Several years ago as I taught the first Cold-Case Christianity class at Biola University (as part of their Master’s Degree program in Christian Apologetics), the issue of evidentialism was raised by one of the students. Christian apologists are sometimes divided between presuppositionalists (who presuppose the Bible is Divine revelation) and evidentialists (who seek to establish the authority and reliability from internal and external evidences).
I am an evidentialist.
Most people I meet assume I take this approach because of my background as a detective, but while my investigative experience definitely plays a role in my perspective as a Christian, my family structure is the real reason I’m a committed evidentialist. I was raised in a family dominated by atheists and Mormons. My chief role model, my father, has always been a non-believer; his wife of the past forty-five years has been a committed Mormon. My six half-brothers and half-sisters were all raised as Mormons, and when one of them saw my growing interest in studying the Bible critically, she encouraged me to take a similar look at the Book of Mormon. Not knowing one from the other, I was willing to investigate both simultaneously. I used the same four part investigative template to test the New Testament Gospel authors and the author of the Book of Mormon (Joseph Smith). This analytical template provided me with confidence in the Gospels even as it destroyed my confidence in the Book of Mormon. As a result, I became a Christian at the same time I became a Not-Mormon. This dual experience of becoming and not-becoming had a powerful impact on the way I’ve looked at Christianity and the claims of competing theological systems in the years since my conversion. It is the reason why I’m an evidentialist.
In the early months of my life as a Christian, I found myself continually comparing Christianity with Mormonism. When Christians offered a religious experience as confirmation of the truth of Christianity, for example, I quickly compared this to the claims of my Mormon family. The experiences of my family clearly did not lead them to the truth. When Christians told me I needed to presuppose the authority of the Bible before I could assess the truth of the Bible, I quickly compared this approach to my Mormon brothers and sisters. The efforts of my family to presuppose the authority of the Book of Mormon clearly did not lead them to the truth. When Christians defended what they believed with an approach lacking evidential strength, I quickly compared this with the defenses offered by my Mormon family. The non-evidentialism of my family clearly failed to lead them to the truth. At every turn, I recognized the important role of evidence in distinguishing truth from fiction. Evidentialism not only lead me to Christianity, it protected me from Mormonism.
Of course it didn’t hurt that I had been a detective for many years when I first became interested in the claims of Christianity, but I really don’t think my journey (or my current approach to Christianity) would look all that different had I been employed as an architect at the time. Most of the Mormons I know who have come out of the LDS Church (and are now Christians) are similarly committed to an evidential view of their Christian faith. In fact, many of these people, like me, rejected Mormonism once they discovered the evidence for themselves. As Mormons, they had been embracing a view of faith independent of any evidence (aside from their personal experience). They avoided “anti-Mormon” literature describing the evidential case against Mormonism and embraced the claims of the LDS Church in spite of the evidence. As Christians, they now understand the power of evidence and its role in determining truth. Like me, they are now unafraid of literature opposing Christianity. They’ve moved from belief in spite of the evidence to belief because of the evidence.
I’m an evidentialist because the evidence protected me from error and guided me to the truth simultaneously. In the years since becoming a Christian, I often compare the two religious systems as I assess the ongoing role of evidence in my daily Christian walk. My investigative, evidential approach to Christianity provided me with an appropriate tool set for investigating the claims of Christianity, helped me develop a Biblical definition of “faith” and allowed me to distinguish truth from error. That’s why I’m a Christian evidentialist today, and that’s why I’m so committed to sharing this approach with others.
Stephen Ray Hale
December 11, 2024 at 6:03 am
I think the reason I appreciate you and your ministry is because of what I would call the Torah law of two or three witnesses that establishes a matter (in two corollaries) I named for a lack of any theology that ever would seriously develop it when it actually ties together both covenants being basically an archive of eyewitness testimony.
It is in the writings of Moses, in the two accounts of Genesis, first hinted at by Joseph and the two dreams of Pharaoh, found on the lips of Jesus and the apostles, and used by Paul to establish basically the end of the revelatory gifts of prophecy by a prophecy that hints at AGAPE replacing not only the gift of prophecy to the church until the end of the church age, but the stopping of the marvelous sign gifts to the Jews, itself a prophecy hinted at in Micah 7:15, with a hint of an Isaiah Chapter 42, back up, and the mysterious “HIM” that GOD was going to show marvelous things to, revealed in John 5:19-20.
Jesus used it in terms of truth when in John 5 He says “If I bear witness of myself my witness is not true (Corollary One), and by Peter in his commentary on Paul’s writings in 2 Peter 1:20 when instead of the mistranslation found in the King James Bible I traced to the Latin Vulgate of Jerome, it should have read corrected to the Greek, “this first knowing that every prophecy of scripture is NOT OF ITS OWN INTERPRETATION,” and the is Corollary One of that law or principle of interpretation. Fantastically, that verse introduces verse 21 which if read correctly gives in two phrases BOTH Corollary One and Corollary Two with all sorts of subsidiary information bespeaking the entire Principle.
