Apologetics

In my mind, apologetics is a crucial issue for postmodern times.  We have so much literature on the topic that provides all the "answers" to all the hard questions, but is that our best apologetic?  I have seen some buzz about the need for a new apologetic around the blogosphere.  Joe Thorn and I have discussed it more than once.  And I just noticed that Bob Robinson has started a short series of posts on the matter.  He writes...

But look again at the context of 1 Peter 3:15. The "answer" or "defense" that one is told to be prepared to give is to those who ask us Christians why we live in such hope. What this presupposes is that the Christian community is living in such a radical and conspicuous way in the midst of those who do not yet know Christ that these people are either genuinely wondering why we have such a hopeful lifestyle or they are suspicious that we are just play-acting it. Most often it will be the latter. Many will mock a Christian community of do-gooders (they will "speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ" v. 16), but we must follow Christ as our Lord (v. 15a), and willingly suffer for the good done for people as Christ did (3:18, 4:1).

So the "defense" is not so much a "reasoned argument" but an "account" (not a "reason" as in the NIV—but a logos, as it is in the Greek: a "word") of why we have hope. We are told here to tell our story. We're not told to provide a list of reasoned propositions, but to give an account. We are to tell our story of encounter with Christ, transformation in our faith, and why we are so radically living in such a different manner—spreading hope to those around us. While I believe that some people, if they have cognitive roadblocks to faith, may still need to have things explained to them in rational ways, the main biblical apologetic has always been an Emmanuel Apologetic—an apologetic that displays God to people by living among people as a community of hope.

This is the kind of biblical direction in apologetics that reinvigorates me.

Comments

[Darrell]

I think this follows Hauerwas' (?) statement to the effect that the Church does not have an apologetic; it is an apologetic. I guess the question then is what kind of an apologetic are we living before a watching world?

[david]

i've often thought of that verse as saying we need to be ready to explain ourselves. kind of indicates some observation has already happened which has raised questions. of course its all in the context of suffering. ironically, the only suffering that usually surrounds classical apologetics is the suffering of those listening...

[Glenn]

Is he saying anything like this?

[Paul]

I've been saying for a while now that our most effective apologetic is the way we live out the faith in the world.

[Bob Robinson]

Glenn,

What I'm saying is in the same vein as your post over at "Common Grounds Online." But the emphasis of my post is meant to be more on the COMMUNITY of believers "doing good" for the people around them (and thus incarnating Christ in tangible ways--a life that reflects how our hope impacts the way we live today), and in so doing making people ask about such a hopeful community lifestyle.

[Chad]

I think it was St. Francis who said "Preach the gospel everywhere you go. Use words if you must." I agree that this is the most effective means of apologetics.

However, I do hear a lot of people denigrading the need or effectiveness of reasoning with unbelievers from a more logical standpoint, and I think that's unfortunate. Acts 17 is a great model of the Apostle Paul using methods of reasoning and persuasion to reach unbelievers. A lot of people need to understand there is solid evidence for the Christian faith before they will be open at all to it.

[Alex]

This is a topic I have thought about rather extensively. I wrote a research paper on "The Apologetic of Christian Community" for a seminar last spring that may well be developed into my dissertation. Jesus famously told his disciples, "By this all men will know you are my disciples - by your logical presentation of the ontological argument for the existence of God." Oops. I think he said "... by your love for one another."

Now I don't want to demean traditional apologetical arguments because I really believe they are important and have their place as a part of the defense Peter is talking about. We need to know and be able to show that the Christian worldview best accounts for what we know of reality. But if rely solely on such facts and arguments our evangelism is inadequate. In the passage from Peter, that defense comes after the question about hope - and the question probably originates from seeing the Christian community live its life.

Francis Schaeffer has some great stuff to say on this topic - something that was really played out at L'Abri.

[Tim Keller]

All--I wonder how the very first Christians came to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. The original apologetic could not have been a loving community based on faith in the resurrection--because there wasn't one yet. So it must have been that the first believers in the resurrection believed a)personal testimony and evidence like the empty tomb and/or b)empirical sense experience--seeing Jesus with their own eyes and hands. Now maybe you can say that today the only apologetic for Christianity is the life of the Christian community, but if the first believers used their minds and arguments in order to come faith, why couldn't that at least be one factor for us as well?

[JACK]

Tim, you write:

"Now maybe you can say that today the only apologetic for Christianity is the life of the Christian community, but if the first believers used their minds and arguments in order to come faith, why couldn't that at least be one factor for us as well?"

