In this series, I am stepping back to look at the discipline of attaining Christian knowledge. This is a higher order consideration. It is not aimed at articulating or defending a particular theological doctrine or analyzing a distinct social or moral issue. Rather, it is aimed at the overall process of studying the Christian faith for the purpose of evangelism and discipleship. In the first post, I discussed the most central discipline of the Christian faith: the study of theology. In this post, I will discuss the discipline of apologetics, specifically philosophical, historical and cultural apologetics, as it applies to Christian faith.
What is Apologetics?
A standard definition of apologetics is usually given as: the rational defense of the truth of Christianity using evidence and arguments. The practice of this discipline is usually grounded in verses like 1 Peter 3:15-16 or 2 Cor 10:3-6 and Romans 1:18-32. However, even without these verses, the practice of apologetics would be a necessary one. Apologetics is, in a sense, unavoidable. For as soon as one begins to give reasons for why they believe what they do, this activity could be properly described as an “apologetic.” Thus, everyone, even atheists, do apologetics in this broad sense. In short, therefore, apologetics has to do with truth and claims to truth and giving reasons for believing those claims. We all do this in some way or fashion. It is only a question of how good we will do it.
The task of apologetics can be categorized in various ways. One can speak of offensive apologetics, or polemics, which is showing where an alternative worldview to Christianity might fail in its claims about reality. For example, one might pose to the naturalist the problem of human consciousness, which challenges naturalism’s overall truth value. Alternatively, one might raise certain problems with Hindu views of an eternal cosmos, given that the best data from science suggests the universe began to exist.
On the other hand, there is a defensive mode to apologetics, which is showing that certain claims of either theism broadly or Christianity specifically are reasonable and coherent. Defensive apologetics defends positive claims about Christianity, like the claim that “God raised Jesus from the dead.” Or it explains how doctrines like the Trinity, while paradoxical, are not necessarily incoherent or illogical.
Another way to classify the activity of apologetics is by method. Apologists will often talk about the following methods (taken from Five Views on Apologetics):
- presuppositional,
- evidentiary,
- classical,
- cumulative case,
- or even “reformed” apologetic
Admittedly, I find most discussions about apologetical method not only boring, but hardly useful. For example, the distinctions made between the middle three approaches–evidentiary, classical and cumulative case– are negligible. It is roughly the same with the distinctions made between the first and the fifth approaches. In my humble opinion, there are distinctions that simply make no real difference. (I am not saying that Cowan and Gundry have edited a bad collection of essays, only that I think the idea behind the collection is hardly important).
At most there are really only two distinct methods: presuppositional and evidentiary apologetics, whereby on the former view one presupposes a metaphysical first principle, i.e., God, and an epistemic first principle, i.e., the Bible, before any other discussion is had. The idea being that without these two sources, the ontological and the epistemic, there cannot be rational discussion about anything, since all rational discussion has to presuppose some such starting points. But if this is the case, and non-Christians (especially atheists) presuppose entirely different starting points, then it must be held that there is literally no common ground between the Christian and, say, the naturalist. But this is obviously false.
The latter view, the evidentiary, would say instead that there is a common starting point in reason itself, or in the rational structure of the mind (see Hackett, The Resurrection of Theism). On the evidentiary view, there is no need to posit a metaphysical starting point before one can begin a careful investigation of the evidence from common, human experience. Beyond these two fairly distinct approaches, everything else is just splitting hairs.
What I will propose as a better taxonomy is to simply break the apologetical project into three distinct areas of study or inquiry:
- philosophical apologetics,
- historical apologetics,
- and cultural apologetics
Philosophical apologetics deals primarily with natural theology, or developing cogent arguments given the deliverances of our own reason and the data from experience. Historical apologetics, more specifically, deals with the special revelation of the Bible and argues from God’s revelation in space and time. Thus, instead of demonstrating theism, historical apologetics has to do with showing the reliability and truthfulness of Christianity’s historical claims. Finally, there is cultural apologetics, which analyzes the current culture in which the Church resides and applies theology to the cultural context and the deep questions that emerge from within that context (this is the area I tend to emphasize in this blog).
What Can Apologetics Do?
As stated above, apologetics is something that everyone does naturally, anytime they seek to defend or clarify the claims and content of what they believe. Even atheists do some kind of apologetics when they defend their views about naturalism. Clearly the aim of any apologetic is to convince one’s interlocutor of the truth of one’s own view or the falsity of their view. There is nothing malicious about such an exchange, even if those engaged may be malicious people. But argumentation is necessary for any discussion, if it is aimed at truth. Plato called argumentation aimed at truth the “dialectic,” and contrasted it with sophistry, which is argument aimed at defending arguments. Christian apologetics is always a project of the former, and should never be one of the latter.
