If they can be good Christians and understand the most important thing (that Christ died for their sins), then I don’t see the reason to spend hours arguing with an atheist about the age of the planet when all he needs to know is that God created us and that we are sinners who need Christ.

Who said anything about starting with creation?

An atheist doesn’t BELIEVE in the bible or a god. There is no argument against God. You cannot be philosophically honest and say there is not God. Creation is a point of debate the atheist goes to as a safe-haven. Ask an atheist where morality comes from, he will say it developed through evolution. Ask him why something is wrong, he will say because society says so. Ask him why that makes something wrong and he cannot answer. Ask him why a person should be subjected to relativism and he cannot answer. Ask him how he would feel if you slaughtered a child in front of him and he will say “that is evil”, yet he cannot tell you why it is evil.

You say the bible says to an atheist, he will say “I don’t believe the bible is true”, what then? Do you strongly insist that it is true? You must get an atheist to see that God MUST exist before he will believe.

This isn’t theory I am speaking of, this is experience.

I think Tim Worley is moving in the right direction. How did the Spirit-inspired apostle present the Gospel in Romans 1-Romans 11?

The bottom line is this: The Christ and the Creator cannot be divorced. They are one and the same. Who is Jesus? Jesus is the Creator and we have exchanged Him for lies. At least Paul thought so when he wrote to Rome and Colossae.

I personally utilize Lewis’ Lord, Liar, or Lunatic question most of the time to break the ice. However, I steer the conversation into a Romans presentation as soon as possible, where Paul clearly begins with Creator. BTW…He assumes his readers believed in a Creator, at least in their heart of hearts. He mentions truth-suppressors, not atheists.

One more thing…Jesus is a treasure only to those who are spiritually bankrupt. He is a life-support-system only to those who are on their death beds. Unless we understand we have sinned against our Creator, we will never embrace Christ. We will never repent and believe authentically. So we should be thankful to God for our NEED which makes CHRIST look beautiful.

The original question asked about which text to use “first”–not which one to use exclusively.

The passage I have launched from in dealing with materialists is Psalm 19. It moves the reader from God’s revelation in the undeniable beauty and complexity of the material world to His revelation in His Word, to His righteous judgment. Without a foundation of creation and revelation, God’s judgment is arbitrary and capricious.

In my experience, each progression of the passage gives opportunity to explore the contradictions in their belief system. As each contradiction is exposed, it’s time to gently and lovingly “rip their roof off” as Shaeffer put it. After the roof is ripped off and the bad news is clear, it’s time to give the Good News.

Or if that doesn’t “work”, just break out the Four Spiritual Laws and pray “the prayer” with them…. :-)

TS

sdg

p.s. Dr. Moore I’m still wondering what book has most influenced your biblical theology and preaching method?

When you start with Jesus you have then set the foundation for talking about everything else.

History does not prove Jesus’ resurrection. The historical record only proves his existence. You see, if a person doesn’t believe in the bible, then you have a problem because you are basing your faith on the word of God. Now, you can prove that it is old..and that the manuscripts weren’t manufactured after the fact. But there were no newspapers in the first century. A person will simply say “jesus was a good man, nothing more”. You must prove to the atheist specifically that morality, love, compassion all exist outside of humanity. It is then that the person of Christ makes sense because now they see that a Creator-God must exist, that He alone sets the standard for right and wrong and that since all people have violated those standards that a judgment must come.

Then, the gospel makes sense. A person cannot be saved until he understands what he needs to be saved from. We use our Christianese when we describe conversations we will have with people, but we fail to see they do not speak this language.

Remember what the writer of Hebrews said, “…without faith, it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to him must believe He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him”. You must first believe God exists before you can understand Christ’s purpose on earth and God’s redemptive plan.

It isn’t a question of creation vs The Gospel or which “method” is better than which. It’s understanding where a person is and meeting him there. You must answer his most basic questions before you can show him God’s most extraordinary plan. Otherwise we are just hawking another religion to them and, as a Hindu once said at a bible study I attended, “I will add him to my other gods”.

Southern Baptists in the mid-1950s first presented the gospel to me when I was a boy, and it contained (as far as I can recall) the basic facts and meaning of Jesus and his work on the cross. I heard substantially the same message for the next six or seven years as I wandered in and out of various SBC churches. I understood more or less correctly who Jesus claimed to be (God in the flesh), what He was doing on earth (reconciling the world to Himself by dying for its sins on the cross), and that the benefits of His work accrued to sinners who turned from their sin and trusted Jesus to forgive them their sins.

I didn’t believe any of it, though I think I understood it the basics.

I didn’t believe it because I didn’t think it was true. And, I didn’t think it was true because I lumped the gospel claims of the Bible with many other Bible claims that I most certainly did not believe (miracles generally, but most importantly the obvious claims of Genesis 1-11. Jesus took Genesis 1-11 at face value. So did Paul. They were wrong about that. Ergo, their claims about the gospel could not be trusted as true.

My conversion occurred during college days when I met Christian apologists who provided me compelling evidence that Genesis 1-11 is reporting history, and that there is abundant evidence that this history is true. At that point, the significance of all the gospel-stuff I’d heard previously changed.

In my case, both were needed — the person and work of Jesus, and the Bible’s presentation of beginnings in Genesis 1-11. As a matter of personal history, knowledge about Jesus came first, but was not believed. Later, knowledge about the veracity of Genesis 1-11 *was* believed, and along with it the things I’d known for quite some time about the Bible’s presentation of Jesus’ person and work.

