APOLOGETICS: A MODERN ENLIGHTENMENT ABERRATION?

In “The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context,” Myron B. Penner writes that our apologetics is a “modern” aberration, an unfortunate outgrowth of the rationalistic Enlightenment:

• The modern apologetic enterprise so many Christians engage in is a bankrupt venture, a kind of false messiah, and considers what this might mean for Christian witness and discourse.

Penner even argues that our rationalistic apologetic efforts fail to even represent Christianity:

• So it is that many attempts to articulate the reasonableness of Christian faith in our context paradoxically end up doing something different than defending genuine Christianity. 

Well, what does genuine Christianity look like? How do we decide this issue? From Scripture! Jesus was all about rational, evidentially-based apologetics. He even instructed His followers to NOT believe Him if His words weren’t backed by the evidence. He then cited the supporting evidence – Scripture, miracles, and the testimonies of John the Baptist and of the Father (John 5:31-37).

Apologetics takes what is certain and uses it to prove what is less certain – Jesus’ own testimony. This might sound unbiblical. After all, how could we regard Jesus’ testimony as uncertain? Without evidential support, it was to be regarded as uncertain. In this, Jesus was merely echoing the Old Testament assertion that everything had to be established by two or more witnesses (Deut. 19:15).

Seeking evidential confirmation might seem like the rationalism of the Enlightenment, but it is also very Scriptural. Jesus routinely quoted Scripture in support of His own teaching, invoking the certain to prove what was regarded by His audience as uncertain.

When asked about divorce, He didn’t simply give His opinion, He engaged in apologetics by citing the Scriptural evidence:

• He [Jesus] answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female [Gen. 1:26-27], and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ [Gen. 2:24]!  So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

The Bible is imprinted with apologetics. The Bereans were not satisfied with what they had heard from Paul. They checked it against Scripture, and Scripture commends them for exercising apologetic discernment (Acts 17:10).

Meanwhile, Paul would enter into the synagogues and rationally reason with them from Scripture:

• Then Paul, as his custom was, went in to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, "This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ." And some of them were persuaded; and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas. (Acts 17:2-4)

• And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded both Jews and Greeks. (Acts 18:4)

Was Paul’s tactics a reflection of “genuine Christianity?” Apparently so! Many were persuaded through his “enlightenment” tactics.

While some of Penner’s brethren argue that Jesus’ ministry was all about proclamation and not rational proofs, Jesus wouldn’t have agreed with this. Instead, He was always ready to provide rational reasons for their faith:

• "You heard me say, 'I am going away and I am coming back to you.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe.” (John 14:28-29) 

Jesus never directed His followers to, “Just believe.” After his imprisonment, John the Baptist was experiencing a crisis of faith. He therefore sent his disciples to Jesus to ascertain if He was truly the Messiah. Jesus could simply have answered them, “Just tell John that being my disciple has nothing to do with rational, evidential proofs but of just having faith.” Instead, He directed them to the evidences:

• Jesus replied, "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised…” (Matthew 11:4-5) 

This raises another issue. Penner is convinced that our apologetic efforts are bankrupt in terms of winning others to the Lord. However, this is only a secondary aspect of apologetics. First of all, we need to know why we believe. John needed to know, and he was given reasons for his faith. The Apostles also needed to know. Following the Crucifixion, they had abandoned their faith and were hiding. What then turned them around to the point that they were willing to die for this faith that they had now rejected? Apologetics – the evidences, proofs, the reasons to believe:

• After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3)

We too experience trials and doubts and need evidential reassurance about what we have believed.

It can even be argued that the entire biblical message is underpinned by apologetics – the reasons to believe. Moses explained to the Israelites that they had no reason to not follow God. They had seen the evidence of His love and deliverance from Egypt:

• Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him there is no other. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire. (Deuteronomy 4:33-36)

All of Peter’s sermons were apologetic in nature. They not only stated what to believe but also why to believe. In his first sermon, upon the creation of the Church, Peter had to explain that speaking in tongues was not a product of drunkenness but of what Scripture had precisely promised. Peter first cited the evidence from Joel’s prophecy:

• "'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.'” (Acts 2:17-21)

The rest of Peter’s sermon consisted of the Scriptural evidence Peter brought forth in  defense of the Gospel.

Enlightenment rationalism? Perhaps, but it is Scripture nevertheless. And it has served me well! As someone who always second-guessed himself, battered by one doubt after another, I needed the confidence and stability that only knowing the truth could give me. This confidence came only through a careful examination of the evidence.

