This is a guest post by Colin Burgess. Colin is a lay apologist who has been working with Reasons To Believe since 2015, as both a volunteer apologist and an instructor. Colin writes, “It is my goal, as an apologist, to get people thinking about faith, and to help Christians communicate their beliefs more effectively. While Randal and I disagree on a few things, here and there, I would like to think we have a common goal in mind throughout it all. I am honoured to have him share my thoughts on his blog.”
Apologetics and argumentation are certainly fun. Apologetics has provided the occasion for many to learn so many things in life from various disciplines, such as philosophy, history, and science. It has turned me into an intellectual “Jack of All Trades, Master of None,” so to speak, which is probably the dangerous part of it. (At least if one has an advanced degree in a field, they might know how to stay in their domain of expertise.)
After my indifference to faith wore off, I started examining and questioning it. Given the ubiquitous access to knowledge, my generation sees challenges which my parents may not have experienced, eventually arguments were not impressing anyone as I tried sharing my ideas with atheists. Exposure to various ideas caused me to question what I once held with a high degree of certainty. I was fortunate enough to have found Why The Universe Is The Way It Is by Hugh Ross, which opened my plausibility structure up to accepting an Old Earth view alongside my Christian faith.
Apologetics touches on matters of the heart, as much as it does the intellect; an apologist not only takes their faith “into their own hands,” to paraphrase CS Lewis, but they also poke and prod at matters of the human heart as they evangelize to unbelievers. I doubt someone grieving at the loss of a loved one wants to hear an apologist comfort them with the reality of God’s existence by a thorough recitation of the Kalam Cosmological Argument just as a physicist wrestling with doubts about the existence of God would not want to hear the moral argument. It is about responding to the needs of the individual, which involves a certain degree of intellectual responsibility.
It seems important to understand that God is seemingly hidden from one person while oddly evident to another. The task of the apologist, therefore, is not to stand above a person, in an intellectual sense, but to sit beside them and to make one’s doubts their own, a practice which involves a degree of empathy. There is no magic bullet or recipe for apologetics. There is no critical mass of argumentation whIch should culminate in the guaranteed belief of an individual. It is our task to humbly minister to the doubts of an individual rather than to stand above them.
Hugh Ross, in “Always Be Ready” draws attention to this, that apologetics is both an art, and a science. If it were all science, then belief would be guaranteed once the a critical mass of arguments were presented, while if it were all art, then it would be a wishy washy field of study, or a description of one’s own subjective and personal journey into their deeply held, but intersubjectively held beliefs. If apologetics were a hard science, one could set up a cardboard cut out, with a voice box, of their favourite apologist in a public square, or a church, where one presses a button and they hear them give a defence of the resurrection of Jesus in some sterile, and impersonal fashion, and a listening audience would emerge believers.
It is an art in that it is as much about what we, the individual, bring to the table of discussion, and how we present it.
We bring our respective personalities, and experiences to the discussion. No two apologists are alike, nor should they be. No one should strive to be William Lane Craig, nor should Craig strive to emulate Hugh Ross. “Who we are” plays as much a vital role in apologetics, as does “what we know.”
I have had the pleasure, for nearly two years, of teaching an online class with Reasons to Believe—Evangelism in a Scientific Context. One thing I try to communicate to the students taking it (many of whom are more expert in apologetics than I) is that this is a type of missiology; If one were to presume to be a missionary to China they have hopefully equipped themselves adequately to step into their world, even though they may not be of it. One should obtain some descriptive knowledge of another person’s world before entering it, and telling them how the gospel interacts with it. For instance, if one were to evangelize to a group of Inuit who had never seen or heard of a “lamb,” how would they convey the idea of Jesus being the Lamb of God who removes the sins of the world to them? One would have no points of contact and would be describing an alien world to them. We aren’t trying to tell them how their worldview is flawed, so much as how their worldview is compatible with the gospel.
As mentioned earlier, I made this mistake when I presumed to speak as an authority in areas where I had no business doing so. This is a common mistake one might make in their eagerness to promote the gospel, that we abandon intellectual humility, being so convinced of the answer that we forget how to lead people gently to it. When it comes to belief, we are there, but they are not—but in terms of their unbelief, they are there, and we are not. We are trying to bring two worlds together and to reconcile them in a rational sense.
What business do I have teaching a course about Science and Evangelism? Probably very little. I have no scientific background, except some modest training in computer science. Nor am I an authority in Apologetics. However, I have had the pleasure of interacting with many well-educated students, from various backgrounds, and I certainly feel inadequate providing them with instruction about how to promote their faith within their own setting. It is unlikely I could ever sit down in their workplace and speak to their peers about the gospel, and maintain a strong degree of credibility.
There is a duty to liaise our faith with the world in which we live. We must relate to our audience, to which we are presuming to speak, while not dismantling the components of their worldview, and demanding they reconstruct it in our image. This is where we must become a Jew when speaking to the Jew, and become a Gentile when speaking to Gentiles, not simply by knowing the right words, and studying the vernacular. This is so much more than throwing around the right terminology, or we will sound like businessmen walking into a truck stop, relating to truck drivers, saying “10-4,” and “rubber duck,” all the time.
While scientists do certainly live in a world of process and careful thinking, undoubtedly they also struggle with the same emotional and existential issues that we all do. We might see scientists as a dispassionate and clandestine group of people who have all the answers and who deign to try and lift us up to their world, but they also live in the everyday world, and we can find points of contact with them without being tacky, smug, or authoritative. Perhaps we can learn from them, as much as they can from us.
We are entering into another person’s intellectual space and might do well to learn from them as much as you expect them to learn from you. Imagine how much it would impress a Muslim if you had taken the time to read a Quran before presuming to assert the superiority of the gospel. It would demonstrate that you cared enough about them, as a people group, to peer into their world enough to relate to it. The scientific enterprise should be no different. I have little knowledge by direct acquaintance of the scientific fields out there, and it would show immediately if I tried presenting myself any differently. However, I can learn from those who do.
One valid criticism of religion, in general, is that it seems to make the claim that one has all the answers from the particular stance of one’s brand. But if our approach is one of intellectual humility and of continual learning, we can overcome this objection—an objection which seems to be more about the adherent than it is the religion itself.
Apologetics isn’t about seeing what you can get away with saying, with a veneer of intellect. It is about establishing relationships, based on trust, and helping one acquire firm beliefs which generate a saving faith. This is a process which God ultimately facilitates, but one which we are instrumental in, and it seems appropriate to recognize the role which we play in this process.
