Dominic Bnonn Tennant

I’ve lately been perusing the “deconversion” stories posted by the contributors to the ambitiously named Debunking Christianity blog. Since I once claimed a similar deconversion story, I find it occasionally entertaining to see what those who once professed the faith have to say about their reasons for falling away.

When I was first truly converted by God, I found deconversion stories unsettling. Anyone unschooled in the Bible, and who does not continually seek to conform his thinking to it, so as to develop the mind of Christ which he has been given (1 Cor 2:16), will tend to feel shaken by stories of deconversion. However, as a Christian, such stories should evoke in you a certain unsurprised amusement; and, rather than being distressing, they should bolster and solidify your faith. This is because, like all things, they are actually testimonies to biblical truth.

Sometimes it can be hard to see past the immediate exterior of the fact that someone is relating how they “stopped believing in God”. But we should always seek to take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:5), so as to put every idea with which we’re confronted in its proper place. With this in mind, I’ll offer a brief discussion of the biblical perspective on the deconversion stories I’ve read lately. I won’t quote them specifically, since really there’s little to commend any of them as particularly noteworthy. Rather, I would invite you to familiarize yourself in full with at least a few of these testimonies, before I outline the general principles we can take from any and all of them.

You’ll notice that I initially placed the word deconversion within quote marks. The reason for this should be obvious enough, but lest I be accused of being unclear, or assuming something without justifying it, permit me a brief aside:

The Bible is unequivocal in teaching that salvation is granted to God’s people through faith. These people were elected by God before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4) and predestined for adoption through Christ (v 5) according to his purpose; for he works all things to the counsel of his will (v 11). God makes the elect alive while they are still spiritually dead (2:5), raises them up (v 6) and saves them by his grace, by giving them faith as a gift (v 8). They contribute nothing to this process; for how could the dead make themselves alive? Rather, it is entirely God’s doing and not a result of their own effort (v 9). They are his workmanship; not their own. Even the good works they do in faith are prepared beforehand for them by him (v 10). He has chosen us (John 13:18, Col 3:12, 1 Thes 1:4, James 2:5); we did not choose him (John 15:16). As many as are appointed to eternal life will believe (Acts 13:48); conversely, then, none appointed to destruction will ever come to faith.

This being the case, it should be obvious that anyone who professes faith, but then fails to continue in it, could never have been saved at all; for salvation, by its very nature, is eternal. The faith that produces salvation is everlasting; and so any professed faith which turns out to be temporary cannot be faith at all. In other words, those who claim to be Christians with us, but do not continue in faith, were never Christians. As 1 John 2:19 says, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” It then goes on to say in verse 20, “But you [in contrast] have been anointed by the Holy One”—just as 2 Corinthians 1:21-22 echoes: it is God who establishes us in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee of our election and salvation.

I don’t wish to dwell extensively on predestination, since it is perspicuous in Scripture and should bear no real explanation. Nonetheless, it warrants the above explication so as to show that any alleged deconversion is, in truth, merely the inevitable exposure of the unbelief which existed all along.

This can be easily seen in all the deconversion testimonies at ‘Debunking Christianity’. Despite the claims of the contributors there, these testimonies are all very similar. Perhaps in an effort to imply that the ways in which Christianity can be disproved are very diverse, these contributors will mention how their deconversion stories are all quite different; but, in truth, they are all the same. The apparent differences are merely trappings appended to the underlying incomprehension and unbelief of Scripture, which is evident in their professed faith as well as in their atheism, and is similar to them all.

In fact, they are all so similar that I started developing a loose template for them in my mind; and in so doing I found that this template conformed fairly snugly to my series ‘On Strawmen’, read in reverse, with some evidential arguments attached. Each testimony follows this basic structure:

The “deconvert”, at quite a young age, starts to become increasingly interested in Christianity. Eventually, he has some kind of conversion experience, in which he “gives himself to God”. This experience can range from the minor to the dramatic; from the mere extension of an existing lifestyle to a significant change. However, in every case, this “conversion” is based largely on emotional and social factors, rather than real biblical knowledge. This is easily seen by the unanimous descriptions in the testimonies (some of them implicit, but still evident) of “choosing Christ”. Although there’s a recognition in the deconvert of salvation by grace through faith, there is no realization of his own inability, or that keystone of soteriology: election. His conversion is based on humanistic beliefs; not biblical ones. There’s never any thought of Christ choosing him.

During the deconversion, this comes heavily into play. Without an understanding of his own inability, and of God’s sovereignty over salvation, the deconvert presumes to rely on his own power to have faith, by “re-choosing” God in an effort to return to the state he was at shortly after his profession.

Once he has professed faith, the deconvert is always told what to believe, but never why—that is, he is never educated as a Christian. His elders are useless in degrees which may vary from simple incompetence to obvious unbelief. Questions such as the problem of evil, the doctrine of hell, and so on, are never placed in their proper context through a systematic study of biblical philosophy and theology, and are therefore never adequately answered in his mind; they merely fester, leading to eventual intellectual dissonance.