At the same time, while apologetics aims as truth, we must also recognize that apologetics does not cause saving faith in the ultimate Truth. Good arguments and reliable evidence can be effective steps in one’s individual journey toward saving faith. However, God alone is the source of any genuine belief. And so as Christian apologists, we rightly restrain our expectations regarding the power of rational argumentation alone. When it comes to attaining personal knowledge of a personal God, no argument can convert the human heart. That operation is reserved for the Great Physician alone, for deeper than man’s intellect is his will.
Pascal, one of history’s great apologists, put it this way:
It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.
Pascal, Pensees
Taken one way, this statement could mean that reason plays no role at all when it comes to belief in God. But Pascal was one of the great mathematicians of his time, and this is an unlikely interpretation. What is more likely is that Pascal was indicating the bounds of reason itself. Reason is incapable of grasping the entirely transcendent God who created the very capacity for rationality. Moreover, if God is personal, and not transcendent like a number or Platonic form might be, then it is the heart, or will, of man that matters most to God, not man’s capacity for abstract or logical thought.
Finally, Pascal, like most deep thinkers, understood that human beings do not have faith in anything of real value based on purely rational grounds, “the heart has its reasons which reason knows not.” All of us hold our most cherished beliefs on some grounds other than the merely rational. If this were not the case, we would not raise our children well, love our spouses in good times and bad, commit to noble causes or sacrifice for seemingly hopeless ones. There is, at bottom, something that moves us about a worldview or belief that reason alone capture. The Christian claim, going back to St. Paul Himself, is that any genuine belief in Christ is itself a gift from God:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Ephesians 2:8-9
And so all rational argumentation for the Christian faith is ultimately limited to showing to the rational faculty of man that Christianity is coherent, reasonable to believe, and cogent– or explanatorily powerful. But no Christian has ever argued that arguments alone can actually do the work of conversion. They are but means to a potentially salvific end, that end always being efficiently caused by God Himself (specifically the Person of the Holy Spirit).
Philosophical Apologetics
Philosophical Apologetics is itself a very broad topic. But philosophy as a discipline is indispensable to the life of the Christian disciple, especially in the structuring of Christian thought. That said, this indispensability of philosophy does not mean that philosophy, or even reason, stands above theology, or revelation. Aquinas states it this way:
This science [sacred theology] can in a sense depend upon the philosophical sciences, not as though it stood in need of them, but only in order to make its teaching clearer. For it accepts its principles not from other sciences, but immediately from God, by revelation. Therefore it does not depend upon other sciences as upon the higher, but makes use of them as of the lesser, and as handmaidens.
Summa Theologica, I.5.ii
As a secondary intellectual discipline, or handmaiden, there can be a “philosophy” of almost any other intellectual discipline. Thus, it is now common to find all kinds of very narrow philosophical disciplines at the academic level: philosophy of science, art, religion, literature, mind, history, business, etc. However, philosophy generally has usually been understood to entail four foundational areas of human inquiry, namely: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and logic.
Metaphysics is roughly the study of what is or what is real. It can be divided up into two major domains: ontology (the study of being) and causation (the study of change in being, especially over time). Epistemology is the study of knowledge or the modes of knowing, as well as whether or not beliefs can be justified or not. Ethics is just that, the study of human moral values and duties vis-a-vis God, oneself or other members in a society. Finally, there is logic, the language of proper thinking that helps adjudicate competing views in each of the other areas of inquiry. The fundamental rules of logic are themselves considered indispensable to all other areas of philosophical investigation.
Analytic versus Continental Philosophy
Today in the West, most philosophy is done in what is called the “Analytic Tradition.” This tradition, which starts at the end of the 19th century with Gottlob Frege, has its historical predecessors– Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz and Kant most notably. However, in spite of its Austrian origins, Analytic philosophy really takes hold of English-language philosophy in the 20th century. Its counterpart, Continental philosophy, was marginalized in the philosophy departments in the first half of the 20th century, especially in England and America.
Nevertheless, continental-style thought has had tremendous impact in other academic departments, especially in the social sciences and history departments. Inspired primarily by Hegel and Marx, most continental approaches seek to “actualize” philosophy, making it a more concrete, political and dynamic project than in its classical manifestation. Truth as an aim is not central to the continental project. Instead continental philosophers concerned themselves more with the way we live in the world. These could be more mystical, as with Heidegger or Jaspers, or more political, as with Gramsci, Marcuse or Foucault.
Much of what we see today dominating our public discourse on morality and politics has been shaped by various types of continental philosophies, especially post-modernism, existentialism and critical theory. I will touch upon these movements in the article on Cultural Apologetics, since it is these theories that have worked their way into the mainstream. As a foreword to that, however, Tim McGrew, a Christian analytic philosopher, gives what I think is an entirely appropriate, and trenchant, assessment of continental philosophy:
One does occasionally encounter a sincere, fuddled attempt to deny the laws of logic outright. In graduate school, a fellow student much enamored of Heidegger and Derrida tried to explain continental philosophy to me: “What you need to understand is that, in continental philosophy, those three laws of logic, noncontradiction, excluded middle, and . . . and . . . I can’t remember the third one, but I have it written down somewhere, they don’t hold.”
