A New Apologetics is Needed

Today is June 28th which is a black letter day on the Church Kalendar, dedicated to St. Irenaeus, the second century Bishop of Lyons remembered for his Adversus Haereses, written against the Gnostic heresies of his day. Tomorrow, however, is the red letter Feast of St Peter and St Paul the Apostles, Martyrs. Both of these dates are appropriate for a brief discussion of Christian apologetics. This is a subject that ties in well with what we have been looking at last week, especially in Friday's essay about Critical Theory. The general theme of my last three essays has been the social science departments of the universities and how they have been functioning as indoctrination centres for far left ideology for much longer than many people realize. These were a continuation of an examination begun in May of how the universities have betrayed their foundations. Critical Theory, regarding which we only scratched the surface in my last essay, has from its beginnings in the Institute for Social Research in the 1930s, spread throughout the humanities, turning these disciplines into instruments for instilling the kind of left-wing doctrine now manifesting itself as "wokeness." The founders of this transdisciplinary methodology made no attempt to disguise the fact that this was their goal - it is written right in to their account of Critical Theory as being distinguished from older forms of theory by its end of transforming its object, society as a whole, rather than understanding it. While obviously there is much in Critical Theory which somebody, like myself, who regards Sir Roger Scruton's observation that "good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created" as axiomatic, must oppose on political grounds, it also poses a specific challenge to the Church in the field of apologetics. Critical Theory, like its parent ideology Marxism is inherently hostile to the orthodox Christian faith and is a particularly effective tool of the enemies of the faith in that it inoculates those steeped in it against contrary evidence by making traditional forms of presenting evidence out to be part of the system of oppression that it seeks to overthrow, thus turning any traditional evidence-based argument raised against them into confirmation of their own position. The challenge in this for the Christian apologist is how to penetrate such a wall.

The reason that apologetics is a particularly suitable topic for today and tomorrow, is that St. Peter was the one who commanded that it be done, St. Paul is the best example in Scripture of someone who actually did it, and St. Irenaeus was a notable apologist among the Church Fathers.

The first thing that needs to be said about apologetics is that it does not mean the confession of wrongdoing and imploring of forgiveness. This needs to be stated emphatically in the present cultural climate, in which left-wing mobs are forcing people to make such public demonstrations, not for their sins, but for their skin colour, ancestry, and often sex and faith. There is a place - a prominent place - for confession and seeking forgiveness in Christianity, but never for any of those things. It is our sins, that we are commanded to confess in Christianity, and it is primarily God from Whom we seek forgiveness. Secondarily, of course, we are also commanded to seek the forgiveness of those we have harmed by our personal sins. This is enjoined upon us as individual believers as part of our living out of our faith, and collectively as a body is incorporated into our Church liturgy where it occupies a prominent place. Both Morning and Evening Prayer, the daily Offices in the Book of Common Prayer, open with a General Confession followed by a clerical pronunciation of God's absolution because it is only as penitent and forgiven sinners that we can enter into God's presence to worship Him in an acceptable way. For the same reason, a General Confession and absolution precede the liturgy consecrating the elements of the Sacrament in the order of Holy Communion. Obviously, confession of sin and forgiveness are central elements of orthopraxis. They are not, what is meant by apologetics.

The apology in apologetics is the same kind of apology in Plato's dialogue of that name. An apology was the speech on behalf of the defendant in the Greek court system. In Plato's Apology - and Xenophon's for that matter - we have an account of Socrates speaking in his own defence at his trial. He gives witty answers to the actual charges against him, suggesting that Aristophanes' play of a quarter of century earlier had so prejudiced Athens against him as to lead to these proceedings. The real issue, he maintains, is that he has annoyed his fellow citizens with his constant questioning. He gives an account of why he has pursued this path and concludes by saying that if he were to be offered release on promise to cease and desist he could not give it because "the unexamined life is not worth living." Condemned to death, he accepts his fate but warns the consequences will be worse for the city than for him.

Christian apologetics is the offering of such a defence of the Christian faith. It is to be distinguished from evangelism, which is the proclamation of the basic message of the Christian faith, the Gospel, the Good News that God has given mankind a Redeemer in His Son Jesus Christ, Who died for our sins and rose again. Evangelism has as its end that those who hear would believe and be brought into the Church. Apologetics is auxiliary to evangelism, not a substitute for it or an alternative means of seeking the same end. This cannot be stressed enough because the most basic mistake an apologist can make is to try and do the work of an evangelist through apologetics. Few, if any, have ever been argued into believing.

