By: Dr.Paul Coulter
What
is ‘Apologetics’?
What is ‘Apologetics’?
The term ’apologetics’ derives from the Greek word apologia.
Although it is derived from the same word as the English noun ’apology’ and
adjective ’apologetic’ the meaning is quite significantly different. In the
ancient Greek world an apologia was a legal defence of oneself, similar to the
speech a modern day defence lawyer makes on behalf of their client. It did not
mean “a regretful
acknowledgement of an offence or failure” (the
Oxford English Dictionary definition of ’apology’) but a carefully reasoned
defence of one’s beliefs or actions.
We might, then, define Christian apologetics as follows:
The task of developing and sharing arguments for the
truth and rationality of Christianity and the falsehood and irrationality of
alternatives with the aim of strengthening the faith of believers and provoking
non believers to consider Christ
The significance of this definition will become clearer throughout
this article, but at this point it is important to emphasise that ’argument’ in
this context refers to a logical, reasoned case rather than an argumentative
style. Apologetics includes both developing and sharing arguments – it is not a
purely academic exercise conducted in an ivory tower, but a practical engagement with real people and real problems. You will also notice
that there are two sides to the arguments we seek to develop – a positive case
for Christianity and a negative case against alternative belief systems.
Furthermore, the ultimate aims of apologetics are not to develop clever
arguments but to see people led to faith and strengthened in their faith.
What Are the Origins of Apologetics?
In the second century AD, as Christianity began to engage at an
intellectual level with Greek philosophy and attractedgreater attention from
Roman society, a number of writers produced reasoned defences of the Christian
faith. Of these Justin Martyr (c. 100165 AD), a gentile from Samaria who was converted
after seeking truth in numerous philosophies and eventually died as a martyr in
Rome, is probably the best known and the most significant. These writers are
generally referred to as ‘the apologists’. Their writings collectively show
three major concerns:
●To defend Christianity against false
accusations (e.g. that Christians were atheists, sexually immoral or cannibals)
●To argue for the truth of Christianity on
the basis that it fulfilled Old Testament prophecy
●To show that Christianity was superior to or
fulfilled Greek philosophical ideas
Other eminent Christians of this period were disparaging of the
approach of the apologists. For example, Tertullian criticized Justin’s use of Greek philosophy, saying
famously, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? This difference of opinion continues to divide
evangelical Christians today. Some have a positive approach towards
apologetics, believing thatall truth is God’s truth and that it is important to
defend Christianity in the realm of philosophical debate, whereas others are suspicious
of apologetics and argue that we should put our energies into proclaiming the
gospel instead.
Interestingly, all three of the main lines of argument advanced by
the apologists of the second century find precedents in the New Testament book
of Acts, making Luke (or perhaps Paul, whose words he recorded) the first recorded
Christian apologist. Renowned biblical scholar F.F. Bruce wrote [1]:
Of three main types of Christian apologetic
in the second century Luke provides first century prototypes: apologetic in
relation to pagan religion (Christianity is true; paganism is false);
apologetic in relation to Judaism (Christianity represents the fulfillment of
true Judaism); apologetic in relation to the political authorities
(Christianity is innocent of any offence against Roman law).
So, then, apologetics originated in the New Testament (see the
later section on A biblical case for the task of apologetics), developing
further in the second century in response to challenges encountered as it
crossed cultural boundaries into the Graeco Roman world. Throughout the history
of Christianity apologetics has continued to adapt to new cultural challenges.
For a short overview of the history of Christian apologetics,
including profiles of the leading figures in the development of modern
apologetics, the reader is referred to the online article A Brief History of
Apologetics by Kenneth D. Boa and Robert M. Bowman.[2]
What is the Purpose of Apologetics?
Apologetics is
generally said to have three functions, although it should be realised that not
all Christian apologists accept that all three functions are valid (some would
say that we should not try to construct positive arguments for Christian faith
but simply focus on refuting accusations against it) and there is considerable
variation between different schools of apologetics as to what arguments should
be used within each function:
1) Arguments for the
truth of the Christian faith (vindication / proof / positive apologetics)Aim –
to show that Christianity is reasonable / rational. Using philosophical
arguments and evidence from science, archaeology and history to show that the
Christian faith has greater power than any alternative belief system to explain
and interpret the world we live in.
2) Arguments refuting
accusations made against the Christian faith (defence / negative apologetics) Aim
– to show that Christianity is not unreasonable / irrational. Removing
objections that are made against Christianity, for example claims of
contradictions in the Bible, alternative interpretations of historical and
scientific evidence and misconceptions about Christian belief.
