Defending Faith: The Role of Apologetics

We continue today now with our study of apologetics, and in our initial lecture we saw that the term apologetics comes from the Greek word "apologia." We find it in the New Testament where the apostle Peter gives the admonition to the Christian to be ready always, to give a defense for the reason of the hope that lies within us. [00:00:03]

I remember being on a college campus many years ago with John Gess, the British preacher and evangelist, and John was doing an evangelistic outreach mission on this university campus, and I had been with him; and I was standing next to him when one of the more intellectually inclined students began to confront John with questions and objections to the truth claims of Christianity. [00:01:23]

But on the other hand, there is what I call the positive task of apologetics where Christian philosophy constructs a whole philosophical defense for the truth claims of Christianity that should be applicable to every culture, every theological or philosophical environment in which the church ever finds itself. [00:02:46]

Now, in the history of the church we've seen this. We've seen apologetics be both defensive and offensive, answering the objections that people raise and at the same time setting forth its own case for the truth, and there have been different approaches to this science of apologetics, and Christians throughout history have disagreed as to what is the best method or strategy for presenting a case for Christianity. [00:03:24]

If we go back to the text that I mentioned in our last meeting from Peter -- 1 Peter chapter three verse fifteen. I remind you of what it says: "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear, having a good conscience that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ might be ashamed." [00:06:31]

Now, you live in a culture today where in the intellectual world the truth claims of Christianity are not only rejected but they are ridiculed. Many of us have had the experience of sending our sons and daughters off to college where they became the object of the sport of the professors who made fun of them in the classroom for their naiveté because they embraced their Christian religion on faith and their religious commitment was not intellectually respectable. [00:09:05]

And in the Middle Ages, in the university system in Europe, where theology was seen as the queen of the sciences and philosophy her handmaiden -- namely where philosophy was seen as the maidservant to assist the queen, people were atheists. There were atheists in the Middle Ages, but they were pretty quiet in the culture because the assumption was, in the intellectual world, that to deny the existence of God, for example, was to commit intellectual suicide because the case had been made so powerfully by Christian apologists at that time that people who didn't embrace the faith pretty much kept their mouths shut. [00:11:06]

Now remember, what Peter is saying here in the first century is that the Christians are being reviled -- that is they're being ridiculed -- and he said, "You need to be standing ready at every moment to give a response to that reviling and to that ridicule that you might present the reason for the hope that is within you, where you're not just standing there saying, you know, 'I believe because I took a leap of faith, and I jumped into the abyss and hoped that Jesus would catch me,' but rather, we are called as Christians to give solid answers to people who are raising questions and objections about the truth claims of Christianity and against those who are ridiculing the faith, to put them to open shame" because remember in the Old Testament Israel, it is declared by the Psalmist, that it is the fool who says in his heart, "There is no God." [00:12:20]

In our culture today, somebody who says there is a God is regarded as a fool, unscientific, unsophisticated, irrational, and the like. And what has also happened in the last two centuries or so, I think, in our Christian culture, is that the church has surrendered the tools of apologetic defense, or if you would say, the weapons of this warfare to the pagan. [00:13:16]

These are the tools of knowledge that God has given the human person to think with, to study with, to embrace reality, and to discover truth with, and if Christianity is true, ladies and gentlemen -- as I believe it is -- then we shouldn't be afraid of the normal tools of learning or of scientific inquiry because an objective, nonbiased application of the tools of learning, if Christianity is true, should verify and corroborate the truth claims of Christianity rather than demolish them. [00:14:32]

Calvin made a distinction that I think we need to understand between proof and persuasion -- proof and persuasion. Calvin said, "We could martial evidence and arguments that are demonstrative, that are overwhelmingly objectively sound, to the point that they actually prove the thesis and have people remain unpersuaded by it." [00:16:04]

Now, there's value to that, according to Calvin. On the one hand, to stop the mouths of the obstreperous, but in that venue, what's so important for that is to give protection to the young Christians, the Christians who haven't had the opportunity for advanced studies in apologetics and so on, who, when they're exposed to an avalanche of criticism from the scholars, then they are frightened by that, then the task of apologetics is to shore up their confidence in their faith because if Satan can paralyze a Christian -- he doesn't have to destroy your faith, but if he can make you embarrassed to speak out because you're listening to all these critics all the time. [00:21:47]