Make a Defense!

Christian Apologetics is the rational defense of the faith. In other words, it is the presentation of the reasons that we have to believe what we do about the Bible, God, Jesus, and the eternal life that is found in him alone.

The word apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, meaning either a reason given, or defense. And that word is used in 1 Peter 3:15:

“but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense (ἀπολογίαν) to anyone who asks you for a reason (λόγον) for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”

Both Greek words used here for “defense” (apologion) and “reason” (logon) have the same root in the idea of “word” or “logic.” Some have pointed out that this word had connotations of the formal courtroom trial, as in the Trial of Socrates, recorded by Plato and being titled The Apology. That may not sound very attractive. Argument is unattractive enough in our age, and the notion that one is on some trial of sorts may capture the feeling of many in thinking about this subject. True, such a “defense” can occur in a great lecture hall, but it can also occur on a street corner, a beachside boardwalk, or at a table in the local coffee shop. The first thing that matters is what that verse in 1 Peter 3:15 suggests, namely, that all Christians are called to engage in this activity in one form or another.

A Fuller View of Apologetics

It has been said that there are three dimensions to apologetics: (1) proof; (2) defense; (3) offense. Some important distinctions between these may be noted. Proof, at least meant in this general way, is a demonstration, or formal argument, that some important aspect of the Christian worldview is true. Defense involves answering the objections that come from skeptics, or adherents to other worldviews. Offense, as the name suggests, storms into the terrain of the other worldviews, showing these to be logically incoherent and incompatible with the evidence of the way our world is.

What kind of subjects ought to be addressed in a defense of the Christian faith? The answer is really any that come up. There is no part of reality that the devil will not attempt to twist into his own territory. However, if all truth is God’s truth, then the Christian ought to at least have a category for the Bible speaking to each of these same arenas, whether that be history, science, literature, logic, art, politics, pleasure-seeking—you name it. It all belongs to one reality. God’s reality.

Some of us will naturally gravitate to one area within apologetics more than to others because of our own personal interests, whether philosophical arguments, the natural sciences, evidences for biblical inspiration, or for the resurrection of Jesus, or things more existential such as the meaning of life, the prospects of happiness, or whether beauty is objective. It is not only permissible, but useful, to specialize in one of those areas. However one should also have an operational knowledge as a “generalist,” which can be gained by those survey books on apologetics. Examples of these include William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith, J. P. Moreland’s Scaling the Secular City, Norman Geisler’s Christian Apologetics, or R. C. Sproul’s Defending Your Faith.

Why not use Scripture, not apologetics?

One simple answer to this is that Scripture itself would not endorse such an approach. Jude 3 tells us to “contend for the faith,” which treats faith in the objective sense, that is, as the body of doctrines. The example of the Gospel writers (see especially Luke 1:1-4 and John 20:30-31) is instructive. It shows us that their selection of what to include in the Gospels was aimed at their readers’ persuasion that Jesus was who he said he was. While Luke and John took different angels on doing that, the design was the same. Paul’s example in Acts displayed the art of reasoning with both Jews and Greeks in ways consistent with their presuppositions (17:2, 17; 18:4, 19; 19:8-9; 24:25). And 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 speaks of demolishing arguments and does not separate the intellectual battle from the battle over spiritual “strongholds.” It is Scripture itself that speaks of the clarity of God’s existence in the things that he has made (Psalm 19:1-4; Romans 1:19-20). In short, the Bible never gives us license to pit the Bible against making a total rational defense. That the Bible is the inspired word of God means that it has power that our words do not have. But the difference is not that the Bible speaks to “spiritual things” whereas our arguments speak to “philosophical things” or “scientific things” or “historical things.”

But doesn’t the Spirit bring conviction to the truth?

There are a number of answers we could give to this misgiving. The following is just a short list. Yes, the Spirit brings conviction of the truth, but one still uses apologetics: (1) because the Scriptures command a defense at least in a general sense (1 Peter 3:15); (2) because biblical figures exemplify it (Acts 17); (3) because God uses means, just as in the reasoning involved in preaching (Romans 10:14-17) and he himself reasons with the sinner (Isaiah 1:18); (4) because part of evangelism is speaking in the terms of a particular culture, and that includes their basic presuppositions of the way the world is, which is at least a dimension of being all things to all people (1 Corinthians 9:19-23).

