Apologetics

General Information

Apologetics is the branch of theology concerned with the intellectual defense of Christian truth. The Greek word apologia means "defense" and was originally defined as a defendant's reply to the speech of the prosecution in a court of law. The title of apologist was initially applied to a series of early Christian writers who, in the first few centuries AD, addressed their "apologies" to the Roman emperor or to the educated public. These writers were attempting to show that Christianity was both philosophically and morally superior to paganism (the worship of nature). These early apologists included Aristides, Athenagoras, Saint Justin Martyr, Minucius Felix, Tatian, and Tertullian.

History

In later ages, apologists became most conspicuous when the Christian faith was under attack. For instance, Saint Augustine wrote his City of God (413-426) partly in reply to the accusation that disaster had befallen Rome because the pagan gods were abandoned in favor of belief in the Christian God. Similarly, 13th-century Italian theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote his Summa contra gentiles (1261-1264; On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, 1956) as a defense against the theories proposed by ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, which had been newly introduced into the West by Muslim philosophers.

During periods when Christianity was supported by the state and unbelief was a crime, as was generally the case in Europe from the High Middle Ages to the end of the 17th century, there was little need for apologetic work. During those times, the term apology was usually used in a secondary sense; apologetics were not as much a defense against non-Christian thought as they were a defense against rival Christian interpretations. Examples are 16th-century German theologian Melanchthon's Apology for the Augsburg Confession (1531) and the apologetic works of Saint Robert Bellarmine, who wrote against what he referred to as Protestant heretics.

With the breakup of the traditional Christian worldview in the 18th century (see Age of Enlightenment), the need for the defense of the Christian faith against the trend toward logic and rationalism became urgent, and a number of apologetic works appeared. Of these works, among the most influential were English bishop Joseph Butler's Analogy of Religion (1736) and English theologian William Paley's Evidences of Christianity (1794). Throughout the 19th century and up to the present the stream of apologetic works has continued.

Recent Schools of Thought

Many of the more recent apologists aim to show that the Christian faith is not at odds with modern science and philosophy. They argue that that a true understanding of the development of modern thought, as well as the further progress of it, is actually dependent on Christian insights. Current theological writing often has an apologetic overtone because Christian theologians are usually aware of the challenges presented to the faith by contemporary science, psychology, sociology, and philosophy. However, a recent school of theologians, led by Swiss Protestant Karl Barth, holds that apologetics is not the proper business of the theologian. This school claims that apologetics is inherently defensive and therefore seems to allow nonbelievers to set the agenda in a dialogue about Christian beliefs. These philosophers argue that the best apologetic is simply a clear statement of belief.

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Apologetics

Advanced Information

The English word comes from a Greek root meaning "to defend, to make reply, to give an meaning "to defend, to make reply, to give an answer, to legally defend oneself." In NT times an apologia was a formal courtroom defense of something (II Tim. 4:16). As a subdivision of Christian theology apologetics is a systematic, argumentative discourse in defense of the divine origin and the authority of the Christian faith. Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a reason for the hope they have (I Pet. 3:15). Broadly defined, apologetics has always been a part of evangelism.

Christianity is a world view that asserts some very precise things, e.g., that the cosmos is not eternal and self-explanatory, that a Creator exists, that he chose a people and revealed himself to them and worked miracles among them, and that he incarnated himself in a particular Jew at a precise time in history. All of these claims need to be substantiated. This involves apologetics. The only way to get apologetics out of the faith is to drop its truth claims.

Throughout Christian history apologetics has adopted various styles. One could divide them into two broad classes: the subjective and the objective.

The Subjective School

This includes such great thinkers as Luther, Pascal, Lessing, Kierkegaard, Brunner, and Barth. They usually express doubt that the unbeliever can be "argued into belief." They stress instead the unique personal experience of grace, the inward, subjective encounter with God. Such thinkers seldom stand in awe of human wisdom, but on the contrary usually reject traditional philosphy and classical logic, stressing the transrational and the paradoxical. They have little use for natural theology and theistic proofs, primarily because they feel that sin has blinded the eyes of man so that his reason cannot function properly. In Luther's famous metaphor, reason is a whore.

Thinkers of the subjective school have a keen appreciation of the problem of verification. Lessing spoke for most of them when he pointed out that "accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason." The problem of going from contingent (i.e., possibly false) facts of history to deep, inward, religious certainty has been called "Lessing's ditch."

Kierkegaard complained that historical truth is incommensurable with an eternal, passionate decision. The passage from history to religious certainty is a "leap" from one dimension to another kind of reality. He said that all apologetics has the intent of merely making Christianity plausible. But such proofs are vain because "to defend anything is always to discredit it."

