Apologetics in the Bible

The living God and the idols

Apologetics did not begin with the later church: within Scripture itself God's people gave reasons to those who asked and to those who opposed them.

In Elijah's day Israel went back and forth between the LORD and Baal. On Mount Carmel Elijah put the question plainly: "How long will you waver between two opinions?" (1 Kings 18:21) Then he proposed a public test: "The God who answers by fire, He is God" (1 Kings 18:24). At the altar he prayed "so that this people will know that You, the LORD, are God, and that You have turned their hearts back again" (1 Kings 18:37). When the fire fell, the people fell on their faces and cried, "The LORD, He is God!" (1 Kings 18:39). The one who answered on Carmel was God, and what Elijah sought was not to win a contest but to see hearts turned back.

Isaiah follows the maker of an idol step by step. With half of a log "he kindles a fire and bakes his bread" (Isaiah 44:15); from the rest he carves a god, bows down and prays, "Save me, for you are my god" (Isaiah 44:17). Yet no one stops to ask, "Shall I bow down to a block of wood?" (Isaiah 44:19). In the terms of the first lesson, this is offence: bringing out the contradiction that unbelief carries within itself. But these sharp words were spoken first to God's own people, who were drawn to idols, and they end in an invitation: "Return to Me, for I have redeemed you" (Isaiah 44:22).

Jesus and the apostles answer

Jesus answered with questions and with Scripture. He asked the Pharisees, "What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is He?" (Matthew 22:42) Then he asked how David, speaking by the Spirit in a psalm, could call the Christ his Lord if he were only David's son (Matthew 22:43-45), and "No one was able to answer a word" (Matthew 22:46). He offered his works as evidence: "even though you do not believe Me, believe the works themselves" (John 10:38). He called his witnesses, John the Baptist, his works, the Father and the Scriptures: "These are the very words that testify about Me" (John 5:39).

The apostles did the same. Luke wrote from what "the initial eyewitnesses and servants of the word" handed down (Luke 1:2), "having carefully investigated everything from the beginning" (Luke 1:3), writing to Theophilus "so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught" (Luke 1:4). At Pentecost Peter begins with the signs his hearers had seen, "as you yourselves know" (Acts 2:22), turns to David's psalm and to David's tomb, still "with us to this day" (Acts 2:29), and ends: "God has raised this Jesus to life, to which we are all witnesses" (Acts 2:32). Before King Agrippa, Paul insists that he is "speaking words of truth and sobriety" (Acts 26:25), for these things are public: "it was not done in a corner" (Acts 26:26).

At the centre stands the resurrection. Paul passes on what he received, "as of first importance" (1 Corinthians 15:3):

Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living

1 Corinthians 15:3-6

Many read the note that most were still alive as an invitation to go and ask. Paul stakes everything on it: "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is worthless, and so is your faith" (1 Corinthians 15:14). Biblical faith rests on what happened in history. The evidence is weighed in Did Jesus really rise from the dead?, and the arguments in this course's lesson The historical Jesus and the resurrection.

At the Areopagus

In Athens Paul "was deeply disturbed in his spirit to see that the city was full of idols" (Acts 17:16). After days of reasoning in the synagogue and the marketplace, Epicurean and Stoic philosophers brought him to the Areopagus to hear his "new teaching" (Acts 17:18-19). There he began with their own altar:

Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and examined your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore what you worship as something unknown, I now proclaim to you.

Acts 17:22-23

He went on to the Creator who "gives everyone life and breath and everything else" (Acts 17:25), who made every nation from one man and set their times and boundaries so that they would seek him (Acts 17:26-27). He quoted one of their own poets, Aratus: "We are His offspring" (Acts 17:28). And he ended with a command and a sign. God "now commands all people everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30), for he has set a day of judgement, and "He has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead" (Acts 17:31). Some mocked, some wanted to hear more, and some believed, Dionysius and Damaris among them (Acts 17:32-34).

With Jews, Matthew Henry notes, Paul argued from prophecy and miracle; with these hearers his aim was "to lead them, by the common works of providence, to know the Creator, and worship Him" Matthew Henry. Apologists read the speech in two ways. Classical and evidential apologists see Paul building on ground he shares with his hearers: their religious sense, their poets, and the witness of creation and providence, which reason can grasp, believer and unbeliever alike. John Wesley calls the speech "a lecture of natural divinity" Wesley, natural theology: knowing God from creation and reason without appeal to Scripture.

Presuppositional apologists see a confrontation. The Athenians live in God's world and know him, they say, though they hold that knowledge down (Romans 1:18), and Paul does not accept their starting point as neutral ground. He calls their worship ignorant and proclaims a Creator who needs nothing and a Judge who commands repentance. So he opposes both the Epicureans, whose gods took no interest in human affairs, and the Stoics, who saw the divine as the reason that pervades the world; even the poet's line he sets within his own teaching, not theirs. The same note of Wesley's says that Paul "equally refutes both the Epicurean and Stoic" Wesley.

Both readings agree that Paul began where his hearers stood and led them on to repentance, judgement and the resurrection. They differ over what kind of ground that starting point is. This course picks neither; the two are followed further in Classical and evidential apologetics and Presuppositional apologetics.

In conversation

Scripture's answers begin where the hearer stands. Paul asked Agrippa, who knew the Scriptures, "King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets?" (Acts 26:27); to the people of Lystra, who did not, he spoke of the God who "gives you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons" (Acts 14:17). Wherever they began, they led to the living God, to Christ and to repentance, and they left the outcome to God: at Athens there were mockers, the curious and believers all at once.

In a conversation, this means first noticing your friend's altars and poets: the songs and books she loves, the justice and love she longs for, which often point beyond themselves. Begin there, but do not stay there: carry the conversation on to Jesus and his resurrection. For the whole sweep of Acts, see Acts in the Bible Overview course. The next lesson, The early apologists, asks how the church answered after the apostles.

Practice