Following his profession, things go very well for a while. He is involved in some kind of ministry (whether pastoral or apologetic or both), and studies his field extensively (allegedly). He becomes increasingly confident in the Bible, but still without an understanding of its epistemic necessity, or its centrality and power—because these things have never been taught to him, and, being steeped in humanistic thinking, he is blind to discover them on his own. Nonetheless, he starts to study skeptical arguments against Christianity so as to refute them. During the course of this study, doubts begin to grow, as more and more “problems” are exposed with the Christian worldview. These doubts are primarily dealt with through attempts to renew the faith he supposes he created in himself, by “getting closer to God”—a wholly futile effort to improve his “spirituality” through praying and reading the Bible—and through further study of the wrong things. Obviously, such efforts are hopeless without the mind of Christ, and this is evidenced by the eventual collapse of the pretense of belief in the deconvert’s own mind, generally culminating after many years of gradual ablation.

It’s also notable that there are no other Christians (particularly elders) to whom he can speak about his doubts and problems. This, really, is merely an extension of my previous observation that the elders are quite incompetent; for if they were not, the doubts and problems should never have arisen in the first place. But their responses on the occasions of his asking for help are truly despicable (if they are related truthfully): testaments to the complete lack of work of Christ in their own lives, as well as his. Rather than correcting and teaching him, they consistently rebuke him, being totally unequipped to even attempt an answer to his simple objections.

It’s interesting (although obviously expected) that his ability to think starts to diminish quite evidently in proportion to his rejection of Scripture; which rejection increases as he studies it more. This phenomenon should encourage us as believers, since it’s the exact result we ought to expect if Scripture’s claims about itself and wisdom are true, and if the gospel is folly to those who are perishing (1 Cor 1:18) because it is veiled from them (2 Cor 4:3).

In all this, the only thing really demonstrated is not that the deconvert lost a faith he once had, but rather that faith which is based on humanistic beliefs is not faith at all; and that the Bible is incompatible with humanistic philosophy. In other words, the problems which the deconvert faced were all based on his humanistic assumptions about reality—assumptions which are false, and contrary to biblical teaching. Since he clung to these assumptions, he found it harder and harder to cling to Scripture; for as Jesus says in another context, “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Luke 16:13).

Now, the deconvert may object that it was not problems of philosophy which caused him to begin questioning his faith, but problems of fact. That is to say, most deconversions occur because of supposed “scientific facts” discovered by the deconvert, which “prove” the Bible wrong. It’s from these initial problems that the whole false faith unravels. But the very notion of a scientific fact merely demonstrates the extent to which humanistic thought has taken the deconvert captive, and proves that it was indeed a philosophical error that led him into unbelief. He has never engaged with the ultimate questions of reality at all; never been taught biblical philosophy, never been grounded in epistemology and metaphysics. If he had, he would understand the epistemic necessity of Scripture; and be all too aware that the scientific method is incapable of discovering truth in any way, shape, or form. Not only is it impossible to gain knowledge at all through empirical means, but the scientific method itself is a formal logical fallacy and therefore cannot yield any justified true belief (knowledge), ever (see the appendix on science in The Wisdom Of God).

But he has never studied the philosophy of science; or, if he has, he has refused to accept the plain facts of logic, and to believe the truth of Scripture; he has instead exchanged them for a lie. He has always assumed a false, humanistic worldview, and has simply attempted to force the Bible into it. No transformation of his mind ever took place (Rom 12:2).

If it had, he would be aware that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom (Pr 9:10), that wisdom is Christ (John 1:1), that it is put within the heart (Job 38:36)—and he would understand and affirm the epistemic ramifications of this instead of abandoning rationality for the hopeless, knowledge-destroying foolishness of unbelief (Ps 14:1). Indeed, he would be quite familiar with all these basic metaphysical and epistemological issues critical to the biblical worldview, and to intellectual endeavor itself. Without such a knowledge-affirming worldview, one is left with the foolishness of physicalism or naturalism or materialism or spiritualism, or whichever other ism one wishes to choose; and through which nothing can be known. As I discusse at some length in chapter 3 of The Wisdom Of God, the Bible’s nature as the word of God is the first principle upon which all other thinking is based; and it is the central pillar toward which every aspect of a believer’s life is conformed. It isn’t simply important; it is fundamental in the most basic sense: philosophically, it is the foundation for all thought.

No wonder the deconvert fell away, if he never learned this. He never had this foundation; he never knew the power of God at all; never really believed in the Bible’s centrality and power. It was never a lamp to his feet and a light to his path (Ps 119:105); he never believed it was sufficient and profitable for every area of intellectual endeavor (2 Tim 3:16); and he never took seriously its command to meditate upon it day and night (Josh 1:8). Simply put, although he may have thought he understood and believed these things, in truth he did not. If he had, he would truly have had his mind transformed and conformed into the rational, knowledge-affirming, unbelief-destroying mind of Christ.

Now, as a final comment: Although, as Christians, we proudly affirm the gospel, and tear down every pretension raised against the knowledge of God, we must not be too proud to take a caution from these sorts of tales of unbelief. They serve at least to remind us that self-deception is possible. This is why we are commanded to work out our salvation in fear and trembling (Phil 2:12), being doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves (James 1:22).