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This category isn't so much of a school of Christian Apologetics as it is an orientation; an orientation which can be probably labeled more accurately as Fideistic, Existentialistic and relationship-oriented. This approach toward apologetics stresses the uniqueness and convicting appeal of personal experience. God working in the heart, the existential encounter with Christ or the still small voice. Well known adherents of this approach include Tertullian (160-230), Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Karl Barth (1886-1968) as well as many mystics, the desert fathers, and pietists. On the other hand, many non-Christian voices exist among existentialism as well including Friedrich Nietzche, Martin Heidegger, Albert Camus and John Paul Sartre, This approach so plays down the rational, many times it outrightly rejects that aspect of the human composition. Tension and paradox plague the human condition even in its attempts to know the infinite God. This condition is magnified by the negative effects of original sin. Thus the knowledge of God can only come through the initiave of God. Personal experience stands on its own as a legetimate way of knowing God. The notion that any given experience may be deceptive and faulty is rejected. "Without a strategy to identify which experiences really do reveal God, a person must adopt Fideism or admit the legetimacy of non-Christian religious experiences." (Clark, Dialogical Apologetics, pg. 104). One can easily see how this could lead to unchecked false beliefs or relativism & puralism. Advantages of exiperientialism are that 1) It guards against dry rational intellectualism (however, this can also lead to a strong anti-intellectualism; 2) Testimonies of believers who have found God in the midst of strive and chaos is a legetimate apologetic that carries considerable weight. Reacting against the highly intellectualism of the German liberalism in which he was schooled, Barth rejected the elevation of human reason over subjective belief as Immanuel Kant held and as the German school continued. German liberalism held that human nature was basically good and that Jesus' teachings were more related to His mission rather than human redemption. Barth grew up in the footsteps of news of Communism and Fascism, the deadly logical applications of Charles Darwin & Herbert Spencer's teachings & application of evolution as well as the survival of the fittest. Barth saw the horrors of Mussolini and Lenin as well as smelled the stench of the third reich.
Fideism emphasizes belief in the lack of reason or logic for that belief. Fideism is the notion that reason is utterly at odds with faith. Both are so contradictory, they shouldn't even be used in the same sentence. The holier-than-thou arrogance of fideism is both to blame for much anti-intellectualism throughout church history (in movements and in individuals) as well as an over zealous, pseudo piety-driven knee-jerk reaction against the scholarly and studious development of the Christian faith.
The underlying premise of experimentalism-whether it be secular (ala Jean Paul Sartre, Martin Heidigger or Albert Camus) or 'Christian' (Soren Kerkegaard, Karl Barth) is that the person themself who is the gauge of what is authentic and what is not. The notion of 'authentic' here replaces the humanistic idea of 'enlightened' and 'inauthentic' stands in for the idea of unenlightened', 'shackled', and 'bound by societal customs (norms) and ideas of morality'. Unlike Christianity which is based upon the premise that a totally other deity exists who is the ground of being, and defines what is right, true, authentic, and moral, experimentalism unseats this God as the definer of reality, the creator-sustainer of what is, with the feelings of the individual. The experimentalist is guilty of looking into the mirror and declaring, 'Thou art God.' The experimentalist has declared that he not only has the God of the universe within him, but that he is Him.
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