I was sitting in a graduate school course on Advanced Christian Apologetics, when the professor, Dr. Ralph Gilmore, asked, “is Christian Apologetics still relevant for the local church?” The class remained silent for a few moments. It seemed to me that either the class was unsure how to answer the question, or they were still deliberating. For the most part, I think the church is unsure regarding the role of Christian Apologetics in the life of its mission to share the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world.

I’m convinced that the most important contribution the field of Christian Apologetics offers to the church is its capacity to equip believers of all stages of maturity to engage their culture with clarity and confidence to apply the timeless truths of the Christian faith to the timely problems of every generation. This particular field of theology empowers them to become case makers for their faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ and savior of humanity.

In short, Christian Apologetics fulfills one aspect of the Christian’s call to “the work of ministry” in which “we destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (Eph 4:12; 2 Cor 10:5). The following three points will help appreciate the place of Christian apologetics in the life of the Christian.

Polemical Theology

In his Dogmatic Theology, William G. T. Shedd (1820–1894) pointed out that after the task of studying and “deriving doctrines from Scripture,” it is the task of the theologian to “defend them against attacks, answering objections, and maintaining the reasonableness of revealed truth.” Shedd, and many before him, called this activity “polemical theology” (theologia polemica). It is “here,” he writes,

“where religion and philosophy, faith and science meet. Human reason cannot reveal anything, but it can defend what has been revealed.”[1]

It is a biblical faith engaging the challenges raised against a biblical worldview.

Shedd was writing for the theologian, but this is misleading. What is often expected of the professional theologian, the apostle Peter asserts, is that the essential work of every Christian is to “witness” to the world. In 1 Peter 3:15, Peter wrote,

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. (English Standard Version, 2016) 

The apostle Peter wrote to Christians in the eastern Roman Empire experiencing varying levels of social persecution in which their character was brought under attack (1 Pet 2:12, 15; 3:16). Christians will often be called on to reply to questions about why they do not line up with the dominant worldview and social expectations (1 Pet 4:4). But we must know what God has revealed in the scriptures, before we can articulate and defend the faith.

Pre-Evangelism

C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) is a perfect example of pre-evangelism. When Lewis developed his general outline for the radio addresses that would later become Mere Christianity, he was purposeful to start from scratch. His strategy was to establish the moral argument and God’s existence so that he could then discuss the reality of good and evil, the joy of the good, and the terror of evil deeds. He did this to establish from these premises the problem of the human condition (i.e., evil is real, humans do evil, and God will hold human evil accountable) and to demonstrate how Christianity claims to answer this problem (i.e., only God can remedy the human evil problem, God became human in Jesus, Jesus offers the cross as the solution).[2]

Lewis believed this strategy of storytelling, from natural theology to Christianity, would help people understand and thereby accept the “common Christianity” he offered. Today, Lewis’s approach (add G. K. Chesterton, etc.) to apologetics and theology has been dubbed “Romantic Theology.” He was also practicing pre-evangelism.

Natural theology is the sort of argument that demonstrates from the material universe that there is evidence that implies there is an immaterial, un-caused Being who created it, namely God. It was already well accepted in Paul’s day, and we see him use this form of argument in ancient Lystra and ancient Athens (Acts 14:15–17; 17:22–32). In contemporary Western Society, we see a dismal ignorance of God’s word and the substance of the Christian message. “In America,” one prominent NT scholar wrote, “we live in a Jesus-haunted culture that is biblically illiterate.”[3] Our neighbors may only know about the Christian message from what they learn in TikTok or YouTube videos, but not from the Bible. Compounding the problem with naturalism as the dominant worldview of culture leads to a fundamental roadblock to evangelism.

Christian Apologetics is, then, an important tool of “pre-evangelism.” It is the work of addressing ground-clearing questions to remove obstacles to proclaiming the gospel message. It is accomplished by establishing good reasons for belief in the existence of the God who raised Jesus from the dead, reliably recorded in the New Testament.

Proper Worldview

Culture is the result of a set of beliefs that have turned into learned patterns of behaviors and the products that reinforce these beliefs and help society carry on. In other words, it is the result of a shared worldview. Too many times we see culture as the enemy of the faith, so for many Christians, the plan is to ignore what is going on in culture. Others embrace a “culture war” mentality against specific moral matters like abortion, transgenderism, and the new social justice movements. Neither of these approaches is truly biblical.

The kind of piety that isolates itself from society is found nowhere in Scripture. Paul humorously clarified in 1 Corinthians that if Christians are going to keep away from the sexually immoral, one would have to “go out of the world” (5:9–10 ESV). Such a notion is nonsensical, counterproductive to the Christian witness. Paul notes that Christians face every day spiritual war (Eph 6:10–20). As Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey note,

“The real war is a cosmic struggle between worldviews–between the Christian worldview and the various secular and spiritual worldviews arrayed against it.”[4]

We must speak to the assumptions of the modern worldview (e.g., materialism, nominalism, anti-natalism, neo-Gnosticism, LBTQ+, CRT and intersectionality, etc.). In the process, “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5b). Following Christ overturns every assumption we have about the world.

A worldview is basically,

“the framework you use to interpret the world and your place in it. It is a set of glasses that you look through to bring what is happening in the world into mental focus.”[5]

Christian apologetics is sensitive to cultural tensions between the Christian faith and the dominant culture, it may even help Christians realign their commitments with a biblical worldview. It seeks to assess competing worldview questions and their moral outcomes and offers the reasonableness of the Christian worldview centered on the work of God in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

Christian Apologetics is a tool for cultural engagement. Christians are called to proclaim and defend their faith in the face of competing worldviews. In the post-Christian culture of America, with its dominant naturalistic worldview, it seems that the Christian witness needs to shore up its ability to give a defense for our hope in the resurrected Jesus and the toppling of opposing worldviews.

Endnotes

1. William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 3^rd ed, ed. Alan G. Gomes (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003), 50.
2. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, rev. ed. (1952; repr., New York: Macmillan, 1984), 36–39.
3. Ben Witherington, III, What Have They Done With Jesus? (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 2.
4. How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1999), 17.
5. Glenn S. Sunshine, Why You Think the Way You Do (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), 13.

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