Always Playing Defense?

I was amused a few weeks ago — perhaps bemused would be the more appropriate word — to read a pronouncement from a nonmember of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about the gross weakness of Latter-day Saint apologetics.

He has, he says right off, never read much apologetic writing apart from C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton.

I note, for the record, that neither C. S. Lewis nor G. K. Chesterton was a Latter-day Saint.  So, if you take them out of consideration, what he’s saying is that he hasn’t read much Latter-day Saint apologetic work at all.

But he had just read the article by the late Davis Bitton that was recently republished in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship — “I Don’t Have a Testimony of the History of the Church” — and he didn’t like it.

Unlike Lewis and Chesterton, he says, who offered affirmative reasons for their beliefs, Latter-day Saint apologists seem merely defensive.

This reminds me of the old witticism, “All Indians walk in single file lines.  At least, the one I saw did.”

After all, it seems that he’s basing his judgment on a reading of a single essay by Davis Bitton.  He himself freely volunteers that he’s read very little Latter-day Saint apologetic writing.

Davis Bitton’s essay is, admittedly, devoted to offering a defense.  But to draw from that fact the sweeping conclusion that Latter-day Saint apologetic writing is wholly or even largely defensive is, quite obviously, to generalize from far too small a sample, and from one that is arguably quite unrepresentative.

It’s as if, based on watching only two minutes of the 2019 Super Bowl, someone were imagine himself an expert on football strategy.  “I don’t watch much football, but I noticed that the New England Patriots played only defense, while the Los Angeles Rams were always — without exception! — on the offense.  This was plainly an error on the part of the Patriots.  Unless they change their game plan, they’re far less likely to score than the Rams are and they’re almost certainly going to lose.  Plainly, they lack the confidence that the Rams have.”

Or imagine the same person who, based solely on his observation of the bottom half of the third inning of Game 3 in the 2018 World Series, concludes that the strategy of the Boston Red Sox (based on pitching and trying to catch baseballs and thus prevent scores) is far inferior to that of the Los Angeles Dodgers (based on hitting and seeking to score points).  Plainly, the Red Sox lack confidence and will not win.

Remember, this critic himself cheerfully volunteers the fact that he knows very little about Latter-day Saint apologetics and has read almost none.

But neither the works published in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, nor the Interpreter Foundation’s books, nor its films (e.g., this and this), nor its other productions can reasonably be described as wholly or even predominantly “defensive.”  Nor can the efforts of classic FARMS and its successor organization, the pre-2012 Maxwell Institute.  Nor can my “Mormon Scholars Testify” website.  Nor can the Journey of Faith films (e.g., this and this).  Nor can my columns for the Deseret News and LDS Living.  Nor can the work of Hugh Nibley.

Heck, just recently I’ve called specific attention to two Interpreter articles — “Revisiting ‘Sariah’ at Elephantine” and “Let There Be a Famine in the Land” — that offer positive reasons, small but not insignificant, for confidence in the historicity of the Book of Mormon.  And there are many, many more.