The Potential of Apologetics: Second of Two Parts

An eighth assignment for apologetics is the development of empathy for differing viewpoints. The apologist begins, not by seeking to destroy all viewpoints other than his own, but by attempting to understand the other. He will aim at thinking from the perspective of the others, so that he can truly understand what the others are saying, and why. Only then can effective Christian witness be brought to bear. Dogmatism and opinionation are not attractive qualities in a Christian. Although the believer must be convinced of the truthfulness of what he holds, he must be capable of recognizing that there is a difference between having absolute truth and understanding it absolutely.

Apologetics will also have to give itself to the careful delineation of the objective and subjective elements in faith and in theology. The general movement of our age has been toward increasing subjectivity, in many fields: art, music, philosophy, theology. In taking this route, some have continued beyond subjectivity into subjectivism, with consequent skepticism and even despair. In theology, Bultmann took the neo-orthodox emphasis upon subjectivity a step further, making the biblical message primarily a message about existence and man’s self-understanding, rather than relating to truths about the objective God. Some of Bultmann’s followers carried the principle to its logical extreme, virtually maintaining that the objective referent is superfluous, and that the subjective experience is the message of Christian theology. In the work of Wolfhart Pannenberg, there is a reaction against this trend. Here, a strongly objective position on faith is advocated. Theology may be leading the way back to a more objective form of thought.

Christianity is not to be a purely objective, coldly impersonal matter. It cannot be assimilated to the methodology of natural science, nor should it. As usually understood, it has required involvement, commitment, passion. Yet it also is something more than belief in “the great whatever.” Jesus seemed to teach that belief was good not in itself but only as it rested upon the true object (Matt. 16:13–20; John 14:5–7). One can err in the direction either of excessive subjectivity or of excessive objectivity. It seems to me that at present excessive subjectivity is a greater potential danger. Christian apologetics will be concerned to locate, define, and describe accurately the objective basis of Christian faith and the believer’s subjective involvement with it.

One particular area illustrates this issue: the problem of ethical norms. Christian apologetics must work hard at the problem of how ethical judgments are made and justified. In so doing, it must take account of the complexity of the situations in which ethical decisions are made and to which they are applied. Yet, it must not take lightly the question of the identity, nature, and status of ethical norms, if ethics is to be more than mere expression of one’s own preferential tastes. This problem is graphically seen in the case of Joseph Fletcher, who places his situational method midway between antinomianism and legalism. Yet, as Paul Ramsey has shown, Fletcher has difficulty keeping his method from sliding into one or the other of these extremes, largely because of a lack of specification of the meaning of “love,” as well as any really clearly defined conceptual framework, such as the understanding of man’s nature and destiny. Apologetics should deal with the status of ethical judgments.

Finally, apologetics accepts the task of helping to place theology in the context of other, non-theological disciplines. If it is to speak relevantly to the world in which it finds itself, Christian theology must interact with the so-called secular world. Thus, for example, in developing and expounding a doctrine of man, the theologian will draw its content from the biblical revelation, and will seek for insight in what the best theological minds are saying on the subject. But he will not disregard the questions the behavioral sciences are asking about man; he will address himself to them. It may well be that the most significant questions that the theologian must answer today are not those being asked by the exegete. Most of these have already been quite adequately answered. Further, the non-Christian is often quite indifferent to them. But the behavioral scientist is posing questions to which he does not necessarily have the answers himself. Apologetics attempts to relate theology to general culture.

This means that there will be a concerted effort to determine just what the biblical view on a given matter is, and similarly, what non-theological disciplines are saying. At times there will be insight into the biblical doctrines from these other areas. If the Bible teaches that God created man in his own image, psychology, sociology, and anthropology may help us to understand just what it was that God created. This is a procedure not unlike the use of archaeology and secular history to shed light upon a given event reported in the Bible. Sometimes an antithesis may be found, which should not be surprising in view of First Corinthians 1, and the apologist should call attention to this. Neither uncritical acceptance nor blind rejection of culture should be the pattern for the Christian.

We seem to have moved beyond the idea that the Christian life is to be lived in a monastery. We are quite generally agreed that the Christian is to be in the world, actively relating his faith to it. Yet we may perpetuate a monastic tendency in our theology. The result is usually a theological jargon that is little comprehended by the secular thinker.

What I am speaking for is a dialogue that is broader than theologian with theologian and extends to conversations with secular disciplines as well. There are a number of practical means by which those could be promoted. One could be a use of the sabbatical leave program, for study not simply in the scholar’s own theological field in a seminary or university divinity school but rather in a cognate discipline in a secular university. This would be particularly desirable in the case of a scholar who has taken none of his previous education in a truly secular environment. For example, a systematic theologian might spend his time studying philosophy; a New Testament scholar, classics; an Old Testament man, ancient history; a homiletics teacher, communications; a pastoral-counseling professor, clinical psychology; a church-administration teacher, business administration. Another valuable tactic would be for a theological scholar to join a professional society in a “secular” field for which he might be qualified.

It is not simply the intellectual who is exposed to the influence of secular thought. Through literature, music, the various art forms, even the modestly educated layman is encountering modern forms of thought. It is no secret that the most effective teacher in a Sunday school is not always the theologically trained minister. Often the doctor, the engineer, or the public schoolteacher does a more effective job of communicating Christian truth, because he lives in the same world as fellow laymen and speaks their language. The apologist will attempt to do away with “ghetto theology” and relate his work to the world of today.

But if these are the tasks that apologetics is to fulfill, what of the general nature of the apologetic that will attempt this? We will concern ourselves with the “shape” of apologetics, a general contour or outline rather than a detailed depiction.

