Apologetics

I recently attended a conference on apologetics in Charlotte, NC. In attendance guys like Norm Geisler, Gary Habermas, Chuck Colson, Josh McDowell, Erwin Lutzer, and even Dinesh D'Souza. Getting to see D'Souza was quite a treat. He's the author of the book What's So Great about Christianity, which is hot off the presses and selling big. In this book D'Souza is attacking the New Atheists, namely Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. What so interesting about D'Souza is that he's coming neither from a critical biblical background, like Habermas, nor from popular Christian apologetics, like, well, the rest of them. He's really a writer/debater in politics. He was definitely the best orator and he somehow packed roughly the equivalent of a basic undergrad apologetics course into about 40 minutes and still kept 4000 people interested. Not small feat to be sure.

But before I get off on a tangent, I am wondering if there is anyone else out there that is sensing a fundamental change in apologetics. I'm sure that if we look close enough, we can see change. Apologetics is inherently a work of response, response to culture and to science. It is, in a sense, impossible to see apologetics as a fixed or static science. It's admittedly ad hoc and what was the hot topic of yesteryear is not necessarily all that important nowadays. But I'm talking about a different type of change. At the conference, it was striking how little apologetics was discussed or taught on any level of content. I do not mean to say that the sessions were trivial, but to say that it seemed that most people were concerned with other things than new arguments. I would have to say that the conference was seemingly centered, in the sessions I personally attended, on the importance of relationships. Josh McDowell, especially, put forth a strong statement of the thesis that people don't care how much you know, unless they know how much you care. Now, anyone at Liberty, or any other seminary, has certainly heard this pithy statement more than enough times, but somehow when McDowell said it, I was sure he meant it.

What is seemingly implicit in this admission is that apologetics isn't, in the big picture, working. People seem to be infinitely capable of believing what they want in the face of good evidence to the contrary. I'm sure we've all dealt with people who are plagued with perennial doubts. They think, "If I can just get the doctrine of creation straight, I'll be sure." But, of course, they never get it straight, and while they're on the fence they pick up 20 or so other problems which must be answered in their minds before they'll commit to Christ. There are even, surely, people who do not have any good reasons for not believing. There are those non-committal atheists just as there are such Christians. Thus, the question I ask when I'm thinking about apologetics is, "Why even bother?" There is an elusive element in the conversion process, we'll call it the x-factor, which is that which breaks the camel's back, so-to-speak. The x-factor is that which separates those who commit to Christ from those who don't. I admit my Calvinism, so I'm not going to really "go there." But I am willing to propose a discussion in which we think about just what the x-factor is NOT. It seems that if we concede that relationships are more important than arguments, we're saying something about the x-factor here. I guess that the point is that the x-factor is not merely cognitive, but also at least somewhat emotional. McDowell seemed to be saying that it is the emotional tie that we have with people which allows us to make real progress in bringing people closer to Christ or farther from apathy. When we couple this message with the fact that I didn't more than one actual apologetic argument at the conference (I didn't attend all sessions however). Rather, most talks were on methodology. We can make two conclusions from this: either we have all the arguments we need and we just need to learn how to preface them, or the arguments aren't what is really important. The latter seems to be more true.

Here, I feel as though I need to explain a bit. The powerful thing for me is that there ARE arguments that the audience would have benefited to hear. One that comes to mind is Alvin Plantinga's justification of exclusivism. This would have been perhaps more beneficial devotionally than even as preparation for apologetics. There are plenty of new versions, revisions, etc. of the discussions that it was actually striking that the only message that I heard devoted to such an argument was Habermas' talk on the resurrection. The rest of the talks seemed to deal with doubt and relationship building. If you merely look at the discussions this year versus those of the last conference, the difference is striking. This might just be a fluke, but then again it might be a meaningful reaction.

I would guess that the Christian apologetic community as a whole is reeling and trying to figure out how to deal with these New Atheists. They're different from what we're used to. They are making bold claims and aren't really founding much of it on argumentation. The Atheists are really giving a cultural commentary with bits of conclusions placed sporadically. Many of these ideas are argued for in philosophy, but none of these new Atheists are philosophers (Harris has a BA in philosophy). They really just seem happy to preach to their choir of God-haters, jumping to conclusions in the most stylistic way possible. And they're good at it. The numbers on their book sales don't lie. But why might they present a new problem for apologetics if they are long on style but low on content? Aren't atheists supposed to be the smart ones? Isn't somebody holding these guys accountable? Maybe, but nobody's really doing anything about them from the atheistic side. So, what were left with is the problem of trying to fight celebrity with truth, and as we have seen in the recent past in politics, this battle is hard to fight. If there were any substance to their work, then we could attack that, but there isn't. We could put a guy like Habermas up against anyone of these guys and they would be utterly unable to defeat his argument, yet they can "win" by being funny in the eyes of the audience. We seem to think that if we can win the minds of american college students, we can win their hearts. But, and this is an important revelation, the minds of american college students aren't up for sale. Their minds follow their hearts, and right now their hearts are set against God. This is my best guess for the change I sensed, along with others, at the apologetics conference.

But, and this is really just vanity and speculation, winning peoples hearts is not really a viable goal for the Church either. How might we achieve this goal? Through celebrity? No. Through meeting felt needs? This is good, but also ineffective. Really, I could go on and on but there is no formula which always causes a heart to change. We all know this, if only for the fact that everyone is unique and so every heart resists God in different ways. In my opinion, it is only the Holy Spirit that can change a heart. We must do evangelism God's way if we want the Holy Spirit to work in our efforts, for he does not have to. This is why I have committed myself to a ministry of example and a heart of submission and humility. God is the only real evangelist, and I wonder how I ever thought it could be me.