The Rev. Jeffrey D. Lang, minister at The First Presbyterian Church of Glendale, Ohio
Every Christian is called to offer a witness to their religious faith. The Apostle Peter framed the matter this way: “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” (1 Peter 3:15, NKJV) One application of that scriptural principle is called apologetics. Apologetics “is the discipline that deals with a rational defense of the Christian faith whether the challenges come from inside or outside the church.”1
Humans are rational beings. Both Christians and non-Christians use reason. They differ in how they weigh the evidence and in the conclusions they reach.
Methodist theologian L. Harold DeWolf vividly framed the issue this way: “A revelation must be made to a rational being . . . If God wished to reveal Himself or any truth to a stone He would have first to endow the stone with a reasoning mind.”2
In Classical Apologetics, John Gerstner, Arthur Lindsley, and R.C. Sproul grant that “the question of common ground . . . is a controversial and complex one,” but they argue that the reliability of sense perception, the law of non-contradiction, and the principle of causality are starting points shared with non-Christians. One cannot reason coherently without them.3
There are compelling, and not merely probable, reasons the Christian may offer for belief in God. Among those reasons are the cosmological (the universe requires a cause beyond itself), ontological (God, by definition, cannot fail to exist), and teleological (the order and design of the world point to a Designer) arguments. Moving beyond those, the historical reliability of the New Testament and the evidence for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus support receiving the Bible as authoritative revelation. Underlying every argument, the laws of logic and the reliability of the senses provide common ground from which to weigh claims and counterclaims.
To be “always ready” may involve little more than speaking from one’s own experience as a Christian: the conviction of God’s reality and love, the salvation experienced by trusting in Jesus Christ, or the inspiration to live into his example. Or it may extend to offering reasons for the existence of God, the possibility of miracles, the inspiration of Scripture, or the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ as historical facts. In any event, the entirety of the apologetic enterprise, offered “with meekness and fear,” should be motivated by love toward God and neighbor. It should point people to the God who “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, NKJV).
- Norman L. Geisler, “What Is Apologetics and Why Do We Need It?” in The Harvest Handbook of Apologetics, ed. Joseph M. Holden (Eugene: Harvest House, 2018), p. 21. ↩︎
- L. Harold DeWolf, A Theology of the Living Church (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), p. 33. ↩︎
- John Gerstner, Arthur Lindsley, and R.C. Sproul, Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), p. 70, cf. pp. 71-72. ↩︎
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.