I'm not sure, to be honest, that classical apologetics has any application. You just tell someone, this is the ontological argument. Take it or leave it.

I've only met maybe one person in the last 17 years I've been doing this that's asked questions even remotely related to this. And I think some of the new books being put out by Dan Strange and Josh Chatro and Glenn Scrivener and others like them that are getting now to the emotional, spiritual, psychological reasons, you know, the big worldview questions. I hear that all the time. That's way more on the minds and hearts of people than the five arguments. And most of these guys, strange is an exception don't give credit to van till but it's like i even gavin orton i see van till's influence all through them because they recognize this is a hard issue yeah

yeah that's great let me let me ask you um you address so briefly and so clearly different schools of apologetics. You just kind of introduce and point out here's a point of departure. Here's what it is. And you do so very winsomely. The first one you address, as you mentioned, you describe as the most, you say the most well-known approach to apologetics is evidentialism. Yeah,

I believe it's the most well-known.

Yeah, I think so too. I think I'm on page 20. So you describe evidentialism, and then you make this comment, which I'd be interested to hear you explain a little bit. You say this, while it is true that some Christians describe their conversions this way, as in they were convinced by evidence, their testimonies are experiential descriptions of how they felt at the moment that they realized the truth of the gospel. In reality, as we'll see later in the book, such an experience comes at the end of a process through which the Holy Spirit convicts them of sin and draws them to Christ. God uses evidences as part of that process, but it is not the presentation of evidences alone that compels them to believe.

Wow, that's profound. I can't believe I wrote that. I

think it's great, because I heard recently, I wish I could remember where I read this, that there was a doctoral dissertation done somewhere in the UK, and it was sort of a survey of adult conversions. After this, I'll take it up to my office and show you the book. But sort of statistically, overwhelmingly, people were convinced by these kinds of arguments, or at least that's the way they would describe their conversion, that they realized there's a great deal of evidence for, or they realized, wow, maybe I should believe the Bible. And you have sort of mock conversations or maybe accounts of real encounters in your book describing these things when someone realizes, wait, I have a hostile attitude toward the Bible for no reason whatsoever. I've never even it. So you sort of disabuse someone of the notion that the Bible this and that, or that they are experts in the untrustworthiness of the Bible and so on. But what about this comment that you make? I find it intriguing. You talk about evidentialism, there are some weaknesses to evidentialism, but then you say many Christians are perhaps led to faith by evidence or by evidential argumentation? Yeah,

we're not against evidences. As you know, Van Til was not against evidences. He just believed that everything was evidence. And I'm so thankful for the evidential apologist. J. Warner Wallace's books, unbelievable details. And all the work that Gary Hopper Moss is doing in the resurrection, like there are so many evidences. But evidentialism as an approach essentially requires you to learn massive amounts of detailed historical, scientific, geographical, geological, archaeological evidence to be convincing. And so while I recommend people learn as much as they can of that, I still hold true to what I said there, is that God can use evidences to make people more open to hearing the gospel, but the evidences themselves don't save anyone. And you have to be very careful. If someone becomes intrigued by the evidences for the Bible and starts to then lean toward believing, oh, maybe Christianity is true, they can give the appearance that they've become a Christian. approach them about their guilt before God because of their sin, or to ask the question, are you trusting in Christ alone for your salvation? They might say, wow, I really love all this historical stuff. This is intriguing. May even start going to church, may even start trying to witness to others. But if you haven't zeroed in on what salvation is, Jesus' message in Mark 1 15, when he begins to preach, repent and believe, for the kingdom is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel, because the kingdom's at hand. Too much focus on the evidences leads people into curiosity, if they're not directed then to the need to repent and believe. So I love evidential apologetics. I just think as an approach, it's deficient.