You would be very impressed how that little undeveloped piece of scripture ties the entire archive of eyewitness testimony including apparent contradictions and different complementary details each witness gives.
When Paul gives the practical use of that law in 1 Corinthians 13:12 to mean that an anticipation of the entire canon of prophecy, itself a testimony of knowledge, GNOSIS, compared to a partial canon of prophecy EPIGNOSIS, to looking at one’s self in a mirror with one eye with the foreground, focused viewpoint, and background all mashed into the plane of the mirror, is surpassed by the looking into that mirror with both eyes point on point or eye to eye which Paul exclaimed as EPIGNOSIS OR KNOWLEDGE ON KNOWLEDGE. His rejoicing is that of the magnitude of knowledge beyond the sum of the testimony of both eyes if a picture is worth a thousand words, we call Stereoscopic perception, and that there is apparently an anticipated perception in terms of events in time with one foreground fulfillment of prophecy before the prophecy in focus with some background or far future prophecy compared temporally.
But Paul’s single verse analogy is multi tasked to explain not only the concept of the information in the prophecy but that it also is describing in concert of context of verses 8-13 that there will be a cessation of the actual living Holy Spirit endowed presentation of testimony in the church seen in the future when the office of Prophet in the church will be done away with, and concerning verse 8-10 with the doing away of KNOWLEDGE with the presentation of KNOWLEDGE, in that eyewitness testimony is the basic unit of knowledge, (and prophetic testimony and any other consideration of things that are testimony), that last prophet giving such testimony alive will be done away with in the person of what appears to have been the very last eyewitness of what Jesus said and did having Holy Spirit enhanced remembrance, we discover as being in John the Apostle the last prophet (Revelation) and last eyewitness of what Jesus said and did (gospel of JOHN), and to Paul introducing chapter 13 with, “show a more excellent way” that AGAPE, the unconditional love that Jesus gives His true disciples (John 13:35), will replace special miracles and healing headed up by tongues in the prophecies of the OT to be the credibility giving gift that every one even atheists will recognize there is going to be some supernatural factor in their existence, when they see Christians just loving one another in true Jame 1:27 definition of religion. Here John’s almost boring repeating of AGAPE or love in his epistles reveals John’s knowledge that he recognizes himself being the person in Paul’s prophecy where agape is greater than faith and hope.
Of course you might see in my run on sentences that I am very excited about this discovery of the simple law of two or three witnesses that establishes a matter where this testimony is found even in the very last sentences of the Bible in the very last Book we call Revelations, and that ending found in John’s Gospel that he is the prophet and eyewitness that Jesus speaks of, and Paul hints at. And that YOU are the most important supporter of this concept through your experience is my excitement that I came across your material, and in that I am an old (78 years) ex geologist who experienced this law of stereoscopic perception in Moses’ Law (please find a simple theological term like they did for trinity and rapture) using a stereometer in mapping surface feature with pairs of adjacent aerial photos, I would place some prominent middle object as target of one of my eyes and adjust the photo till the image seen by by other eyes appears to be on top of the image of the first eye, I would achieve the stereoscopic perception Paul rejoices as EPIGNOSIS or KNOWLEDGE UPON KNOWLEDGE.
Since you are a YOUNG whippersnapper compared to me living on borrowed time, I would love for you to look into a comprehensive if not exhaustive development of Moses’ law he used in terms of justice, and Jesus in terms of truth, and Paul in terms of doctrine when speaking of two or three witnesses to reduced confusion in things like tongues and prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14 where Paul finishes up his lecture on spirituals (Chapter 12 through to the end of chapter 14), where spirits used in that chapter refers to the words as Jesus in John 6 speaks of Jesus saying “my words are SPIRIT and they are life”. And Peter in 2 Peter 1:21 speaks of the Holy Spirit being the conductor of those spiritual words given to the prophets. You see how testimony of Jesus ties in from Genesis to Revelation both covenants for a stronger sense of credibility that the Bible is indeed the word of God from beginning to ending, even if He will not reveal in the mortal heart of man He inspires with concepts of the forever or eternal or even infinity, His works from beginning to ending as Ecclesiastes 3:11 speaks of. You taking over and doing your magic on this concept when I fade from the scene is one of my wishes. Someone with credibility of eyewitness testimony being the best economical uses God applies on the language of men to give more bang for the bucks in every set of words He delivers in that achieve of eyewitness testimony we call the Bible, is what I am searching for.