So much the worse for continental philosophy.
Excerpt From: Paul M. Gould & Richard Brian Davis. “Four Views on Christianity and Philosophy.” Apple Books.
McGrew’s tongue-in-cheek story highlights the perennial problem with continental philosophy and its various manifestations: they are all notorious for playing very fast and incredibly loose with the laws of logic. That is why the most serious philosophers today, to include philosophers of religion, work in the analytic tradition. Nevertheless, this does not mean that apologists will not have to respond to continental philosophy. It just means that using evidence and logical arguments may not be effective means for response.
Philosophy and Natural Theology
Finally, the use of philosophy is most useful in its application to what is traditionally known as Natural Theology. Natural Theology relates to all that we can know about God from God’s creation. One of the first allusions to a natural theology, or knowing something about God through nature, is given to us by the Psalmist:
1 The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky proclaims the work of His hands.
2 Day after day they pour out speech;
night after night they communicate knowledge.
3 There is no speech; there are no words;
their voice is not heard.
4 Their message has gone out to all the earth,
and their words to the ends of the world.Psalm 19:1-4
St. Paul further elaborates on this natural knowledge of God, explaining, however, that it is through an act of the corrupted will that man suppresses the theology of nature:
18 For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, 19 since what can be known[a] about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse. 21 For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.
Romans 1:18-23
However, natural theology should not be seen as separate or distinct from revelation. It is only a more general form of revelation, for anything that discloses some knowledge of God is due to God’s desire to reveal Himself, as Francis Turretin points out, therefore:
The theology of revelation is again divided into natural and supernatural. The natural, occupied with that which may be known of God…is both innate (from the common notions implanted in each one) and acquired (which creatures gain discursively). This was exquisite in Adam before his fall, but is highly disordered in corrupted man.
Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 5
Natural theology, therefore, applies to everything from mankind’s universal longing for God (the innate) as well as the limited, yet true, knowledge of God attainable through a mutual investigation of His created order (the discursive). From these two sources: the inward-looking and the external-looking, we can begin to derive particular arguments for God’s existence and for aspects of His being.
Kinds of Arguments
The two sources of natural theological arguments are the natural world (or cosmos): its physical structure, biological life and its beauty; and the human person: human consciousness, reason, morality, freedom, dignity and desire. From our observations of the external world and our self-reflection, we develop particular arguments for God. They can be classified as such:
- Arguments from nature
- Arguments from the human person
In turn, arguments can be further categorized as being either a posteriori, based on experience, or a priori, based on reason alone before any empirical observation is made. However, there is really only one serious candidate for an a priori argument for God–the ontological argument. Here are some common categories for types of a posteriori arguments given an external world:
- Cosmological arguments
- e.g., The Kalam Argument, The Contingency Argument, The Argument from Motion or Change, The Argument from Degrees of Good, The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)
- Design (or Teleological) arguments
- The Fine-Tuning Argument, The Argument from Biological Diversity and Complexity
- Arguments from Beauty
- The Argument from Miracles
- The Argument from the Applicability of Mathematics
Arguments that are specific to the human person could be categorized as follows:
- Arguments from Human Consciousness
- e.g., The “Hard Problem”
- Arguments from Reason or Rationality
- Moral Arguments
- e.g., the reality of objective moral values and objective moral obligations
- Arguments from Religious Experience
- The Argument from Desire
- Argument from Freedom of the Will
This is, of course, only one way to categorize natural theological arguments. While there is no perfect way to categorize anything, in my experience separating out what we can know about God by observing features of the external world and what we can know about Him by reflecting on our own selves in that world has been useful. Obviously some arguments, like the argument from Beauty, could be placed in either category.
Natural Theology: A Revival of Epic Proportions
For several decades now one of the most influential philosophers of religion, William Lane Craig, has been proclaiming a “renaissance in Christian Philosophy.” There was a time in the first half of the twenty century, when most philosophers believed religious claims were no longer worthy of philosophical reflection or academic treatment. But the days of logical positivism, verificationism and ordinary language philosophy are over. With their demise Christian natural theology has seen a resurrection.
Today there is a very large, vibrant, even if somewhat annoying, public debate over theistic belief and Christian belief in particular. Resources abound at the academic and popular levels as the internet is now flooded with podcasts, lecture series, debate programs, interviews and other online forums dedicated to the arguments mentioned above. Philosophy of religion and Christian natural theology are indeed experiencing a revival, not only in interest, but in the articulation, modification and presentation of the classical arguments for God’s existence and the Christian faith.
In the next post, I will discuss the second domain of Apologetics– Historical Apologetics. It is in the study of history itself that the Christian truth claim must be defended.
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