Defense of Apologetics

There is no nice way to say this. But if someone tells you that apologetic arguments do not bring people to Christ, well,

I find that it often means this person thinks the apologetic arguments fail to justify their conclusions.

Sometimes it may be helpful just to play the other side. Simply ask how they know God exists. When they make tons of bad arguments or even excuses, you have a teachable moment on your hands.

Apologetics does convert people.

Have you heard this one? People tell me that studying Apologetics is a waste of time. Apologetics is giving reasons and evidence for the Christian faith. But they say that people who are atheists or in other religions are set in their ways and will not change. Just preach the basic message of Jesus and that is it. This is funny because when they say this stuff to me, they are trying to reason with me. But why is it such a bad idea to reason with nonbelievers? I have seen many come to faith in Christ through Christian Apologetics, which is giving reasons for our faith. If you do not do apologetics and avoid it like some sort of sin, then of course you do not see anyone come to Jesus through apologetics.

But I have also seen many refuse to believe even when I show them proof. Incredibly, many regular churchgoers confess to me that they are actually disbelievers when I start talking about proof. One thing that saddens me is when I see believing Christians get scared at the mention of the word “atheist.” We should not be so afraid. The great weight of the evidence and proof is on the side of faith in Christ. Apologetics ministries regularly report new believers that come to faith through their work. For example, Reasonable Faith regularly shares stories of people who came to faith through proof and evidence.

So you say we should just ignore apologetics and love others and share our faith? Mormons do that too.

Why are not you a Mormon? They are incredibly nice people and love to share their testimony with you. But you will never convert to Mormonism. Why? Mormonism has many intellectual problems. These intellectual problems just make it impossible for you to become a Mormon. You might find their friendship and dedication to their faith truly encouraging and uplifting. But you will never ever convert as long as those intellectual problems remain. Apologetics often serves to prepare the way for a presentation of the Gospel. It gives people intellectual permission to open up to Christ.

People often think Christians are nice idiots who believe in talking snakes and virgins getting pregnant. If a woman told you that today, would you buy it? We believe that a book with human authors was somehow also written by God. We actually claim to know what happens after someone dies. It all boils down to whether you believe that a man who lived 2000 years ago was also God. I mean, He prays to Himself constantly and got killed. But hey, there are stories that say He came back from the dead. You always believe stories like that right? There are stories where Hercules destroyed the land separating the Atlantic and the Mediterranean by punching hard. Other stories say that Buddha came out of the womb and walked immediately. After every step, a lotus blossom popped out of the ground.

Often, people are not directly convinced by Apologetics. Rather, they realize that Christianity is not stupid. What happens when someone goes from thinking that Christians are complete idiots to thinking that they could possibly be right? What happens when someone realizes that there are some seriously strong reasons to believe in Jesus? Even if she is not sure whether the arguments prove the point, she is often convinced that it is not so clear that you failed to prove the point either. And when that happens, a person now has intellectual permission to consider Christianity a serious option.

Do people reject Jesus because of a lack of evidence or a hard heart?

This idea is rooted in Romans 1:18-25. Paul tells us that everyone knows about God because of the things God has created. Biblically, there is another book of the Bible. It is often called the Book of Nature. Psalm 19 tells us that the world God created pours forth speech and knowledge about God. Furthermore, Paul tells us that we further understand we are under the wrath of God for falling short the glory of God. Instead we have chosen wickedness, godlessness, and the suppression of truth by wickedness. Unfortunately, some Christians see this as a reason to avoid apologetics. When, in truth, apologetics is studying another book of the Bible, the world God created. And they also ignore what Paul goes on to say. People willfully reject God. But that is a hard way to live. It is much better if you can convince yourself this was the smart and rational thing to do. As Paul says, the thinking of humanity became futile. We think we are wise, but really we are fools. The effect of this is that atheists, for example, really honestly start to feel smart, confident, and most of all correct. What is more, Christians get disheartened by all of this. Christians start to feel dumb, afraid and most of all wrong. This can lead to less prayer, less drive to obey God, and obviously a desire to keep one is religion private.

