What is Christian Apologetics?
When I first began my master’s degree program, I remember telling my father that I was in a Christian apologetics degree. He chuckled and said, “Well, it’s about time you Christians start apologizing.” I retorted, with a playful smile, “Now, Dad, you know that’s not what I mean.” I explained to him what I’m about to share with you, that apologetics entails offering a case for Christian beliefs and answering objections against Christian beliefs (see 2 Corinthians 10:5 and 1 Peter 3:15)…doing so with gentleness and respect.
What is Christian Apologetics? A Sports Analogy
My dad was a huge sports fan, and just like him, any coach of a sports team knows that to be well prepared for their games, they need to have both a good offense and a good defense. Dad frequently complained about a lack of one or the other with whatever team he was watching at the time. If a team goes into their game without any understanding of how to defend their goal, they are going to lose the match. If a team only knows how to defend their goal, but not how to win points through offensive strategy, they will also lose the match. While Christianity is not about “winning” or “losing” in this way, we can encounter difficulties in our own game of life for which we feel unprepared if we are not intentionally building our analogous offense and defense.
On the Defensive Line
Christian apologetics can help an individual understand the doubts, questions, and objections that are: 1) part of growing up and maturing as a person, and 2) part of living in an increasingly post-Christian society.
When we are young, we tend to trust, for the most part, the authority figures in our lives. We believe what they say and try to live like those teachings are true. As we age, and begin to encounter more experiences in life, we naturally begin to question what we’ve learned so far. Ideas, such as the goodness of God, which were simpler concepts when we had less experience with pain, suffering, and death, now become much more complicated. This questioning isn’t a bad thing, rather it’s a part of maturing as a human thinker.
As our society’s culture becomes increasingly relativistic, post-Christian, and social media/entertainer influenced, the profound philosophical Christian concepts begin to lose their comprehended complexity, becoming more caricatured and reduced even to absurdities. Thoughtful questioning and understanding of beliefs are often traded for quick, inflammatory sound bytes and slogans. As these short, uncritical ideas become popularized through various streams of social media, they become harder to engage well. Apologetics helps believers answer these popularized caricatures of Christianity, as well as engage in the deeper questions of life.
On the Offensive Line
When professing Christians do not know what they believe or why they believe it, their trust and faith in God can be affected. For example, at times, when I’ve conversed with someone who left Christianity and the church, and I’ve asked them what they used to believe, I’ve ended up saying, “Well, I don’t believe that about God, either.” While I’m sure there are many reasons why this happens, in my own church education, I rarely came across any depth of teaching on basic Christian theology, church history, or aspects of philosophy such as basic logic (thinking well) and the difficult questions of life. I’ve noticed that believers are left to piece together Christianity between their own experiences, intermittent bible study(ies), topical sermons and/or sermon series, church cultural interests, and overall cultural influencers. Too often, this leaves them with an emaciated Christianity, stripped of its deeper explanatory power for the human experience.
Through building a positive case for belief in God, Christians can begin to discover why it is they believe that God is the answer to the fundamental questions of meaning, purpose, and value to human life. People can learn that God is not only worthy of our trust, but also of our worship and love (1 John 4).
What is apologetics? A game plan
In creating robust offensive and defensive apologetic lines, Christians develop a game plan for understanding and communicating their faith. Learning how to make a case for what we believe is not a “10-step-program to winning in life,” but, rather, an important piece of the holistic development of a maturing believer in Christ. As the Apostle Peter admonished us, we are to “always be ready to give a defense (apologia) of the reason of your hope.” That reason is the hope that Jesus provided for us through the resurrection and redemption of humankind. And although we’re not apologizing for our beliefs, in a way, we are saying, “Sorry, not sorry,” for holding onto that redeeming hope within a society that needs to see genuine Christians living out, and putting into action, the truths they profess to believe.
*Author’s note: In a future post, I’ll discuss the important aspect of apologetics, which entails communicating our beliefs with “gentleness and respect.”
This logical fallacy is one of the more popularly (pun intended) utilized in marketing a product. A company wants you to go out and purchase their product so they tell you how many other people have also done so. “Buy a Tough Guy truck. The number one truck in Oklahoma.” This appeal does nothing to evidence the quality of the product, it’s just an appeal to the popularity of the product. “Use BeautyGirl wrinkle cream. Voted the best wrinkle cream by Vogue magazine readers.” What is wrong with using a product, buying an item, or believing a view on the basis of its popularity? The error in reasoning is due to the fact that a position or product is not the best one for any individual just because a group of people (even a large group of people) think so. What is important is looking at the evidence these people have utilized in arriving at a conclusion about the product or view. Unless the group has some kind of special knowledge (such as they all work for a consumer watch company), it is fallacious to ascribe authority to their view.An everyday example: Gossip can fall into this category when a person uses the phrases “some people” or “the word on the street” or “they say” in order to prove or argue for a point. Remember, good reasons (good data) must be brought as evidence for an argument, not just a group of people’s preferences or opinions; especially not an anonymous group of people such as “they.” A political campaign example: Political campaigns utilize this strategy when they use the opinions of the American populace to support their platform: “Seventy-five percent of Americans say they will vote for Senator George Washington in the upcoming presidential election. Therefore, Washington is the best candidate!” The problem with polls and percentages is that though they may reflect a group of people’s opinion on an issue or on a person, the poll itself does not prove that the candidate is therefore the best choice for any individual voter. However, candidates misuse the polls as evidence that they are the better choice for voters. When choosing the best candidate for your individual vote, you need evidence that the candidate will legislate according to what you think is best for the nation. Popularity is not an evidential factor for legislative ideology. I’m sure you have seen this type of fallacy in use already as we approach the upcoming 2012 elections.Resources for recognizing fallacies:
committed when the Christian avoided the atheist’s actual argument and put forth a response to a different argument. The Christian focused on this issue: that the atheist did not desire to know truth. In doing so, the Christian is irresponsible in representing the atheist’s actual argument (the problem of evil), and therefore irresponsible to represent the truth. Notice that the atheist offered a reasonable objection to the existence of a good God, and the Christian did nothing to even acknowledge the atheist’s argument. This is not being a good ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the truth. Jesus did not avoid questions. He sought to engage people with a deeper understanding of the questions they asked (Matthew 22).
So you’ve finally worked up the gumption to go discuss an important matter with someone with whom you have a specific problem. You approach the person about the issue and all of a sudden you find yourself defending another issue not directly related to your point. In fact, you are no longer discussing your original point at all. What happened? The person moved the subject to another topic; they used a red herring. The red herring fallacy is probably more prominent in our current culture than we realize. I’m making that generalization due to my own experience with this fallacy with much frequency. I’ve also seen this fallacy utilized by public figures to deflect difficult questions which they don’t wish to answer.The term red herring comes from the name for a dead, smelly fish used to throw off a dog’s tracking ability while training a dog to follow a scent trail. A dog trainer would lay out the scent of the animal they wanted the dog to track and allow the scent to become old. Then, the trainer would drag the smelly red herring across the original trail, leading in a different direction from the animal scent the dog was supposed to follow. The red herring smell is intended to distract the dog from the original trail. So, in an argument or discussion, a “red herring” is a distraction from the real issue or question. It throws us off the track!As the authors of Asking the Right Questions remind us, “You should normally have no difficulty spotting red herrings as long as you keep the real issue in mind as well as the kind of evidence needed to resolve it.”