Apologetic Methodologies II

Reflecting on apologetic methodologies, I just got reminded of GK Chesterton who commented that he came to know Christ not because of the positive arguments given by apologists, but by reading the different arguments offered by different people against Christianity. The contradictions of these different arguments against each other led him to think that there is either something very wrong about Christianity or there is something very wrong with the people offering the different arguments. The point he was trying to make is that the contradictions of Christianity are not coherent enough to contradict the very thing they are trying to contradict.

Anyway, moving on to cumulative approach. I guess this may be the most favored approach by most people. A cumulative approach to apologetics states no preference to any one kind of argument and instead maintain that all the evidences and arguments add up to form a comprehensive case for Christ. This is way different from the classical and the evidential approach in the way cumulativists (if there is such a word) will weigh all the arguments equally. This means that the cosmological argument and the resurrection argument need to be utilised at the same time. If I have understood the approach correctly, it is an implicit acknowledgement that all the arguments have loopholes that can be covered up by one another.

Again, while it seems attractive, I often wondered is that the case? There is of course an impetus to want to cover all base and ensure that as apologists, we are able to give a comprehensive array of arguments to show that the case is completed. But I mean, does it need to be the case that this is so? I wonder, because at the end of the day, when it comes to the crux, one does not need to see a cumulative case in order for the apologetic to take effect. I, for one, was convinced by the resurrection argument without going into cosmological argument or moral argument (although I need to qualify that I never believe fully in evolution or moral relativism in the first place). I know of people who are convinced by simply the cosmological argument without going deeply into the ontological argument.

And then there's the problem of the equal weight. Are all arguments equal in weightage? A cumulative approach, when fully practiced, is one which may not be probably customised to the questions of the questioners. Arguments cannot be weighted equally, as they need to be prioritised and tailored according to the need of the askers. This is one question which I think we need to reconcile with the approach.

More to be said about presuppositionalism and reformed epistemology.

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