Introduction
Introduction
This book is an introduction to apologetics—the field of Christian thought that focuses on the justification of the core themes of the Christian faith and its effective communication to the non-Christian world. It commends a mindset of engagement, encouraging Christians to interact with the ideas of our culture rather than running away from them or pretending they can be ignored. Apologetics aims to convert believers into thinkers, and thinkers into believers. It engages our reason, our imagination, and our deepest longings. It opens hearts, eyes, and minds. As the great apologist G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) once quipped, “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” Apologetics celebrates and proclaims the intellectual solidity, the imaginative richness, and the spiritual depth of the gospel in ways that can connect with our culture.
Apologetics is to be seen not as a defensive and hostile reaction against the world, but as a welcome opportunity to exhibit, celebrate, and display the treasure chest of the Christian faith. It encourages believers to appreciate their faith, and to explain and commend it to those outside the church. It aims to set out the intellectual, moral, imaginative, and relational richness of the Christian faith—partly to reassure believers and help them develop their faith, but primarily to enable those outside the community of faith to realize the compelling vision that lies at the heart of the Christian gospel.
This book sets out to introduce its readers to the leading themes of apologetics, presenting a basic understanding of its agendas and approaches. I have tried to make this book accessible, interesting, and useful, while giving pointers to more advanced resources that will allow you, the reader, to take things further in your own time. It is not comprehensive, so you will need to supplement it with more advanced and specialized texts. Nor is it committed to any particular school of apologetics. Rather than limiting itself to any one specific school or approach to apologetics, this work draws on their collective riches. It aims to encourage and equip its readers to develop an apologetic mindset, and explore further how to explain and commend the gospel to our culture. In many ways, the book’s approach mirrors that of C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), perhaps the greatest apologist of the twentieth century. It aims to help you get an idea of what the issues are and how Christians can respond to them. Like any introduction, it will leave you wanting to know more and go further. It cannot hope to answer all of your questions!
All the material used in this book has been tested on student audiences and in public addresses over a period of six years, primarily in a foundational lecture course I teach at the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics entitled “An Introduction to Christian Apologetics.” This has been supplemented by material developed for summer schools in Oxford and at Regent College, Vancouver, dealing with the central themes of apologetics and how they enable the church to engage positively and powerfully with the questions our culture is asking. I am deeply grateful to my students for their feedback, ideas, and stimulus, which have been so important to me in developing the approach set out in this book. I hope it will help others to discover why apologetics is so interesting on the one hand, and so vital to the future of the Christian faith on the other.
Alister McGrath
King’s College, London
December 2010