One of the courses I just finished for the semester was apologetics. When I was younger, I remember thinking that apologetics was all about arguments—they had to be sound, they had to be able to concretely prove that God existed, that He had created the world, and various other essentials. I realize now that apologetics is not so much a technique to be mastered, but an engaging of worldviews, the fundamental convictions of the heart. Consider what J. Mark Bertrand has to say in his book, (Re)thinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World:

The mature apologist comes to realize that the real problem isn't a lack of bulletproof arguments; it is the lack of ears to hear. There is no 'abstract' apologetic. The faith is always being defended against a specific attack. It is always being presented to a specific people. Apologetics is an incarnational event, an encounter with a decidedly spiritual overtone.

This is where worldview comes into play. Applied to apologetics, worldview awareness emphasizes the interconnectedness of ideas. It probes beneath the questions to the network of assumptions that motivates them. It helps us see the mental and spiritual state of the person before us.

An apologist with worldview awareness, for example, instinctively knows that the opposition of faith and reason is a false dilemma. When unbelievers talk this way, he probes their epistemological assumptions and starts asking questions of his own. The goal is not to win the argument, but to plant a seed of self-doubt (or, to be more precise, self-knowledge) in the unbeliever's mind. He wants to help the unbeliever test his own faith commitments (198-199).

In studying the various methods of apologetics, this is what I found to be the overwhelming strength of the method set forth by people like John Frame and Tim Keller,¹ who do not approach apologetics neutrally (since nothing is neutral, anyway), but operate out of a foundational biblical worldview that seeks to challenge and expose the problems inherent in the worldviews of unbelievers. It is insufficient (and impossible) to merely argue about certain issues from some sort of neutral epistemological perspective. Apologetics operates at the level of worldview challenging non-biblical epistemologies.

Bertrand here makes two points which I think are especially important: first, that apologetics is an incarnational event. I really love that language because it tells us that when unbelievers encounter us, they must encounter Christ. All our thoughts, words, and actions are to represent Him, and our witness depends on it. Although to some degree hypocrisy is inevitable, we have to make every effort to bear faithful witness to Jesus. An encounter with His love is what unbelievers need most.

Second, Bertrand makes the point that we are not so much drawing attention to an unbeliever's self-doubt as to his self-knowledge. While he does not reference it here, this is clearly an allusion to Romans 1:19-21, the passage which states that unregenerate man is not innocently ignorant of God, but represses his knowledge of God. Our apologetic task is to expose that repressed knowledge by showing the inconsistency of their worldview and bringing to light the truth of the biblical worldview. The acknowledgment of God is the core issue, and any worldview that is not biblical and centered on Him ultimately lacks cohesiveness and meaning.

If apologetics is reduced to giving pat answers to what can be some of the most unsettling questions in an unbeliever's heart, it is not helpful. I think Bertrand's point is key. Worldview and apologetics go hand in hand. A proof of God's existence means nothing if the fundamental convictions of the heart are predisposed to reject it. It begins with digging deep to draw out the contradictions and inconsistencies of those non-biblical worldviews and providing the only framework that will make sense of reality.

¹See their books, Apologetics to the Glory of God and The Reason for God, respectively. Generally, this method is referred to as presuppositional, although admittedly that term carries its fair share of ambiguity.