The root problem with rejection of God is not a lack of proof. It is a willful rejection of God. It is a heart problem, not a head problem. But disbelievers are not that simple. They intentionally created a head problem on top of the existing heart problem. They dream up reasons to reject God that actually sound smart and rational. This makes them feel safe and confident, but makes Christians feel scared and powerless. Apologetics exists to turn the tables. We show that the proof is on the side of Christianity. Thus we help to strengthen the faith of believer. For disbelievers, we remove their intellectual barriers, allowing us to dig down to the heart problem. At that point, it is about showing them the love of Christ, not Apologetics. Apologetics has a role to play in evangelism. But it is not the whole thing because, simply put, humans are irrational.

It helps you deal with stronger objections that you encounter later.

We will deal with this important topic under the section on Kierkegaard's objection.

Many have said that Apologetics commits the sin of testing God.

This is a misinterpretation of Jesus' response to the temptations in the wilderness from Satan. We misinterpret this passage because we do not know the Old Testament as well as either Jesus or Satan, or even the Jews of that day. The Jews were testing God by asking for proof of His faithfulness to them, not His existence. This was a sin because they already had immense proof. God had led them out of Egypt with numerous plagues on their oppressors. He had performed signs of Moses' status as a prophet before even that. That alone should have been sufficient. He had led them through the Red Sea and protected them with a wall of fire. He was sending bread that fell from the sky every morning and causing their clothes and shoes to never wear out. By asking for more proof, the issue is clear. They were just looking for an excuse to reject God. They had more than enough proof.

Hebrews 11:1, does it teach that faith is literally belief without proof?

The KJV translation here basically says faith is evidence. Some modern translations render it as saying that faith is conviction. It is the KJV that is actually correct. Therefore, many declare that Hebrews 11:1 is saying faith is belief without proof. But that idea is really coming from us, not the Bible. We read it that way because we are looking for a verse that says that. We shout, “Eureka! I have found a verse that says Apologetics is bad!” Rather, the verse says that faith is proof. We take that to mean, “MY faith is MY evidence.” But in reality the Bible is saying, “THEIR faith is YOUR evidence.” They are witnesses for you regarding what they have seen. But you have not seen it. Thus, their faithfulness becomes evidence that you can trust them.

The faith of people like Paul is proof that they were eyewitnesses to Christ's Resurrection. It is not that your faith is your proof. Rather, the faith you have seen in those who are eyewitnesses is proof of what they testify about. That is what Hebrews 11 is about. The list of witnesses is not witnessing our lives. Rather, they are testifying to us. They are witnesses for us to ground our faith in their testimonial evidence. And they prove their trustworthiness by their faithfulness. Hebrews 11 lists for us many people who performed great acts of faith. In every case, Hebrews makes the point that the person of faith did these things at great personal cost. They did not benefit from what they did but rather believed in what they said about why they did it. Thus, we know that they were honestly doing what they did because of why they said they did it. God really had spoken to them and told them what to do.

It is much the same with us and Jesus Resurrection. The Apostles saw Jesus alive. They proved that they believed this by undergoing great personal cost. They were martyred. They had not received eternal life. But when you see a guy get killed and come back, then you will probably believe what He says about what happens after you die. They saw Jesus alive. We see their faith. Look at the examples in Hebrews 11. Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham all spoke directly with God. God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would have a son in old age. He also promised to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah on the same day. When you see that the cities are destroyed, then you will have good reason to believe that a 90 year old woman can deliver a healthy baby. Sometimes people say that...

Thomas should have believed without proof.

Thomas refuses to believe based on the testimony of others about Jesus' Resurrection. He believes when Jesus shows up later. Jesus miraculously enters a room though a locked door. He shows Thomas the various fatal wounds still in His body. Thomas believes. Jesus tells Thomas that he believes because he saw, but those who believe without seeing are blessed. We say Jesus means we should believe without proof. This is because we assume that seeing is the only form of evidence. Abandon that assumption. Jesus is saying that Thomas is now a witness to His Resurrection. For Thomas, the proof was seeing Jesus for himself. For us, the proof is Thomas' testimony. Jesus is commissioning Thomas as a witness to what He has seen. John makes this clear by following up and saying that these things are written so that we may believe. Thus, he is assuming that his readers know his trustworthiness, and are able to believe based on that.

But what is faith then?