There is a joy in believing. However, it only came slowly as God led me to examine the reasons for my wobbling faith. I can only thank God that He has been my tutor and not Penner and the hordes of postmodern thinkers.

The Need for Apologetics: The Defense of the Faith

Sometimes we expect that a few good arguments will unlock salvation’s door. When we find that they don’t and that we are met with a glaring sneer instead of a grateful embrace, we are hurt and conclude that “apologetics doesn’t work.” We then swing to the opposite – “I’m going to simply let my good works speak for the Gospel.”

Admittedly, in our post-Christian society where people have been warned and inoculated against the Gospel, it might be better to lead with good works in most cases. However, we are instructed to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that [we] have” (1 Peter 3:15). Therefore, I want to present a rationale for this.

Apologetics - reasons to believe in the Christian faith – is primarily for us. We have to know why we believe and how to defend ourselves against the many challenges to the faith.

Moses knew that the children of Israel needed reasons to believe – evidences – in order to follow him out of Egypt. In the midst of a burning bush, God had instructed him to return to Egypt to lead His people out of captivity, but Moses was reluctant:

• "What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, 'The Lord did not appear to you'?" (Exodus 4:1).

Instead, of commanding Moses to tell the people “Just believe,” God  equipped Moses with a quiver of miraculous evidences – a rod turning into a snake, a leprous hand, and water turning into blood – to prove that He had sent Moses.

Jesus also understood that His disciples needed evidences to support their faith. He therefore prophesied to them what would happen to Him so that they would believe once these prophecies were fulfilled:

• I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe. (John 14:29)

We also need supportive evidences to help in sustaining our faith. After the crucifixion, Jesus’ disciples fled, convinced that everything that they had believed in had been for naught. In order to bring them back, they required the proof of His resurrection appearances:

• After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3)

John the Baptist also had his struggles with his faith in Jesus after he was jailed, prior to his execution. He therefore sent his disciples to Jesus to ascertain whether He was truly the Messiah. Instead of Jesus telling them to tell John, “Just believe,” he told them to relate the various confirmatory miracles they had seen Him perform (Mat. 11).

We need to know why we believe. Doubts are birthed like tsunami waves in our post-Christian world. The highly touted Jesus Seminar proclaimed that only 18% of what Jesus is purported to have said in the Gospels is authentic. In the wake of this pronouncement, the faith of many had been severely shaken.

Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code rattled thousands of others with his claims that the selection of the Bible’s Gospel accounts was merely the product of political in-fighting and church counsels. He claimed that there had been 70 other gospels vying for inclusion.

As a result, one woman wrote that she could never again be able to trust the Gospels as she had. How tragic! Fortunately, there were many able apologists who have exposed the fallacies of both Brown and the Seminar. However, those who don’t believe that apologetics is necessary will neglect such works.

How can we face the world with the confidence and the boldness we need if we can’t be confident about the basis of our faith – the Bible! We can’t! Before I went to seminary, I subscribed to Biblical Archeology Review. Many of the authors wrote approvingly of the Wellhausen Hypothesis – a radical theory of how the Hebrew Scriptures were humanly assembled by cutting-and-pasting from pre-existing manuscripts. They were so confident of this skeptical theory that they didn’t even provide any evidence for it.

I was troubled but decided that I would lock my doubts away, pushing them back into a crevice of my mind until, perhaps, I might have the tools to critically examine them. However, this strategy didn’t work. The doubts that this theory had provoked interfered with both my reading of Scripture and my faith. Consequently, I read the Bible less and with less excitement. The doubt that the Bible might merely be a human creation festered in the back of my mind.

Fortunately, I was struck down with a bad back for several months. Someone had given me a copy of Gleason Archer’s Survey of Old Testament Introductions. Although it was one of the driest texts I’ve ever read, I cried my way through it. Archer dealt conclusively with the Wellhausen Hypothesis, and restored my Bible back to me as if Jesus Himself had returned to me.

I think it inevitable that without understanding the rational foundations of the faith and without knowing how to critique the challenges, our faith and life will suffer.

Apologetics is also necessary for the health of the church. Jude counseled the church to oppose false teachings and not neglect them:

• Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. (Jude 1:3-4) 

Elders, therefore, had to have the ability to defend the faith against false teaching:

• He [the elder] must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it…They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach. (Titus 1:7-11)

The possibility that the faith of the church might suffer damage must be a central concern. Many studies have shown that 80-90 percent of regular church-going youth completely leave the church by the end of their forth year in college. Even many of those who remain do so with a faith severely compromised by their involvement with the surrounding culture.

