Definition

(Gr. Apologia, "speaking in defense") The defense of religion in general, one particular religion, or denomination, against criticisms made by those outside of the apologist's faith community. Second and third century apologists attempted to define Christianity as the fulfillment of both Hebrew law and prophecy, and of classical Greek thought. Subsequent apologists have appealed principally to reasoned arguments or to a common human religious sensibility, in defending Christian revelation against Islamic monotheism, Enlightenment rationalism, atheism, and Marxist historical criticism.

Significance

The question of which doctrines need defense has been determined by the criticism of competing philosophies and religious worldviews. Early apologists (Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine) synthesized the personal God of Hebrew Scripture with the Platonic ideal of an unchanging, entirely spiritual divinity.
Apologists of the Middle Ages (Anselm, Thomas Aquinas) defended Christianity by appealing to reason and natural human abilities.
An anti-apologetic stream in Christian thought maintains that there is “no point of contact” between revelation and human reason except through the gracious in-breaking of God (Luther, Barth), limiting potential theological dialogue with philosophy and the sciences.
Recent apologists have faced arguments from secular modernity (Butler, Schleiermacher, Niebuhr). In the wake of Immanuel Kant’s distinction between faith and reason, contemporary apologetics has invoked experience and a common religious sense rather than rational argument (Troeltsch, Rahner, Tillich), claiming that God correlates to certain feelings or questions within human experience.

Recent Articles and Books

1. Dulles, Avery. "Mere Apologetics," in First Things, no. 154 Je-Jl 2005, pp. 15-20. Examines the work of C.S. Lewis, whom he describes as "probably the most successful Christian apologist of the 20th century." According to Dulles, Lewis' work followed many of the traditional apologetic steps, including a philosophical argument for the existence of God, and an appeal to human experience that identifies God as the source of our moral, rational, and spiritual senses. Dulles criticizes Lewis' failure to emphasize the importance of participation in a particular faith tradition.
2. Saayman, William. "New Testament Studies and Missiology in South Africa: Uneasy bedfellows?" in Missionalia 33 no. 2, August 2005, pp. 205-213. Asserts that "mission is the mother of theology." Points to the sometimes difficult relationship between Western Biblical scholarship and the evangelical use of the Bible in ministry in the Global South. Can Western Biblical scholarship still play a part in the apologetic/mission project of churches in a multicultural context? Argues for the importance of dialogue between those engaging texts on the "periphery," that is, in an evangelical and pastoral context, and those at the academic "center."

Related Terms

Evangelism, Ecumenical Dialogue, Missions/Missiology, Natural Theology