Doubt, Koukl, and Presuppositionalism

A generalization: evangelicals don't like doubt.

It's difficult--foolhardy, even--to attempt any unifying description of evangelicals as a group, so I'm hard-pressed at times to explain to people exactly the faith communities I write about most. A friend of mine is a witch who happens to be aligned with a local Unitarian congregation. "I believe we should all evangelize," she said, "so I'm not quite clear why we aren't evangelical." At that point, I find myself going into the standard speech about the etymology of evangelion ("good news"), distinguishing the act of spreading good news (evangelize) from the specific group of (mainly) Protestants defined by a particular set of doctrinal and historical likenesses.

More and more, though, I'm convinced that most (not all) present-day evangelicals distinguish themselves from other Christian faith traditions by their antipathy to doubt and uncertainty. I've written on this blog previously about the Baptist reliance on certainty as both a sign and a product of true conversion. The key evangelizing question for them and many other conservative evangelical tends to be some variation of "If you were to die right now, are you 100% sure you'd go do heaven?" A lack of certainty--anything less than "Yes, because I've been born again by faith in Jesus Christ"--means the person needs some doctrinal intervention.

I recently read a book on evangelical outreach that manifests the resistance to doubt in a different way: Greg Koukl's Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. Print). Koukl (KOH-kul), a well-known apologist, aims at evangelicals who feel the need to share their faith but lack confidence in their ability to do so without seeming pushy, preachy, or uneducated. In his well-written volume, he outlines some simple rhetorical tricks (tactics) to test out, break into, and ultimately undermine secular worldviews.

Koukl's evangelism partakes in a tradition of "conversational" or "friendship" evangelism. In contrast to, say, Ray Comfort's Way of the Master, Koukl does not go out into the street specifically to strike up conversations with passerby about their eternal fate. Nor does he seek to end every encounter with a conversion. Instead, Koukl counsels readers to prepare themselves to notice and take advantage of naturally occurring opportunities for sharing their faith. The goal of his tactics, he says, is to "put a pebble in their shoe," disrupting their faith in the coherence of their own worldviews enough so that they consider the possibility that evangelical Christianity could be more appealing.

Koukl relates his foundational tactic via the metaphor of Columbo, the bedraggled TV detective played by Peter Falk. Columbo's method for cracking a case of course involved misleading suspects he questioned by presenting himself as innocuous, even incompetent. He seemed confused, slow, and disorganized as he slowly formulated a simple question. As his conversations went on, however, his questions would become more penetrating, pointing out logical contradictions in the answers suspects gave, giving them enough rope to string themselves up.

Christians, Koukl argues, should follow Columbo's example, amiably posing simple, seemingly innocent questions, generally some variation of "What do you mean by that?" or "How did you arrive at that conclusion?" Indeed, in Koukl's manual, most of any evangelical conversation should consist of the Christian asking questions of the person to be witnessed to. Such a tactic gives the Christian control of the conversation. They are relieved of being an expert in apologetics or presenting themselves as some kind of perfect saint since they're just asking for information.

After getting information about the person's worldview or faith, the questions should shift from simply info-gathering toward a slightly more focused direction. "Help me out here, 'cause I'm a little confused," says the Columbo Christian, "You said you believe in animal rights, but you support abortion. How does that work?" or "You said you don't believe in the Bible because it contains so many contradictions. What contradictions are you talking about?" or "You said Christians should tell other people what to do because morality is relative. But isn't saying what Christians should or shouldn't do itself a moral statement?"

Koukl calls these leading questions-that-undermine "taking the roof off" of other (secular) worldviews. The more technical name, which I'm sure he knows but does not relate in this book, is apagogy--systematically revealing another's argument or philosophical foundation to be self-contradictory. Since Christianity alone is the Truth, Koukl maintains, non-Christian worldviews inevitably turn out to be lies or delusions. Taken to their logical extremes, they "commit suicide," revealing themselves to be fatally self-refuting or incoherent. Christians needn't be experts in philosophy or theology to see how these views refute themselves. They merely need to ask questions and listen.

In a striking departure from many other "share your faith" authors, Koukl does not relate specific techniques for elaborating or defending specific pieces of Christian doctrine. His book assumes a conservative evangelical readership that endorses conservative evangelical tenets such as Biblical inerrancy, anti-Darwinism, and heteronormativity. But none of his techniques suggest referencing Biblical scripture or advancing specific proof of Christianity's truth in these or other matters. Indeed, one of Koukl's main Columbo tactics involves reversing the burden of proof, urging the evangelist to keep the non-Christian on the defensive. Non-Christians must prove the legitimacy of their points of view to Christians, not vice versa.

His technique, in other words, participates in a presuppositionalist rather than evidentialist tradition of apologetics. Evidentialism seeks to make the case for Christianity by affirming the literal (historical, scientific, archeological, etc.) truth of Christian texts and beliefs. Presuppositionalism, on the other hand, tends in the present to deal more with the reality of non-Christian worldviews. A person raised in a non-Christian worldview, goes argue presuppositionalists, may not even recognize a Christian's evidence as legitimate proof. Christians must therefore engage in the other person's worldview, gaining a sense of what the other person believes, why he or she believe it, and what role that worldview plays in his or her life. As per Koukl's tactics, the next presuppositionalist step is apagogic, leading the person to an understanding of how or why their worldview refutes itself. Only after the person's native worldview falters is the person ready to hear the (true, non-suicidal) worldview of Biblical Christianity.

Koukl's tactics are therefore a form of prevangelism (a term Koukl attributes to famous apologist Francis Schaeffer), breaking up the hardened soil of another's philosophy to receive at a later point the seeds of Christian truth.

And the tool Koukl and other presuppositionalists prefer do accomplish this breaking-up? Doubt.

More tomorrow,

JF