Honest Apologetics

In the introduction to Jesus through the Centuries, Jaroslav Pelikan writes: “For each age, the life and teachings of Jesus represented an answer (or, more often the answer) to the most fundamental questions of human existence and of human destiny, and it was to the figure of Jesus as set forth in the Gospels that those questions were addressed”[1]. While Scripture tells us that Jesus is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), Pelikan’s book traces how, throughout history, the church presented the life and teachings of Jesus in dialogue with the ways in which each age asked those fundamental questions. It is an illustration for how the church today can do the same work: actively reforming and reframing our proclamation of the gospel, and our defense of it, so that we are giving answers that match the age in which we live. Apologetics in the 2020s will require us to rightly discern the ways in which the world around us raises questions about Christianity, and then find ways to show how the gospel gives the most compelling and beautiful answer to those questions.

Before we try to give an answer for the hope that is within us (1 Peter 3:15), we have to be sure that we listen well so we can fully understand the question that is being asked. Clergy often have to listen carefully when asked a question about Christianity or the Bible, because so often there is a question underneath the question. The person asking about how God could possibly instruct Abraham to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22 may be asking from a place of simple curiosity, or they could be struggling with how to reconcile the possibility of a loving God with their own experience of abuse at the hands of a parent. A question about what the Bible teaches about God’s design for human sexuality is as much a question about how to be a good neighbor to the gay couple next door as it is a question about hermeneutics and exegesis.

Listening well is a way in which we fulfill the second great commandment, to love our neighbor as ourselves. Questions about Christianity, or even accusations and criticisms of Christianity, never come without context. If we are answering questions of fundamental importance, questions about what it means to be human and to be in relationship with a loving God, then apologetics can never be simply an exercise in logic. Rather than answering questions in the abstract, apologetics has to answer questions mindful of the individual person who is asking.

Listening well means that we start with the assumption that questions are worth asking. Perceived attacks on Christianity often don’t originate from purely evil motives, but from misguided attempts to direct towards what is good. As Virgil points out to Dante in the central cantos of the Divine Comedy, while sin can come from loving the wrong thing, it often is the product of loving a good thing in the wrong way (too much or too little)[2]. Properly understanding the questions posed to us as Christians means that we learn to hear the good that is being appealed to. For instance, many progressive social justice movements may not share our understanding of what God has intended for human sexuality. But they are often founded on an ideal that we share: that every human being has dignity and is worthy of respect. As those who proclaim that every human is made in the image of God, we have a solid foundation upon which to talk about what it looks like to take those who are downtrodden and marginalized and say that God sees them and loves them as an image bearer.

By looking for the underlying good that is appealed to in the cultural and political currents that end up flowing contrary to the Gospel, we can start our apologetics from a posture of love. And, as Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 13, in every endeavor (including our apologetics), love must be the foundation. If speaking the truth were always loving, then Paul would not have had to tell the church in Ephesus to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). And to prepare our congregations to speak the truth in love, we must start by attentively listening to the question being asked, and then respond with honesty. Honesty, of course, will include holding fast to truths of Christian doctrine without compromise. But there are two important ways I think we might exhort greater honesty in our apologetics: honesty about complexity, and honesty about ourselves.

Acknowledging complexity is increasingly rare. Attention spans are growing shorter and shorter, and ideas are increasingly presented via memes and clips, and so our cultural discourse on important issues is growing less and less complex. The primary venue for our marketplace of ideas – the internet – is a placeless place where simplicity and cruelty are incentivized. Here is how it plays out: the algorithms that dictate what shows up when we log in reward anger, and so we are increasingly fed content of those who agree with us and are upset about the same things. They also reward speed, because the faster you scroll on to a new post the more advertisements can be put in front of you. As a result, by design, we are encouraged to share ideas that elicit anger, and do so with the quickest turnover. Any time our online discourse is slow and thoughtful, it is going against the grain of how the platforms are designed. As long as our interactions with others takes place primarily online, our society is being trained to think in simple and repeatable ideas.

The problem is that answers to questions of fundamental importance can’t be reduced to a 25 word social media image. Honest apologetics isn’t full of mic drop moments. It recognizes that the tough questions are tough for a reason. Classic apologetics questions, like wrestling with the problem of evil or the existence of God, can be meme-ified if we want. We can try to reduce profound truths to platitudes and slogans. And those slogans might get traction and be shared widely if we are pithy and creative enough. But a simple answer to a complex question is an insufficient answer. The questions asked of us are worth asking, because they deal with matters of utmost importance. And if they are worth asking, then they deserve thoughtful and careful responses. But careful responses, unfortunately, rarely get reposted and become viral.

Embracing complexity is critical not just for giving honest answers to questions asked by those outside the church, but also for the Christians we are equipping to answer them. Because when we hand our congregations an apologetic constructed of straw men, overly simplified answers to complex questions, we are winning battles in order to lose the war. At some point they will face a challenge that knocks the straw man down. I have been involved in youth ministry for almost two decades, and over the years it has become clear to me that if I try to load up high school seniors with answers to every atheist challenge to Christianity that they might hear, I will be sending them out to fail. Because what I can reasonably expect them to remember and internalize will not be enough to answer every difficult question that can be brought up. You don’t gain stability from the storm by building lots of structures quickly. You do so by building structures well.

