An example of presuppositional apologetics

While there are variations within what is known as the presuppositional school of Christian apologetics, one of the basic goals of this approach to defending the faith is to identify the root commitments a person has. The assumption here (and it's a very good one) is that our underlying predispositions, presuppositions, attitudes, or whatever you wish to name them shape a great deal of how we see the world and operate in it. In other words, nobody approaches anything from a position of complete neutrality; nobody is a clean slate. Therefore, the presuppositional school generally believes quite strongly that in order to make any real headway in apologetic evangelism, one has to get to the heart of the matter. And this cannot be done without a sustained focus on the presuppositions that each of us bring to the questions of life, including religious and faith questions. While Van Til's application of this approach was generally negative (prove the validity of the Christian faith by proving the invalidity of all presuppositions that oppose the Christian faith), Frame's approach strikes me as a more well-rounded presuppositionalism that values positive apologetics such as evidence and emotional transformations. But one of the issues people have often had with presuppositionalism is that it is heavily philosophical, and therefore, inaccessible to many average Christians who want to defend the faith in their everyday interactions with unbelievers. This is a legitimate charge, in my view. So what I will endeavor to do in what follows is to offer something of a concrete example of how a presuppositional approach to apologetics plays out in addressing a common objection to the faith.

Let's take the Walking on the Water story from Matthew 14:22-33. This passage, at least in academic circles, has been a very popular focus of critique and skepticism. In recent times, two main streams of critical thought have developed in response to the Biblical account. As we will see, while these two streams of skepticism are distinct from one another, they tend to emanate from the same underlying source.

The first stream is less popular today than it used to be, but it's still adopted, particularly by amateurs to the field. According to the first stream, this event really did happen in history. The text gives us no reason to think it's merely telling a moral fable, so if we take the literary genre of the passage seriously, we are obligated to conclude that the author felt this was an actual literal event. So far, so good. But then this critical stream turns critical. If we are obligated to take this event as historical, how, they say, are we supposed to square it against scientific realities (such as, people don't walk on water)? Their answer was to naturalize the event, and say that while the event really happened, Jesus must have been standing on a rock or a sandbar in the middle of the sea, rather than truly standing on the water. Likewise, when Peter stepped out of the boat, he stepped on the same sandbar and began walking on it to get to Jesus. But at some point, Peter took a wrong step and began to sink. What this critical stream attempts to do is to preserve the historical nature of the story, while providing what it believes are plausible naturalistic causes to explain the seemingly miraculous elements of the story.

The second critical stream is more popular than the first. According to this stream, popularized by Crossan and many others, the Mt. 14 account was not an actual event that literally took place in history. Rather, the story is something of a parable, in which a fictional story is told to deliver a very truthful and timeless moral to the audience. This stream of criticism really latches onto v31, and identifies Peter's lack of faith as the main point of the story. For Crossan and others, this story is designed to provide a vivid (but historically fictional) illustration of what happens when we take our eyes off Jesus in the midst of the storms of life. The moral of the story is simple - when our focus is on Jesus, we can do amazing things even in the midst of chaos and turmoil, and he leads us on the path of righteousness that overcomes fear and doubt. Yet, even when we do stumble like the Peter character does in this fictional story, we can still cry out to Jesus and he will take our hand and rescue us from the consuming storm. Sounds like a great sermon doesn't it? Like the first critical stream, this critical stream also attempts to preserve the story and its value. But unlike the first stream, this stream fictionalizes the entire account, and renders the passage as exclusively a fictional moral tale that is designed to teach timeless truths about faith, rather than providing us with actual history.

What is a presuppositional response to these critical streams? See the next post (which I guess will actually be above this post on the blog order)...