Sample Presuppositional Conversation

After reading Dr. Greg Bahnsen's masterpiece "Van Til's Apologetic" that is over 700+ pages, it kind of leaves you scratching your head thinking "I'm so supposed to use this stuff in a conversation?"

Well, I went ahead and outlined how you can effectively use presuppositional apologetics:

Sample Conversation

Debate: God is Sovereign/the Final Authority

1. How can God let _____ happen?
1. The blank can be filled in with children starving, murder, AIDS, etc.
2. The problem of evil is one of the most frequent criticisms of Christianity.
2. Ask them who is deciding the morality of ______?
3. Can you justify making such a statement? Why is your view on morality authoritative and not mine?
4. If we are deciding whether or not God is the final authority or not, how can you decide with your authority that God is the final authority? That would in fact, make you the final authority!
5. Fallacy of neutrality
1. From the beginning of a talk w/ any non-Christian there are 2 very hostile point of views
2. If they don’t acknowledge that God is sovereign, they need redemption, you can be confident they will be wrong about every fact.
6. Show coherency of the Christian position
1. We can account for logic, reasoning, uniformity in nature for science, morality, existence of evil, etc
2. Tell them that miracles, infallible Bible, rising from the dead, etc. is not a problem in the Christian worldview.
7. Ask for their antitheistic epistemology
1. Universals: Logic, Laws of science/natural law
2. Relativism
3. Materialistic Naturalism
8. Show contradictions in their presuppositions
1. One and Many Problem
2. Uniformity of Nature/Problem of Induction
3. Relativism is actual absolute
9. Ask for justifications in their use of
1. Logic
2. Morality
3. (Supposed) Neutrality ie appealing to reason
4. Science/Uniformity of Nature
5. Materialistic Naturalism
10. Explain Romans 1:18-22
1. that they in fact know God and it is b/c of this knowledge of God that allows them to have intelligibility
2. they are actually borrowing the Christian worldview to refute it!
3. Common grace and being made in God’s image allows dialogue.
11. Impossibility of the contrary
1. That without assuming the Christian God none of the unbeliever’s arguments make sense.
12. Share the Gospel