That doesn’t mean that we can’t give any answers at all. But the manner in which we give our answers has to show that underneath what we are saying there is a treasury of deeper and more thoughtful responses that are available for those who are interested. It is just like when we preach. Typically, after studying the texts in the lectionary, we don’t say everything we know or have learned in our study. Instead, we distill down what is most important and communicate what needs to be heard. But hopefully our congregations understand that there is more to it than what we say on a Sunday morning. In the same way, the way we teach about contemporary issues has to make it clear that the topics themselves are complex and worth diving into for those who are interested. We have to point them in the direction of thinkers who were willing to listen well and lovingly to critics, and lovingly respond with thoughtful responses.

In order to do this, the clergy need to take seriously our responsibility to diligently understand both our own faith and the world around us. We must either be well informed enough on contemporary topics that we can teach on them, or know who has done the hard work to wrestle with these issues and refer out. None of us have the time to read widely on every cultural and theological issue facing the church today. But if our people are looking for answers, if we want our people to be able to give answers to a world that is looking for them, we have to know how to help them get there. That means we ourselves resist the temptation to form our own opinions based on sound bites and memes. It means we have to read broadly and think deeply about contemporary issues, and then pray to properly love our neighbors so we can speak truth in love.

I once heard a professor lament that you can often tell when a pastor went to seminary, because it’ll match the most recent publishing date from the books on their shelf. Not all of us need to be academics, but we can’t offer what we do not ourselves have. For our congregations to be equipped to respond to the questions asked of them, the clergy need to be lifelong learners. Then we will have what we need to model a thoughtful and loving apologetic, one that is non anxious and non-defensive. An apologetic that listens well and answers questions with nuance and care, not one with quick quotes meant to win arguments.

But in addition to being honest about the complexity of the questions that we face, it is also crucial that we are honest about ourselves – honest about the church. In Jesus Through the Centuries, Pelikan examines each successive time period in church history through the classic theological lens of God as the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. It seems that if we are really listening well to the questions and challenges that the world is asking, the questions underneath the questions, then we would hear that many seekers and skeptics alike are not first and foremost wondering if Christian propositional truths like the resurrection of Jesus are true. They are wondering whether or not God, and more importantly the church, can be good. Not a week goes by that there isn’t some national news coverage of a pastor who has abused someone in their congregation. Anecdotally, it seems that almost everyone you meet is at most two degrees of separation from church abuse of some kind. The proliferation of those who identify as “nones” and those who are deconstructing their faith is far less as a result of new ideas that undercut timeless truths, and far more a result of young men and women discovering hypocrisy in the church that has rattled who they believed their spiritual leaders to be. And so the questions we are asked may sound like they are about Jesus or the Bible, but many are simply wondering if they can trust the church.

An honest apologetic requires us to not gloss over abuse. It means that we can’t say that “our church is one of the good ones”, or offer cheap grace to abusive pastors by saying “there but the grace of God go I.” Jesus is good, but His church’s reputation is currently in disrepair. An honest apologetic means that we properly lament that churches and pastors have not lived up to the calling that we have been given. It means taking seriously the need to reform and change, and being willing to see just how far and extensive that reform might have to go. It might mean that before we take public stands on contemporary moral issues, we first spend more time addressing the log in our own eye. Pretending that we are healthier than we are will not convince those on the outside who see a slow parade of pastors heading to jail for their crimes. It will only erode the trust our own people have, and compound our need for repentance in the future.

Honesty and vulnerability in this manner might feel uncomfortable, but a look throughout church history can help assuage our fears. The legacy of the church is full of both saints and sinners alike, and God has been faithful through it all. The epistles were written to churches that needed correction for their moral (1 Corinthians) and theological (Galatians) failures. The ecumenical councils were called to define and root out heresy within the church. The Reformation was sparked by churches that needed to reform their doctrines and their practice. Who are we to suggest that we are without any need for reform ourselves? I do not believe that the ACNA is wrong in our theological distinctives and interpretation of Scripture, but our faith doesn’t rest on our those theological distinctives or interpretation of Scripture but on Jesus Christ, the cornerstone of our faith. Our good theology will not save us – and it is not the thing we commend or preach to a dying world.

Which is where all of our apologetics must ultimately find their grounding. The forms and structures of our answers for the hope that we have are means, not ends. We must engage in apologetics by loving our neighbors, listening well to them, and responding honestly, both about the complexity of the fundamental questions we all wrestle with and the failures of the church to live up to its calling. But at its core all apologetics should simply be an invitation to taste and see that the Lord is good. Like Peter, confused and unsure of how to understand what Jesus said about his body and blood, we can keep our focus where it belongs, saying “to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68-69). Let us commend our congregations to do likewise. And then, grounded in the love of Christ, we can give an answer for the hope we have, speaking the truth in love.

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries (Cambridge: Yale University Press, 1999), 2.

[2] Dante Allegherei, Purgatorio, Cantos 17-18.