Unbeliever in the Dock

Quoting from Greg Bahnsen’s Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, Chapter 27, Answers to Apologetic Challenges:

Unbelievers take their intellectual autonomy so much for granted that they find it hard to believe that they are in no position, epistemologically or morally, to be questioning God and His revealed word. This is well described by C. S. Lewis:

The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.

God has, in His holy word, revealed the unholiness of this attitude. “You shall not make trial of Jehovah your God” (Deut. 6:16), as Moses decreed. When Satan tempted Jesus to do so—to push God into offering proof of the veracity of His word (as quoted by Satan)—Jesus rebuked Satan, “the accuser,” with these very words from the Old Testament. He declared “It stands written that you shall not make trial of the Lord your God” (Matt. 4:7). It is not God whose integrity and veracity and knowledge is somehow suspect, really. It is that of those who would accuse Him and demand proof to satisfy their own way of thinking or living.

In answering the objections of unbelievers, the apologist must not lose sight of that profound truth. It is incumbent upon us to offer a reasoned defense to the unbelievers, dealing with the criticism he has in an honest and detailed way. Christian apologetics is not served by obscurantism and generalities. Yet at the same time our apologetical arguments must serve to demonstrate that the unbeliever has no intellectual ground on which to stand in opposing God’s revelation. Our argumentation should end up by showing that the unbeliever’s presuppositions (worldview) would consistently lead to foolishness and the destruction of knowledge. In that case, and given the unbeliever’s sinful lifestyle, it is really the unbeliever—and not God—who is after all “in the dock,” both epistemologically and morally.