St. Peter commanded apologetics when he wrote "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ." (1 Pet. 3:15-16)

In the book of Acts we have multiple examples of this in the life of the Apostle Paul. In his speeches to the multitude in Jerusalem in Acts 22, before Felix the governor in Acts 24, and before King Agrippa, Berenice and Festus in Acts 26, St. Paul exemplified apologetics in the meaning that most closely conforms with St. Peter's words. Here, St. Paul had been accused of wrongdoing, and gives an account of his faith, in answer to the false accusations against him. This would be one of the primary tasks of the early apologists of the first few centuries before Christianity was legalized. Frequently, the Church would be accused of all sorts of things such as cannibalism and incest, and the apologists would answer these charges and defend the faith with the end of achieving peace and legal acceptance in the Roman Empire. However, attacks on the faith also took the form of philosophical arguments against its content. Apologists would also answer such arguments, and after the legalization of Christianity this became the primary task of apologetics. Interestingly, St. Paul also provides an example of this sort of apologetics in his address to the Stoics and Epicureans at the Areopagus in Acts 17, although he was not responding to a specific philosophical objection to Christianity so much as providing a philosophical explanation that he had been invited to give by the curious.

In St. Irenaeus we find an example of yet another role of apologetics - defending the orthodox faith against attacks from within by those teaching heresy. In the Scriptures, it is St. John who practices and enjoins this aspect of apologetics in his first two epistles. St. Irenaeus, although he was a bishop in what is now France, was raised in the Church in Smyrna in what is now Turkey. The bishop of that Church was Polycarp, who had been a disciple of St. John and ordained directly by him.

Apologetics has remained an important element of Christian theology ever since. It is divided into branches differently depending upon whether the criteria is the particular element of Christianity being defended or the particular methodological approach being used.

Today, the challenge from Critical Theory is demanding an answer from Christian apologetics. The apologetics of the last two centuries has been largely addressed to arguments arising out of the various strands of Modern philosophy that have descended from the English/Scottish, French and German branches of the so-called Enlightenment. The "Postmodernism" that arose in French art and literary criticism in the same period that Critical Theory was spreading throughout the humanities has also been addressed extensively, although perhaps to a degree unnecessarily because it is its own refutation. Critical Theory has not received adequate attention from apologists and, indeed, can be said to have largely been ignored by them. Dr. Neil Shenvi and Dr. Patrick Sawyer have made Critical Theory the focus of their defence of the Christian faith, but their work seems to be only in the last year or two, and there are few others. This seems extremely odd because when you look at the tensions that have existed between orthodox Christianity and other social groups in the West in the last two to three decades the arguments of the other groups have come in a Critical Theory framework. Considering that Critical Theory had dominated the humanities and social sciences, that the West is now in the grip of a neo-Maoist cultural revolution that spouts Critical Theory-derived slogans in which there have been calls for a Kristallnacht against stained-glass depictions of our Lord and Saviour, and many within the Churches are trying to incorporate this entirely un-Christian way of thinking, we need to do better than that.

Evidential apologetics is obviously worthless for this purpose. Evidential apologetics is the kind of apologetics that argues "Christianity is true because of such-and-such proofs." "Scientific creationism" is entirely a form of this sort of apologetics approach. It is useless against Critical Theory because of the latter's built-in explanation of all evidence, inductive or deductive, brought against it as being part of the system of oppression. Presuppositional apologetics might be better, but only slightly, at least without significant revision.

What is needed is a whole new apologetical approach that counters Critical Theory at the level of its own basic claims. The idea that oppression conveys moral, intellectual, and cultural enlightenment upon the oppressed ,is one example of Critical Theory's claims, Apologetics needs to be able to counter these claims without setting off the intellectual loop that translates any counter-argument into confirmation of the Theory. It is almost tempting to borrow from Nietzsche's master-slave morality distinction, which comes from the rival branch of the post-Kantian German philosophical tradition to that in which the founders of Critical Theory were steeped, but, of course, that is as anti-Christian a line of thinking as Critical Theory itself.

There is much work to be done in laying the foundation of a counter-Critical Theory apologetical approach. It would be well to emphasize again the distinction between apologetics and evangelism. People are seldom if ever argued into believing, and those who are trapped in Critical Theory behind its anti-argument wall, are even less reachable. Reaching them must not be our priority - we must leave that to the Holy Spirit, working through the Gospel, in answer to prayer. It is to prevent others from falling into the Critical Theory mind-trap that must be the goal of our efforts.