How to Expose the Image of God in Apologetic Encounters

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And today, I'm going to be taking a question from one of the listeners of the show.

They emailed me a question, and you guys can email me a question as well. If you have a question about apologetics in general, presuppositional apologetics more specifically, you could, and just theology or philosophy or whatever the case may be, you can email me your question at revealedapologetics at gmail .com.

And I will read your question. I do check my email. And I will possibly make your question into an article.

Or I'll do something like this, where I make a brief video answering your question. So if you guys really appreciate some of the shorter videos where I just kind of address a thing or two, let me know.

Message me. Let me know in the comments what you guys think about that.

I know typically, I'm doing interviews and teachings. And those are sometimes an hour, an hour and a half.

So I know there are folks who enjoy the long stuff. But I also know that there are folks who find the shorter stuff more useful.

So please let me know. I'm super interested in what you guys are interested in. And I want to give you content that is going to be useful, beneficial for you.

So please let me know. Now, just to jump right in, this is a question from Spencer.

He is a listener to the channel. And he says this. Question, what sorts of things should

I be listening for while talking to unbelievers so that I can demonstrate that they're made in the image of God?

That's a great question. Just to kind of give context here, if you're not familiar with kind of a presuppositional approach, we would argue that the presuppositional approach to apologetics is a biblical approach.

And so our apologetic methodology and our apologetic argumentation is going to be informed by scripture.

It's going to be informed by biblical theology, theology derived from scripture, not necessarily the subdiscipline within the broader discipline of systematics, biblical theology, practical theology.

I'm talking about theology that is derived from the text. We're going to allow those truths of scripture to inform the way we engage the unbeliever.

And so while keeping that in mind, we believe that the Bible teaches that all men made in the image of God have a knowledge of God within them.

And that knowledge of God is being suppressed in unrighteousness, as Romans chapter 1 says and other aspects of scripture also point to this reality as well.

So the context here is that when we are doing apologetics and we are engaging the unbeliever, how do we expose the knowledge of God that they do have, but are suppressing?

Because that's going to be what apologetics is all about. We're going to ask questions.

We're going to engage our interlocutor, so to speak. And we are wanting to expose that suppressed knowledge.

All right? And again, there's going to be other things involved in the apologetic interaction, but what are we supposed to be looking for when we're engaging, right?

Well, first, when I'm speaking with the average person, I may take a different tactic than if I were to speak to someone that was more philosophically sophisticated.

And I don't mean this in like any disingenuous way. I mean, you need to know who you're speaking with, right?

I'm not going to use language like the preconditions of intelligibility while talking to a 13 -year -old or a little kid or an uninformed adult, right?

You're going to have to cater your language to the specific audience that you are engaging with, right?

This is one of the reasons why Cornelius Van Til is accused of adopting kind of like idealistic philosophy and Kantian philosophical categories, the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, because he used a lot of that language.

But in reality, I think there's something very important to learn from the fact that Van Til did use the language of these philosophical perspectives.

Van Til used that language for the purpose of speaking the language of the philosophers that he was interacting with.

So when Van Til used certain terminology that is familiar to those within the idealistic philosophy, the philosophical tradition, and the

Kantian philosophical tradition, he doesn't mean those words in exactly the same way and then within the exact same context as those philosophical, you know, the proponents of those philosophical perspectives.

He tried to use language as a bridge builder for communication to speak the language of the philosophers.

And in like fashion, for us who are not in academia, we want to learn to speak the language, right?

So what are some of the things you want to listen for? Well, first, before you listen, okay, assuming you've already engaged the conversation, you want to preemptively be somewhat aware of the nature of the person you're speaking with so that you can cater your presentation, so to speak, or your spiel, if we can call it that.

You want to cater it to the particular person that you're speaking with, right? This is very, very important.

So now what are some of the things that I like to use when I want to expose the knowledge of God within someone who's suppressing it?

Well, first, when I'm not speaking to a philosopher or someone who is, you know, philosophically sophisticated or anything along those lines,

I like to appeal to morality, okay? When we speak of right and wrong, and is morality objective, and these sorts of things, right?

This hits home with a lot of people. The average person on the street, at least in my experience, believes in objective morality.

And so that is a good touching point to kind of connect with the person that we're speaking with. And so then we could ask that kind of transcendental question, right?

Which worldview makes sense out of, you know, our disdain for acts of evil, right?

This hits home with the average person. Take a look, for example, at someone like William Lane Craig. In many interviews,

Dr. Craig has been asked often, what is his favorite argument? What is the best argument in apologetics, right?

And so Dr. Craig is famously known for the Kalam Cosmological Argument. And so his favorite argument is the

Kalam Cosmological Argument. But he also expressed that really, though, the most effective argument is the moral argument, because it relates so well with people, right?

We can talk about actual infinities, potential infinities, you know, quantum mechanics and cosmology and things like that, and that's super interesting and important.

But for the average person, the issues of right and wrong, objective, good and evil, these sorts of things really hit home and relate to the average person.

So when I'm speaking to the average person, I want to appeal to the law of God written in their hearts, right?

And so bringing up the issue of morality is going to be very useful.

