Don't Quote This To William Lane Craig

"But how can we know that [the Christian story] is true?"

There is a long tradition of Christian theology that goes under the name "apologetics" and that seeks to respond to this question and to demonstrate the "reasonableness of Christianity." The assumption often underlying titles of this kind is that the gospel can be made acceptable by showing that it does not contravene the requirements of reason as we understand them within the contemporary plausibility structure. The heart of my argument is that this is a mistaken policy. The story the church is commissioned to tell, if it is true, is bound to call into question any plausibility structure which is founded on other assumptions. The affirmation that the One by whom and through whom and for whom all creation exists is to be identified with a man who was crucified and rose bodily from the dead cannot possibly be accomodated within any plausibility structure except one of which it is the cornerstone. In any other place in the structure it can only be a stone of stumbling. The reasonableness of Christianity will be demonstrated (insofar as it can be) not by adjusting its claims to the requirements of a preexisting structure of thought but by showing how it can provide an alternative foundation for a different structure.

- Lesslie Newbigin

Is it reasonable to claim that when William Lane Craig and Christopher Hitchens debate about God the only winner is Descartes?