Thinking About Christian Apologetics

What It Is and Why We Do It

James K. Beilby

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780830839452
• eBook ISBN: 9780830869428
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Most introductions to apologetics begin with the "how to" of defending the faith, diving right into the major apologetic arguments and the body of evidence. For those who want a more foundational look at this contested theological discipline, this book examines Christian apologetics in its nature, history, approaches, objections and practice.What is apologetics?How has apologetics developed?What are the basic apologetic approaches?Why should we practice apologetics?Countless Christians today are seeking a responsibe way to defend and commend their faith. If you are one them, Thinking About Christian Apologetics is the place to start.

1

What Is Christian Apologetics?

1. A Basic Definition

Apologetics is, in the simplest possible terms, the attempt to defend a particular belief or system of beliefs against objections. Contrary to popular misunderstanding, apologetics has nothing to do with apologizing or saying I’m sorry. The term derives from the Greek word apologia (a-pol-o-GEE-a) and was originally used in a legal context. An apologia was a defendant’s reply to the accusations of the prosecution. In the context of ancient Greece, a plaintiff could respond to an accusation or kategoria with a defense or apologia. This defense involved the attempt to (literally) “speak away” the accusation (apo—“away,” logia—“speech”) to show that the accusation was false.

Socrates’ defense before the Athenian court is the classic example of an apology. The accusation against him was that he corrupted the young, refused to worship the gods and created new deities. Plato’s Apology is the surviving account of Socrates’ attempt to demonstrate his innocence. But the term apologetics might be applied to a wide variety of contexts. In opposition to those who would claim that Jack Nicklaus or Ben Hogan is most deserving of the designation best golfer of all time, I might deliver an apology for the idea that Tiger Woods deserves that honor. Or I might engage in political apologetics, arguing that the platform of a particular political party is to be preferred. Even in religious contexts, there are Hindu apologetics and Muslim apologetics. The type of apologetics at issue in this book, however, is Christian apologetics.

The word apologetics (in both the noun and verbal form) appears nineteen times in the New Testament. The word is used either to denote an answer that is given to a charge, objection or accusation leveled against an individual or a vindication (implying a successful answer or defense).

Consider the eight occurrences of the noun form of apologia. (The word for apologia has been italicized in each.)

Acts 22:1—“Listen now to my defense.” (Paul speaking to a Jewish mob in Jerusalem)

Acts 25:16—“It is not the Roman custom to hand over any man before he has faced his accusers and has had an opportunity to defend himself against their charges.”

1 Corinthians 9:3—“This is my defense to those who sit in judgment on me.”

2 Corinthians 7:11—“See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves.”

Philippians 1:7—“For whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me.”

Philippians 1:16—“Do so in love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.”

2 Timothy 4:16—“At my first defense, no one came to my support.”

1 Peter 3:15—“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.”

In four of these passages, it is Paul himself that is being defended (Acts 22:1; Acts 25:16; 1 Cor 9:3; 2 Tim 4:16); in one passage it is the recipient of Paul’s letter that has given a defense and been vindicated (2 Cor 7:11); and in three cases it is the gospel of Jesus Christ that is being defended (Phil 1:7, 16; 1 Pet 3:15). The last verse, 1 Peter 3:15, is probably the best-known verse on apologetics because it contains not only a clear reference to apologetics but a command to engage in it.

Of course, while the idea of presenting a rational defense of the gospel of Jesus Christ is clearly present in Philippians 1:7, 16 and 1 Peter 3:15 and is implied in many other texts, that does not mean that the Bible teaches about apologetics. There is no formal system or theory of apologetics found in the Bible. The Bible records instances of apologetics and commends the task to Christians, but it does not provide specifics on how apologetics should be done. In fact, it wasn’t until the second century that the word apologia began to be applied not just to a task but to Christians engaged in that task.[1]

Nevertheless, from the biblical materials, the basic contours of Christian apologetics can be discerned. Christian apologetics involves an action (defending), a focus of the action (the Christian faith itself), a goal (upholding Christianity as true) and a context (the circumstances in which apologetics occurs). Consequently, in this chapter each of these elements will be discussed, as will the relationship between apologetics and related disciplines, such as evangelism and theology.

