Relevant Apologetics In The Church

January 16, 2008 @ 3:25 pm by Pressed

The church in today’s culture faces some of the greatest challenges to doing apologetics and to reaching the lost with the truth of the gospel message. The challenge begins with the startling discovery that people who claim they so strongly believe in the Bible can so easily and willingly live opposite of that belief. This is culminated in the prominent and apparent lack of integrity in the lives of evangelical born-again Christians. While the majority of Christians will claim to believe in the “truth” of God’s Word, we find that the “truth” is not actively lived out in their lives. There seems to be a disconnect between what people believe and the way they live. The church that says one thing and does another becomes impotent in evangelism and irrelevant in a society that is no longer searching for truth in facts and figures, but is instead seeking relevance for the individual through practical ideas that are effective. Apologetics is made irrelevant by those who use it to defend or prove the truth of the gospel but do not effectively live out the very truth it attempts to defend. I’ve done some research on the effect that today’s culture has had on individual evangelical Christians and what role they must play in making apologetics and evangelism relevant to people living in a postmodern world.

Apologetics can be defined as “a branch of theology having to do with the defense and proofs of Christianity.” More specifically positive apologetics deals with presenting the rationality behind the Christian faith and worldview, negative apologetics defends the Christian faith and worldview from those who attack it and contextual apologetics is an attempt to present the Christian faith and worldview to the modern-day mind set without surrendering fundamental elements of the Gospel message. Ronald Nash defines negative apologetics as removing obstacles to belief while he sees positive apologetics as providing arguments that reinforce the Christian belief. In the book, Unapologetic Apologetics, a quote by Emile Cailliet gives a notable definition to the purpose of apologetics which is to clear a path through “intellectual obstacles that would hinder people of modernity from hearing the gospel message.” Cailliet uses the example of John the Baptist preparing the way of Christ, apologetics prepares the way for the gospel to be presented in a positive and possible life changing way.

The church is facing some major roadblocks when it comes to apologetics and evangelism in today’s culture. This problem is amplified by Christians who are affected by the culture and live lives in opposition to what they claim to believe. If it is the churches duty and goal to reach the lost people in our culture, it must start by reaching the misguided Christians in our own church. Once the church affirms the truth and lives it, then it makes the gospel it defends relevant to those who are looking for answers in things that work.

There have been many hurdles to evangelism that the church has faced over time. In the early church apologetics had to speak to the overbearing worldview of Greek philosophy. All of the Greek philosophers held belief in the dualism of the soul and body in which the soul was spiritual and represented the good things while the body was physical and represented the bad things. In order to express the gospel in a way that would be effective for the lost people to hear it in that day, they had to frame the gospel in such a way that it spoke to the issues of the mind and body. Platonism became popular during this period.

The 13th century was called the golden age of medieval philosophy, or the age of Scholasticism. During this period of time in the church there was a shift from Platonism to Aristotelianism. Aquinas denied any basic conflict between faith and reason and thought that reason would lead people to great spiritual truth. Apologetics began to speak in an age of reason and of course had to be adapted to its environment. He was opposed by Bonaventure and Scotus who argued that “reason was limited in its ability to penetrate matters of faith” which meant that philosophy and theology must be separated.

Then as the churched moved into the age of rationalism you see several major church apologists rise up. Martin Luther, a key leader in the reformation, was opposed to Aristotelianism and rationalism. He believed that reason was evil because it was always practiced by someone who is under a fallen will. Calvin, however, believed reason could lead to a natural knowledge of God, just not to a saving knowledge. In these days, apologetics and evangelism had to be done in the light of reason and rationalism.

The church then moved into the modern era where logic and the search for truth continued to be the major theme which developed out of the Renaissance and Enlightenment period. This was a period of time that “attempted to establish culture and life on a universal and objective foundation.” It was the hope of the modern era that humans could understand the world and improve their conditions through reason by accessing absolute truth. The church in the modern age claimed universally acceptable grounds for obtaining knowledge and truth. They believed truth could be known and through the apologetics of the day they attempted to share the truth of the gospel as being an absolute truth that is knowable by all.

The most resent development in our culture is what Ronald Nash considers “a rejection of modern thought” called postmodernism. This new thought completely rejects any claims of realty or truth and the postmodern has absolutely no need for logic. The only thing left is the self and it is within the self that you will find the source of all truth and reality. It doesn’t matter what you choose, the only important thing is that you have the right to choose. Everything, including truth, is relative to the individual. Language itself is relative to those who are constantly interpreting it. Anything can be made to sound good or bad by simply re-describing it using language. There is no universal absolute or objective truth that everyone is subject to, instead all truth is found within the individual self. This has created what we call “political correctness” and “the result is the fragmented, chaotic somewhat arbitrary amalgamation of multiple selves, none with the Enlightenment’s claims to universality.”

