Does God need an excuse? Remarks on apologetics and the refining fire of aggresive atheism.

Raphael: Paul in Athens

"And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them." (Zech. 13:9)

In my studies of American and global Christianities I've come across a phenomenon that is rather strange to my Danish background: Apologetics. The word means giving excuses for or defending something, and refers to the attempt to render Christianity 'reasonable' for the human intellect.

Apologists like William Lane Craig, Ravi Zacharias, and Alvin Plantinga are tremendously popular on YouTube, and people even do philosophy courses in these things. In Europe (Denmark at least) most Christians do nothing of that kind. Here most people have agreed for centuries, believers and skeptics alike, that faith and reason are two quite different things.

Ravi Zacharias has said that "apologetics is the seasoning, the Gospel the main dish". This is only partly right. Rather, apologetics is a poisonous (though tasty) fruit (from some weird tree, Gen 2:19) against which the only effective antidote is the Gospel. This takes some explanation.

Apologetics mostly revolves around three basic types of arguments: First there is the philosophical arguments. Here the apologist uses (largely outdated, pre-modern) philosophy to argue for the existence of God, for example that since everything has a cause, then there must be a first cause, God. Then there is the moral arguments. According to these there can be no moral standards if there is no lawgiver. So if we believe that such standards exist, then we should also accept the existence of God. Finally there is the historical argument. This claims that the most simple explanation, that the early Christians believed in the resurrection is, that it actually happened.

But all these arguments are dubious indeed. The philosophical argument assumes that the human intellect can actually say something about God. The moral argument makes us judges of what God should think is right and wrong, rather than the other way around. And the historical argument makes our faith rest on uncertain historical facts.

Apologetics means eating from the tree with knowledge of good and evil, once again. And again. The apologists start with our ideas of what is right and wrong, what is reasonable and what is not. And then they fit God and the Gospel into that scheme. Such thinking always breaks the radical Christian distinction between Creator and creation. Why? Because it makes God depend on what we know, see, feel, think and perceive.

There is a radical divide between God and the world, which makes all attempts to prove the rationality of Christianity vain. Only when God reveals Himself do we know Him. And He does that in Christ. This is why Christian thinking must start with Christ, nothing else. Christ is not the 'first principle' of philosophy, not a moral principle. God always talk to a specific situation, to specific people, you and me. And we'd better listen. We need to turn things on their head: The gospel is not the answer to all our questions, but the question to all our answers: Jesus does not come with answers to our questions about our life. Jesus is not a solution to all our small everyday problems.

Jesus is the one big question mark to all of our existence, not the other way around: "Who do you say I am?" (Luk 9:20). We need to affirm that Christianity is Christ, nothing more, nothing less, and that only He has the right to ask questions. The apologists might, of course, be good Christians (whatever that is), we can't and shouldn't judge. But their teaching is certainly not: At its worst, apologetics is blasphemy. It substitutes knowledge for faith, the human intellect for God's revelation.

This is why we should be happy with the aggressive atheism of the so-called New Atheists (though it is far less clever than the classical atheism of, e.g., Marx, Nietzsche and Freud). The attacks from Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris and who ever, are not a 'threat' to Christianity, but a challenge, that forces us to find a still more sincere approach to science, morality and culture. Christian anarchists in particular should be happy with this, since the attacks are often mounted against the fusion of theology with conservative moralism, nationalism and similar. What the Atheists attack is very often not Christianity, but Christendom.

Maybe aggressive atheism is God's judgment over Christians that will not distinguish between the Gospel and the wisdom of this world. Like a fire it burns off the chaff of Pagan thinking that has crept into Christianity. It is a fire that must be extinguished, however. Aggresive atheism cannot save us, but only clear the construction site, so that God can build up. But God builds up with the Gospel, not with pseudo-scientifical apologetics.

But what about 1 Pet 3:15, you may ask?

"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have."

The reason for our hope is not some philosophical idea, or a superior moral attitude. When a Christian gives an account for the hope (s)he has, it should be as witnessing, not as apology. God does not need excuses. Thus, let's conclude with some words on 'the wise Solomon' from Gregory of Nazianzus (4th century):

“The more he entered into profundities, the more his mind reeled. He made it a goal of his wisdom to discover just how far off it was.” (De Theol. 28.21)

So let us be satisfied with being aware of how far off our so-called wisdom is, and that all we can do is to bear witness that God is quite different from the moral and philosophical ideas of this world. He has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, and that's all we need to know.

Update: it has recently come to my attention that American apologetics increasingly influence Danish evangelicals, e.g. as the new Center for Christian Apologetics was opened in Aarhus recently.