Experiencial Apologetics – a Summary, Critque, and Supporters

James Fowler’s theory of faith development includes six stages: primal faith, intuitive-projective faith, mythic-literal faith, synthetic-conventional faith, individuative-reflective faith, conjunctive faith, and universalizing faith (Hutchison,

Some adults may live much of their lives with a literal faith. Stage three is group faith Young people start to value the importance of friendship and often come to view God as one who treats them much like a trusted companion. Stage four is person faith. People strengthen their faith by questioning earlier beliefs. Stage five is mystical faith. At this stage of faith the awareness of God’s inner presence leads one to become more aware that God also dwells in others. Interfaith dialogue now becomes not a threat but an opportunity for new understanding. Stage six is sacrificial faith. Jesus, Dorothy Day, and Archbishop Romero are examples of this sacrificial faith. Such people display radical and consistent commitment to the doing of God’s will that is uncompromised by concern for personal security.

Award-winning journalist, Lee Strobel wrote The Case for Christ to retrace and enlarge his journey toward becoming a Christian. Strobel once atheist, and now Christian, shares how he began to look upon the Bible and God. As an atheist, Strobel lived the life of selfishness and only worried to please himself. When his wife began to go to church he wasn’t very pleased until after he saw the positive and attractive change in her. This is the start of his curiosity and investigation about Christianity. He wanted to understand what changed her like this. He wanted to relate with his wife so he decided to study about this and attend church services with her. Strobel began his journey and interviewed thirteen leading scholars who defended their views concerning the historical reliability of the New Testament. Strobel splits the case for Christ into three basic sections: Examining the Record, Analyzing Jesus, and Researching the Resurrection.

Henry, M. (2003). I am the truth: toward a philosophy of Christianity. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.

4. Defending the Christian Worldview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Both assessments also placed him in the Secure/ low avoidance category. Upon consideration of the participant’s answers to the assessment’s questions, he is currently in Elkind’s final stage, the search for comprehension and Fowler’s fifth stage, Conjunctive Faith. The participant in this interview has indeed reach a point in his spiritual growth where he can see the underlying meaning/reasoning of his relationships. While some times still baffled by the behavior of his father, the relationship that he has with his father, other constants in his life, have meaning can ultimately explained through scripture and personal a connection with God. According to Elkind, religion is a natural result of mental development with such complexities, that it ultimately requires our intellectual needs to be gratified by spiritual development as we progress in age, and it is evident that the interviewee has allowed spiritual development to satisfy and bring meaning to that which he could not understand on his own (Hood, Hill, &Spilka, 2009). As for Fowler’s stage of Conjunctive Faith, it is described as place in one’s development where a willingness to converse with those of other faiths in the belief that they might learn something that will allow them to correct their own truths. As minister and someone that has studied theology, the interviewee has had the opportunity to dialogue with several people different faiths and openly admitted that many of them have contributed to his spiritual growth. No longer viewing everything that is found in biblical scripture in a literal sense, he views the theological challenges that are presented to him by those of a different faith as tool to discover as

To know Jesus Christ is the best thing that can happen in a person life. It transforms your mind, body and sprint. I have picked the following three topics to share my experiences of knowing Jesus Christ. First, what can your local church do to better communicate God’s love to your community? Second, why are personal testimonies important in sharing the gospel? Third, Did Jesus claim to be God? These are the three topics that always spark my interest when talking about our Lord savoir Jesus Christ.

As I read this prompt, I remembered my experience as a co-leader of a Christian cell group called Caregroup. One of the members was not then a full Christian; he was interested in the Christian teachings, but since he was a skeptical person, some teachings did not make sense to him. He had some unresolved questions about the teachings.

This course surveys the approaches, questions, and methodologies of Christian Apologetics. The student will be exposed to the major worldviews and belief systems that they will encounter in today’s culture. Upon completion, the student will have a basic understanding of world religions, as well as the knowledge to effectively communicate the gospel with people of other faiths.

Prior to diving into the information that is to be received, it is first important to discuss the methods of knowing provided by Entwistle (2015). There are 4 for epistemic methods of knowing. The four methods are logic, empriricism, revelation, and hermeneutics (Entwistle, 2015). Logic, deals with the assumption that an individual can separate fact from belief by using rationality. Empiricism is a methos that is based off experience, alone. This give responsibility to the individual, and they are to “evaluate” and compare their claims of knowledge by their experiences. Revelation involves the awareness of the signs around humankind. God shows Himself, both, directly and indirectly. This is referred to as special and general revelation. Lastly, Hermeneutics sole purpose is to make sure that God word is never distorted and therefore misunderstood. There are rules that are constructed so that the message of God is, correctly, articulated and passed on to the congregation. In reviewing the methods of knowing, it is safe to say that all 4 are needed to fully integrate faith and science.

The approach of this article with today evangelism deals with the counterfeit faith of some people proclaiming Jesus as their savior. However, if this faith does not show evidence by transforming their lives, then does not deserved to be called saving faith. Such transformation has to show a change on their behaviors. This does not stop there. A true Christian need to perform daily “self-examination” of its own testimony. Another false gospel is to separate incarnational from informational apologetic. They go hand in hand as an absolute truth of Jesus Christ in evangelism. Some would have us believe that incarnational apologetic is not necessary in our society. But, they stand very far from the truth. Both “incarnational and informational” apologetic are interlaced and important tools for our daily life.

The Book of John, and the life and death of Jesus Christ are key components of the authors evidence to back up his ways of solving the issues of Christian worldviews. Along with this, the author includes testimonials of his friends that specifically dealt with real-life issues in conflict with their Christian views as well.

Fay and Shepherd are to be commended for creating this thought provoking book. The authors persuasively implored Christians to encompass witnessing into their lives, then supported their points with specific biblical guidance. For example, when confronted with an individual who declines to accept Jesus because they believe they will be unable to live a Christian life the authors provided Phil. 4:13 as the scriptural response. They were successful in conveying their deep concern for unchurched and lost souls.

Dr. David Feddes revealed Unapologetic apologetics has at least four elements that I want to highlight: dialogue, defense, clarification, and making a positive case. Dialogue includes talking together, reasoning together, listening and learning to talk another person’s language. Part of communicating the gospel is speaking in the language, and in the figures of speech, and with the examples that other people can understand and relate to. In order to relate to other people, you need conversation with them. You need to understand how they think in order to communicate how you think. Dialogue, talking back and forth in an effort to understand each other, is a big part of apologetics.

What is faith? Faith is something different to everyone. If you asked a hundred different people, it is possible that you would get many diverse answers. Religious faith and non-religious faith are two very distinct terms. Faith holds an extremely complex meaning when discussing it in the context of religion. Faith is a belief. That holds true to every religious and non-religious person. Every faith involves a decision. It is not about what we claim to believe, but what we actually do believe, that is true faith. Throughout this paper, I am going to discuss Christian faith, how it pertains to daily life and Christianity as a whole. I also intend to delve into George W. Forell's discussion of Christian faith and analyze and