Two approaches to making a case for Christianity

There are two ways that one might make a full case for the truth of Christianity. There are more, but I'm only concerned with two in this post. One way is a gradualist approach where you inch your way to the final conclusion in small increments. You start off making broad claims, but as you go along, you narrow things down to the specific claims of Christianity. For example, you might start off by making the case that the natural world isn't all that exists. Then you argue for the existence of the god of the philosophers or some general theism. Then you argue that Jesus was the messiah and that he rose from the dead. You could go on to make theological arguments about how salvation works.

Another way is to jump to the end. You could just make an historical argument that Jesus claimed to be the messiah, then rose from the dead. That would prove Christianity with all of its baggage. You'd get God, supernaturalism, morality, etc. thrown in.

That second method might be quicker and more to the point, but I think the gradualist approach is better. The reason is because of how noetic structures work and how people grapple with new information.

A noetic structure is the sum total of all of your beliefs. Everything you think is true is part of your noetic structure. Beliefs are logically connected to each other. For example, the belief that "immaterial souls exist" is logically connected to the belief that "the natural world is not all that exists." It would be a contradiction to claim to believe in immaterial souls while, at the same time, believing that the natural world is all that exists.

Since beliefs are connected in this way, it's nearly impossible to change your belief about one thing without having to also change your beliefs about a number of other things. If you hold all those other beliefs for what seem to you to be good reasons, then it's going to be very hard for you to change your belief about the one thing. The fewer adjustments you have to make in your noetic structure in order to accommodate some new piece of information, the easier it will be for you to accept the new information as true.

This also depends on how strongly you hold those other beliefs. The more strongly you hold the beliefs that require adjustment, the harder it will be for you to change your mind about anything that requires adjusting those strongly held beliefs.

All of us filter our experiences through our noetic structure. We assess new information in light of what we already know and believe. When we are exposed to information that is inconsistent with what we already believe, we resist. We have some initial skepticism about it. If our current beliefs are strong enough, that may result in us rejecting the new information as false. If the new information is sufficiently compelling, then we make the necessary adjustments in our noetic structure to accommodate it, and we end up changing our minds.

This is why two people can look at the same information or evidence and come to different conclusions. It isn't necessarily because one is being reasonable and the other is being stubborn. It's because each of them is trying to be consistent. We have a natural tendency to want our entire noetic structure to be coherent.

We aren't always successful, though. Probably each of us has beliefs that are inconsistent with each other. We often don't notice it because we aren't thinking about everything at once. Every now and then, we'll notice an inconsistency in our noetic structure, and this will lead to internal intellectual wrestling match, trying to smooth it all out and make it consistent. If the problem is too difficult to reconcile, we'll put it on the back burner and go make a knife. Sometimes we'll come up with a resolution resulting in a change of mind.

We aren't perfect rational machines, though. Our desires, emotions, and biases also influence how strongly we hold on to our beliefs and resist change. If there's something we don't want to be true, we'll look for reasons to think it isn't in order to satisfy our desire for it to be false by convincing ourselves that it isn't. All we have to do is gather together as many teachers as we can who will tell us what our itching ears want to hear. If we so much as surround ourselves with people who hold the desired belief and avoid those who don't, it becomes easier for us to keep that desired belief.

With all of that in mind, the gradualist approach to making a case for Christianity should work better. If you jump straight to the case for the resurrection of Jesus, you are making a lot of demands on your listener's noetic structure. To accept that Jesus rose from the dead, they've got to make a lot of adjustments to their noetic structure to accommodate that belief. That may be very difficult for them to do.

But if you can convince them that there's at least a god of the philosophers first, or that Judaism is reasonable first, then it will be much easier for them to accommodate the resurrection of Jesus into their noetic structure. It would require fewer adjustments. And belief in God would come easier to a person who already believes in a supernatural realm than if they think the natural world is all that exists.

There are more steps in a gradual case for Christianity, but each step is smaller and easier to make. It's similar to the frog in boiling water analogy.

You might wonder how I reconcile all of this with my Calvinism, particularly with the doctrines of total depravity and irresistible grace. I addressed this issue in my posts, "Calvinism and Evangelism," "Does Calvinism render apologetics superfluous?," and "The persuasive power of arguments in a presuppositional apologetic."