This is an inexhaustible subject. This is an answer to the why question after you’ve already answered the what question. The what is the Gospel. People say why? Why should I believe what you just told me. In response to the why question, Christians try to go back to the what. But that doesn’t work. People keep asking why? Why should I believe you? Why should I think I’m a sinner.
100 years ago in this country and longer ago in Europe you didn’t need to do apologetics. People lived in Christendom. All the main cultural institutions supported the doctrinal and mental furniture of Christianity. The Bible was treated with enormous respect. If you wanted to be of any importance in society you had to belong in the Church.
That’s Christendom, not that everyone was a Christian, but that the main cultural instiutions Christianized the mind and conscience even if you didn’t have the heart. Nobody said why because it already felt true. It’s like if you ask a fish to tell you about water about wetness. It’s just the state they’re in.
That’s not the case anymore. That has changed. There may be a few places where the cultural institutions are Christianizing the mind and conscience, but by and large that’s not the case anywhere else. When you present your what you have to give the why or people just walk on by.
There’s a fair amount of pushback on apologetics. They’re saying you shouldn’t do apologetics and they’re coming from radically different theological perspectives.
Karl Barth said don’t give them the what, just preach the Gospel. Keep giving them the why. He said that others are setting the standard. They want a watertight argument. He said you can’t make Jesus bow to someone else’s standard, and you can’t make an airtight proof for Jesus. You have others who are far from Barthian who say basically the same thing.
There are others who say you need to belong before you believe. Faith becomes credible through their experience. A great community experience is apologetics.
All of those cautions are very important. An overly rationalistic apologetic where you say you can prove God or Christianity so that any rational person will have to believe it, you are coming to the bar of autonomous human reason, and you’re not honoring the sovereignty of God.
And community and worship are important too. The way people come to any conviction is a combination of mind and heart. But in the end you still have to do apologetics. When somebody asks you why, you can’t just say I don’t want to give you any human reasons you just have to believe. You’re basically just saying because I said so. Or if you invite them in and tell them you’ll know what you’ll just believe, that’s just what every cult just does.
Here are two ways the Gospel shapes our apologetics:
- Motive and attitude – The Gospel changes your attitude. Your self-esteem is based on what you do or who you are physically, which means you have to look down your nose at people who don’t share that positive characteristic. If you’re a hard worker, you have to look down at those you think are lazy. If you think your right doctrine has anything to do with your salvation and not just God’s grace, that’s going to show up in your apologetics.I’ve almost never seen apologetics come from a good place when it comes from someone who just loves it. There’s a love of battle.The Gospel gives you three attitudes of heart that will make you really effective at apologetics:
- Humility: I know that I could be sharing Christ with a Hindu and he may be a much better person than me. Why? Because I’m saved by grace. There should be a winsome humility. I think Christians have an I’m right, you’re wrong, and I love telling you about it subtext to their debates.
- Hope: Without the Gospel sinking deep into us and knowing that we’re sinners saved by grace, we’ll dismiss people as the kind that never become a Christian. Oh, and you’re the kind that does? David Lloyd Jones used to ask people if they’re a Christian and watch for their attitude. If they responded matter of factly, “Of course,” there was no wonder or amazement about them, they missed that it’s a miracle. Jesus preached to Lazarus and he came forth, but all preaching is like that. You’re preaching to dead people.
- Courage: We’re afraid of what people will think of us
- Method – I actually do think that a very rationalistic apologetic doesn’t fit with the Gospel. The Gospel shows you your sin, and then shows you the solution in Jesus Christ.The problem with a completely rationalistic apologetic where you try to prove everything, I’ve got to show that I’m up to snuff and the Gospel’s up to snuff. I don’t think that works.On the other hand, a purely experiential apologetic doesn’t work. At some point you have to let the person know they have a problem. Apologetics needs to setup the problem. It needs to attack. It has to show the non-believer where they’ve got a problem, where their worldview has a problem, where their current faith has a problem.If I had an hour with non-believers, here’s what I’d do and have done:
- Show them the faith it takes to doubt it. You can tell me that the only things that are true can be rationally and empirically proved, but the only way to prove that statement is to use that statement, so you’re just begging the question. You actually can’t prove anything in the end. You can’t prove you’re not a butterfly just dreaming you’re a boy or girl. Here are the two of most common oppositions.
- Suffering: I can’t believe in a God who would let XYZ happen. Well what’s so wrong with XYZ? We’ll it’s so bad. I just can’t believe in that God. But in the last 20-30 years, non-Christian philosophers have shown the problem with that argument. You’re assuming the premise that because I can’t think of why God would let XYZ happen and still be good, then he must not be able to exist. But if God is powerful enough for you to be mad at for everything that happens, then maybe He has reasons you don’t understand. CS Lewis recognized this. If I look at this world and say this should not be happening, I can’t be a secularist. That’s just the way the natural world works. The strong eat the weak. CS Lewis is saying the only way to look at violence and suffering and judge it as bad is with a supernatural standard. If there’s nothing supernatural
- He never got to number 2.
- The problems you have without it. If there’s no God, everything is permitted. Ultimately, there isn’t any way to dfine what should and shouldn’t happen without God.
- The beauty you find within it. At some point you need to be able to go to people and tell the Christian story in such a way that shows how Christ brings everything into peoples’ lives that they’re looking for elsewhere that they can’t find.There’s a way of telling people the story of Christianity that they want it to be real even though they claim it’s not.
- Show them the faith it takes to doubt it. You can tell me that the only things that are true can be rationally and empirically proved, but the only way to prove that statement is to use that statement, so you’re just begging the question. You actually can’t prove anything in the end. You can’t prove you’re not a butterfly just dreaming you’re a boy or girl. Here are the two of most common oppositions.
Types of Apologetics
- Hard Constructive Apologetics: Believe because the rational preponderance of evidence is on it’s side. THat’s not usually most effective, but for some people that is the best approach. Most people aren’t here.
- Soft Constructive Apologetics: Why believe? Because Christianity makes more sense of our common experience than other alternatives. Do you believe in human rights? Yes? Okay, then it makes more sense to believe in a God than not if there are human rights. It’s not trying to prove there’s a God, but is showing that Christianity is more reasonable than others.
- Soft Deconstructive Apologetics: Why believe? Because there’s no good reason not to. It basically just takes apart the objections that people have. You don’t try to make a case for Christianity, you just take down their objectives and bring them into community.
- Narratival Apologetics: Narrates a Christian Gospel in such a way that is very positive to the hearers.