Another difficulty emerges with lopsided doctrinal explanations. As Reformed people especially, we can often commit the either-or and non-sequitur fallacies in one fell swoop by saying, “The problem is moral—not intellectual.” Many texts of Scripture would tell us that all disbelief has its causal explanation in a natural inability of man. We are dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1-3), blinded by the devil (2 Corinthians 4:4), and unable to grasp spiritual truth for what it is (1 Corinthians 2:14). But none of this is meant to deny that there are not what we might call "intellectual roadblocks," so that even those real blindspots are just that, spots in the normal functioning of the soul that cannot, because it will not, come to the light, because our deeds are evil. We must be born again (John 3:3), but when we are born again our minds will be in the process of renewal (Rom. 12:2). That requires total truth, not non-truth.

In other words, Scripture tends to intertwine the moral and intellectual problems as a function of distorted souls that are as distorted in mind as they are in affections (Jn. 3:19-20; Rom. 1:18-32; Eph. 4:17-19).

Interestingly, some will see that very truth and conclude that we should therefore speak to the heart and not to the mind. But surely this is an odd inference. Light to the mind and heat to the heart are of one necessary redemptive substance. If depravity is both moral and intellectual, why would redemptive speech not also be both moral and intellectual? Although it is a complex subject, there is actually an important distinction to make between that liberty which was lost in original sin and the ability that would find God if it wanted to: “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13).

That mankind does not naturally seek God simply begs the question as to what appeals should be made to the mind in the process of the Spirit’s overall work, which — I would remind the reader — is wholly mysterious to us as finite observers anyway. At any rate, what matters here is that the Holy Spirit uses means and the Scripture uses categories of nature. Our aversion to provide such means and categories is really nothing but intellectual laziness, and hyper-spiritual superstition to cover up that laziness.

If God’s truth is so clear, why so many atheists (and why are so many scientists atheists)?

There are several ways to answer that. The ultimate biblical answer is sin. Romans 1:19-20 and 2:14-15 tell us that God has made himself clear in all creation. All of the conscious dimensions of unbelief are really driven by the more subconscious suppression of God’s truth because of unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). On the other hand, from this suppression emerges genuine blind spots and errors in reasoning. This, again, is one reason why we do not pit ignorance against malice. Both are in play. But there is no real mystery to the depth of cleverness in unbelief. The human mind is a deep well of nonsense that can be woven together in any number of plausible combinations to avoid the matters that are staring us in the face.

When it comes to science, there are additional issues that have been explored by famous unbelieving scientists in the twentieth century, having to do with open and closed societies, how paradigms work, and how presuppositions control our method. Throughout the early modern era, the majority of scientists (and especially those credited with the main breakthroughs of the Scientific Revolution) were believers, not atheists. What changed was not any discovery of empirical science that rendered biblical faith actually incompatible with it. Rather the march of secular statism saw religion as the main obstacle to totalitarian control. Once a society has turned its public institutions over to state control, there is a vested interest in undermining religious belief and the church as an independent institution. Such states historically have used their funding to control where research goes through grant money, who gets hired (and who doesn't), and what the curriculum will be.

But whether we are speaking of philosophers, scientists, or anyone else, there is what R. C. Sproul called a “psychology of atheism.” Freud spoke of fears and wish-fulfillment and repression of base instincts, all of which formed a more sophisticated explanation for belief in God. Mankind in his infancy wants and needs such a figure, or at least thinks he does.

The Apostle Paul had a more profound explanation than “repression” and that is the idea of “suppression.” What Paul was really doing in Romans 1:18 was anticipating Freud and slapping his card on top of the psychoanalyst. Has it ever occurred to us that for every ounce of desire that God does exist, there may be a veritable ton of desire that he does not? What kind of a life might one live differently if the sense of certainty could be mustered up that there is no God, that he does not see, that he will not hold me accountable?

Truth be told, the comparative analysis of how worldviews happen to form inside our minds tells us nothing whatsoever about whether or not the view is likely to be true independent of our minds.

Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga speaks of the difference between de jure objections to the faith and de facto objections. A de facto objection says that “Christianity is false and here is why”; whereas a de jure objection says that “Christian belief only exists because of x, y, or z reason.” It is a form of deconstruction, and nothing more. In short, it is always guilty of the genetic fallacy. Psychological dismissals can make for easy cheap shots. Observations about the amount of people who believe x at a particular time and place may make for interesting reading in sociology. As philosophy, however, they are not worth the paper they are written on.

What do I do when my skeptical friends don’t ever seem convinced?

I realize that the pragmatic effects of arguments on our audience can be a driving force (in fact the driving force) for how we conceive of the worth of doing apologetics. But this works a lot like evangelism in this sense. We have to put the objective cogency of arguments ahead of how they happen to play to the crowd, and then continue to fine tune how to make them accessible to our audience. If we lose that resolve, we will find ourselves morphing our taste for truth according to that same blindness of the skeptic. It may seem hard to believe in our results-driven, mic-dropping generation, but persuasion is not proof.

But as far as when to draw the line with a particular person, there is a point when Jesus' words about casting our pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6) must be taken into consideration. We can be increasingly gracious and we can always get clearer and sharper, but we cannot raise the dead.

Never mind my skeptical friend — What do I do with my own doubt? Is that sin?

For many people, what they are calling their “doubt” is really just a combination of two things: 1. some external temptation (just as the temptation from the devil to some sin would be), and 2. the failure to understand the place of Christ's righteousness imputed to us through faith alone in the gospel. Our "performance" in intellectual exercises can turn into a works-righteousness as well as other forms of works. The good news is that such doubts can be fought against free of any condemnation in Christ.

That said, we must make distinctions between (1) chosen unbelief, (2) errors in reasoning, (3) mental blindspots, and (4) the weariness that results. Sinful doubt is really only (1) here. A good parent would not scold a child for messing up his remainder in a division problem. Nor would he blame him, at first, for the child’s own despair that he did not do better. What he would blame the child for is if he was to fold his arms at the rigor of the next lesson, or for reacting to the disappointment by concluding that his teacher, and even the author of the textbook, had conspired against him.

Even so we are told to “have mercy on those who doubt” (Jude 22). This teaches us two things about doubt: First, it is not a virtue in itself. That is, it is not a good place to be. Second, it is a place from which the saints do emerge and even lend a hand to others. But if one finds themselves in doubt, then certainly one is in no position to push away the study of apologetics. To do so would be to demand answers in anything else but answers. It would be to cry, “Help me in my unbelief!” out of one side of our mouths, and complain that the answers are coming too easy out of the other.

Postmodernism has raised a generation of young people who revel in doubt as if it were a virtue, as if imperialistic ignorance declared of oneself and demanded of others was the very quintessence of humility. I have witnessed people in this sorry state of rabid confusion, and it is not somewhere we want to be.

And you already know you need apologetics.

What is the number one reason that most Christians give for not doing evangelism? For some it is laziness or insensitivity to the lost. Perhaps we have become sluggish in our own spiritual disciplines, such that we lack the love and joy that is fitting for a believer.

But in surveys taken on the subject — and I have always found this to be true in my conversations as a pastor with church members — the number one reason given is that people are afraid that they will not have answers to difficult questions. Some even have the same reasons for not engaging in conversation in class when they go to college, or at the workplace.

That in a nutshell is why you need to study and begin practicing apologetics.

Apologetics is not evangelism. However, short of a reason to believe, the unbeliever is left with the sense of being excusable. This is false. Paul says so in Romans 1:20. But the fact of the matter is that we are not faithful to the truth ourselves if we do not live and speak in such a way as to bring to light that which is inherently clear, but which the unrighteousness of sinners has intentionally obscured (see John 3:19-20, Romans 1:18).

The clarity of the good news requires an intelligible set of assumptions: that God exists, that he made the person we are speaking to, that they have a soul that will never die, that the Scriptures are God’s own word, that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and that their sins are what stand in between them and a holy God.

We are not responsible for the unbeliever’s reaction to this truth anymore than we are for their response to the gospel itself.