And it not only allows us to expose the fact that the unbeliever has a knowledge of God and has a knowledge of his law written on their hearts, but it also allows us to contrast the foundationless worldview of the unbeliever with the well -founded worldview of the

Christian faith. And so we could make sense out of something like objective morality and objective good and objective evil and these sorts of things.

So that the thing that the unbeliever wants to affirm, say like murder is wrong or rape is wrong, right?

What they want to affirm, we want to show that given their unbelieving worldview, they can't have those things.

Now, again, I'm saying this in passing, you have all sorts of sophisticated forms of explanation as to how objective morality is grounded.

I'm not getting into that. I'm talking about the average person, right? But what we want to show, just generally speaking, their worldview can't make sense out of those things they know in their heart of hearts to be true, right?

But in contrast, the Christian faith does have a worldview context in which something like objective morality makes sense, right?

So speaking of morality can allow us to kind of connect with the average person, right?

And allow us to kind of talk about the importance of how much Christianity makes sense out of these things.

And again, this isn't a knockdown argument right in the context of a conversation.

Remember, you need to make a distinction between say the debates we see on YouTube and what we're trying to accomplish there versus the day -to -day conversations we have with unbelievers at the coffee shop.

Those are not the same context, right? You need to be careful to make that distinction and understand the difference between those differing contexts, right?

You do not always want to speak with the person in the coffee shop in the same way you would speak to someone when you're in a formal debate, right?

So you wanna be very careful there. So when I'm speaking to the average person, that's where I would go. Now, if I'm speaking to someone who is more philosophically sophisticated or more scientifically minded, you still can use the morality approach.

But for example, with the more philosophically inclined, we might wanna ask more foundational questions with respect to logic.

So when we speak of say the transcendental argument for the existence of God, we tend to think of logic being the necessary precondition for intelligibility.

What is logic? Which worldview can make sense out of logic? And of course, you wanna ask questions. Is this person a materialist?

Is this person a metaphysical naturalist in terms of which logic is something that's grounded in the material world or whatever?

You need to ask those questions, right? Not all atheists or materialists or whatever you wanna call yourself are created equal, right?

They have differing perspectives. So asking questions is going to be vitally important, right?

And you listen to those responses and you cater your answers to what they give you because you wanna be able to represent your,

I guess if this is a conversation, we don't necessarily wanna call them our opponents, but the person who is that you're engaging in the apologetic interaction with, you wanna make sure that you understand their perspective.

So I bring up logic. I wanna look for really what are, with the person

I'm speaking with, what are his worldview foundations, okay? So here's the thing. So this just came to my head.

So when we think of worldviews, we think that we come to this idea that everyone has a worldview, right?

Everyone has a network of presuppositions in terms of which all reality is interpreted, the intellectual shades through which everything is understood.

We know that everyone has that. Now, what I like to look for, and this is helpful to me, that I understand that every worldview is made up of at least these three foundations, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.

Everyone has a metaphysic, a theory of reality. Everyone has an epistemology, a theory of knowledge, how we know what we know.

And everyone has an ethic, how should we live our lives, okay? And so what I'm looking for, because people's worldviews can be very sophisticated, they can be very nuanced.

There's lots of details, lots of things to learn when you're speaking to people about their own position.

What I like to look for are those foundations. What does this person believe about the nature of the world?

And is his theory of reality consistent with his theory of knowledge, right?

Is this person a materialist? Is this person's epistemology that of a strict empiricism in terms of which all knowledge comes through sensation?

I wanna know that. I wanna know if their metaphysic is consistent with their epistemology and their ethic.

These are the three worldview foundations. I look for those three things, and I ask questions in such a way to expose those categories within the person's perspective, and then

I will cater my responses or my questions or my next point in the conversation. I will cater what

I say to how they answer those kind of fundamental questions, right? So those are some of the things you want to look for.

You wanna look for hints that will tip you off to a person's theory of reality. How do you know what's real?

Their theory of knowledge. How do they know what they know? And their ethical theory. How should we live our lives?

And are these three foundations consistent with each other? Or are there conflicts between those categories? If there are conflicts from an argumentative and strategic perspective, you wanna exploit those and gently show that they are inconsistent with what they want to affirm.

And then, of course, you can offer the Christian context, the Christian metaphysics, the Christian epistemology, the Christian ethic as a better context for understanding the particular thing you're discussing, whether it's logic or if you're speaking to someone that's more scientifically -minded, we can speak of the uniformity of nature, right?

This assumption that tomorrow will most likely be like the past, and this is a fundamental assumption within science that nature is predictable and uniform and things like that.

So it really depends who you're going to speak with, but those are some of the things that I look for.

And it's kind of my shortcut, okay? I call it a shortcut in this sense that worldviews are very nuanced, complicated, and filled with lots of interconnected puzzle pieces.

But if you are focused on those three foundations, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and cater your questions to exposing those elements, then

I think that's a good shortcut to kind of get to the foundation of what someone believes and then start asking your questions and engaging.

So there you go. Those are some of the things that I would look for. I hope this is helpful. And once again, if you like this kind of more short form sort of videos, please let me know.

And if you have any questions about apologetics, theology, and philosophy, be sure to email me at revealedapologeticsatgmail .com.