A biblical approach to apologetics does not entail proving God exists in a manner that confers legitimacy upon agnosticism, atheism, sincere seekers etc., let alone does it approve of fastening a dreamy possibility of the resurrection to a vague concept of God or multiple first Causes or Designers that might not still exist. (Nor does our apologetic entail a naïveté that is consistent with furnishing a series of uninterpreted particulars that demand an evidentialist verdict of resurrection.) No, a biblical approach to apologetics does not try to prove what rebels already know, but rather by reasoning transcendentally our aim is to expose what rebels defiantly deny. By the grace of God, the presuppositional apologist will expose the folly of unbelief by powerfully demonstrating in reductio ad absurdum fashion that even the mere possibility of rejecting God’s existence presupposes God’s existence! 

At the heart of Christian apologetic methodology is the consideration of ultimate authority. How the authority of Scripture should shape the Christian’s defense of the faith is a matter of bringing every thought captive to obey Christ, (even as the Christian gives an answer for the hope that is in him, with meekness and fear.) How consistently the believer sanctifies the Lord God in his heart will influence his apologetic methodology.
Classical Apologetics (CA) seeks to establish Theism from nature and unaided reason. If a theistic universe with design, causality and / or morality can be established, then there is a basis for considering evidence for the true and living God who has intervened in history in the Christ event, and in particular through the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. For the classical apologist, a two-step approach is advisable. First, establish theism in general; then, try to prove the resurrection through historical evidence. After all, until one becomes persuaded of the possibility of a Designer, an Unmoved Mover, a Moral Law Giver, or a conception of a “Supremely Perfect” being, he won’t likely be as open to evidence for the resurrection. In other words, before one begins marshaling evidence for God having raised Jesus from the dead, it is advantageous to first establish there even is a god who could possibly have raised Jesus from the dead.
Classical Apologetics denies a biblical contextual reality:
Apologetics ought to be done in the context of the unbeliever’s condition and relevant divine revelation. Because the unbeliever’s condition cannot be reliably inferred by the unbeliever’s false claims about himself, the apologist should seek to be informed by the authority of God’s word alone. Apologetic methodology surely must not betray Scripture and if possible, should be inferred from Scripture.
With respect to biblical contextual reality, General Revelation reveals much about God, yet little about man’s spiritual covenantal condition. For instance, apart from a confrontational encounter with Scripture, unregenerate man knows God is all powerful, omniscient, and omnipresent (as well as other perfections). Yet we know those bits of truth about man’s condition from Scripture alone. Scripture reveals to us that all men know not merely a notion of God but the one true and living God, which is why it can be said that all are without excuse. Indeed, man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness, but it is the truth he suppress (and not some false conception of God). In moral and epistemic rebellion, natural man willfully turns the truth he knows into a lie. Without exception, that is man’s response to what he knows by nature as he lives in God’s ordered universe, experiencing God’s goodness and daily provision. Accordingly, any consideration of the viability of a Natural Theology apologetic should be placed in the context of man’s willful suppression of the truth he knows.
There is knowledge of God that is properly basic. It is apprehended directly (as opposed to discursively), yet not in a vacuum but always through the mediation of created things in the context of providence. Without reasoning from more fundamental or basic beliefs, the unbeliever apprehends God in conscience through the things that are made. Man’s knowledge of God is mediated through the external world, but it is apprehended immediately by God’s image bearers apart from argumentation or even modest reflection. Therefore, the apostle Paul may say that all men have knowledge of the truth. Not all men can follow the elaborate arguments of another’s Natural Theology, let alone formulate their own theistic proofs, but all men directly apprehend God’s General Revelation of himself. A god who must be proved is not the God of Scripture.
Moral considerations regarding Natural Theology as it relates to Classical Apologetics (CA).
To try to prove God exists in order to get someone to believe God exists is a fool’s errand. It is to go along with the charade of the unbeliever who has said in his heart there is no God. Engaging the folly of unbelief in this way is to become like the fool (as opposed to properly answering the fool). In short, by not applying this one foundational biblical truth that all men know God and are, therefore, without excuse, the employment of CA implies several distinct yet related untruths.
