Classical Apologetics and Contemporary Conversion Accounts

By Melissa Cain Travis

Classical apologetics is a two-step approach to apologetics that appeals to a variety of sources to establish the plausibility of God’s existence and then defends Christian doctrines based on historical and other evidences. It proceeds on the fundamental assumption that common grace is granted to all image-bearers by the Holy Spirit, enabling them to thoughtfully consider matters related to God and Christianity. The classical apologist believes human beings have shared understandings of some aspects of reality that allow us to find islands of common ground upon which to initiate such conversations. Otherwise, evangelistic apologetics would be impossible.

. . . Ideally, the classical apologetics strategy will be integrative and holistic, engaging the different aspects of the human person: the intellect, imagination, conscience, aesthetic sensibilities, and innate existential longings. Often, as Blaise Pascal understood, we need first to make Christianity desirable to nonbelievers by helping them see its unrivaled goodness and beauty before attempting to show that it is indeed true. In common parlance, we engage the heart to open the mind. Perhaps an appropriate term for this perspective is holistic classical apologetics . . .

Classical Apologetics and Contemporary Conversion Accounts

In an essay titled “Is Theism Important?,” C. S. Lewis remarks, “Nearly everyone I know who has embraced Christianity in adult life has been influenced by what seemed to him to be at least probable arguments for Theism.” Still today, testimonials indicate that conversions often proceed through an initial phase of theism and, like Lewis’s, involve a variety of experiential and intellectual stepping-stones. The enormous value of conversion stories is that they illustrate the holistic, cumulative, and gradual nature of many journeys to faith, which is instructive for the Christian apologist. The two stories summarized below are paradigmatic in this respect.

Sy Garte is a biochemist, formerly of the National Institutes of Health, with more than two hundred scientific publications to his credit. He was raised by stridently atheist parents who were devoted to the anti-theist political philosophy of Marxism. As Garte explains, “My parents . . . laughed at the idea of God. They were sure that there was no God; there could be nothing like God. . . . My parents’ atheism was indeed a deeply felt religious belief, and it was successfully transmitted to and accepted by me at a very young age.” As a young adult, Garte had the vague sense that there were logical inconsistencies between materialism and humanist ideals, but he remained content with social evolutionary explanations. While pursuing his scientific education and then during the early decades of his career, he began asking crucial questions about the world, such as whether all of reality is fully comprehensible through reason, how to ground human significance, and how the universe, the first life, and consciousness could have arisen through blind processes.

Deep down, Garte experienced the quintessential human longings for meaning and higher purpose, and he sought satisfaction in his professional endeavors. Yet, as his scientific knowledge advanced, his philosophical questions multiplied. The first phenomenon he encountered that he considered a positive reason to believe in God was cosmic fine-tuning—the mathematical constants that must fall within extraordinarily narrow ranges in order for life or even chemistry itself to exist. Ultimately, it was the scientific problems presented by the origin of the universe, of life, and of consciousness that opened his mind to the real possibility of God’s existence. Garte subsequently moved from atheism to agnosticism.

A church service Garte attended with a friend dispelled some key misconceptions he had always harbored about religion and the Christian message. The next lengthy phase of Garte’s journey included intense dreams with themes of surrender and trust as the gateway to true security and joy. After attending church a few more times over several years, he came to understand the gospel message, but he was not yet willing to receive it. Finally, in 2006, as Garte drove alone along a Pennsylvania turnpike listening to the radio, a rhetorically talented preacher inspired him to imagine how he himself would present his hypothetical conversion story to an audience. During this mental exercise, he was emotionally overwhelmed by the thought of God’s love for him. He recognizes now that this was the presence of the Holy Spirit and that many stepping-stones had prepared his mind and heart for that glorious moment. These stepping-stones included encounters with joy-inducing beauty, his recognition of the philosophical incoherence of materialist humanism and the theistic implications of scientific phenomena, the message of Christ’s love and forgiveness, spiritually significant dreams, and finally this direct encounter with the Holy Spirit. Garte’s experience was gradual, cumulative, and holistic.

Crime novelist and screenwriter Andrew Klavan was raised in a secular Jewish home that included some traditional ceremonial aspects of Judaism. Yet his home was entirely devoid of religious devotion. His father was essentially agnostic. “My mother,” he writes, “was, to the day she died, as certain an atheist as I have ever met.” By the age of thirteen, Klavan had developed both a repulsion toward religion and a lifelong love of story. He sought to develop his own philosophy of life by experimenting with those he read about in what he calls the “tough guy” novels—books that exhibited existentialism, nihilism, and detachment—but he was unsettled by their incoherence and insufficiencies. “Just as I wanted my daydreams to make sense as stories,” he says, “I wanted my personal philosophy to make sense too.”