3) Refutation of opposing
beliefs (offense) Aim – to show that nonChristian belief systems are
unreasonable / irrational. Focuses not on specific attacks against Christianity
but on undermining the foundations of other belief systems.
Some writers add a
fourth function, namely persuasion. They claim that apologetics also aims to
persuade people to believe in the Christian message. It is probably better to
see the task of persuasion as the overarching aim of apologetics, with the three
functions above playing different parts within it. This is a helpful reminder
of the fact that apologetics alone is not enough – evangelism is also
necessary.
Another way to think
about the purpose of apologetics is to think about how it relates to those who
are believers and those who are nonbelievers.
Apologetics aims both
to strengthen the faith of the faithful and to remove obstacles to faith for
those who do not believe.
How
Does Apologetics Relate to Evangelism?
'Evangelism' is
generally understood to mean sharing the good news message (gospel) about Jesus
Christ. Apologetics is best seen as either preevangelism or as part of the
process of evangelism. It removes barriers to belief and prepares the ground
for the seed of the gospel to be sown. It is vital not to divorce apologetics
strictly from evangelism. It is unlikely that people who have intellectual
objections to the existence of God or the historicity of Jesus will receive the
gospel message, and apologetics will help to remove these obstacles by
appealing to intellectual reasoning. At the same time, a person could be
intellectually convinced of the credibility and even the truth of the Christian
faith but still not be a Christian. The gospel appeals not only to the mind, it
also appeals to the emotions and, most importantly of all, to the will.
Conversion occurs when mind, heart and will are surrendered to God in
repentance and faith. As such it will often be wise to share the gospel as we engage
in apologetic arguments.
Approaches
to Apologetics
There are numerous
different ways to approach the task of apologetics and it is not always easy to
classify different approaches. No one scheme of classification gains universal
support. Two possible ways of classifying common approaches are:
a) Depending on the
approach to knowing truth about God (i.e. religious epistemologies) Can truth
about God be discovered through human reason in response to observations about
the world (empiricism), through a critical appraisal of the inherent logic of
different belief systems (rationalism), through Scripture alone (Biblical authoritarianism),
through personal experience (mysticism), or through a combination of these
means? The debate over these different means of discovering truth about God
depends on our belief about:
●God
– is greater stress placed on His transcendence (the fact that He is beyond our
knowing) or His immanence (the fact that He has revealed Himself to us and can
be known).
●Sin
– how has sin affected the ability of humans to apprehend truth about God (the
effects of sin on the mind are called the noetic effects of sin).
Differing emphases on
God’s transcendence and the noetic effects of sin lead to three distinct
starting points for apologetics, as the following table shows:
Transcendence
of
God
|
Noetic effects of
sin
|
Starting point for
apologetics
|
Historic examples
|
How can God be
known?
|
Strong emphasis on both
|
The unique Christian
experience of grace
|
Blaise Pascal; Søren
Kierkegaard; Emil
Brunner
|
Faith
| |
|
Less strongly emphasised
|
Proofs from nature and
historic evidences
|
Thomas Aquinas; Joseph
Butler; Dominic Tennant
|
Reason
|
|
Less strongly
emphasised
|
Strongly
emphasised
|
Scripture (God’s
revelation)
|
Augustine of Hippo; Jean
Calvin; Abraham Kuyper
|
Faith and reason
|
b)
Depending on the way arguments are constructed
Steven B. Cowan
argues for a more practical classification of apologetic methods on the basis
of “distinctive ways of presenting the case for Christianity, distinctive types
or structures of argument[3].” He identifies five approaches:
1) Classical method (e.g. William Lane
Craig, R.C. Sproul, Norman Geisler, Stephen T. Davis, Richard Swinburne) Aims
to establish theism through arguments from nature then to present evidences to
prove that Christianity is the correct version of theism. Most proponents of
this method claim that there is no point presenting arguments from historical
evidence until the person has embraced a theistic worldview as they will always
interpret them based on their own worldview.
2)
Evidential method (e.g. Gary R.
Habermas, John W. Montgomery, Clark Pinnock, Wolfhart Pannenberg) Uses both
historical and philosophical arguments but focuses primarily on historical and
other evidence for the truth of Christianity. Will argue at the same time both
for theism in general and Christianity in particular.
3)
Cumulative case method (e.g. Paul D.
Feinberg, Basil Mitchell, C.S. Lewis, C. Stephen Evans) Rather than approaching
the task as a formal logical argument, sees the case for Christianity as more
like the brief a lawyer makes in a law court – an informal argument drawing
together evidence that together makes a compelling case with which no other
hypothesis can compete.