Before reading on, it’s important to internalize that it is only the unbelieving fool who denies God’s existence. The fool’s profession is a deception. The alleged seeker, inquisitive agnostic, and committed atheist all know God. Accordingly, the Bible instructs us not try to prove what is known but rather expose what is denied! That is an entailment of doing apologetics in a biblical contextual reality.
Seven betrayals of CA:
1. Implicit in the employment of CA is that God has not plainly revealed himself in creation and conscience. After all, why use CA to prove God’s existence unless some do not know through General Revelation that God exists? Accordingly, CA implicitly denies God’s revelation and man’s knowledge of God.
The following betrayals flow from the first:
2. CA implies that unbelief is an intellectual matter, not an ethical one. The unbeliever needs better arguments in order to become intellectually persuaded of what is already known yet suppressed. CA emphasis is on proof and persuasion, and not the biblical mandate to gently expose one’s willful, sinful rebellion that can manifest itself in a denial of God’s existence. CA focuses on a false need for intellectual enlightenment and not a true need for moral repentance.
3. CA implies that all men are not culpable for denying that God has plainly made himself known. After all, the alleged need of the unbeliever is to be enlightened to something he doesn’t already know, which undermines the need to avoid wrath due to rebellion against God who is known a priori.
4. Since CA implies man is not culpable, CA implies God’s injustice, for God would be unjust to punish those who aren’t culpable due to their innate inability to construct theological proofs on their own.
5. By trying to overcome the unbeliever’s alleged agnosticism or atheism with sophisticated proof(s) that presuppose man can actually seek God, CA denies that no one seeks after God. Accordingly, CA implies that an alleged seeker is not in ethical rebellion while he masquerades as intellectually pursuing an honest answer to the question of God’s existence.
6. CA implies that God is not a necessary precondition for the very possibility of the masquerade of seeking God (and denying God). In other words, CA grants the requisite tools of investigation (common notions) are implicitly neutral ground and not strictly common ground that can only be justified if it is first true that God exists.
7. If common ground is neutral ground, then CA implies that there are brute facts that can be interpreted without worldview bias. In other words, CA grants that the facts of nature can exegete themselves without any reference to God as sovereign interpreter.
In sum, CA relates to an endeavor that aims to prove a false god who has not effectively revealed himself to at least some invincibly ignorant creatures. Again, a god who must be proved is not the God of Scripture.
Aside from denying the biblical contextual reality in which apologetics should be conducted, theistic proofs as they’ve been traditionally formulated have been, I believe, an embarrassment to the church. For instance, how does the cosmological argument disprove a first cause of simultaneous multiplicity, or the teleological argument rule out multiple designers? In other words, how do such arguments avoid a fallacy of quantification, or avoid a natural theology of the gods? How do we deduce from natural experience of natural causes a single supernatural first cause? Why must a logical first cause or the supposed designer of the universe still exist?
Yet even if these shortcomings (and the ones I’ve not mentioned for brevity sake) were adequately overcome, CA would still entail (a) implicit denial of natural man’s sinful suppression of his knowledge of God along with (b) impugnment of God’s righteous judgement against man’s moral rebellion.
CA follows Eve’s modus operandi:
Unbelievers require a “neutral” investigation into the claims of Christianity. Unbelievers employ autonomous reasoning (i.e., reasoning from a mindset that does not acknowledge God’s epistemic Lordship over the possibility of human reason itself), without which unbelievers cannot judge whether the Bible should be deemed reliable for its claims let alone authoritative over all of life. For the unbeliever, apart from judging the Bible from a throne of autonomy, the Bible and all it claims cannot be assessed as true. The problem with such a philosophical and religious posture, which admittedly touches upon a concept that is difficult for both unbelievers and many believers to grasp, is that if the Bible must first be validated by the unbeliever as authoritative, then it cannot be intrinsically authoritative. Yet if the Bible is authoritative by virtue of its divine origin, then no such human validation is permissible (or even possible when one is in submission to God’s word!).*
While the unbeliever remains a judge of God’s word – the unbeliever remains his own self-proclaimed authority; God’s word is positively rejected as long as the unbeliever seeks to determine its origin. With hat in hand, God remains in the dock awaiting the unbeliever’s favor.