2. Making a Defense

Because apologia is often translated as “defense,” some have misunderstood the task of Christian apologetics to involve only responses to objections to the Christian faith. There are, however, a good number of biblical passages that do not explicitly use the term apologia that provide a more well-rounded picture of the apologetic task. Four of the most commonly mentioned are as follows:

2 Corinthians 10:5—“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

2 Timothy 2:25—“Those who oppose [the servant of the Lord] he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth.”

Titus 1:9—“[One who would be an elder] must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.”

Jude 3—“I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (because some have been spreading false teachings about the gospel).

As these passages indicate, apologetics can involve a variety of activities, including but not limited to “demolishing arguments,” “contending for the faith,” “refuting those who oppose sound doctrine” and “gentle instruction.” Consequently, a more well-rounded picture of apologetics is given by the phrase “defending and commending the faith.” In other words, the action of apologetics includes two different (but complementary) aspects—one defensive and the other offensive. An example of the defensive aspect of apologetics is the attempt to respond to the claim that the existence of evil in the world entails that God cannot exist, or if he does exist that he cannot be all good or all-powerful, as Christians have traditionally claimed. Let’s call this aspect of apologetics responsive apologetics. (Others have called this aspect of apologetics negative or defensive apologetics.) The goal of responsive apologetics is to demonstrate that objections to Christian belief are not successful.

In addition to responsive apologetics, a Christian might defend his or her religious belief by engaging in what I will call proactive apologetics. (Others have called this aspect of apologetics positive or offensive apologetics.) As the name implies, when engaging in proactive apologetics the Christian does not wait until a skeptic has developed an argument against Christianity. Rather, the Christian takes the initiative by giving arguments for Christian belief, arguments intended to show that Christian belief is perfectly rational or, perhaps, that Christian belief is intellectually superior to other worldviews. Those engaged in proactive apologetics would be likely to embrace the slogan “the best defense is a good offense.” An example of proactive apologetics would be an argument for the existence of God, such as the teleological or design argument, or an argument for the reliability of the Bible.

But notice that it is possible to engage in proactive apologetics in two different ways. Arguments for the existence of God or the truthfulness of an aspect of Christian belief are constructive apologetic arguments. They seek to support or establish the truthfulness of the Christian worldview. But it is possible to engage in proactive apologetics in another way—by offering arguments against other worldviews and in so doing show that alternatives to the Christian worldview are deficient in one way or another. This would be a deconstructive apologetic argument. The goal of such an argument is refutation. Of course, deconstructive apologetic arguments do not establish the truthfulness of the Christian worldview. Even if a competitor to Christianity, say atheism, is false, that doesn’t mean that Christianity is true. After all, it is logically possible that both are false. In fact, even if one demonstrated via deconstructive apologetic arguments that all the known competitors to Christianity were false, that wouldn’t mean that Christianity was true. This is because it is logically possible (even if unlikely) that a worldview that no one has yet thought of is true. Nevertheless, deconstructive apologetic arguments are valuable. After all, when making decisions about which worldview is true, if a person is aware of arguments that suggest that the competitors to Christianity were probably false, that makes it easier to embrace Christian belief. Further, arguments against atheism might be sufficient to cause atheists to take more seriously arguments for Christian belief, arguments that had been previously dismissed.

Just as there are a couple of different ways of doing proactive apologetics, one might engage in responsive apologetics in two quite different ways. Take, for example, the argument against the possibility of miracles. One might respond to this argument by providing positive evidence for miracle claims. Such an approach, in effect, says to the objector, “You claim that miracles are not possible, but you must be wrong because I have good evidence for a particular event being miraculous.” Call this a rebutting apologetic argument. But one might respond to the objection to miracles in a very different way, by arguing that the objection itself is problematic. Call this an undercutting apologetic argument.[2] Such an argument might involve the response that the objection to the possibility of the miraculous commits a logical fallacy or entails a philosophical stance that is problematic in important respects.

The essential difference, therefore, between rebutting and undercutting arguments is that rebutting arguments meet force with force: evidence against a proposition is countered with evidence for that proposition. In other words, objection O to Christian belief B is answered by providing reasons to believe B. Undercutting arguments, however, do not seek to offer an opposing side. Rather they seek to undercut the evidence being offered for a proposition by showing that the evidence being offered is flawed in one respect or another. In other words, objection O to Christian belief B is answered by providing reasons to reject O.