I will borrow a definition from philosopher Elizabeth Jackson. The real authority for the definition of a word does not come from the dictionary. People knew what words meant long before anyone created a dictionary. The definition of a word is based in how it is used. For the word “faith” we look at how we use it, but also how the Bible uses it. We end up with a 4 part definition. First, faith includes belief. To have faith in something means you believe it to be true. Second, faith includes desire. You have to want it to be true or like that it is true. You have have tickets to the baseball game. And you may believe that the game was rained out. But you do not have faith that the game was rained out. Third, faith includes trust or relying on the thing in question. When it is raining, I may belief that my neighbor's roof does not leak. But I have faith that my roof does not. This is because I am personally relying on my roof.

Fourth, faith can go beyond evidence. This is a logical deduction of the other three. We hold beliefs with a varying degree of confidence. When you stand in line at the cash register, you believe that the man behind you is a morally decent person. If not, then you may worry that he will stab you in the back. Still, you turn your back to him even though he is a total stranger. But what if the same man asks you for 1000 dollars and says he will give you 2000 in an hour? You will not give it to him because your belief in his moral decency has limits. We hold all our beliefs with a varying confidence level.

Since faith includes desire and trust in addition to simple belief, then it cannot be held with a varying confidence level. We can think of 0% as complete confidence one way and 100% as complete confidence the other way. And 50% will be complete uncertainty. Your confidence level in you faith in Christ may go up and down throughout your life. But faith is not a percentage thing even if your confidence level is. Rather, you either have faith or you do not. In other words, as long as your confidence level stays above 50%, then you still have faith. You may go through a crisis of faith, and still retain your faith.

Apologetics serves to increase your confidence level and help you deal with challenges to your faith with less emotional pain and stressful chaos. We will delve deeper into this in section three.

Since the 1960s, social research has confirmed many times over that people are normally converted through relationships. You believe because other people you know and trust believe. Afterwards you find that your faith fits and makes sense of what you see in the world. Thus you gain new reasons to believe.

Atheists claim that it is irrational to believe because your parents do. But they are wrong. How many things do we all learn from our parents? Stop. Slow down. How many things do you learn from your parents? And you are not in a position to test what they say when you are a child. You trust them because you know and respect them. While your parents are not perfect, it is rational to generally trust them. Becoming a capable adult would be impossible without being able to place your confidence in whoever is raising you.

And so it is the same for what you believe about God. The research shows that atheists also make their choice based on the people they know and respect. The point here is that this is not irrational. And it is ridiculous to claim it is only irrational when it is about religion. But Apologetics is here so that you can go further. Trusting your parents makes sense because they are often the best source of information you have. But growing up means learning to understand for yourself. Sadly, lack of apologetics leads to Christians who have little more to go on than following their parents. They also have found help in life through Jesus and see that the world tends to fit with Christianity. But such evidences are not undefeatable. Apologetics is here to give you stronger reasons to believe.

According to Rm 1, Ps 19 and Job, there is another book of the Bible that is not in the Bible. We should study it because it is the word of God. It is one more book of the Bible that you ca not hold in your hand. It is the only one written by God without a human author. It is the world God created. It is the natural world itself. Romans 1 tells us that studying God's creation can tell us that we are under the wrath of God for sin, that God is the eternal power over creation, and the fact that He is God. Psalm 19 tells us that this particular book about God has no language barriers. Anyone can read it and learn about the glory of God.

Job and his friends debate how God deals with sin and much more. They do not tell us all the details, but they've generally concluded from studying the world that a God must have created it. They agree that this God has incredible power and plans that exceed human comprehension. They argue back and forth on exactly how God deals with us, with some reasoning being better than others. They never rely on scripture for anything they claim to know about God. And they do not know everything, which is why they are debating.

In the 2000 years since the time of Jesus, Christians have been able to prove a lot about God from studying creation. What you get from it are serious and rigorous arguments that go beyond just feeling good. Even on days when God seems distant and you just do not feel like He loves you, these intellectual reasons to believe are still just too hard to deny or ignore.

