What is apologetics?

Question 60000.

Christian apologetics sounds like something you do when you have offended somebody. It is one of those words that has drifted, because the English apology now means an expression of regret, whereas the Greek behind it means nothing of the sort.

So let me clear the ground. Christian apologetics is the work of giving a reasoned defence of the Christian faith, and it is commanded of every believer rather than reserved for the clever. If you have ever been asked why you believe any of this, you have been in the room where it happens.

The word behind Christian apologetics

The New Testament word is apologia, and it belongs to the courtroom. It describes the speech for the defence, the reasoned reply a man gives when charges are laid against him. Paul uses it of his own defence before the authorities more than once.

The key text for Christian apologetics is Peter’s instruction to be prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, 1 Peter 3:15. Notice who is addressed. Not scholars, not elders, but scattered believers under pressure in the provinces.

Notice also what triggers it. Someone asks. Christian apologetics in that verse is fundamentally responsive, the answer given by a person whose life has already raised the question. That order matters more than most of us allow.

What Christian apologetics is for

There are three purposes, and confusing them causes most of the trouble. The first is defensive, removing objections that stand between a person and an honest hearing of the gospel. The second is offensive in the old sense, exposing the weaknesses of rival accounts of reality. The third is pastoral, strengthening believers who are wobbling.

That third purpose is the one most often forgotten. A great deal of Christian apologetics is done inside the church rather than outside it, for the student home from a first year of lectures, or the widow wondering whether any of it was true after all.

What Christian apologetics cannot do is produce faith. Argument can clear rubble. Only the Spirit gives life, and I say more about how those fit together in how we defend the faith.

It is not optional

Some Christians treat Christian apologetics as a specialism, like church accounts or sound systems, best left to the person who enjoys it. Peter does not offer that exemption, and neither does the pattern of the New Testament.

Jude tells his readers to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Paul says he is put here for the defence of the gospel, using the same word again. Luke says Paul reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and the verb there is where we get our word dialogue.

So the question is not whether you will do Christian apologetics. It is whether you will do it well or badly when your colleague asks over lunch how anyone can believe in a God who allows children to die.

The main approaches

Broadly there are three families of method. Classical apologetics argues first for the existence of God from reason and evidence, then for the reliability of Scripture, then for the claims of Jesus. It is the approach of Aquinas and of many modern writers.

Evidential apologetics goes straight to the historical material, the manuscripts, the archaeology, the resurrection, and argues from those to the whole. Presuppositional apologetics starts elsewhere, arguing that the unbeliever’s own worldview cannot account for the things he already assumes, such as logic, meaning and morality.

I do not think Christian apologetics has to choose a camp and stay in it. Paul argues from creation and conscience at Lystra, from a pagan altar and Greek poets at Athens, and from the Scriptures in the synagogue. He fitted the argument to the hearer, and so should we.

The main battlegrounds

Certain questions come round with the regularity of the seasons. Does God exist at all, and can anything be known about Him, which I take up in whether God exists. Can the Bible be trusted as a historical document, and has it survived transmission intact.

Then there is the resurrection, which Paul makes the load bearing wall of the entire structure, and which I examine in the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. If that event happened, most other objections lose their force. If it did not, nothing else needs defending.

And then the hardest one, suffering. Christian apologetics has produced libraries on the problem of evil, and I have added my own attempt in what about the problem of evil. Be warned that the person asking is rarely asking abstractly.

Where Christian apologetics goes wrong

The most common failure is winning. I have watched believers dismantle an objection with real skill and lose the person entirely, because the objector heard contempt rather than care. Peter’s instruction about the defence ends with the words gentleness and respect, and those are not decoration.

The second failure is overreach, claiming more certainty than the evidence supports. If you tell a sceptic that a particular archaeological find proves the Bible, and he later discovers the scholarship is disputed, you have handed him a reason to distrust everything else you said.

The third failure is substitution, where Christian apologetics quietly replaces the gospel. Arguments are the porch. Nobody is saved by admitting that a first cause is philosophically necessary. They are saved by Jesus, and at some point the conversation has to arrive there.

The limits, honestly stated

Paul is blunt about the ceiling. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, 1 Corinthians 2:14. That is not an excuse to stop arguing. It is a warning against expecting argument to do what only God can do.

I hold that the Spirit convicts the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement, and that a person can genuinely respond when He does. Christian apologetics serves that work by clearing away the intellectual excuses people hide behind. It does not manufacture the response.

So I argue as hard as I can and pray harder. The two are not in tension. They are the same activity from two directions.

How an ordinary believer starts

Begin with your own testimony, since it is the one piece of evidence nobody can take from you. The man born blind in John 9 was outmatched theologically and still won the exchange, because he knew what had happened to him.

Then learn one question properly rather than skimming twenty. Pick the objection you meet most often at work and spend three months on it. Depth in one area gives you more confidence than a thin acquaintance with everything, and Christian apologetics rewards patience.

And get comfortable saying you do not know. It is disarming, it is honest, and it buys you a second conversation, which is usually where the real question surfaces anyway.

The character behind the argument

Peter’s famous verse begins before the defence. In your hearts honour Jesus as Lord, and then be prepared to make a defence. The order is not accidental. Christian apologetics flows out of a settled reverence, or it becomes a hobby of scoring points.

That is why the verse ends with a clear conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behaviour may be put to shame. The strongest apologetic in most workplaces is a believer who does not lie about the figures and does not join in about the colleague who has just left the room.

You will not out argue everyone. You can be someone whose life makes the argument worth hearing, and in my experience that opens more doors than any book I could hand over.

Two words that keep the balance

There is a second New Testament word worth knowing alongside apologia. Paul speaks of the defence and confirmation of the gospel in Philippians 1, and the second term, bebaiosis, belongs to the world of legal guarantees. One word looks outward at the objector, the other looks inward at the believer needing to be settled.

Christian apologetics that only ever faces outwards produces a church that can argue with strangers and cannot comfort its own. A discipline that only ever faces inwards produces a hothouse. Both words are in the same verse for a reason.

Paul also tells the Corinthians that we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Jesus, 2 Corinthians 10:5. Notice that the demolition happens in the realm of ideas, and that the aim is obedience rather than victory. I have never met a person argued into the kingdom, and I have met a good many whose obstacles were removed by somebody patient.

So, now what?

Write down the objection you most dread being asked, then go and find out what the best answer to it actually is. Dread usually survives on ignorance.

Then pray for one specific person by name this week and ask God for a conversation rather than a debate. Christian apologetics that never leads to prayer has become a sport.

And when the question comes, remember you are not defending yourself. You are pointing to somebody who does not need your protection. That should take a great deal of pressure off. Who has been asking you questions lately?

But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.

1 Peter 3:15, ESV