What is built into the unbeliever’s make-up is something from which the unbeliever cannot extricate himself. That is, there is an ethically driven intellectual bias, a deep-seated antithesis that rejects the authority of God’s voice in Scripture (and in nature). If God’s word is authoritative, then it may not be judged. It must be obeyed for what it truly is, God’s word. But like Eve who placed God’s word on the same level of Satan’s and then rose above both to judge what is true, so is the posture of the unbeliever. He sits in the place of God, presiding over the authority of Scripture. CA not only caters to the unbeliever’s quest for autonomy, the classical apologist shares in the mission! He has become like the fool, which is the very thing the Proverb warns against.
The unbeliever presupposes at the outset of his pursuit of God that the requisite tools of rational investigation (e.g. logic, inference, memory etc.) and the context in which they function (e.g. reality and providence) are not God dependent. In other words, the unbeliever’s bias is that any mind-world correspondence is perfectly intelligible apart from any reference point other than the finite human mind itself. Little if no consideration is given to the question of why the subject and object of knowledge should correspond, or how there can be a fruitful connection between the knower and the mind-independent external world that can be known. By the nature of the case, the unbeliever imagines that if God exists, he must be discovered through autonomous reason that is capable of functioning apart from God. In doing so, the unbeliever not only rejects a God who must make reason possible – he is not even seeking such a God at all! The unbeliever is seeking a god who does not make knowledge possible and has not plainly revealed himself in creation, providence and grace. The unbeliever is seeking an idol of his own making and CA aids in the pursuit.
Hope is on the way:
There is an apologetic that is true to biblical contextual reality, but it looks quite different from CA. It’s my experience that an appreciation for the sheer profundity of a distinctly presuppositional approach to apologetics directly corresponds to a diminishing view of CA. Until the Christian apologist recognizes the biblical infidelity of an apologetic methodology that wrongly diagnoses man as needing cleverly devised proofs to satisfy “neutral” yet “honest” intellectual-pursuit of God’s existence, it is not likely he will see the biblical faithfulness of an apologetic approach that works within the biblical confines God’s revelation. Far from partisan apologetics, this is a matter of Christian obedience. The extent of the fall as it relates to what mankind lost when our first parents plunged humanity into a state of total depravity must be seen through non-Thomistic, Calvinistic lenses if we hope to apprehend a biblically informed apologetic.
But before getting into a distinctly presuppositional approach to apologetics, first a few words about Evidentialism, which is the short-relief closer for the ace of CA. (It is October, after all! ⚾️) Translation, Evidentialism completes CA.
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Written by J. Lance Acree |
Monday, December 13, 2021
For example, Francis S. Collins wrote a foreword for Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution, in which he espoused a theology of Christianity free of any historical interest in the Genesis creation account.  But as we see in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, without a historical First Adam as our first covenantal representative there can be no historical Last Adam, and hence no salvation—for anyone, at any point in history.

Christians do not need to adopt the Neo-Marxist theory of race as a social construct in order to do battle against the CRT of Neo-Marxism. It is better to recognize the truth that distinct races do exist in objective reality, and that good and bad attributes become characteristics of races as a result of the religion that dominates them.  This includes both black and white. 
After reading a number of books on Critical Race Theory (CRT) by evangelical and reformed authors, I have become convinced that sometimes good men get it wrong.  Some of the writers I respect the most are saying that the existence of distinct human races is not real.  It is just a social construct.