Finally, the book of Ecclesiastes is primarily making a case for the existence of God philosophically. It is part of Biblical Wisdom literature. The Greek word “sophia” means “wisdom.” The Greek word “phileo” means “I love.” That means that the word “philosophy” literally means “the love of wisdom.” Ecclesiastes primarily focuses on the moral argument for the existence of God. It argues that outside of God, life has no meaning. The phrase “under the sun” in this text is an old phrase that means “outside of God.” This book really only makes a case for the first premise of this argument. It does not try to prove that life has meaning. And, with most people, if you show that life has no meaning without God, they consider this a good reason to believe in God. This is because they hold that life does have meaning. Most people do their best to avoid death after all. Therefore, they think life is worth living. Ecclesiastes is not a book that is telling you how to live life. It is a philosophy book about big questions. What makes life meaningful?

There is also the question of how we know the Bible is true. It is the job of apologetics to make a case for the trustworthiness of the Bible. By saying apologetics is unbiblical, then you are saying that simply having a reason for trusting the Bible is unbiblical. There is more on this in the section on the Holy Spirit below.

Have you heard of this? When I share a proof for God, people say that proof makes faith impossible. They often use this illustration. Let us say that I hold out my closed hands and ask you, “which hand has a coin in it?” In that situation, you have a choice what to believe because you do not really know which hand has a coin in it. But if I hold my hands out with them open, you can clearly see which hand has a coin. In that case, you do not have the free will to believe the coin is in the other hand. The idea that you do have a choice in such a situation is called Doxastic Voluntarism. And it seems clearly wrong. But people who argue in such a way are, again, trying to persuade you with reasoning. It seems clearly ridiculous to claim that we either have proof and no free will, or either we have no idea what the truth is and free will. Are we really either guessing about what we believe or else forced to believe it? And if those are the only two options, then why does anyone try to CONVINCE of it!?!?!

Proof does not force a person to believe unless it is obvious. What if I told you there are 30 rhinos in the room with you right now? The proof against the rhinos is so obvious that it is actually hard to believe in them. It almost forces you. You could believe in them, but it would take a lot of effort. And you would go crazy in the process. But we also have proof the earth is not flat. The proof of a round earth is strong enough for us to really know it is round. But it is not obvious enough to force to you believe. There is a categorical difference between the strength of the proof and the obviousness of the proof. The proof for the Christian faith works the same way. It is not going to force anyone into the kingdom. But if you want to know for sure, you absolutely can.

All you need to do is continue reading in 1 Corinthians to see that this is a misinterpretation of what Paul is saying. In 1 Cor 2:6-9, Paul says that he does teach wisdom to Christians. He says that there is the wisdom of God and there is human wisdom. Therefore, Paul is clearly not opposed to wisdom. He is only opposed to what is claimed to be wisdom but actually is not.

Some assume that Paul is objecting to all human knowledge, education, study, philosophy, science etc. This is not true. The problem is that we know so little of the science/philosophy of the Greek and Roman world of Paul's day. In Romans 2, Paul borrows the Stoic concept of conscience and uses it in a Christian way. In Acts 17, Paul says that Greek philosophers have figured out truths about God. He goes so far as to quote the Cretan philosopher Epimenedes. In Romans 1, Paul says that truths about God can be understood from study of creation. This is exactly what the subject of philosophy of God sets out to do in both the time of Paul and our time. So it is clear that Paul cannot be objecting to philosophy. Some go so far as to say that Paul is actually an anti-intellectual and against studying in general. But again, he clearly is not doing that. Blind guides lead the blind, but I will try to shine a flashlight. Maybe someone will see it.

Also, the Greek word "sophia" means "wisdom." When Paul says he teaches the wisdom from God, he is literally saying he teaches the "sophia" from God. The word "philosophy" comes from a Greek combination of two words. The term "phileo" means "I love." If you combine this with sophia, then "philosopher" literally means "wisdom lover." While God has made the Greek wisdom lovers look foolish, he is not against wisdom itself or even the love of wisdom.

So what on earth is Paul talking about if it is not that? Greek philosophy directly objected to the idea that God could be crucified. The problem is that we tend to know far less about ancient Greek philosophy than we do about the Old Testament. And we saw with Objection 2 that we often do not know enough about the Old Testament. Greek philosophy is why Paul says that the Crucifixion is foolishness to the Greeks. Their arguments worked like this. Take this statement, “You will have pancakes for breakfast on October 17 in three years .” That statement is either true or false. It is already true or false. Therefore, it is logically impossible for you to do anything other than what it is already true that you will do. Let us say that it is true that you will eat the pancakes three years from now. Not eating the pancakes is then like saying the number 3 equals the number 4. Since it is already true, you cannot do anything other than eat the pancakes. It is impossible because the statement about the future is already true. Rather, it is always true. It is true before, during and after you eat them.