In the book The closing of the American Mind, a University of Chicago philosopher, Allen Bloom, explains the self in today’s culture as seeking after its own desire. Virtue or any other thing that attempts to overcome or pervert desire is rejected or criticized. Bloom says, “Our desire becomes a kind of oracle we consult; it is now the last word, while in the past it was the questionable and dangerous part of us.” Virtue, truth, or anything that would impede the freedom of the individual self is rejected in postmodernism and the result is relativism. Bloom made the statement that “there is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: Almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.”

Our culture shapes who we are as people and this begins to seep into the church. One of the best ways to look at how culture affects our church today is to look at our teenagers. Josh McDowell has recently been on a pod-cast with Dr. Richard Land that discusses some of these very issues. The Barna research group and McDowell’s organization, Beyond Belief, have recently joined forces in producing polls regarding teenagers and what they believe about truth. McDowell shared with Dr. Richard Land that 39% of professing born-again, evangelical Christian teenagers do not believe that the Bible is the Word of God. 51% do not believe that the resurrection is true, 63% do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God, 65% do not believe Satan is real, 68% do not believe that the Holy Spirit is real, and 63% of professing born-again, evangelical Christian teenagers believe there is no way to tell if Christianity is true. McDowell goes on to say that their study has shown that in 1991 52% of born-again, evangelical Christian teenagers did not believe in absolute truth. In 1994 the number went up to 62%, in 1999 it went up to 78%, and only two months after the world trade center incident, in 2001, the number jumped to 91% of professing born-again, evangelical Christian teenagers do not believe in absolute truth. Culture has had a greater impact on our teens than the church and their parents.

While the affect of culture and postmodernism in our church is quite evident in our young people, there is still evidence of its affect on the born-again, evangelical adults as well. Douglas Webster makes the observation that “Heavily influenced by radical pluralism, self-gratifying individualism and relativism, we have lost our consciousness of personal sin.” Josh McDowell makes the claim that our behavior is driven by our values and our values are formed by our beliefs which explains how those who do not believe in the total absolute truth of the Word of God can form relative values that allow them to live in ways contrary to Christianity, but what about those people who truly believe in the Word of God and still do not behave in a way that confirms that belief? It’s not that all Christians are forsaking the truth of the Word of God, but the truth is not affecting Christians in such a way that it has any bearing at all on how they live their lives.

Some kind of disconnect has developed between the religious world and the secular world and some how many Christians believe in Biblical truth and yet they don’t live it in any way in their life. Nancy Pearcey addresses this issue in her book Total Truth. According to Pearcey, there are many Christians today who have divided minds, in that they have “absorbed the fact/value, public/private dichotomy, restricting their faith to religious sphere while adopting whatever views are current in their professional or social circles.” It is almost as if Christians have become split personalities. While at the church doing religious things they can have one mind-set and while out in the world doing secular things they can have another mind-set, their truth is relative to their situation and surroundings. According to Pearcey these are Christians who lack a Christian worldview; they don’t see how Christianity can function as “a system of truth that applies to social issues, history, politics, anthropology, and all the other subjects areas.” Allen Bloom found desire to be the individual’s ultimate goal and it seems to be the culprit here as Christians morph into their desired mindsets in their different surroundings. It is this same self-centered, relativistic way of thinking that Douglas Webster points out when he describes Christians as people who think they deserve love, freedom, friendships, pleasure, and happiness. The desire for holiness is not only lost in the church, it can even be looked down upon as if people are trying to have a “holier than thou” attitude. Any law, even God’s law, that is absolute and restrictive to an individuals life, even a Christian who believes the Bible, is frowned upon and disputed.

The leaky culture that has dripped its way into the center of the church has not come without its consequences. Christians who have grabbed on to this relativistic view of the world and others who have unknowingly stumbled into it have made themselves virtually useless and irrelevant when it comes to evangelism and apologetics to the postmodern world. James gives an insightful message on this when he says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” (James 1:22) He also claims that faith without deeds is useless. Faith and action work together, and our faith in God and believe in his Word should compel us to do what is right, and if it doesn’t it is useless and dead according to James. Christians are deceiving themselves and living a faith that is worthless when they claim belief in the Word of God and have no evidence of it in their lives. The fact that Christians and the church have taken on some postmodern tendencies and have developed some predisposition towards relativism is the very thing that has discredited their evangelism and ability to affectively do apologetics in the postmodern world.

