Value in apologetics?

Prob­a­bly every­one (or mostly every­one) who’s been inter­ested in apolo­get­ics for any amount of time has heard the fol­low­ing: peo­ple won’t believe in Jesus because of argu­ments, they are use­less! Well, I’ve cer­tainly heard the com­ment, any­way. What is inter­est­ing about it, is that it’s lim­ited in scope. It ignores the fact that there are many ways to do evan­ge­lism, and there are many “steps” in evan­ge­lism. I’ve been read­ing William Lane Craig’s On Guard, and he makes a few obser­va­tions that I think it would be prof­itable to share (or at least share the main one).

Craig points out (cor­rectly) that there is a “cul­ture war” going on in the West, and that this is rel­e­vant to the gospel because the gospel is “never heard in iso­la­tion” (p. 17). Apolo­get­ics has the abil­ity to make peo­ple more recep­tive to the gospel. Con­sider the fol­low­ing extract:

A per­son who has been raised in a cul­ture that is sym­pa­thetic to the Chris­t­ian faith will be open to the gospel in a way that a per­son brought up in a sec­u­lar cul­ture will not. For a per­son who is thor­oughly sec­u­lar­ized, you may as well tell him to believe in fairies or lep­rechauns as in Jesus Christ! That’s how absurd the mes­sage of Christ will seem to him.

To see the influ­enced of cul­ture on your own think­ing, imag­ine what you would think if a Hindu devo­tee of the Hare Krishna move­ment, with his shaved head and saf­fron robe, approached you at the air­port or shop­ping mall, offer­ing you a flower and invit­ing you to become a fol­lower of Krishna. Such an invi­ta­tion would likely strike you as bizarre, freak­ish, maybe even a bit funny. But think how dif­fer­ently some­one in Delhi, India, would react if he were approached by such a per­son! Hav­ing been raised in a Hindu cul­ture, he might take such an invi­ta­tion very seriously(p.17).

And Craig is exactly right, even if apolo­get­ics is not the biggest “soul win­ning” method, it is a tool on the front lines, and which opens the way for other meth­ods of evan­ge­lism. This apolo­get­ics isn’t just argu­ments, it is also the way we live our lives. I like the way Peter Kreeft put it:

An argu­ment in apolo­get­ics, when actu­ally used in dia­logue, is an exten­sion of the arguer. The arguer’s tone, sin­cer­ity, care, con­cern, lis­ten­ing, and respect mat­ter as much as his or her logic — prob­a­bly more. The world was won for Christ not by argu­ments but by sanc­tity: “What you are speaks so loud, I can hardly hear what you say (Pocket Hand­book of Chris­t­ian Apologetics).

Some­one com­ing to Christ isn’t usu­ally (or ever?) the result of a one time encounter, or action. There are many peo­ple involved, many things involved. To object to apolo­get­ics on the basis that “no one is won by argu­ments” just seems to miss the big­ger picture.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: “Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics” by Dou­glas Groothuis
2. Inter­view with Dr. Dou­glas Groothuis on his upcom­ing book, “Chris­t­ian Apologetics”