Clearly, the churches are failing to prepare their youth for the challenges of this world – sexual permissiveness, theistic evolution, multiculturalism, religious pluralism, moral relativism… We are neglecting the life of the mind, the port-of-call where destructive teachings are entering. Arrogantly, some are neglectful of apologetics, claiming, “I know what I believe and what I have experienced, and no one will take that away from me.” They are confident that they can “stand” (1 Cor. 10:12-13) even though they are neglectful of the Biblical instruction to also love God with our minds.

While it is probably true that the Spirit begins His work in our heart, we are nevertheless commanded to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).

We are also instructed to subject all thoughts and worldviews under the scrutiny of the Gospel (2 Cor. 10:4-5). If we neglect the mind, the world will not. It will co-opt our minds at great cost to the church.

Think of the mind as a protective shield. If it is not fully operational, attacks will penetrate freely to our heart of faith, undermining the peace, joy and confidence of the church. We will stumble around in a schizophrenic haze – our minds in conflict with what we believe in our heart.

Apologetics is also required for the seeker. In fact, we are commanded to have in hand the rationale for our beliefs (1 Peter 3:15). I wouldn’t even begin to consider the Biblical faith as long as I believed that evolution was a fact. I was convinced that if Darwin was right, Genesis had to be wrong. However, a Jehovah’s Witness gave me a book critiquing evolution, the theory I had once thought to be unassailable. This made me more receptive to the Bible.

Similarly, in Search for the Truth, Bruce Malone wrote:

• Prior to graduation from college, I had not once been shown any of the scientific evidence for creation either in school or in church. Little wonder, that by the time I started my career [as a chemist], God had little relevance in my life. It wasn’t as though I had any animosity toward God or religion. It simply held no relevance to the world around me. This should be no surprise when the subject never came up in school and everything seemed to be explained without reference to a Creator.

Apologetics is also helpful for cultural interaction. My apologetics professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, William Lane Craig, stated that people will not believe what they find unbelievable. Today, many deem the Christian faith “unbelievable.” I think that part of the reason for this is that the church has become intellectually lazy and compromised. We have lost the ability to show forth the wisdom of God in the public marketplace of ideas. We are no longer culturally proactive as we must be:

• The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, turning a man from the snares of death. (Proverbs 13:14)

Wisdom is part of our inheritance. We have wisdom regarding so many areas of life – forgiveness, morality, justice, child rearing, and marriage. However, we have hid our light under a bushel basket. Why? For one thing, we have failed to develop the ability to understand and critique the ideas of the world (2 Cor. 10:4-5). Consequently, we don’t know how to speak to the world, and we know it. Therefore, we fear the world and interaction with it. Instead, we need to understand the poverty of their thinking so that we will not be driven to take cover.

What happens when we neglect the life of the mind and apologetics? We will keep our light hidden. However, many are now saying, “Well, my good works are the light.”

However, even though there is some truth in this, it is not adequate. It is like flying a airplane with one wing. It just won’t fly! Instead, Paul claimed that we are “the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved” as we speak “the word of God” (2 Cor. 2:15-17). This is not to leave out good works. Rather, it is an acknowledgement that we need both!

When Paul visited the synagogues around the Mediterranean, he didn’t go there to perform good works alone. He went there to preach the Gospel and also to reason with the Jews according to the Scriptural evidence:

• As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. "This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ," he said. Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women. (Acts 17:2-4; 18:4)

God’s arm has not withered away. He can still save through the Gospel, even in our post-Christian world.

“Christians – Children of God? Just Look at How They Act!”

Many militant atheists will say, “Christianity screws up everything,” citing warfare, slavery, the Crusades and intolerance.

Christians will generally respond in three different ways:

1. “Christianity is about Christ and not about individual Christians. I am deeply sorry about what people who have called themselves ‘Christian’ have done. However, I’m here to tell you about Jesus.”

While this response majors in the major – Jesus – it simply makes an end-run around the challenge. The challenge still remains: “How can those who claim to have God act so ungodly?”

2. “Let’s take the big picture and compare those nations that have emerged from a Bible-centered culture to those nations that haven’t. The former are superior in regards to any measure you want to use.”

Although this might be very true, it often leads into endless back-and-forth argumentation: “Well, the Christians did…” “Have you forgotten that the Communists did even worse!”

This approach also takes us away from what is central.

3. “Logically, you cannot bring charges against the Bible or against Christians because you, as a moral relativist, have no basis to make such charges. You are unable to demonstrate how any moral absolute has been violated.”

Although this is very true and perhaps the most effective way to respond to a militant atheist, it fails to win hearts for Christ. It also leaves people with a gut-level feeling that this is a mere cover-up for the failures of the church.

