The Comprehensive Guide to Apologetics

dozens of geographical markers in the Bible have been identified; including the Temple Mount area, pools of Bethesda (John 5) and Siloam (John 9), and many other locations.7 This is remarkable in spite of the fact that only 1 percent of all the sites in the Holy Land have been excavated!

Faith is always directed into something or someone—that is, faith always has an object.

Faith is contrasted with mere assent (Matthew 13:20-21; John 2:23-25; 1 Corinthians 15:2; Galatians 5:6; Ephesians 2:10; James 2:14-26; cf. James 2:19).

The biblical apologetic focuses in four areas, and these are subsequently employed throughout Christian history: miracle, fulfilled prophecy, natural revelation, and personal experience (what the philosophers term “subjective immediacy”).

Augustine of Hippo. He was converted from neo-Platonism to Christianity

Matthew, Luke, Mark, John were written either by direct apostolic eyewitnesses (Matthew, John) or based on apostolic eyewitness testimony (Mark was based on Peter’s preaching, and Luke [Luke 1:1-4] gathered his information by interviewing eyewitnesses and traveling with Paul [Acts]).

Richard Dawkins, a proponent of evolutionary biology and an outspoken opponent of Christianity, is a prime example of this. He categorically states that “faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”1 This view of faith is called fideism (blind faith); to attribute it to biblical Christianity is to indulge in rank car

Among prominent evidentialists are the author of this article; Gary Habermas; and the many advocates of the “Intelligent Design” movement (the most important being William Dembski).

1.A continuing, virtually endemic disinterest on the part of many evangelical denominations, pastors, and laymen for the kind of rigorous academic study apologetics demands—and a corresponding preference for non-intellectual, subjective religiosity (“the devotional life”), group activities within the church (“fellowship”), and church-growth activis