In summary, there are two different kinds of apologetic arguments, each of which has a pair of variations:

1. Proactive apologetics: demonstrating that belief in Christianity makes sense
   1. Constructive arguments: arguments for the truthfulness of Christianity
   2. Deconstructive arguments: arguments against the truthfulness of other worldviews
2. Responsive apologetics: demonstrating that objections to Christianity are unsuccessful
   1. Rebutting arguments: responses to an objection designed to support that which is being attacked
   2. Undercutting arguments: responses to an objection designed to show that the objection itself is misguided

Typical apologetic encounters will involve a complex of the various types of proactive and responsive apologetics. Which kind of apologetic argument is utilized depends on the situation, one’s knowledge base and the apologetic topic being discussed.

3. Defending the Christian Faith

So apologetics is about defending and commending. But Christian apologetics is a particular variety of apologetics, one that defends and commends Christian belief. What is meant by the term Christian? And what about the term Christian does apologetics defend? Before seeking to answer this question, it is important to acknowledge that there are at least three different usages of the term Christian. First, Christian may be simply used as a cultural label or identifier. On this usage, a people are Christian if they call themselves Christian. Second, Christian can be used of those who have (or will have) the gift of salvation. Finally, Christian is used as a description of the beliefs Christians have embraced throughout history, the fundamental beliefs shared by Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and Wesley. The first of these usages is generally uninteresting and dangerous if used to define what makes apologetics Christian (for some of what has been done by those who call themselves Christians cannot be defended). The second sense of Christian is also inadequate for understanding the sense in which Christian apologetics is Christian. Whether a person is saved is simply beyond our ken. We simply do not have access to the current disposition of a person’s heart toward God, much less the future disposition of a person’s heart. Consequently, the final usage of Christian is the appropriate one here. Christian apologetics seeks to defend what orthodox Christians have claimed about God throughout history.

But this does not mean that it is the task of Christian apologetics to defend everything that Christians believe. This is an all-too-common misunderstanding. On this mistaken view whether or not one accepts social trinitarianism or the substantial view of the imago Dei or an episcopal understanding of church government is an apologetic issue. But none of those issues is apologetic in nature. They are theological questions. Of course, this isn’t to say that they are unimportant. Theological questions are very important, in many ways and for many reasons. Simply put, apologetics does not focus on questions that might be considered intramural debates between Christians, however theologically important those debates might be. Apologetics deals with core Christian issues, the essentials of the faith. In other words, what apologetics defends are the notions that if removed from a system of beliefs would eliminate the sense in which that system could be called Christian.

What are these core Christian beliefs? There is, of course, no simple answer to this question. There are undoubtedly theological beliefs on some Christian’s essential list that are not on others. Nevertheless, there is a common core of beliefs that are expressed in the ecumenical councils (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon), affirmed by the ecumenical Christian creeds (the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed), sustained by the major denominational divisions of the Christian church (Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox), and central to the basic teachings of the great theologians of the faith. Items on this list include the existence of God, the deity of Jesus Christ, the affirmation of God as Trinity, the claim that God created all that exists outside himself, the assertion of human sinfulness, the atonement of Jesus Christ and undoubtedly more. This is not to suggest that there are no disagreements on how to understand these core ideas. For example, there are numerous ways of explaining the atonement. To explain the unity and diversity of Christian belief, we need a distinction between dogmas and doctrines. Dogmas are the core Christian claims; doctrines are attempts to explain, apply and flesh out dogmas. The idea that our salvation was made possible by Jesus is a dogma; different explanations of how Jesus made our salvation possible are doctrines. Consequently, one who accepts the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement has doctrinal disagreements with one who accepts the Christus Victor theory, but they both accept the underlying dogma.

Here is the key idea: The proper domain of apologetics is the defense of dogmas, not doctrines. Again, this is not to say that doctrinal disputes are unimportant, only that they are theological in nature, not apologetic. And I fully acknowledge that this definition will result in the definition of some topics as apologetic where others define them as theological. But the potential muddiness of the dogma/doctrine distinction does not diminish its importance. Some such distinction is necessary to provide some understanding of the term Christian apologetics. What is being defended is Christianity, not ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1: What Is Christian Apologetics?
• 2: Patristic and Medieval Apologetics
• 3: Modern and Contemporary Apologetics
• 4: Varieties of Apologetics
• 5: Philosophical Objections to Apologetics
• 6: Biblical and Theological Objections to Apologetics
• 7; Doing Apologetics Well
• A Bibliography of Works on Christian Apologetics
• Notes
• Name and Subject Index
• Praise for Thinking About Christian Apologetics
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press