Must it be this way for everyone? Certainly not. But, many of my peers came to faith by this path. And, because that’s the path I followed into the Kingdom, I’m inclined to invite others to follow a similar path unless/until I see that they need to follow a different one.

I also do want to say this… If I were to start sharing the gospel with a person I knew and a person I knew I would see often I would first share briefly about Jesus and then I would indeed go back to creation and move on towards the Second Coming.

We should share the gospel like we read the Bible: start with Jesus to have the center context of the rest of the gospel narrative.

“You cant understand Jesus without understanding creation.” This is false.

“You cant understand creation without understanding Jesus.” This is true.

Jesus is the proper context for all of God’s redemptive plan. We should start with the center, Jesus, only when we have a good grasp on him can we begin to understand the rest. Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics is a great book and Goldsworthy often makes the case that to understand the biblcial narrative in its proper context you MUST start with Jesus. I agree with him in how I read the Bible and that carries over to how I share the biblical narrative.

Dr. Moore,

What do you start with? And, if you have read my comments, am I missing something?

If I could only have one conversation with somebody then I would undoubtedly start with Jesus. Tim Keller gets this right when he says to not get into a conversation/debate about secondary issues before dealing with Jesus. He says, make them deal with Jesus and then move on to creation, the fall, sin, etc.. If you start with creation they can merely say, “Well I dont believe in a God and we got hear by evolution.” Conversation over… But if you make them deal with the physical person of Jesus, to whom history proves his resurrection, then you might get somewhere.

If you are talking to someone who is already sold to evolution than you arent going to get anywhere in your conversation if you start with creation. He will call you naive of science and that will be that.

Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree. I pray we both have an opportunity to test out our theory of which one would be better. Good luck. ;)

You can’t talk about Jesus and sin until you can get a man to admit that morality exists outside of man. Otherwise, and atheist will simply say “I am the judge of that”. Kirk Cameron goes around the country telling people about the Ten commandments, which is fine, but what about those people who don’t believe in them? What makes murder wrong? How do you preach Christ to a person who has no biblical basis to understand what it is you are saying?

When Peter preached to the Jews, they had a biblical background. So, Peter preached from the Old Testament. But when Paul preached to the Greeks, they had no biblical understanding, but they did believe in many gods, so they accepted that issues like morality and meaning existed outside of themselves, and so Paul used reason.

But an atheist believes none of these things. So you must show the atheist and the agnostic that apart from a loving Creator-God there can be no standard of morality or it simply becomes relativism.

I agree with Ross Clark. You can debate all day long about the age of the earth. You can tell a man he is sinful and needs Christ. But if you ask a man why something is wrong or right. If you ask a man why he should care what happens to his neighbor or why a someone should love another human, what you get is that untestable part of life that science cannot explain but is nevertheless real.

It is at that point that you unmask the atheist and get to the heart of the matter - that human beings cannot explain themselves outside of a Creator-God that loves them.

That is the point at which the Gospel can do it’s most powerful work.

Why get into a debate about creation, age of the earth etc. when you could talk about the person and work of Jesus, sin, repentance, justification, etc?

I wish I was in your class Dr. Moore!

The Alpha evangelism course (UK) has as its strapline, “Talking about the meaning of life”. Why? Because that is very much what concerns the moderns and even more so the post-moderns. If you engage at *that* question and do so well, then all in good time you will be able to talk about Jesus and then to engage about the big questions of sin and redemption (book 1 of Mere Christianity will give you a good way to do that, as well).

This may not be the intuitive answer for the Bible Belt, but outside it, the term “born again” is almost meaningless. If you want a completely foreign mission field, who needs to go to Africa when you can go to NYC?

To answe your first question, the Bible verse I would start with is that, “God has set eternity in the hearts of men” and then work from there.

Now of course that does not mean that regardless of what question they ask I am simply going to quote Gen. 1:1 as the answer - and I am quite sure that is not what you are driving at. :-)

However, I would start with creation when presenting the Gospel to this man - actually when speaking to nearly everyone I meet here in New Zealand.

To me it is not a matter of Creation or the Gospel, but rather giving a more full and complete understanding of the Gospel. Creation is part of the Gospel. God is the creator - He created you and therefore you are accountable to Him. You actually know that in your heart of hearts (for you believe there are somethings that are absolutely wrong and that conviction is but the shadow of God’s image upon your conscience). Since God is the Creator and you are but a creature and you are fully accountable to Him you are also completely dependent on Him to provide the means of reconciliation, so you can be make right before Him.

As the Sovereign Creator of the Universe and of you personally, He has provided the means of reconciliation in His Son - Jesus Christ, Who is fully God, was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life on this earth fulfilling every righteous requirement of His heavenly Father, which you could never fulfill, died as a substitutionary atoning sacrifice so sinners could be made right before Him by crying out to Him in faith trusting in Christ and Christ alone, and, being the Creator of all life, He has the power over all death, therefore His Son, Jesus Christ did not stay dead, He rose again and is alive - therefore those who trust in Him and Him alone have the full assurance of hope not only for this life, but the life to come, when God will recreate and make all things new!

(I would expect a conversation with an actual person to take a number of turns and therefore my comments would not be exactly as stated above, but that would serve as the overall outline of where I would head - from Creation to Recreation!)

CB