Mere Apologetics

We are not limited to arguments appealing to human reason, but are able to engage every aspect of human nature—including human imagination, feelings, and intuition. In the following chapter, we shall consider a series of gateways to faith, assessing their significance and how each might best be used.

But in many ways, apologetics can be thought of as getting a serious conversation under way by getting our audience—whether it is a single person or a roomful of people—interested and intrigued by the deep questions we are exploring

Notice how I developed an approach that is apologetic, not evangelistic. I did not set out to convert, but to entice, intrigue, interest, and ultimately convince.

Apologetics begins the conversation; evangelism brings it to its conclusion.

I do not find that believing in God contradicts science, but rather that it gives me an intellectual and moral framework within which the successes of science may be celebrated and understood, and its limits appreciated.

C. S. Lewis once wrote: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not just because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.”

Faith offers a bigger picture of reality. It doesn’t just make sense to me; it makes sense of me as well.

Calvin then argues that a full knowledge of God, grounded in divine revelation, is able to engage these perceptions to allow them to be understood properly and to allow them to be reinterpreted, redirected, and hence ultimately fulfilled by redemption through Christ.

Philosopher John Cottingham recently offered a fine account of why the Christian belief in God is so intellectually robust and spiritually satisfying:

It provides a framework that frees us from the threats of contingency and futility that lurk beneath the surface of supposedly self-sufficient and autonomous secular ethics. It offers us not a proof but a hope that the “cave” of our human world (to use Plato’s image) is not utterly sealed and closed, but that our flickering moral intimations reflect the ultimate source of all goodness.

Christian theology is the loom that allows them to be woven together so their true significance can be appreciated and understood. While each thread may be appreciated individually, they have a greater significance when they are woven together to form a coherent and beautiful pattern.