There is a rather broad consensus that the traditional proofs for the existence of God are not effective today. Whether one considers them valid or not, they do not seem to make much impact upon modern man. These proofs rest upon certain assumptions that were once very widely held and thus considered to be “first truths,” innate truths, or indubitable facts. An example of this is Thomas’s premise that there cannot be an infinite regress, which is widely disputed today. Attempts to begin with certain features of the space-time universe and conclude to God seem to be falling into disuse.

The new apologetics in general does not attempt to prove demonstratively the truth of Christianity, as did classical natural theology. It recognizes that all proof is a function of two factors: evidence offered, and someone who accepts the validity of that evidence. Rather than claiming to start with something accepted by all men, it acknowledges that it begins with faith. It rests upon presuppositions not antecedently proven. In this, it takes its stand within classical Augustinianism. Yet it hastens to observe that the issue between Christian and non-Christian is not between faith and proof. Every position ultimately rests upon unproven assumptions. Although these cannot be antecedently proven, there will be basis for choosing one standpoint over another, and apologetics will concern itself with showing this.

This new apologetic will not claim to derive a theism from the data of natural theology. Rather, it rests its content upon the special revelation claimed by Christianity. The contention is that once the hypothesis has been derived from the revelation, its tangency to the whole of man’s experience can be seen. Natural theology is like a person trying to discover the solution to a mathematical problem from the problem itself. The new apologetic is more like a man who has been given a claimed solution to the problem and whose task then is to determine whether it is the correct solution. The Christian message is the key to understanding the puzzle of life. The case is not for theism in general; it is more effective when it seeks to assay the adequacy of the distinctive Christian biblical theism.

Much has been made in recent years of Wisdom’s famous parable. It goes like this:

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, “Some gardener must tend this plot.” The other disagrees. “There is no gardener.” So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. “But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.” So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well’s The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. “But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.” At last the Sceptic despairs. “But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?” [quoted by Anthony Flew in “Theology and Falsification,” New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. by Anthony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, Macmillan, 1964, p. 96].

Note, however, that the evidences that support the hypothesis of a gardener are derived from a scrutiny of the problem itself. If a claimed communication from the gardener were found, indicating certain specific features of his nature and describing certain features detailed of the garden-tending, not ordinarily observed but accessible under a certain type of study, then the parallel to Christianity would be more appropriate. Apologetics today finds the most effective evidences for Christianity to be those specifically pertaining to the distinctive nature of Christianity.

This means that the new apologetic will focus upon Jesus Christ, and what his life and teaching mean to the person who puts his trust in him. Christianity is not so much a philosophy of reality and of life as it is a person. To be sure, the person who becomes related by faith to Christ in taking him as personal Saviour has thereby committed himself to much else as well. Nonetheless, this is secondary and derived. In our age, which is apparently so starved for reality in personal relationships and is more person-oriented than idea-oriented, an emphasis on Jesus as a real person, a person with whom one can interact, is probably the most germane to the felt needs of men, and is, of course, biblical.

Further, then, the apologetic will attempt to focus upon man’s existential predicament. Rather than starting with an abstract principle and deducing from it certain conclusions, the strategy today will involve beginning with the problems of anxiety, confusion, and impersonality that modern man feels. It will try to show how the Christian message relates to these concerns. The present age is at least suspicious of, and perhaps even hostile to, authority. It will be necessary to make man aware first that his situation necessitates acceptance of some authority and then that he achieves this best by turning his life over to Jesus Christ as Lord and teacher.

One of the areas where apologetics will make its primary thrust is ethics. The old arguments that seek to move from observable characteristics of the physical universe to God are not very effective today. In part this ineffectiveness is due to logical difficulties that have often attached to many forms of the argument. Beyond that, however, is the fact that a large number of persons today are relatively uninterested in the physical universe; they are more interested in ethical issues and activity.

In particular, this is seen on college campuses, where there is strong interest in politics, in issues of war and peace, civil rights, materialism, and related concerns. It is instructive to note that on many rather relativistic campuses, quite absolute pronouncements are being made, such as: The Viet Nam war is immoral! Racial discrimination is wrong! This opens to the apologist what appears to me to be a potentially very fruitful opportunity for dialogue, not necessarily about the conclusions or positions taken but rather about the very basis of ethical judgments. There should be an opportunity for demonstrating the significance of the Christian revelation, both in the ethic it presents and in the support and justification it gives to ethics.

The new apologetic will ask about the basis or rationale for man’s estimation of himself. In what context does modern man’s self-concept make sense? Christian apologetics has often argued that a humanism that does not go beyond itself is incomplete and inconsistent, that man has real significance only if there is something beyond him from which he derives value. Today, this seems to be an even more strategic type of approach, as man concentrates increasingly upon the problem of man.

Finally, apologetics will want to stress the dimension of history. If it is true, as I contended earlier, that Christian apologetics will be most effective when it concerns itself with what is unique in Christianity, then history will occupy a prominent place. Christianity is a historical religion, in a sense in which most other world religions are not. It depends upon certain events claimed to have occurred. The renewed concern with history, exemplified by the “Pannenburg circle,” should prove an effective vehicle for Christian apologetics.

Christian apologetics has in all ages a task to do, and some of the most highly regarded theological critics of our day recognize the particular urgency of apologetics today. Theology, however, can be likened to a long train. When the cars at the front have already rounded a curve and are headed in a different direction, later cars will still for a time be traveling the old course. Thus, despite the facing of Barthianism and its emphasis upon a purely kerygmatic type of biblical theology, there will be theologians who continue to regard this as exclusively sufficient. Yet others are proclaiming the need to supplement this with apologetic. As the train of theology moves onward, from yesterday, through today, into tomorrow, I want to be in that front car.

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