I am a Sorry Christian
Most people haven’t heard of apologetics. It sounds like a sorry task (excuse the pun) to try to use human reason to prove Christianity. To ‘apologise’ in this sense is not to be sorry for Christian truth, but to give a rational defense in the face of opposition.
a·pol·o·get·ics (n) - The branch of theology that is concerned with defending or proving the truth of Christian doctrines.
When questions arise such as “How do we know God exists?” or “How can a powerful, loving God allow suffering?” or “Why can we trust the New Testament documents?” then the practice of apologetics comes into play.
To use an illustration of Rob’s – apologetics is one of the quivers in the bow of evangelism. Rational argument will never prove the gospel, will never convince someone who wants to ignore God, and can never – without the Holy Spirit doing his work – convert anyone to Christianity. However, just like personal testimonies or hospitality or engaging with people on social issues, apologetics can be an opportunity to get stuck into communicating the gospel with people and breaking down barriers to them accepting it.
One particular reason why we as university students should engage in apologetics is the intellectual, academic environment that we exist in.
One common misconception of Christianity is that faith is actually opposed to reason, as if you can only have one rather than the other. We Christians can be guilty of propagating the same myth when we excuse gaps in our understanding of Christianity as things about which ‘we just have to have faith.’
And thus Christianity is seen as an easy target for Physics lecturers who claim that “there’s no room left in the laws of physics for God to exist”, for Biology lecturers to claim that the theory of evolution excludes the Creator, for Environmental Science lecturers to blame the Judeo-Christian understanding of ‘the dominion of man’ for our environmental problems, for Sociologist lecturers to call Christianity ‘patriarchal’ and ‘oppressive of women’.
In my Philosophy class this semester we’ll be looking at Body, Mind and Persons, including such topics as Free Will and Determinism, Sexual Ethics and Living The Good Life. Surely these are topics that Christianity can contribute too, but we seem to be excluded from the debate. Can anyone explain why this is?
And so, part of worshipping God with all our MINDS will involve some hard intellectual work. To sort out a doctrine of suffering, to understanding the relationship between science and Christianity, to engage intelligibly with other religions and worldviews.
Part of the process of me being converted to Christianity included an understanding of the historical fact of the resurrection. My bible study leader pointed out the historical evidence that all but one of the apostles died proclaiming a risen Christ. All they had to do to avoid death was to produce his dead body, or say that they were all making it up for power or for money or…
But they died professing a risen Christ.
In TEAM we will be running a course on apologetics called “Shields Up: Giving a defense for the gospel.” Engage your mind and prepare to really delve into these issues and consider how to increase our ability to proclaim the gospel of the risen Christ.
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