4)
Presuppositional method (e.g. John
M. Frame, Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Clark, Greg Bahnsen, Francis Schaeffer)
Emphasises the noetic effects of sin to the degree that believers and
unbelievers will not share enoughcommon ground for the preceding three methods
to accomplish their goal. The apologist must presuppose the truth of
Christianity as the proper starting point for apologetics. All experience is
interpreted and all truth known through the Christian revelation in the
Scriptures.
5)
Reformed epistemology method (e.g.
Kelly James Clark, Alvin Platinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, George Mavrodes,
William Alston) Argues that people believe many things without evidence and
that this is perfectly reasonable. Although positive arguments in defence of
Christianity are not necessarily wrong, belief in God does not need the support
of evidence or argument to be rational. The focus, therefore, tends to be more
on negative apologetics, defending against challenges to theistic belief.
The book Cowan
edited, entitled Five Views on Apologetics (Zondervan, 2000) contains chapters
by proponents of each of these five approaches as well as responses to each
chapter by the other four contributors. It is a helpful, although fairly technical,
attempt to show the commonalities and differences between different approaches.
A
third way: four methodologies
Although I agree that
Cowan’s categories are very helpful, I prefer a fourway categorisation of approaches that is used by Kenneth
D. Boa and Robert M. Bowman, which combines both the epistemology and the
approach to constructing arguments. The four methodologies they identify are
Classical apologetics, Evidential apologetics, Reformed apologetics and Fideism.
It should be obvious that three of these four approaches are identical to three
of Cowan’s: classical, evidential, and Reformed. Cowan’s ’cumulative case
method’ is a distinct approach to formulating arguments but since it draws
together insights from the classical and evidential methods it is not strictly
a distinct approach to apologetics. Cowan’s presuppositional
method is largely subsumed under Reformed apologetics in this fourfold scheme
(a careful reading of the descriptions above will show that they have much in
common). The fourth approach in the Boa and Bowman scheme, which is not covered
in Cowan’s classification although it shares ground with some people Cowan
would class as ’presuppositionalists’, is Fideism. This position correlates to
the first line of the table of religious epistemologies, as it identifies faith
as the sole way to know God and appeals to the Christian experience of God’s grace
as the only appropriate basis for apologetics.
The following table,
adapted from Boa and Bowman, details the characteristics of these four
approaches to apologetics [4]:
Classical
|
Evidential
|
Reformed
|
Fideist
|
|
Basis
|
Reason
|
Fact
|
Revelation
|
Faith
|
Form
|
Rational
|
Empirical
|
Transcendental
|
Paradoxical
|
Precursors
|
Anselm;Aquinas
|
William Paley
|
Calvin; Thomas Reid
|
Luther; Kierkegaard
|
C20th advocates
|
C.S.Lewis; Norman Geisler
|
J.W.Montgomery; Richard Swinburne
|
Cornelius Van Til; Alvin Platinga
|
Karl Barth; Donald Bloesch
|
Popular with
|
Catholics; evangelicals
|
Arminians
|
Calvinists
|
Lutherans; neoevangelicals
|
In practice it is not
always easy to place apologists neatly into any one methodology as many use
different approaches depending on the question at hand. It is probably best to
see these approaches as tools in a toolkit or weapons in an armoury. We can
freely draw on different approaches depending on the situation in which we find
ourselves. We will return to this idea in the section entitled The dynamic of
apologetic dialogue.
Common
Objections to the Task of Apologetics
Christians who are
sceptical about the value of apologetics raise a number of different
objections, some based on verses from the Bible and others based on limitations
of logic and apologetics. These objections are generally based on misunderstandings
of the Bible text or of the purpose of apologetics. In the list of objections
that follows I am indebted to Norman Geisler although I have made some changes
to his list and have significantly modified his responses:
A]
Objections from the Bible
1.
The Bible does not need to be defended
Verses such as Hebrews 4:12 are quoted to
support the claim that the Bible ispowerful in itself since it is God’s living
word. It is sometimes said that the Bible is like a lion – it does not need to
be defended but unleashed. It is true that Scripture is powerful to change
attitudes and challenge hearts, but if someone will not read or listen
seriously to it then it cannot do this work. Apologetics can establish the fact
that it is reasonable to take the Bible seriously, so opening people to be
prepared to listen. Furthermore, if Scripture only needed to be unleashed to do
its work then the task of teaching and preaching would also be unnecessary and
evangelism would be reduced to merely passing on texts from the Bible.
Scripture consistently describes people as the medium through which God’s truth
is communicated to other people. The Bible, and the gospel which it declares,
is powerful to change attitudes and lives, but it must be proclaimed, declared
and explained for, “How ... can they call on the one they have not believed in?
