It’s currently pretty expected for people like me – you know, suavely dissatisfied, well-dressed postmodern types – to disparage apologetics at least a little, particularly classical apologetics. In large part I share in and support this sentiment, not least because of personal experience: in the past, one of the worst things for my own discipleship has been an overattachment to the amassing of evidences and arguments for Christianity. But more than that, I find the typical criticisms of classical apologetics compelling. The appeal to a universal reason as a neutral and competent arbiter between opposing truth claims is suspect not only philosophically, but biblically. Are any of the classical arguments for the existence of God, let alone the deity of Christ or the authority of the Bible, anything close to valid? Don’t the omnipresence of presuppositions and the ubiquity of interpretation make the prospect of a neutral playing field impossible? And isn’t the gospel, after all, sufficient to stand on its own feet without the need to be shored up by the efforts of philosophers? After all, Paul didn’t give the cosmological argument at Athens, he told a story.
What’s more, when it comes down to it, the best apologetic work is almost never done by syllogism, but by beauty. The force of literature is more forceful than argument could ever be (you can’t tell me Till We Have Faces isn’t more compelling than Mere Christianity). The grandeur of a cathedral, the evocation of music, the mystery of nature and the pull of personal charity make the cosmological argument look a bit out of place, like an awkward kid at a dance who doesn’t know how to act or what to do with his hands. Earlier this week John Stackhouse posted on the best apologists of our time, including Mark Noll, International Justice Mission, and Arcade Fire. “Apologetics,” he says, “is more than analytical philosophy of religion…or the history of the New Testament. It’s about anything that points to the plausibility and credibility of the gospel. And that means a very wide range indeed of Christian activity.” If more people thought about apologetics this way, Christianity would not only be more aptly defended, but the world would have a lot more beauty in it.
The bottom line in all of this is that good apologetics is not about defending, but about winning – not winning a culture war, but winning people. The best apologetic is not the philosophically smashing argument (if there even is one of those), but winsome Christian behavior.
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All that being said, I cannot join with the wholesale denunciation of classical apologetics popular in Reformed and postmodern Christianity. As feeble as I believe classical apologetics to be, I still believe it can be useful. People have doubts, worries and concerns about Christianity that classical apologetics can play a role in overcoming. Conviction often involves actual convincing. When you’re sitting down with someone and they tell you they just can’t believe in Christianity because those claims about resurrections and miracles from a bunch of peasants (in the first century, at that) seem implausible to the modern scientific mind, you can’t play Bach or show them a beautiful building and expect their doubts to go away. People sometimes need evidence to remove barriers. Doubts and logical or historical questions about Christianity stand in the way of people confronting faith directly,
Nor is it true that the effort to convince and persuade is necessarily a quest for conceptual hegemony. Arguments and evidences are not intrinsically bad or harmful, nor is the deliberative, intellectual side of life something we ought, in a kind of reverse gnosticism, to shun or avoid. Nor do I want to wholly oppose logical argument to beauty. I don’t buy the idea that all logical persuasion is necessarily violent and manipulative (though it often is). The Christian must hold out hope that Christ can redeem even rigorous thought from our tendency to label our own idols “truth”.
Additionally, many critiques of classical apologetics (including my own, oftentimes) seem to have in view a false stereotype, the conversation that consists of nothing more than two people hurling syllogisms at each other. Conversations on apologetics are almost never like this. Their scope almost always goes beyond the evidences, and they can be useful if for no other reason than this. A discussion on the existence of God naturally leads into a discussion of other elements of Christianity. The teleological argument is not very far from a description of God as a good creator and loving father who cares for his creatures, and that is not very far from the topic of what has gone wrong with creation, which can lead into what God has done about that problem…etc. As long as we don’t mentally hive off apologetics from proclamation of the gospel, talking about God and telling the story of his redemptive work in the world can go hand in hand.
Nevertheless, I don’t want simply to endorse classical apologetics. It should also be emphasized that there is a proper context for apologetics, and that context is relationship. Debates conducted with the village atheist via letters to the editor help virtually no one, regardless of whose arguments are better. Conversations with a friend over coffee are very different. The context of a relationship lends a personality and a potency to rational deliberation that is essential to the apologetic task.
This point, I think, ought to be emphasized more often. Apologetics very often functions as a quick fix to doubt and opposition, allowing us to take care of the problem, zap, just like that, without bothering about the messy business of getting to know a person. This is not just ineffective, it is unfaithful to the example of Christ, who took care of our problem by inserting himself right into the middle of it, and eventually taking it onto himself. We must learn to deal with doubts about and opposition to Christianity in the same way as Christ dealt with us: incarnation and self-sacrifice. This means relationship.
I don’t mean that we ought never present an apologetic argument or evidence to anyone we haven’t known for at least six months. Relationship can be as little as thirty minutes’ conversation. The point is that good apologetics presupposes some sort of investment, large or small. The Christian enters into the doubt and confusion of the world even as she experiences her own doubt and confusion, trusting in the grace of God in Christ to reconcile her to the Truth, and offering out of that trust the word of God as the answer to the world’s problem. On the way, classical apologetics can help with that.
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26 July, 2008 at 3:38 pm
I share, obviously, some of your concerns without being as well-dressed. I can’t seem to chuck the classical arguments even though I think an apologetic based on the idea of “common ground” is asking for it. The classical arguments are useful for a believer in doubt, where the bulk of the Christian framework has been adopted but as always, needs improving. In this sense, the classical arguments are not really “arguments” in the strong sense of the word, in the sense of the Church confronting the unbelieving other, but encouragements within the Church. Perhaps the best way, as you have alluded, for the classical argument to manifest itself is in the context of the story. In these positions they shine forth as faithful presentations of the Gospel, which is what they should have been all along.
Presuppositional apologetics is nevertheless too strong – the temptation is to use the power in the same way an atheist would attempt to wield rationality. Presuppositional arguments have to be informed by the story as well, although it is certainly more geared towards the cleansing of the temple end of the story.
Me, I just prefer to get people reading O’Connor if it can be helped.
28 July, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Well put all around. I think that apologetics are most useful for young believers – as something to, as it were, introduce yourself to the faith. Some people need a good hearty dose of rationality and logic – take C.S. Lewis for example. However, when you’re not dealing with the literati, the intellectual crowd, you have to remember that (as someone I can’t remember said) you can’t argue someone out of a position they were never argued into to begin with.