Unbelievers require a “neutral” investigation into the claims of Christianity. Unbelievers employ autonomous reasoning, i.e. reasoning from a mindset that does not acknowledge God’s epistemic Lordship over the possibility of human reason itself, without which unbelievers cannot judge whether the Bible should be deemed reliable for its claims let alone authoritative over all of life. Apart from judging the Bible from a throne of autonomy, the Bible and all it claims cannot be assessed as true. The problem with such a philosophical posture, which touches upon a concept that is difficult for both unbelievers and many believers to grasp, is that if the Bible must first be validated by the unbeliever as authoritative, then it cannot be intrinsically authoritative. Yet if the Bible is in itself authoritative by virtue of its divine origin, then no such human validation is permissible (or even possible when one is in submission to God’s word). As long as the unbeliever behaves this way – as long as he remains a judge of God’s word – the unbeliever remains his own authority, which means God‘s word is rejected while the unbeliever believes he is being neutral in his evaluation of that word. With hat in hand, God remains in the dock awaiting the unbeliever’s favor.
What is built into the unbeliever’s make-up is something from which the unbeliever cannot extricate himself. That is, there is an ethically driven intellectual bias, a deep seated antithesis that rejects the authority of God’s voice in Scripture (and nature!). If God’s Word is authoritative, then it may not be judged. It must be obeyed for what it truly is, God’s word. But like Eve who placed God’s word on the same level of Satan’s and then rose above both to judge what is true, so it is with the posture of the unbeliever. He sits in the place of God.
It is not as though in conversion the unbeliever chooses to grant approval to God’s word and then by way of reason decides for himself to submit to what he himself has decided to be authoritative. Rather, in biblical conversion God subdues the sinner’s will, causing him to believe and to receive God’s word aright, as authoritative. (Then from a recreated posture of belief and submission, the believer can can choose to submit to the authority of what Scripture has to say.) Since we don’t choose to accept truth, the converted sinner doesn’t choose to believe and receive God’s word as being authoritative. Instead, by the grace of God the sinner’s rejection of the voice of God is overcome whereby he finally receives it for what it really is, the authoritative Word of God.
As noted above, the unbeliever cannot free himself from his bondage and rebellious stance against God and his word. He is not neutral toward God. He is at enmity with his Maker. And although the apologist needn’t necessarily inform the unbeliever of this rebellion, it is nonetheless something of which the apologist should be aware lest his apologetic methodology likely suffers.
Philosophical Theology 