One more post about doubt from William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith. As he began to explain in the passage form the previous post, doubt and unbelief, are not really intellectual problems. Rather, “unbelief is at root a spiritual, not an intellectual, problem.”

This is a great insight. And how does it apply to situations where the doubt in question is not our doubt, but the doubt of someone we’re trying to share the gospel with? What about a non-believer’s doubts about the message of Christ?  Dr. Craig explains:

Sometimes an unbeliever will throw up an intellectual smoke screen so that he can avoid personal, existential involvement with the gospel. In such a case, further argumentation may be futile and counter-productive, and we need to be sensitive to moments when apologetics is and is not appropriate. If we sense the unbeliever’s arguments and questions are not sincere, we may do better to simply break off the discussion and ask him, “If I answered that objection, would you then really be ready to become a Christian?” Tell him lovingly and forthrightly that you think he’s throwing up an intellectual smoke screen to keep from confronting the real issue; his sin before God. Apologetics is thus most appropriate and effective when the unbeliever is spiritually open and sincerely seeking to know the truth.

This is a helpful strategy. Instead of answering the hundredth question, why not try to get to the heart of the issue? Dr. Craig offers one more piece of insight about these situations:

Now there is also a danger in all this. There is the danger that in evangelism we may focus our attention on the argument instead of on the unbeliever. In doing evangelism we must never let apologetics distract us from our primary aim of communicating the gospel. Indeed, I’d say that with most people there’s no need to use apologetics at all. Only use rational argumentation after sharing the gospel and when the unbeliever still has questions. If you tell him, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,” and he says he doesn’t believe in God, don’t get bogged down at that point in trying to prove the existence of God to him. Tell him, “Well, at this point I’m not trying to convince you that what the Bible says is true; I’m just trying to share with you what the Bible says. After I’ve done that, then perhaps we can come back to whether there are good reasons to believe that what it says is true.” Remember our primary aim in evangelism is to present Christ.

Isn’t this solid? And I agree. In our day, when many people we meet are ignorant of the message of Christ, while at the same time being indoctrinated into hostility towards Christianity, one of the best things we can do is just to tell people about Jesus–tell people what he did, and what he said. Tell them the little stories from the gospel accounts about Jesus’ miracles. Tell them about his parables. Tell them about his teachings. Tell them how he treated people. Tell them about his death and resurrection. Just get the message out there. We can trust God to do his work, with his word.

In other words, we can sow seed, and trust God to grow fruit.

What are some implications of the truth that the Holy Spirit in our hearts is God’s way of assuring us that Christianity is actually true? William Lane Craig explains:

This…also underlines the vital importance of cultivating the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. For though all Christians are indwelt by the Spirit, not all are filled with the Spirit. The New Testament teaches that we can grieve the Holy Spirit of God by sin (Eph. 4:30) and quench the Spirit by repressing his working in our lives (1 Thess. 5:19).

This next sentence is very true and very important. Don’t miss it…

The Christian who is not filled with the Spirit may often be wracked with doubts concerning his faith.

I can testify personally that my intellectual doubts seem most poignant when I am in a carnal condition.

Did you catch that? Dr. Craig is a world-famous apologist who teaches apologetics and debates people antagonistic to the Christian faith around the world, and he himself says that he struggles with doubts when he is, as he puts it “in a carnal condition.” In other words, if he’s not cultivating and awareness of, responsiveness to, and yieldedness to the Holy Spirit, he finds that–even with all his education and expertise, even though his career is literally showing how Christianity is true–he himself experiences doubt. He goes on:

But when a Christian is walking in the Spirit, then, although his intellectual questions may remain, he can live with those questions, without their robbing his faith of its vitality. As the source of the assurance that our faith is true, the Holy Spirit’s ministry in our lives needs to be cultivated by spiritual activities that help us to walk close to God, such as Bible study, prayer, devotional reading, inspirational music, evangelism, and Spirit-filled worship.

That’s from the first chapter of Reasonable Faith.

So, when a Christian is struggling with doubt, maybe the answer is not all about finding every answer to their every question. Maybe a big part of the answer also includes drawing near to God–cultivating closeness with him through those basic spiritual activities Dr. Craig lists.

What do you think? Do you have similar experiences to share?

In the first chapter of his excellent, college-level presentation of the serious reasons for believing the Christian faith, William Lane Craig addresses some of the issues raised when we try to show people Christianity is true. He writes:

…in answering the question “How do I know Christianity is true?” we must make a distinction between knowing that it is true and showing that it is true. We know Christianity is true primarily by the self-authenticating witness of God’s Spirit. We show Christianity is true by presenting good arguments for its central tenets.

What, then, should be our approach in using apologetics with an unbeliever? It should be something like this:

My friend, I know Christianity is true because God’s Spirit lives in me and assures me that it is true. And you can know it is true, too, because God is knocking at the door of your heart, telling you the same thing. If you’re sincerely seeking God, then God will give you assurance that the gospel is true. Now to try to show you it’s true, I’ll share with you some arguments and evidence that I really find convincing. But should my arguments seem weak and unconvincing to you, that’s my fault, not God’s. It only shows that I’m a poor apologist, not that the gospel is untrue. Whatever you think of my arguments, God still loves you and holds you accountable. I’ll do my best to present good arguments to you. But ultimately you have to deal, not with arguments, but with God himself.

There are, of course, other important ways Christians show that the message of Jesus is true. There is the testimony of godly lives which are lived out consistently, even in tempting or trying times. Sometimes there is the miraculous power which God can work through believers (at His discretion). There is the faithful proclamation of the word of God itself (which God often applies directly to people’s hearts with His own power). I am sure Dr. Craig would agree with all of this. What he’s doing here is making a helpful distinction for Christians to remember when we begin to get excited about all the different kinds of compelling evidences which show how reasonable it is to believe that Jesus is Lord.

His main point is just to remember that, no matter how good we get at handling these different lines of evidence, they alone do not constitute the foundation of our knowing–for that we rest on the One who’s in us, interacting with our hearts and minds and granting us assurance when we struggle.

I would add, though, that the Spirit does not work apart from all the evidences God has given, but along with those evidences. Everyone should believe that Jesus rose from the dead, and therefore is the Lord, and then, when you study his life and teachings… that all of the scripture written before him is true, since he testified to its truth. And everyone should believe these things because of the evidence of the universe itself, the nature of humanity as we find it, and the historical weight of the evidences for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  These lines of evidence can be, as Dr. Craig points out, the kinds of evidences we present when people ask us why we believe.

And yet, we all know that there are times when our personal hold on this kind of evidence might not be as firm as we’d like. Sometimes we don’t have access to all these lines of evidence. Or sometimes we hear them challenged, and we don’t immediately know how to answer the challenges. Or sometimes painful things happen to us, and evidence of this kind feels far away and unhelpful. What then?

And this is, I think, the most helpful part of Dr. Craig’s observation here. Though these historical, observable evidences are actually enough to make us liable to believe in Jesus Christ, God, in his mercy and generosity of spirit, has not left us only external evidence. He also comes to us, personally, by His Spirit, and lives in us, and testifies to the truth of everything the Bible says. If we’ll listen to him, and yield to him, He’ll work the kind of assurance in us that we need to walk through a disheartening, confusing, and often painful world.