Tim, I don't mean to pick on you, but there's something implicit in your quote that I think a lot of us suffer from. It's a notion that somehow the method by which we today can encounter Christ is different than the early Christians. More and more, I don't think it is. I think we have to take very seriously the other half of what Jesus says when he gives the great commission in Matthew: that he will be with us always, to the close of the age. The Christian people manifest Christ's Presence in the world today. And that was true back then as well. I forget which Gospel it is in, but even during Jesus' ministry he sent people out and they worked miracles in his name and others believed. So even when he was on Earth, the face of Jesus to some was his followers. I think we are tempted too much to think of ourselves as different than our ancestors, or that we don't see flashy miracles that there is some other method that must be true for us. I think that's a mistake.

The other problem I see is that, in modern times, we have truncated what is meant by reason and reality. We tend to think that there is a universal method (science, logical deduction, etc.) by which all of reality can be approached, versus that there is a myriad of methods, the appropriate one being determined by what we are trying to understand. From my experience, the problem with apologetics is that it sometimes is approached as if it is the manner in which one can come to know God, rather than as part of a fuller fabric of indications of the reasonableness of faith.

[Steve McCoy]

Tim, I agree that minds and arguments are a big factor and important, and I often share Deconstructing Defeater Beliefs with others as a great apologetical model.

But so much of apologetics (it seems to me) is lacking the relational/incarnational witness and is only about the arguments. I'm sure you have seen plenty of that too. I don't want to encourage apologetics to swing too far and miss "reasoning from the Scriptures." But I think modernism has taken us too far in that direction and so what too many Christians do is pick fights with our neighbors on politics, and we think that is apologetics.

[Bob Robinson]

Jack,
I think you got Tim's argument backwards--Tim is attempting to forge our contemporary apologetics based on what the first Christians did, not something that would be different from that.

But that is where I think Tim's argument actually falls apart. The early Christian witness is recorded in Acts 4:42-47. After telling us what the Christian COMMUNITY looked like, we read, "And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." So, I don't understand how Tim can say that there wasn't an early Christian community that was a testimony and an apologetic for the gospel. As I read this passage, it was that testimony of a counter-cultural community that was instrumental to people being saved on a daily basis.

As I understand the Gospel, it is God forming his Kingdom Community on earth through the spiritual means of His Spirit, with Christ as King. Evangelism is inviting people into this radically different Kingdom Community so that they can join us in our participating with God in fulfilling our prayer--"Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

[Alex]

In fact, one of the most powerful historical evidences for the veracity of the resurrection is the dramatic change in the disciples themselves. They went from a cowering bunch of nobodies to a powerful witness to the claims of Christ - and they stood in unity and mutual commitment to each other. (Of course they had their differences - some of which the Bible is very frank about).

I'm trying to forge ahead into middle ground here. It's Both/And rather than Either/Or. We need the arguments that talk about the historicity of the gospel and the truth of the Christian worldview. (Heck I'm doing PhD work in that subject - you know I must think it is important).

But arguments alone will only take us so far. The incarnational witness of the Church - as community of God, living in obedience to Christ in love and service to others - is itself a powerful witness. Jesus spoke of this apologetic in John 13:34-35.

Both/And.

[JACK]

Bob:

You are right. Rereading his post, I see that the dichotomy between then and now that I was reacting to was more of a rhetorical bit of Tim's piece, as suggestion of what others might argue. I think I got tripped up because I also had your reaction, namely, that the early Christian community clearly was a witness. Solomon's Portico and all that.

[David Leonard]

I don't see how Bob's insights challenge a classical apologetic method. Yes, early Christians were living a radical and conspicuous lifestyle. But why can't the Peter passage include the notion that one should give a reasoned argument to defend the legitimacy of that lifestyle?

Telling your story is important, but this is very different than giving a defense, as the word is historically used. And it doesn't seem clear to me that this is primarily what Peter has in mind.

[Bob Robinson]

David,
As I read the text, what Peter is telling us is that we will get people mocking us for our righteous behavior as a body of believers, and therefore we will have to defend that lifestyle. There may be some "reasoned argument" involved in explaining to people why we live in such a way, but this is a far cry from what moderns understand "reasoned argument" to mean. We tend to think (due to modernity's elevation of reason and rationality as the only true legitimator of truth) that we must give rational, logical, scientific-like answers to people regarding our faith. This type of "defense" would have been foreign to the pre-modern Peter. He is, instead, telling us to give a defense for the way we live.

[David Leonard]

I'm not convinced that emphasizing reason is as "modern" as you think. We all use reason to analyze and refute ideas we disagree with. In fact, you are using reason to argue against the elevation of reason. Jesus used reason, Paul used reason, and so on.

What exactly do you have in mind when you say we tend to think we should give rational, logical, and scientific-like answers regarding our faith? Surely you're not implying we should strive to give irrational, illogical, and unverifiable answers regarding our faith. I'm not sure what you're criticizing here.

