Sunday, January 1, 2017

Unexpected Conversions

Christians find a good deal of humor in the stories and accounts of how people hostile and antagonistic towards the Bible, Christianity, and all that they encompass have decided to intensively study the historical or philosophical evidence for Christianity . . . and have become Christians at the end of their quests.

An atheist, agnostic, agnostic theist [1], skeptic, postmodernist, scientist, or anti-theist could investigate history, theology, and philosophy with the intent of refuting or mocking Christianity and emerge, ironically, as a Christian.  Indeed, many have done this.  Lee Strobel, for example, comes to mind.  He certainly did not expect his conversion into Christianity to result from his attempts to intellectually discredit it.

However, Christian apologists rarely hear of the inverse: of a Christian studying apologetics, history, Biblical theology, logic, and abstract philosophy, only to come to the realization that although Christianity may stand tall above competing worldviews intellectually it still cannot be fully proven.  In such cases, the presence of knowledge does not just illuminate the rational coherency and verifiability of Christianity but also highlights its inability to be fully confirmed.  This can deter people from continuing to pledge themselves to Christianity and Christ.  Is this as common as the opposite?  No, but it probably has occurred.

Remember that it is possible that unexpected conversions will occur, even when they reverse the expected stereotype of such conversions.  It is just as possible that Christians may become philosophical skeptics from studying philosophy and apologetics as it is that skeptics may embrace Christianity after or while studying the very same disciplines.


[1].  What I mean by "agnostic theist" here is someone who knows that a god or god-like being exists but does not know or claim to know if this entity is represented by any particular religion.  According to this definition, agnostic theism is the belief that a "god" exists but there is no way to know if this being is Yahweh, Allah, Jesus, etc.

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