Reasoning as a part of witnessing

Last Wednesday I went from campus to Borders to study some. Why I went all the way to west Knoxville is still kind of a mystery to me, because there are plenty of good places to study around campus, but I went anyways. Upon arriving I saw that Juile K. was there reading. We talked for a little bit, and then I got to my studying. A little later Julie told me that she was really feeling burdened for these two guys sitting near her, because they were very educated men talking about Christian subjects, but their perspective was obviously very different from what I would term "biblical Christianity." I was too far away to hear all they were saying but I remember hearing words like "Augustinian thought" being thrown around. But I got up to go to the bathroom, and as I was coming back to my seat, Julie was sharing the gospel with these two men. I decided to go back to my seat and pray for her as she shared, but I was still close enough to be able to overhear much of what they were saying. After a time, they began to pepper Julie with questions that seemed to be of a nature that they wanted her to feel intellectually inferior and leave them alone. I felt like they were trying to make her feel stupid. I knew that I could give an answer to a few of these questions, so I went over there and joined the conversation in an attempt to help Julie witness.

At this point our conversation turned in large part to an intellectual debate. It was not divorced from the gospel, but I was trying to answer some of the logical roadblocks that he felt were in the way of him accepting Christianity. (At one point when we were talking about the gospel, he remarked that you don't read much about the substitutionary atonement in the gospels, but that it is primarily a Pauline theology.) So, he knew the gospel, however he rejected it on intellectual grounds. Therefore, the only way (at least that I knew of) to continue to effectively witness to him was to discuss these problems with him, which amounts to an intellectual debate. Now he is a philosophy professor here at UT, so an intellectual debate with him is not exactly easy, and there were times I felt like a three-year-old with how I was presenting my arguments. We continued on for two or more hours talking with this man, and left on a good note. He gave us his name, and yesterday I emailed him two articles, one by Edwards and one by Piper that were very relevant considering the context of our discussion. He responded by blasting Piper pretty hard-core, and I'm currently trying to figure out how to respond to him.

Now that I have spent a really long time introducing my topic with an experience, what I wonder is: am I being an effective witness by approaching this man in this manner? In VFC and Cornerstone we are encouraged to witness, but are usually dissuaded from engaging in debates as we witness. I think this is good counsel in the sense that you don't want to have a debate take the focus off of the gospel, and that the gospel is the only message that can save, and that the Spirit has to work in someone's heart for them to be saved, but does this mean that we should refuse to answer problems that people we witness to have with the gospel that keep them from believing? I know the Spirit has to move, but if we don't see the Spirit move, are we to ignore their questions and abandon our witness?

In Acts, Paul is said to reason in the synagogue. Acts 18:4 says "And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded both Jews and Greeks." He reasoned with them, and he persuaded them. I wish that Luke had included a bit more information on what this reasoning actually contained. I would think that if Paul is reasoning with him, he is answering their questions. In the next verse it says that he "testified to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ" but he was reasoning as well. I just can't see why we should avoid reasoning if it is not distracting our message. I think that many times college students have programmed responses to try to get discussions off track (such as the pygmies in Africa, can God create a rock so big he can't lift it...) and when confronted with these that seem to be intended solely to turn your discussion from the gospel, I can see why debating should be avoided. However, you can't talk to a philosophy professor about God without reasoning. If you don't reason with him, you don't talk to him.

So I didn't have a great conclusion in my post. Sometimes reasoning is appropriate, as it was for Paul in the synagogue, and I believe me with the philosophy professor in Borders, but it may not be with a college kid who just wants you to fight something out with him to keep you from talking about sin. But anyways, I'll stop rambling now.