Postmodernism and its affect on culture has made truth relative and thus it has made all truth equal. The question we are left with is “how can you present truth in a culture where all truth is equal?” As evangelism and Christian apologetics has had to adapt to its environment throughout the centuries in the church, once again we find it having to frame itself in a way that is relevant and effective in the culture of our day. The problem is that postmodernism has no use for logic and does not seek truth in facts. To declare Biblical facts and doctrinal truths to a postmodern thinker is virtually useless if it is not accompanied by action. Postmodernism in its very premise is pragmatic. The postmodern thinker will take a second look at something if it is practical and effective because they look at what works and they are skeptical of what doesn’t. Christians don’t need to come out of the church, guns blazing, and declare Biblical doctrines as being true to people who are postmodern thinkers, but we first must persuade our audience that Christianity has something important to say and only then do we gain their right to suggest to them that it might be true. How is it that we first persuade them that Christianity might have something to offer? We have to show them something that is practical, we have to show them a Christianity that works! Postmodern Christians who do not live with integrity disqualify themselves from doing apologetics and evangelism in that they do not live what they say they believe and therefore they discredit Christianity as being something that is ineffective. To the postmodern it is obvious that Christianity doesn’t work if it isn’t lived out in your life, and in that case it deserves immediate skepticism and disbelief. The reason they adapt to relativism is because they seek to find things that work for the individual and to the Christian who claims belief in the Bible but does not live it, it is quite obvious that Christianity doesn’t really work for them.

One of the first steps in making apologetics relevant to the postmodern is to start making apologetics relevant within the church. Believers must start the process within themselves. While it is obvious that we want affirmation and approval in the church, according to Webster, what we need is “repentance and deliverance.” We must not only be people who Love God and trust in His Word, we must also be people who live by it. Once the truth we attempt to prove and defend becomes the truth that we actually live out in our lives, only then will it make apologetics and evangelism relevant. Christians must develop a Christian worldview that affectively allows God to touch each part of their life, both the religious and secular settings. There is an excellent quote in the book Christian Apologetics in a Postmodern World. It says, if we “trivialize even the smallest item in God’s Law we will only have trivialized ourselves, but take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom.”

God’s truth becomes irrelevant when we make it trivial. It could be this trivialization of God’s truth among the adults that has made it a matter of relativity for the teenagers. When they don’t see it being lived out in the lives of the adults in the church and in their own parents then it is obvious that the truth these adult Christians proclaim is not all that important. To reach them we must do so not only with word but in deed. McDowell shares his theory that another reason the church has become so susceptible to the relative tendencies of our culture is because of the split between the conservative and liberal groups. The liberals took with them relationships without truth and the conservatives took with them truth without relationships. The truth of God’s word will be further revealed to our young people and to those in our culture when we are able to reach them in a way that is relevant to their lives. When we relate to them with not only the message, but also with the life that proves the message as being affective and worth while we open the doors for apologetics and evangelism to be able to do what they are supposed to do.

In conclusion, the church is facing some major roadblocks when it comes to apologetics and evangelism in today’s culture. This problem is amplified by Christians who are affected by the culture and live lives in opposition to what they claim to believe. If it is the churches duty and goal to reach the lost people in our culture, it must start by reaching the misguided Christians in our own church. Once the church affirms the truth and lives it, then it makes the gospel it defends relevant to those who are looking for answers in things that work. While I do not answer all the questions, and while this is not an exhaustive discussion of the broad topic of postmodern culture and its affect on our church, I do think there is a clear issue that needs attention in the church today, and that is integrity. If Christians believe in absolute truth but do not live it, then why would they expect others to believe in a truth that isn’t effective or life changing as it claims to be? It is not only in our words, but in our deeds that we will find the ability to present the message of the gospel as an effective way of living that not only works, but is far superior to all other ways of life.

References used in the writing of this post:

1. Webster’s New World Dictionary, 1991 ed. Pg. 64

2. Steve Lemke. Unapologetic Apologetics. Summer 2005 edition. 1993. Pg. 13

3. Ronald Nash. Faith and Reason (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 14-15

4. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright 2005, Columbia University Press, available from http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0860967.html; Internet, accessed 01 August 2005.

5. Timothy Phillips & Dennis L. Okholm, eds., Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World.
(Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1995), 12.

6. Ronald Nash. Life’s Ultimate Questions. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1999) 233.

7. Allen Bloom. The Closing of the American Mind. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.) 175.
Josh McDowell & Richard Land, Beyond Belief, excerpts and statistics by Josh McDowell, pod-cast, for Faith & Family, 2005.

8. Nancy Pearcey. Total Truth. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2004) 32-33.

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