To the Greeks, everything that happens does so due to logical impossibility. 1+1=2 cannot fail to be true. Therefore, it cannot be made to be true or made to be false. That is logical impossibility. This is Greek Fatalism. In the Bible, God has predestined the future. But God could have predestined something else if He wanted. Under Greek Fatalism, God cannot predestine anything other than what is logically necessarily fated to happen. They argued on the basis of things like the argument from pancakes that everything that happens must happen in a logically necessary way. So they argued that the universe cannot be created or destroyed. Also, nothing can be changed in the world. A problem for them was that things obviously change in this world. So, all the philosophical schools believed in cycles. Everything that happens has already happened in an identical way and will happen again over and over. It is impossible for any of this to change. So, God could not create the world, or change anything about it. The Greeks believed that this was as certain as 1+1=2.

All of the philosophical schools had come to believe in an ultimate God through philosophical arguments. The Epicureans did accept free will and opposed fatalism. But they also thought that God should be ignored because He is so far beyond us. He should be ignored because He cannot possible even think about us. Stoics thought that even though everything is fated to happen in a logically necessary way, all that matters is that you know God loves you. But neither God nor anyone else can change anything. Aristotelians thought that although God could not possibly do anything in the world, he is the ultimate model of perfection to be copied. None of the schools could accept the idea that God could become one of us. To them, that was the most insane or foolish idea imaginable. The idea that God could die and then that death would change anything in this world was even more ridiculous to them. So Christ and Him crucified was very much foolishness to the Greeks. To them, that was like saying that 20 + 15 = 78.

The issue is that Greek Philosophy was wrong. By testifying to His Resurrection to the point of death, Paul and the other Apostles were giving good evidence that Greek philosophy was very wrong about God. The fact is that there were some flaws in the Greek arguments, which later Christians managed to demonstrate philosophically. For starters, Christians began to formulate arguments that the world was not eternal and had been created. The doctrine of creation was a massive point of disagreement between later Christian and Pagan philosophers. Even later, the medieval Christians defeated the “pancakes” reasoning. Things progressed on and on. But the observed fact of Christ's death for us was a message from God that caused humanity to rethink philosophy.

This is so important that it has a long video series. Here we will simply say this. Ephesians 1 tells us that the Holy Spirit inside you is a proof for Christianity. If you directly experience the spirit of God living in your heart, then that would be good reason to believe. So what use is there for apologetics that involves arguments and evidence? Let us say you want to cross the road. You look both ways. You are rational to believe that it is safe to cross the road. This is on the basis of your sense experience. With your eyes, you see no vehicles coming. But what if you knew that you had taken hallucinogenic drugs that morning? Would you trust your eyes then?

If you knew you had taken such drugs, then you would probably want to just stay home and sit in the chair. So what do you say when millions of atheists tell you that the experience of the Holy Spirit in your heart is just your mind playing tricks on you? Is it just wishful thinking? What about the millions of Mormons who say that the Holy Spirit told them Joseph Smith is a true prophet? What about the billions of Muslims who say that they experience God through the beauty of the Quran?

In the event that you look both ways and do not see anything coming, you are rational to believe that it is safe to cross the street. But when you encounter good reasons to doubt your sense of sight, then you have to deal with it. The same is true for your internal sense of the Holy Spirit. If you can deal with what people like Atheists, Mormons, or Muslims say, then you are back to just trusting your senses, which show that Jesus is alive.

On top of that, there is the issue of Natural Theology, which is covered under a dedicated section. (4) There is also the question of how we know the Bible is true. The Holy Spirit shows us that the core message of the Bible, the Gospel, is true. But there is more in the Bible. You need Apologetics for that. According to survey research, most people begin having faith because others do. They later see that this faith fits with how life works. These are great places to start. But we need something more to deal with tough questions. For example, there are books that almost got in the Bible and books that got in but almost did not.

There are also some people who come to faith in Christ through Apologetics. If you've been part of Christian Apologetics long enough, then you'll see this. When people say that no one comes to faith though Apologetics, then that just shows they either have little experience in it or else experience with flawed Apologetics.