There is a place for each of these approaches. However there is also another approach. This one is intended primarily for in-house consumption. It is an approach that helps us to understand why we, both individually and church-wide, fail to look as good as we should.

1.      We endure great trials. When we are caught in the pressure cooker, steam pours forth in the form of bitterness, anger, envy and discouragement. God ordains these struggles so that we’d cry out for understanding and find our comfort in His revelations and in His Word (Psalm 119:67, 71).

2.      Trials begin with the church (1 Peter 4:17). Those whom God loves, He chastens (Heb. 12:5-11). We are therefore works in progress. Therefore, we are not going to look as morally competent as we would want to look.

3.      We are often perplexed (2 Cor. 4:8). This can be very discouraging and de-motivating. Although God is eager to grant us understanding, there is a great danger that understanding can produce arrogance and self-sufficiency (1 Cor. 8:2) if it comes to us before we have the spiritual capacity to handle it (Romans 8:24; 2 Cor. 5:7).

4.      Perhaps the greatest fruit—the one that underlies them all—is humility. Humility teaches us that it’s about Him and not about us. This is something we need to learn if we a really going to trust in Him—something that can only arise out of affliction and failure:

·        We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Cor. 1:8-9)

Only after we despair of our good deeds and merit can we learn to trust. We are simply far too addicted to self-reliance and our own giftedness to rely on an unseen God. If the other “fruits of the Spirit” aren’t built upon self-despair, they’ll produce arrogance, self-reliance, and eventually contempt for others—the very opposite of what God wants to accomplish in our lives.

5.      We Christians were scraped from the bottom of the barrel, and so we’re going to look so good. Because many of us come out of broken and abused circumstances, we’re not going to look very appealing to the rest of the world and even to the faithful.

·        He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Cor. 1:28-29)

Unbelievers often exhibit personal qualities that make us envious. However, without the presence of the Spirit to shape and guide them, they will eventually become corrupted. A rose can look wonderful after it is cut and placed in a vase, but it nevertheless is dying.

6.      It’s when we are struggling with weaknesses and even moral failures that we become spiritually strong:

·        But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9-10)

God has a vested interest in keeping us humble. He will not exalt us when we are strong, self-sufficient, and morally adequate in our own eyes (Luke 18:14). This would merely enable us to become proud, arrogant, and look down on others, convinced by our successes that we deserve God’s good graces. Instead, God targets the needy and broken as recipients for His comfort (Isa. 57:15; 66:1-2; Psalm 34:17-18). Eventually, we will bear good moral fruit.

7.      God loves us too much to make the faith-walk easy for us. He might even restrain our attempts at moral rectitude. Instead, He uses the struggle to make us like Jesus:

·        We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. (2 Cor. 4:10-11; Hebrews 12:8, 11)

8.      Being morally successful in the eyes of the world might not produce an eagerness for Christ. Instead, it will allow us to feel too comfortable in this world:

·        We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:23; 1 Peter 4:12-13)

Consider this scenario: Christ returns and we tell Him, “Jesus, would You just delay for another week. There’s a ball-game and a new Chronicles of Narnia movie was just released and…” This is the antithesis of the joyful meeting Christ has in store. But such a meeting is only possible if we are longing for His return because this life isn’t so pleasant. If, instead, we become a moral success-story, we might simply become too comfortable here.

Nevertheless, we have to continue to model ourselves after the moral example of Christ (1 Peter 1:15-16). However, it is inevitable that we will fall far short of this goal.

9.      Moral success might produce complacency, not a love for God and His Word:

·        He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deut. 8:3)

Trials bring out the worst in us, at least at first. We scream and complain but are humbled in the process. It’s only when we’re humbled and despair of self and our own opinions that we come to rely on His Words. We have to grow less in our own sight so that He might become greater. Therefore, God might withhold moral success until we have acquired the understanding to handle it.

10.  Moral success can prove counter-productive, unless we are prepared. Some of the most moral people have become the most vicious people. Their moral success had enabled them to believe that they were more valuable and deserving than others. And once they have this entitlement mentality, they can easily justify abusing others.

The examples of this are inexhaustible. Many Communists had devoted themselves so sacrificially and completely to their cause that they had convinced themselves that they were entitled to exterminate any who didn’t fall into line behind their moral cause.

Of course, none of these ten points should be used as an excuse to not act morally. However, I would instead hope that these would help give us some degree of cognitive peace when we are troubled by our own failures and also those of the church. Although we should grieve over our moral failures (Matthew 5:3-4), let’s not become discouraged.