The first turning point for Klavan was the realization that themes and symbols of certain high ideals pervaded the stories he loved most and that these ideals were rooted in Western Christianity. He recalls that by his mid-teens, he had already begun “to understand that at the heart of all Western mythology, all Western civilization, all Western writing, all Western thought, and every Western ideal, there stood a single book, the Bible, and a single man, Jesus of Nazareth.” He read the Bible, which, aside from the supernatural parts, he thought made sense as a metaphor. “As I struggled to educate myself and find my voice as a writer, the Bible story came to seem to me the story behind every story, especially the stories of the West. . . . It was, as the poet William Blake said, ‘The Great Code of Art.’”

. . . Near the end of a long and excruciating season of psychosis and suicidal depression during which he had an intensely spiritual experience at the birth of his first child, Klavan entered a period of existential exploration. He searched for enlightenment in various ways. He sat in contemplative silence and experimental prayer in empty churches, he immersed himself in the meditative practices of Zen Buddhism, he became attracted to Freudian philosophy (thanks to his therapist), and then attempted to shoehorn his human experiences into an atheist framework. The philosophical reasoning he found in the likes of Nietzsche, Kafka, and Freud could not, however, make sense of the human condition or of Klavan’s personal experiences of the world.

What Klavan calls “the only truly nonlogical leap of faith I ever made” was his decisive assent to objective morality. This moved him back to agnosticism. After another decade, he became mentally healthy and gained success as a writer, all while being further shaped by both the reading and writing of stories. That’s when he spontaneously prayed a simple prayer of gratitude before falling asleep one night: “Thank you, God.” From that moment on, he cultivated a diligent prayer life: “I went on praying. I prayed every day. Every day, the joy of my joy grew more present to me. And God became more present to me as well.” This period of devoted theism went on for five years, culminating in an encounter with the Holy Spirit during a solitary scenic drive. Upon asking God what he should do next, the response was clear and startling: “Now, you should be baptized.” This led Klavan to consider the historicity of the Gospel accounts and then to assent to the truth of the resurrection while reading the Gospel According to Mark. Several months later, he was baptized in New York City.

In both Garte’s and Klavan’s conversion stories, we see a grand variety of factors that led them, over long spans of time, to the truth of theism and then to the truth of Christianity. We must consider how such observations should inform our philosophy of apologetics and encourage enrichment of the tool chest at our disposal. Of course, every nonbeliever we encounter is at a unique place in their journey, and thoughtful triage is necessary. Blessed is the one who is prepared and willing to meet a soul where they are and to participate in the Spirit’s work.

— Dr. Melissa Cain Travis is assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Christian University. She is also a Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture and serves on the Executive Committee of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. She is the co-founder and president of the Society for Women of Letters, a ministry that mentors Christian women pursuing intellectual formation. She is a regular contributor to Christian Research Journal and lectures internationally.

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Excerpted from Understanding Christian Apologetics: Five Methods for Defending the Faith, edited by Timothy Paul Jones (Hendrickson, 2025). Used by permission.

God has called Christians to be prepared to defend their hope in Christ, but what’s the best method for making this defense? In this book, five expert apologists set out together to determine which approach to apologetics is the most faithful to Scripture and the most useful in a secular age.

Understanding Apologetics presents in counterpoint form five popular approaches to the defense of the Christian faith that have developed throughout history―from the early days of Christianity through to our practices today. Apologetics philosophies explored here include:

• Cultural Apologetics

• Presuppositional Apologetics

• Evidential Apologetics

• Classical Apologetics

• Ecclesial Apologetics.

“Understanding Christian Apologetics is an accessible yet challenging exploration of five key approaches to defending the faith. This survey of apologetic methods—including the often overlooked cultural and ecclesial approaches—stands out as a model of charitable dialogue. The authors exemplify the kind of respectful engagement so needed in the church today. A fantastic resource for Christians beginning their study of apologetics!”

— Mikel Del Rosario, professor of Bible and theology, Moody Bible Institute

“Understanding Christian Apologetics offers a nuanced and insightful exploration of the varied approaches Christians employ to articulate and defend their faith. Instead of positioning apologetic methods as competing ideologies, the authors skillfully illuminate their unique strengths, fostering a thoughtful and integrative perspective. What particularly resonated with me was the book’s consistent emphasis on clarity and charitable engagement. It masterfully models an apologetic rooted in humility, love, and a deep sensitivity to the listener, a crucial element often overlooked.”

— Mary Jo Sharp, founder of Confident Christianity Apologetics Ministry and author of Why I Still Believe: A Former Atheist’s Reckoning with the Bad Reputation Christians Give a Good God

Find Understanding Christian Apologetics at Hendrickson, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Christianbook.com, and Books-A-Million.

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