Apologetics

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StartA reason for the hopeStart

What apologetics is

  1. A reason for the hope Apologetics is giving a reason for our hope to anyone who asks, with gentleness and respect, from a heart that has set Christ apart as Lord. It gives reasons, answers objections and exposes the weaknesses of unbelief, but it serves the gospel and the Spirit's work and never takes their place.
  2. Faith and reason The faith the Bible speaks of is neither believing without reasons nor reasoning without trust: it trusts God and seeks to understand. Teachers of the church have long said that they believe in order to understand; how far sin has darkened reason, the methods of apologetics weigh differently.
  3. Apologetics in the Bible The people of Scripture began their answers where their hearers stood: with the Scriptures and the witnesses for those who knew the Scriptures, with creation, providence and their own poets for those who did not. Wherever they began, they led to the living God, the risen Christ and repentance.

Apologists in history

  1. The early apologists In the early centuries Christians were charged with atheism, cannibalism, incest and disloyalty, and some were put to death. The apologists answered by pointing to how Christians actually lived, and by showing the faith true from fulfilled prophecy and the Word made flesh.
  2. The Middle Ages and the Reformation In the Middle Ages Anselm and Thomas Aquinas sought to understand what they believed and to show its reasons to unbelievers too. The Reformers did not give up reasoning, but refused to let reason sit in judgement on God's word and taught the inward witness of the Spirit to Scripture; Pascal called seekers with the heart and the wager.
  3. The modern age and today When the Enlightenment made reason the judge of all, apologists answered with probability, design and historical evidence, and Reformed theologians at Princeton and Amsterdam differed over apologetics' place. Twentieth-century writers and a revival of Christian philosophy opened the roads of apologetics we walk today.

Methods

  1. Classical and evidential apologetics Classical apologetics takes two steps, first showing from reason and the created world that God exists, then from historical evidence that this God has spoken in Christ; evidential apologetics takes one, beginning straight from historical evidence such as the resurrection, which points to God and to Christ together. Both begin from the reason and evidence that believer and unbeliever share.
  2. Presuppositional apologetics Presuppositional apologetics holds that there is no neutral ground between belief and unbelief, and argues that logic, science and morality stand only if the God of Scripture is presupposed. It shows that the presuppositions of unbelief cannot support reason and meaning and then presents Christ: the road Cornelius Van Til founded and Greg Bahnsen and John Frame carried on.
  3. Reformed epistemology and the cumulative case Reformed epistemology holds that belief in God, like belief in other minds, can be rational without arguments, though not without grounds. The cumulative case gathers the cosmos, morality, Jesus in history and human experience, and argues that Christianity explains them all best; in real conversations Christians often draw on several roads at once.

Arguments for God

  1. The cosmological and design arguments The cosmological argument reasons from the world's existence to a first cause, the design argument from its order to a mind behind it. Both point to a Creator, but by themselves they do not show the triune God.
  2. The moral and ontological arguments The moral argument holds that if there are objective moral values and duties, God is their best ground; the ontological argument tries to show from the very idea of God that he exists. Both have met serious objections, and neither by itself reaches the gospel of Christ.
  3. What arguments can and cannot do Arguments can clear away obstacles, show that faith is reasonable and commend Christ, but by themselves they cannot give faith. Faith is God's gift, worked by the Spirit by and with the word, and our love and our lives are part of the witness.

Jesus and the Bible

  1. The historical Jesus and the resurrection Apologists weigh the evidence for the resurrection as historians weigh any evidence. They begin from facts that most scholars accept, sceptics included, ask which explanation accounts for them best, and keep apart what history can show and what faith confesses.
  2. Can the Bible be trusted? To the questions people ask about the Bible, its manuscripts, canon, history, contradictions and prophecy, apologists answer by looking honestly at the evidence. On Scripture's authority itself the roads of apologetics begin in different places, yet they meet in confessing that this authority rests on God and that full assurance is the Spirit's gift.
  3. Are miracles possible? The miracles of the Bible are signs that point to what God is doing. David Hume argued that testimony set against uniform experience can never be strong enough to make a miracle credible; apologists ask whether his argument assumes its conclusion, and how testimony and probability should really be weighed.

Facing objections

  1. The problem of evil and suffering The problem of evil comes as a question of logic, a question of evidence and a cry of pain. Christians answer with the free-will defence and with theodicies, but at the centre of their answer stands not a theory but Christ, who suffered for us.
  2. Science and faith The story that science and faith have always been at war took shape in the nineteenth century, and many historians of science now think it far too simple. Christians read God's two books, his works and his word, together, and they tell the method of science apart from the philosophy that nature is all there is.
  3. Is Jesus the only way? The church has confessed that Jesus Christ is the one way to the Father. This lesson sets out what pluralism, inclusivism and exclusivism each say about that confession, and how to bear witness to grace and the cross while respecting other religions.

Conversations today

  1. Atheism and a secular society Unbelief takes several forms: atheism, which says there is no God; agnosticism, which says we cannot know; and indifference, which does not ask. This lesson hears Nietzsche, Russell, Freud and Dawkins at their strongest, gives honest replies, and shows how Christians bear witness in a secular society, by seeking its peace and asking good questions.
  2. Before Korea's religions and culture Shamanism, Buddhism and Confucianism have long lived side by side in Korea, and the gospel came in among them. This lesson hears each as its followers would put it, with respect, and learns from Paul at Athens and from Matteo Ricci's True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven how to build bridges while saying plainly and gently where the gospel differs.
  3. Apologetics as conversation Apologetics is not a technique for winning arguments but a conversation with a person. We listen first, ask questions as Jesus did, answer honestly with gentleness and respect, leave the growth to God, and let the conversation lead to the gospel.