APOLOGETICS: LIMITS AND PITFALLS

Since there might be some amount of confusion between the title subject and the word “apology,” here is what that infallible source Wikipedia as to say on the subject. “Apologetics (from Greek ἀπολογία, 'speaking in defense') is the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse. Early Christian writers (c. 120–220) who defended their beliefs against critics and recommended their faith to outsiders were called Christian apologists. In 21st-century usage, apologetics is often identified with debates over religion and theology. In the Koine Greek of the New Testament, the Apostle Paul employs the term apologia in his trial speech to Festus and Agrippa when he says 'I make my defense' in Acts 26:2. A cognate form appears in Paul's Letter to the Philippians as he is 'defending the gospel' in Philippians 1:7, and in 'giving an answer' in 1 Peter 3:15.”

Note that “apologetics” does not indicate in any way that we need to be apologetic when talking about our faith. As Link says, “Whereas the word apology denotes a particular defense of the Christian faith, apologetics is the working out and presentation of intellectual, scientific and philosophical arguments which may underlie such an apology.” For some resources on this blog site and elsewhere regarding Christian apologetics that meet that definition, see my post “Apologetics: A Study Guide.”

But the context of I Peter 3:15 encompasses more than the intellectual alone since the passage goes on in v. 16 to caution that your defense needs to be made with gentleness and reverence. For, as Walls explains, “the spirit in which a statement is made may matter more with some hearers than its content.” And from a practical viewpoint, Polhill adds, “Meekness is necessary when sharing the faith in adverse circumstances.”

However, Link probably goes too far in explaining these verses by saying, “Evangelism both in private and in public included persuasive testimonies...These consisted of one's personal experience of salvation, especially the power behind one's transformed and/or exemplary life.” I believe that he may be confusing the roles of an apologist and an evangelist, although they can be one and the same person at times.

Of the various “word” ministries within the body of Christ, four are sometimes confused with one another: preaching, teaching, evangelism, and apologetics. In general, one could say that:

    The goal of a teacher is to help Christians grow in their faith and knowledge of the Word.

    The goal of a preacher is to present the gospel to those who are seeking and to strengthen believers' walk.

    An evangelist restricts his activity to spreading the word to those who have not heard it, using methods such as life-style evangelism, sharing of one's testimony, one-on-one ministries door-to-door or at campuses and prisons, utilizing the media, etc.

    An apologist attempts to remove barriers to belief from those who have rejected the claims of Christ for one reason or another.

There are certain overlaps between these various ministries. Just look at Paul, who practiced all of them at one time or another. However, one must also recognize that God has not gifted all Christians in the same way, and the separate ministries each have their own unique place in the body of Christ. For example, a Sunday school teacher or preacher who addresses the same group of believers every week with an evangelistic message (and I have run into several of them) is rightly characterized as “preaching to the choir.” On the other hand, an evangelist such as Billy Graham was the first to admit that he would not exactly be called a Bible scholar. And as far as I know, both Graham and C.S. Lewis only wrote one book each which could be called a Bible commentary.

With all that in mind, even within the field of apologetics, there are a number of different ways in which to approach it. And much depends on the characteristics of the person or group you are trying to reach and the nature of their objections. The actual books, magazines and blog posts put out by “professional atheists” form one of the most valuable resources for an apologist since they accurately represent what they themselves consider the weakest aspects of theistic beliefs. Another valuable resource comes from Reasons to Believe, a group of Christians who represent mainly the scientific community. You can access lectures from various experts in their respective fields and also their writings on the subject of apologetics in general.

Here are some pertinent pieces of advice and quotes taken from C. S. Lewis' book of essays titled God in the Dock, along with my personal comments.

    1. “We are to defend Christianity itself...not 'my religion'. When we mention our personal opinions we must always make quite clear the difference between them and the Faith itself. St. Paul has given us the model in I Corinthians vii. 25: on a certain point he has 'no commandment of Lord' but gives 'his judgment'. No one is left in doubt as to the difference in status implied.”

I know a staunch Christian man who was utterly taken by surprise when his son announced that he had rejected Christianity and embraced atheism. I was not as surprised as my friend when I heard that news since I knew that the sort of Christianity the father constantly touted was the sort of mix of religion and politics that certainly would have turned me off of Christianity if I had been his son.