In his recent post (Race is Real and Not a Social Construct, October 14, 2021), Larry Ball referenced writers quoted above, who are doubtless asserting that race is not real because its scientific basis is in debate.  The debate among scientists rages around values of an abstract probability (Fst) and what constitutes a “sub-species.”[i]
In western culture, the concept of race was given a veneer of scientific legitimacy by Charles Darwin, the title of whose best-known work is usually abbreviated as On the Origin of Species, but the title continues with race-grounding language: by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.  The theory of evolution he espoused was, and remains to this day, inherently race-centric and inextricably racist.  He himself acknowledged this racist element when he pointed out (in his less well-known work The Descent of Man) his theory’s implications with regard to white supremacy:[ii]
The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution.  Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridæ—between the elephants, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals.  But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct.  At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.  At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Prof. Shaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated.  The break between man and his nearest allies will then be the wider, or it will intervene between man and a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
Close reading of the final half of this section reveals that Darwin considered only white-skinned Caucasians to be civilized, and therefore destined (through “the general principle of evolution”) to “almost certainly” exterminate and replace the “savage” (non-Caucasian) races.  Scholarly research shows that this intrinsic white supremacy was a driving force in the formulation of Nazi racism.[iii]  ‘There is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends in death.’
Since Darwin published his theory, many have attempted to forge a savvy syncretism between Christianity and evolution, perhaps feeling intellectually ashamed under the constant bombardment of evolution propaganda.  That kind of effort inevitably leads to gutting Christianity until it is unrecognizable.  For example, Francis S. Collins wrote a foreword for Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution,[iv] in which he espoused a theology of Christianity free of any historical interest in the Genesis creation account.  But as we see in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, without a historical First Adam as our first covenantal representative there can be no historical Last Adam, and hence no salvation—for anyone, at any point in history.
The person who avidly endorsed this book to me also asked me, “Why save Genesis?”  They clearly felt the hopelessness of rationally integrating evolution with biblical history—and had decided to throw Genesis away.  If I remember correctly, I responded, “I can think of about fifty reasons to ‘save’ Genesis.”  One of them would be to preserve an alternative to the metanarrative and religious dogma of evolution (with its two Big Invisible Friends, MegaTime and Chance).  This has become the Theory of Everything, the Religion of the Age, despite the obvious fact that it requires believing the Gambler’s Fallacy to be true when we know scientifically that it is false.
Devotion to evolution also requires persistently avoiding a glaringly obvious scientific fact: the origin of a species has never been observed and recorded, even though the species generation rate must be significant.  This is the classic null result. A couple of null results in the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887 abruptly ended the theory of “luminiferous aether.”  Not so with the supposedly scientific theory of evolution.  Across all the fishponds and aquariums, all the pastures and backyard chicken houses around the world, we see a continuous stream of null results.  Where is a newly originated and reproductively independent species?
We all hear when someone discovers the two-headed calf or a two-headed snake in the barn; but we never hear of a completely new and reproductively independent species appearing among the cattle in the pasture or the goldfish in the bowl.  Over millennia of livestock domestication and managed breeding across the animal and plant kingdoms across the globe, not one record has emerged that indicates the spontaneous origin of a new and independent species from an existing one.  We are told that evolution is one of the most powerful forces among all living things; yet no one has won a Nobel prize for documenting a recent origin.  No ancient texts supply a hint of an observed origin.  All we get instead is romanticized but ambiguous “flex-splanations” such as “speciation” among interbreeding finches in the Galapagos.[v]  I have often thought of writing a book entitled The Beak of the Acrees: A Romantic Story of Scholastic Sleight of Hand.
But there is something else curiously missing.  Despite the estimation that over 99% of earth’s species have gone extinct, no evolutionist publishes a mathematical (Fibonacci) model of species origins; the correspondingly high species origination rate (that must necessarily exceed the high extinction rate) to produce the millions of species we now observe alive and well.  We are bombarded with the output of population models and climate models, but no species origination models.
And with any systemic outcome like racism, we should (if we are rational and system thinkers) look for systemic inputs.  And few inputs to our society have been more systematic than the fawning exaltation of evolution in just about every high school and college biology class.  What student makes it to a diploma without multiple doses of this theory crammed down their throats?  The state has installed its one religion.  This formal propaganda is reinforced with a steady stream of film and song riddled with evolution dogma.  The pope must be jealous.