This often (not always) means the objector has almost no contact with anyone but Christians. It may be helpful to simply play as an atheist or believer in another religion here.

It is quite common for people to comment on apologetics without knowing much about apologetics. They heard about a few arguments for God, and knew nothing of the further arguments and evidence for the Resurrection, Jesus teachings about Himself, the trustworthiness of the Apostles, etc.

Philosophical arguments prove the existence of God. But they do not prove Christian theism, only classical theism. For that, you need to focus on the actual person in history, Jesus Christ. Historians use something called the historical method that functions like the scientific method but for history. We can prove historically that Jesus existed, that Paul really wrote Corinthians, that Peter and the other apostles preached the Resurrection, that Jesus claimed to be divine, and that Jesus really rose from the dead. If you think that list is ridiculous, then you are in for a wild ride.

This is really an objection to theology, which is the study of God.. Theology has also been defined as “Faith seeking understanding.” People are usually very inconsistent with this objection. They object to theology in general. But the really only object to anyone who disagrees with their own theology. And as long as there is bad theology, good theology must be there to fight it.

This also commits the fallacy of hard agnosticism. If I tell you that it is impossible to know anything about peanut butter, then I am claiming to know something about peanut butter. Therefore, for my position on the unknowability of peanut butter to be true, it also has to be false. This means it is impossible for it to be true. You can replace peanut butter with literally anything, including God, and the same logically self contradictory statement emerges.

This is so important that it is covered under it's own article. To the best of my knowledge, this is a favorite of Young Earth Creationists

Calvinists sometimes present their preferred interpretation of the Bible as simply correct. Anyone who challenges it is challenging God. Usually, there is a trick going on. But the difficulty of the trick is that they are fooling themselves. They tend to approach the Bible with a philosophical stance that they are not aware they hold. Specifically, they think it is so obvious that it does not occur to them to question it. They interpret the Bible through this philosophical lens which is so familiar to them that they do not notice it is there. To make matters more difficult, Theological work on divine sovereign control of all human action and accompanying foreknowledge is a very difficult subject. Thus, some Calvinists will parrot phrases from people who challenge Calvinism, and yet fail to understand what those phrases refer to. What you end up with is a very self contradictory jumble of ideas that are spoken without giving serious time to think about what those words actually mean.

The fact is that the questions of human free will alongside the sovereign control of God are difficult, so people should be given grace and understanding on this topic. And yet, Apologetics can take hard work. So some Calvinists may be tempted to even declare Apologetics sinful, and found this on doctrines they themselves do not understand well. If this is going on, it may be helpful to raise some basic questions in response.

In my experience, Calvinists tend to focus their conversion efforts on other Christians. Specifically, they really put a lot of time and energy into reasoning other Christians into Calvinism. With non believers, they do more sharing of the Gospel than reasoning. But there is an all too prevalent problem of Christians living in an echo chamber. Significantly confused reasoning like we are discussing here tends to demonstrate that the person is only interacting with other Christians. In other words, let him be challenged by an Atheist, Muslim, or someone like that.

It is amazingly easy to play the Atheist. Ask him how he knows the Bible is true. Ask him how he knows the inner witness of the Holy Spirit is not just his mind playing tricks on him. Ask him if prayer really works for him or if it just works randomly. The rest of the time, he just says that it was not God's will. When a person lives in an environment where he most often hears someone refer to the Bible as “The Word of God,” then he may lose the ability to question whether it is. Circular reasoning on a topic tends to make sense to people when they never come into contact with anyone who disagrees with them on that topic. What can happen is that this irrational thinking can be confusedly thought of as God directing the will towards faith.

What is amazing is the problem of evil. If you raise this classic objection to the existence of God, you may find what I have. The confident Calvinist suddenly abandons his doctrine. Amazingly, he asserts humans have a free choice to be good or evil which God does not direct or control. Rather, God lets humans choose on their own. I would not write this if I had not seen it for myself. It indicates a lack of intellectual effort, perhaps due to youth.

Or if you want to have some fun with him, you can just disagree with everything the Calvinist man says. You can do the opposite of what he tells you to do. And you can just say that God predestined you this way. I am not a Calvinist because God did not predestine me to be one. I am doing Apologetics because God predestined me to do Apologetics. Just remember to be kind while having fun.