And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can
they hear without someone preaching to them?”(Romans 10:14).
2.
God cannot be known by human reason
1 Corinthians 1:21 says that the world did not know God through
its wisdom. It is claimed that this means there is no point in trying to get
people to accept rational arguments for God. The context of 1Corinthians 1,
however, is not the existence of God but the acceptance of the message of the
cross. That message cannot be accepted by natural reason alone – it only makes
sense because of the special revelation of Scripture and as the Spirit enlightens
(1 Corinthians 2:14 (http://biblia.com/bible/esv/1%20Cor%202.14)). Elsewhere,
however, Paul writes of evidence in nature pointing to the existence of God and
some of His attributes, leaving people without excuse (Romans 2:1215).
3.
Natural humanity cannot understand God’s truth
1 Corinthians 2:14 says
that “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things what come from the
Spirit of God”. It is argued that there is no point, therefore, in trying to
explain them to him. Notice, however, that Paul says this man does not accept
(Greek dekomai, ’welcome’) them, not that he cannot understand them.
Nonbelievers reject
the gospel not because it is illogical and they cannot understand what it means
but because they refuse to accept its claims over them. Apologetics seeks to
explain the message clearly and rationally so that when the Spirit moves\ the person’s heart they will be ready to
accept the truth. In fact, a prayerful approach to apologetics recognises that
the work of the Spirit is necessary for people to receive the truth. The
apologist does not seek to obstruct or replace the Spirit but to be the
Spirit’s agent in bringing people to Christ.
4.
Without faith one cannot please God
Hebrews 11:6 clearly states that faith is essential to
please God, and some people suggest that this means that reason is displeasing
to Him. This claim sets up a false division between faith and reason.
Biblical faith is not
blind belief in spite of the evidence, but trust in something that has been
commended to the person as trustworthy. The gospel is a message from God that
claims that He can be trusted, and apologetics provides evidence that supports
that claim. Faith is a response on the part of the individual that accepts the
claim (or, rather, accepts the one of whom it speaks) and places confidence in
it (or, more correctly, in Him) rather than in self or any alternative.
5.
Jesus refused to give signs to evil men
This claim arises
from Matthew 12:39 (http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Matt%2012.39), where Jesus says
that a wicked generation asks for signs. However, in the next verse Jesus says that
one sign, the sign of Jonah, meaning His resurrection, would be given. Jesus
presented His miracles as evidence of His identity as the Messiah and Son of
God (Matthew 11:45) ; (Mark 2:1011); (John 14:11). On occasions
He refused to do miracles for entertainment (Luke23:8) or because of
unbelief (Matthew 13:58),
but people saw his miracles and realised that they showed He came from God (John 3:2), and the apostles
pointed to His miracles (Acts
2:22) and especially His resurrection (Acts 2:32);Romans1:4); 1 Corinthians 15:3ff.) as
evidence of His identity. The proper lesson to learn from Jesus’ example is not
that apologetics is wrong, but that we need discernment to know when to engage
in an argument and when not to.
6.
Do not answer a fool according to his folly
Proverbs 26:5 is the basis for this claim, but those who
make it neglect to read the following verse, which says that we should answer a
fool according to his folly. The point of these adjacent and seemingly contradictory
proverbs is that we need wisdom to decide when we should give an answer to a
“fool” (someone who rejects God’s existence, according to Psalm 14:1 and when we should
not.
7.
Apologetics is not used in the Bible
If this claim is
meant to say that Scripture provides no examples of God providing evidence to
support faith then it is simply wrong. Geisler points to the miracles of Moses
(Exodus 4:19), Elijah (1
Kings 18) and Jesus (Acts
2:22) as well as the way in which Paul reasoned with people about God’s
existence, even using their own philosophical and religious ideas as a starting
point (Acts 17:2231).
The Bible, therefore,
provides clear precedents for the task of apologetics even if it does not
contain the kind of detailed arguments necessary in modern apologetics since it
was written in a premodern world primarily to believers. Apologetics today
continues patterns found in Scripture.
NEXT: B] Objections from outside the Bible
Source:
An Introduction to
Christian Apologetics - bethinking.org
[1]F.F. Bruce ’Paul's
Apologetic and the Purpose of Acts’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University
Library (1987) 89:2, pp.38990
[2]Available at http://bible.org/seriespage/briefhistoryapologetics (http://bible.org/seriespage/briefhistoryapologetics)
(accessed 16/3/11)
[3]S.B. Cowan
‘Introduction’ in Five Views on Apologetics (Zondervan, 2000), p.14
[4]Table adapted from
http://bible.org/seriespage/speakingtruthloveperspectivesapologetics
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