Apologetics has been defined as the reasoned defense of the Christian Faith.
Are apologetics important? Why should we bother with them?
The place of apologetics in the Christian Church has not always been agreed upon.

The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper is quoted as saying “in this struggle apologetics has not advanced as one single step”. Robert L Raymond states “I believe in the Christian God because I am a Christian by the grace of God” and does not rely on an apologetic to make his argument.

On the other hand C.S Lewis is quoted as saying,

to be ignorant and simple now, not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground would be to betray our uneducated brethren who have under God no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist if for no other reason than because bad philosophy needs to be answered.

Francis Schaeffer states,

the Christian is to resist the spirit of the world. The world spirit does not always take the same form, so the Christian must resist the spirit of the world that it takes in his own generation. If he does not do this he is not resisting the spirit of the world at all.

We live in a world that would deny many of the truths that we profess and we must resist, defending the truth as it is attacked in our own era.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, talking about apologetics, states.

What the Bible teaches about such arguments is that they can never create faith, they are useful in a negative sense but they will never lead to faith according to the Scriptures. No one can believe in God without faith, without the inward work of the Holy Spirit that leads to faith. When men and women believe in God by faith the proofs are of value in supporting their faith so they are of some help but I doubt if they have any further value. If you are interested in them you can make use of them in that way to strengthen and support your faith and to show people with whom you are discussing these matters that things render them inexcusable.

Reasonable Faith⤒🔗

While we can never reason anyone into the Kingdom of Heaven, we can show that our faith is reasonable and not a mere leap in the dark. Apologetics may therefore be used offensively, that is showing the folly of man’s wisdom and reasoning, or defensively, defending the historic truth of scripture. Lloyd-Jones further says “the Bible does not argue about the existence of God, it declares it. The Bible does not give us any proofs of the existence of God, it assumes it”. We will now look at some of what the Bible itself says about mankind’s response to the evidence for the existence of God and the truth of the Bible.

In Romans Chapter One, the Apostle Paul writes that,

the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse.

Here we read that God’s power and nature are shown in part by the creation itself but that men choose to suppress this truth. However, it is not just the wickedness of man that suppresses this truth. Paul states that “the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ”. (2 Cor. 4:4) and it is into this environment, an environment of men who choose to ignore what may be known about God and of men blinded by the devil, that we must seek to proclaim the truth about God. Peter tells us to “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15) and Luke opens his gospel with the words “that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught”.

In this series I do not propose to use so-called classical apologetics and traditional philosophical arguments but rather to follow through a line of argument moving from the general revelation of creation to the specific revelation of Scripture and then finally the personal revelation of God in Jesus Christ. But before doing this I think it would be useful to look at how our current secular world view has developed. It is important to know the world view of those with whom we seek to share the Gospel in order to communicate properly.

Consider the Apostle Paul speaking to the Jews in Thessalonica (Acts 17). He enters the synagogue and for his Jewish audience starts with the Scriptures explaining about Christ. However, later when he moves on to Athens and meets a pagan culture his approach is different. He starts with a discussion about their style of worship and even use a quotation from one of their secular poets to help make his argument. For a more detailed discussion about the development of the western postmodern world view and how it has permeated science, art and religion I would advise you to turn to the writings of Francis Schaeffer.

We now turn to compare the Christian world view with the postmodern secular world view. The Christian worldview can be summarized in Hebrews 1:1-3.

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he provided purification for sins he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

Facts According to the Word←⤒🔗

• God is real.
• God is personal and can be known.
• God has spoken to man.
• He made and sustains the Universe.
• He is moral and has provided for the moral needs of his creation.
• Sin and guilt are real.
• God has provided for our guilt.

These verses in Hebrews give us an explanation of where we come from and where our destiny lies. They give us a basis for our knowing. They also explain our experience of the conflict between good and evil that we see in the world around us.

But what of the world? What does the postmodern world view state? As an example consider the writing of Jaques Monod, a molecular biologist and Noble Prize winner. He writes of the beginning of all things that “chance alone is the source of every innovation of all creation. Pure chance, blind and free, it is the only conceivable hypothesis. Man must wake out of his dreams, wake to total solitude and fundamental isolation; a world that is deaf to his music, indifferent to his hopes, his sufferings or his crimes”.

Jaques Monod’s world has no God. Man is therefore alone in the universe. There is no direction in his life and no morality. How has this worldview developed?