Yet, for all his anti-intellectualism, Kierkegaard still had a kind of apologetic for Christianity, a defense developed strangely out of the very absurdity of the Christian affirmation. The very fact that some people have believed that God appeared on earth in the humble figure of a man is so astounding that in provides an occasion for others to share the faith. No other movement has ever suggested we base the eternal happiness of human beings on their relationship to an event occurring in history. Kierkegaard therefore feels that such an idea "did not arise in the heart of any man."

Even Pascal, who discounted the metaphysical proofs for God and preferred the "reasons of the heart," eventually came around with an interesting defense of the Christian faith. In his Pensees he recommended the biblical religion because it had a profound view of man's nature. Most religions and philosophies either ratify man's foolish pride or condemn him to despair. Only Christianity establishes man's true greatness with the doctrine of the image of God, while at the same time accounting for his present evil tendencies with the doctrine of the fall.

And we are told that, in spite of his energetic Nein! there is an apologetic slumbering beneath the millions of words in Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics.

The Objective School

This places the problem of verification clearly in the realm of objective fact. It emphasizes external realities, theistic proofs, miracles, prophecies, the Bible, and the person of Jesus Christ. However, a crucial distinction exists between two schools within the objectivist camp.

The Natural Theology School

Of all the groups this takes the most cheerful view of human reason. It includes such thinkers as Thomas Aquinas, Joseph Butler, F. R. Tennant, and William Pelye. Behind all these thinkers is an empirical tradition in philosophy that can be traced back to Aristotle. Such thinkers believe in original sin, but they seldom question the basic competency of reason in philosophy. Perhaps reason was weakened by the fall but certainly not severely crippled.

Aquinas sought for a common ground between philosophy and religion by insisting that God's existence could be demonstrated by reason but was also revealed in the Scriptures. He employed three versions of the cosmological argument and the teleological argument in his proofs for God.

In his Analogy of Religion (1736), Butler used the basic Thomistic approach but toned it down a bit with his emphasis on probability, "the very guide of life." He thus developed an epistemology very close to the pragmatic attitude of the scientist. Butler argued that geometrical clarity has little place in the moral and religious spheres. If a person is offended by an emphasis on probability, let him simply reflect on the fact that most of life is based on it. Man seldom deals with absolute, demonstrative truths.

Apologists of this school often have a naive, simplistic approach to the evidence for Christianity. They feel that a simple, straightforward presentation of the facts (miracles, prophecies) will suffice to persuade the unbeliever.

The Revelation School

This includes such giants of the faith as Augustine, Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and E. J. Carnell. These thinkers usually admit that objective evidence (mircales, proofs of God, prophecies) is important in the apologetic task, but they insist that unregenerate man cannot be converted by mere exposure to proofs because sin has seriously weakened human reason. It will take a special act of the Holy Spirit to allow the evidence to be effective.

One should not conclude from this that the revelation school considers the external evidence worthless. On the contrary, the work of the Spirit presupposes the external Bible and the historical Jesus Christ. If faith is largely a creation of the Holy Spirit, it still remains true that you could not have the faith apart from the facts. In sum, the Holy Spirit is the sufficient cause of belief while the facts are a necessary cause of belief.

The revelation school, therefore, borrows valuable insights from both the subjective school and the natural theology school. From one they acquire a distrust of unregenerated reason, from the other a proper appreciation of the role of concrete facts in the Christian faith. As Luther said, "Prior to faith and a knowledge of God, reason is darkness, but in believers it is an excellent instrument. Just as all gifts and instruments of nature are evil in godless men, so they are good in believers."

Oddly, both objectivist schools tend to use the same body of evidence when they do apologetics; they just differ on how and when the proofs persuade the unbeliever. Through the centuries Christian apologists of the objectivist school have used a variety of material: (1) Theistic proofs, the ontological, cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments. (2) OT prophecies, predictions about the Jewish Messiah that are fulfilled in Christ, such as Isa. 9:6; Mic. 5:1-3; and Zech. 9:9-10. (3) Biblical miracles, signs of the power of God which occur in great clusters in the Scripture, the two biggest centering around the Exodus and the coming of Christ. (4) The person of Christ, the unparalleled personality and character of Christ, illustrated by his demonstrations of love and concern for all kinds of people, especially the outcasts. (5) The teachings of Christ, the unparalleled doctrines, the beautiful sayings and parables of Jesus. (6) The resurrection of Christ, the greatest miracle of all Scripture, the capstone for the entire building of apologetics. (7) the history of Christianity, the benign influence of the Christian faith on the human race.

A J Hoover
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)

Bibliography
F. F. Bruce, The Apostolic Defense of the Gospel; A. Dulles, A History of Apologetics; J. H. Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua; W. Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity; B. Pascal, Pensees; B. Ramm, Varieties of Christian Apologetics; J. K. S. Reid, Christian Apologetics; A. R. Vidler, Twentieth Century Defenders of the Faith; O. Zockler, Geschichte der Apologie des Christentums.

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