Yes, Peter is telling his readers to give a defense for the way they live. But is that the same as simply telling their story? I think not. Telling a story is necessary, but not sufficient.

[Bob Robinson]

David,
I suggest you read my series on a Christian Response on Postmodernity. If after reading that, you have questions, then we can dialogue.
To think that Peter is telling his pre-modern readers to do a kind of "apologetics" that verifies the Christian Faith based on philosophical logic that elevates rationality is (a) anachronistic, and (b) in danger of saying that the witness of our faith lived out in front of people needs some sort of legitimating by way of Reason.

If Reason is elevated above praxis, we are no longer following the biblical model.

And yes, Peter is telling his readers to give a defense for the way they live by way of telling their story. Story is sufficient.
If not, then I guess the story that we read in the Gospels in insufficient, and we need a bunch of philosophers to give us "Rational Arguments" for believing it. That elevates Reason above the Proclamation, which is simply heresy. The Word is sufficient, and does not need rational legitimation for it to be so.

[David Leonard]

If you are dealing with someone who has sincere objections to the Christian faith, then simply telling your story is certainly not sufficient. Imagine a skeptic saying to you, "I just don't believe that Jesus ever claimed to be God," and you respond with, "Never mind that, let me tell you how Jesus has changed my life." What is that? Very unhelpful and insensitive, in my opinion. If it's heresy to desire to help people clear away obstacles to coming to Christ, then I will wear that label with much pride.

And again, I ask you to clarify your terminology: what does it mean to verify the Christian faith using "philosophical logic." Are you referring to things like syllogisms and deduction, or simply the rigorous use of the critical faculties? To be honest, I don't find much logic in the popular apologetics books, so it's unclear to me what you have in mind here.

Finally, I don't recall ever suggesting that reason should be elevated above praxis. In fact, in my previous post I actually stated that "telling your story" is necessary, which means it needs to happen--people need to hear how God has transformed our lives. But this is not sufficient, which means there are times (not always) when people need more than a testimony--they need to hear a good argument.

Bob, I suspect that if we were to dialogue more on this topic, we would find more similarities than differences in our thinking. In reading the emerging literature, I find the authors hold a rather extreme view of apologetics and the use of reason--equating it with Descartes' view that we must have certainty in our knowledge, a view which most Christian philosophers and apologists would reject as too stringent.

There is a bit of irony in this insight: As emergent leaders complain that they are misunderstood and mischaracterized by their critics, they turn around and make the same error in criticizing the use of reason and the legitimacy of classic apologetics. In my opinion, they simply do not understand the convictions and motivations of philosopher-types like myself.

[Bob Robinson]

David,
I agree that if we were to dialogue more on this topic, we would find more similarities than differences in our thinking. If I appeared to say that we should never use reasoned argument in our witness, I refer you back to the original quote in Steve's post above: "While I believe that some people, if they have cognitive roadblocks to faith, may still need to have things explained to them in rational ways, the main biblical apologetic has always been an Emmanuel Apologetic." I'm not suggesting to say to a person with genuine cognitive roadblocks, "Never mind that, let me tell you how Jesus has changed my life."

My statement about elevating reason above praxis was not meant to be a jab at you, but more a jab at myself. I gobbled up modern Christian apologetics like it was ice cream covered in chocolate sauce and whipped cream. I own most of the best apologetics books published in the last 50 years. I've taught seminars on how to do apologetics in churches and seminaries. And, honestly, I elevated "good sound arguments" above praxis. It wasn't that I denied doing good works or living out my witness, it was just that my main passion was to get into a deep philosophical discussion with an unbeliever so that I could show how intellectually superior the Christian faith is.

What postmodern Christians are identifying is that this kind of life makes an idol out of Reason (again, maybe not for you).

[Bob Robinson]

My critique of modern Christian apologetics is that it makes Reason the final arbiter of truth. All discussions and arguments are judged by how rational they are (this is the root of our critique of Descarte's influence on us: the final judge of what is true is how sound our foundational arguments are). Modern apologetics makes Rationality the final court of appeal.

Brain Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat in Colossians Remixed write,
"If there is any court of appeal, it is God who sits as the judge. The deep blasphemy of modernity is that it made 'reason' the judge. Now if you submit your faith claims to the adjudication of reason and you justify your belief in the sovereignty of God or the authority of the Bible on the basis of reason, take a close look to see what is really sovereign and where real authority lies. Reason ends up being the sovereign authority. The Bible has a word for this kind of thing: idolatry. We have taken a good dimension of human life-cognitive reasoning abilities-and made a god out of it, subjecting all else to its authority." (p. 126)