Rene Descarte (1596-1650) resolved to accept only that which he could not doubt. After much thought he decided that the only thing he could not doubt was his own existence hence his famous statement “I think, therefore I am”. In reality all he could really say was “I think, therefore I think that I am”, because he could not even prove this. Successive thinkers have continued in this spirit. David Hume (1711-1776) is viewed as the father of moderns scepticism. He came to doubt even the principle of cause and effect that we would take for granted. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) decided that “reason deceives us only too often therefore whatever I feel to be right is right”. George Frederick Hegel (1770­-1831) challenged rules of logic, which state that if a proposition (the thesis) is true then its opposite (antithesis) must be false, as incorrect. Hegel viewed things as a synthesis between the two positions and developed the form of thought known as dialectics.

Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980) viewed truth in terms of a significant or ultimate experience or an authenticating act by which someone would define their existence. It didn’t matter what the act was. It was making the choice that was important. Frederick Nietzsche (1844-1900) sought to ignore the influence of all outside authority to establish his own values – power for itself “beyond good and evil”.

Following these lines of thought we discover the background to the contemporary situation of moderns man having difficulty knowing if anything is true; all becomes relative and there is no absolute truth. If we follow the train of thought from Descarte onwards we find that everything but our own existence is to be doubted. The observations of cause and effect on which we base most of our sciences are dubious. We have a society that turns to feelings rather than fact and is prepared to abandon the principles of logical argument and build a world view with no external reference points.

But you may say this is all simply philosophy. It is all highbrow. This is not really what people in science think.

Questions Demanding Answers←⤒🔗

However, let me quote from a lecture given by Cambridge Professor Richard Dawkins and Stephen Pinker, Professor of Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Psychology. Dawkins asks,

 Am I right to think that the feeling I have that I am a single entity who makes decisions and loves and hates and has political views and things is a kind of illusion that has come about because natural selection finds it expedient to create that illusion?

Pinker answers,

 that the fact that the brain ultimately controls the body that has to be in one place at one time may impose the need for some kind of circuit that co-ordinates different agendas of the different parts of the brain to ensure that the whole body goes in one direction.

So again even moderns science views reality and the possibility of knowing as just an illusion, and is left with the question of how can we know anything for certain.

Another question that modern man has to answer is “why is there something rather than nothing?” We have two alternatives: the Christian world view is that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; whereas for postmodern man, Jacques Monod says “all is chance” or as Richard Dawkins claims “evolution is the only game in town”.

The third question that postmodern man has to deal with is the question of moral conduct. If all is chance and we cannot have any means of knowing objective truth then how do we determine what is right? American Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendle Holmes is quoted as saying “truth is the majority vote of the nation that could lick all others”. Francis Schaeffer terms this the “rule of the 51%”, that is, what is right is that which is deemed to be right by the majority of the population. This is a very unsatisfactory answer.

We remember that Hitler was elected democratically with the support of the German people. Would that have meant that if by greater military might the Nazis won the Second World War, that their policies with regard to the extermination of the Jews, gypsies and the mentally infirm would have been right? If we follow Darwinian natural selection to its logical conclusions it must influence our morality. Peter Singer, the Australian ethicist, does just this in his books, such as “Rethinking Life and Death”. He rejects the inherent value of human life, disputes the value of man over non-human species, favours abortion and suggests that infanticide up to the age of 28 days may be beneficial for society.

This is what we must conclude if there is no God and no external source of morality. But even other enthusiastic supporters of evolution cannot stomach this particular conclusion. Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene states “we must teach our children altruism for we cannot expect it to be part of their biological nature”. But if it is not part of their nature why must we teach it? He realises, as indeed most of us do, that there is that which can be properly called right and wrong; we know it instinctively. We know that if someone cuts in front of us in a queue where we have been waiting that it is not fair. We are disappointed when a sports person cheats. We know it is not right. The very fact that people are prepared to compare moral teaching of different cultures and state that one is of a higher morality than the other implies that there must be some absolute to which they should attain.

For those seeking a fuller discussion of this topic I would direct them to CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity and the section entitled “Right and Wrong as a clue to the meaning of the Universe”.

Conclusion: Three Questions for the Post-modern Man←⤒🔗

1. How can you be sure of anything you believe if there is no objective truth and no certainty of knowing?
2. Why is there something rather than nothing in the universe?
3. How can you have a meaningful morality without God?