This may be what Ball is thinking of when he says race is real, but that would require him to confound race with racism.  Racism is certainly real—it’s a real and measurable characteristic of a population systemically indoctrinated with the inherently racist theory of evolution.  If all of humanity were, as Ball says, of one race, then the term is useless slang; “race” becomes a synonym of “human.”  Like the word “stuff,” it denotes a categorical distinction without significance.  But race is a fiction that persists, a fiction useful for secular propaganda purposes.
All this means that for Christians the widespread use of the phrase “systemic racism” offers an opportunity: to (graciously but firmly) point out to our pagan friends the systematic indoctrination in the intrinsically racist theory/religion of evolution.  This is a kind of paraclete work, and it’s a work of love: walking hand in hand with our friend while he walks in the wrong direction.  The path seems right to him, but we know it leads to death.  And when our friend is standing at the end of the path, staring into the empty pit and feeling the devastating death in his soul, we must be standing there with him, holding his hand.
What, Where, When and How questions are how we walk alongside.[vi]  We may politely ask, Francis Schaeffer fashion, where and when the origin of a reproductively independent species has been scientifically documented?  How many more billions of null results are required to make evolution a suspect theory?  To ask what is preventing people from tearing down the two statues of the well-known white supremacist Charles Darwin?  To ask what “chance” really is?  To lovingly hold their hand as their intellectual house of cards collapses in their hands—and then offer them real hope through the historical last Adam who has mercifully fulfilled the covenant office of the first Adam.
J. Lance Acree is in his 33rd year of service as a Ruling Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.  He researches preventable human error and lives with his wife of 41 years in Clinton, Tennessee.

[i] Faulk, Ryan. “Variation Within and Between Races – The Alternative Hypothesis.” Accessed December 7, 2021, https://thealternativehypothesis.org/index.php/2016/04/15/variation-within-and-between-races/.
[ii] See Chapter VI, “On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man”, 1871
[iii] Weikart, Richard. “The Role of Darwinism in Nazi Racial Thought.” German Studies Review 36, no. 3 (2013): 537–56. https://doi.org/10.1353/gsr.2013.0106.  Kelly, Alfred. The Descent of Darwin: The Popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860-1914. UNC Press Books, 2012.  Bergman, Jerry. The Darwin Effect: It’s Influence on Nazism, Eugenics, Racism, Communism, Capitalism & Sexism. New Leaf Publishing Group, 2014.
[iv] Giberson, Karl W., Harper One, 2008.,
[v] Weiner, Jonathan. The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time. Reprint edition. New York, NY: Vintage, 1995.
[vi] Good, Mark C. Real Talk: Creating Space for Hearts to Change. Sisters, OR: Deep River Books LLC, 2017.

There will come a time when the graves will opened. And all of you ladies who are in Christ will hear: “Talitha cumi.”  “Little girl, get up.” And all of you men who are resting in Jesus for the forgiveness of sin—you will hear: “Talay Cumi.” “Little boy, get up.” And you will be ushered into eternity—body and soul—by the one who conquered death. 

Most of the Gospel of Mark is written in Greek, and when the reader is confronted with Jesus speaking Aramaic, it ought to give pause. Jairus’s twelve year-old daughter–an only child–lay dead and the Lord Jesus had been called to her bedside to heal her. The Gospel records:
Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. Mark 5:41-42
With the quiet of the room and the mourning of the parents…
With Peter and James and John looking on…
With a twelve year old girl lying dead in her bed…
With all the wailing outside and the mockery of Jesus….
With the words of her death spreading around the small town….
Jesus, the precious savior, takes this little girl by the hand and whispers in Aramaic:
Talitha cumi.
These are two of the most precious words in all of the Word of God:
“Little girl, get up.”“Honey, it’s okay—rise up.”“Rise up, little girl.”
And she did.
She rose from the dead as Jesus brought her back to life through whispering two of the most precious words that have ever crossed the lips of humanity.
Talitha cumi.
Now go–if you will–with me into the next years and decades of life, along with this twelve-year old girl. Use your sanctified imagination.
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