    2. “The great difficulty is to get modern audiences to realize that you are preaching Christianity solely and simply because you happen to think it true; they always suppose you are preaching it because you like it or think it good for society or something of that sort....what is being discussed is a question about objective fact – not gas about ideals and points of view.”

This may be a difficult point to get across since so many of us are so geared toward a political or pragmatic approach rather than a logical or intellectual one.

    3. “We have to answer the current scientific attitude toward Christianity, not the attitude which scientists adopted one hundred years ago. Science is in continual change and we must try to keep abreast of it. For the same reason, we must be very cautious of snatching at any scientific theory which, for the moments, seems to be in our favor.” In practice I have seen both extreme pitfalls in action. On the one hand, I have heard more than one preacher or visiting church lecturer who made a total ass of himself by his total incomprehension of modern scientific beliefs. And on the other, I had a Christian friend who would swing from elation to depression whenever various scientific “proofs” of Christianity were touted and then later retracted.

    4. “We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so; but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted. As long as that situation exists, widespread success is simply impossible. We must attack the enemy's line of communication.”

This situation has several ramifications. Thus, although most of us may now employ some sort of electronic means to spread our ideas, it will probably be totally ignored by the vast population of the world if the platform we are using has somehow fallen out of current favor.

And then there is the inevitable issue of any audience's attention span and memory. I ran into this one time in particular when after a Sunday school class I had taught, two women in the class told me that they were confused by my teaching several possible interpretations of a Scripture passage. I asked them what they would do if I only taught one view and then another one of our teachers expressed a different view of that passage the following week. Their prompt reply was, “We will believe you this week, and that teacher next week.” And this was with two lifelong Christians. The same cavalier attitude toward the truth and short attention span is even worse with a hostile audience.

    5. Lewis reminds us that there are some common prejudices and presuppositions that need to be kept in view when engaging in apologetics. These include the feeling that historical matters are considered to be either highly untrustworthy or totally irrelevant to us in the modern world, and that “a sense of sin is almost totally lacking.” Dealing with the latter case, I once horrified a truly “good” (meaning “moral”) work colleague at work by hinting that he might be a sinner. In his mind, that word meant a criminal who should be in jail for his actions, and he was quite sure that he didn't fall into that category. This brings up the next point Lewis addresses: “We must learn the language of our audience...you must translate every bit of your Theology into the vernacular.”

    6. “I turn now to the question of the actual attack. This may be either emotional or intellectual...I am not sure that the ideal missionary team ought not to consist of one who argues and one who (in the fullest sense of the word) preaches. Put up your arguer first to undermine their intellectual prejudices; then let the evangelist proper launch his appeal.” This principle points at another deficit of apologetics, he or she may eliminate the expressed objections of people, but it in itself is practically useless in actually converting them.

I have saved my half of an extended correspondence I had several years ago with an old high school friend who would consider himself an atheist. You may read it in the posts “Dialogue with an Atheist: Parts 1-7.” It represents my one foray into the area of one-on-one apologetics. My friend has a brilliant mind, but I attempted to keep up with him. If you happen to find yourself debating with someone who is totally up on science and philosophy, this dialogue may be of special interest to you even if the final result in my experience was less than satisfactory from an apologetic viewpoint. But it does illustrate some of the deficits of a totally intellectual approach when the underlying issues may lie elsewhere.

I have twice in my life bested someone in an intellectual debate only to have the other party say, “Well, I still don't believe it.” And in at least one of those cases, it became quite obvious that there was a strong emotional reason for him not being willing to accept the truth.

    7. “I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one's own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of the Faith seems to be so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate. For a moment, you see, it has seemed to rest on oneself: as a result, when you go away from that debate, it seems no stronger than that weak pillar. That is why we apologists...can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments...into Christ Himself.”

This same thing can happen to a preacher who realizes the tenuous nature of his own understanding of the faith.

    8. As hinted several times above, purely intellectual arguments don't really reach the whole person. C. S. Lewis himself said that he was converted to Christianity not so much through logical expositions as through the study of pagan mythology as well as the fairy tales and fantasy stories of George MacDonald.

All this has led to a movement called cultural apologetics, as opposed to propositional apologetics, which “looks at faith and reasons for faith through an interdisciplinary kaleidoscope of art, literature, film, history, theology, and philosophy.” (Holly Ordway)