Boston College professor of philosophy Peter Kreeft, a Protestant convert to Catholicism, says apologetics remains in disrepute in some circles. “Traditional apologetics has a bad reputation among modernists, who hate tradition and don’t believe in the supernatural; among postmodernists, who hate reason and don’t believe in the natural; and among ‘nice’ Catholics who are too busy being apologetic to be apologetical,” Kreeft said in a recent interview with IgnatiusInsight.com editor Olson. Kreeft is the author of 40 books, many of them apologetical, including Fundamentals of the Faith. (To read the whole article, click here.)
“Most theology departments in 'Catholic' colleges have not done apologetics for decades and are proud of it; they don’t want to be 'divisive' by suggesting that there might be such a thing as objective truth, so that some people (other than 'fundamentalists') could be wrong,” Kreeft said.
Akin said most seminaries don’t offer apologetics but should. “Priests doing parish work have a big need for apologetics. This need often goes unmet because the priest is totally unprepared for it by his seminary education. He may have even been taught to be hostile toward apologetics,” Akin said.
With outspoken Catholic bishops such as Archbishop Chaput challenging politicians who claim their Catholicism while espousing evils such as abortion, superficial cultural Catholicism is starting to crumble. “I think what we’re seeing now is that facade falling apart,” states Olson, “I think we’re seeing a little clearing of the slate.”
Some of the Church’s most convincing apologists have been our popes, including Pope John Paul II who devoted two chapters in Crossing the Threshold of Hope to the existence of God. In the third chapter of his encyclical Fides et ratio, John Paul II explained the Augustinian theme “I understand in order to believe.”
With Pope Benedict XVI we have a pope who is a very adept theologian, apologist and evangelist. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict wrote numerous works on the relationship of the Church, Christ and faith to man and the modern world, including Introduction to Christianity and Truth and Tolerance.
Father Charles P. Connor’s Defenders of the Faith in Word and Deed notes: “Few men of the modern world have given such convincing intellectual defense of the faith as the current Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.”
Pope Benedict XVI’s view of the crisis in the Church after Vatican II is that a misinterpretation of Vatican II’s documents, and of the nature of the Church is at fault. Rather than the democratic view of the church as belonging to its people, Connor writes, “Cardinal Ratzinger strongly emphasizes it is Christ’s church, not ours.”
In Truth and Tolerance, Ratzinger emphasizes that truth is immutable and the Church is obliged to present Christ as he is to the world — not to fall into the trap of saying all forms of belief or unbelief are equal.
“When the existence of God is denied, freedom is, not enhanced, but deprived of its basis and thus distorted,” stated Ratzinger. “If there is no truth about man, then he has no freedom. Only the truth makes us free.”
(Valerie Schmalz is a writer for IgnatiusInsight.com and a freelance journalist.)
“…but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence…” 1 Peter 3:15.
The word apologist probably ranks slightly below mud in most theology departments at Catholic universities — even today.
But, it is a job we are all called to in one way or another.
The exhortation to “make a defense” remains at the heart of modern day apologetics — the defense of the Christian Faith. While once a discipline held in disdain by many Christians, apologetics is now enjoying a resurgence among both Protestants and Catholics as faith in Jesus Christ is under assault from a number of aggressive “isms”: secularism, materialism, relativism, atheism, and many others.
Far from being an isolated activity, apologetics is meant to accompany and aid the work of evangelizing. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” Jesus told His disciples, “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you always, to the close of the age.” (Matthew 28)
“Jesus is not talking to somebody else. He is talking to you and me,” says Colorado Archbishop Charles J. Chaput in the foreword to Mark Brumley's How Not to Share Your Faith: The Seven Deadly Sins of Apologetics and Evangelization. “The work of evangelizing — and its sibling, apologetics — is not just a job for ‘professionals.’ We are the professionals by virtue of our baptism.”
The work of apologists is not just to engage non-Christians, but also to defend Catholicism from the attacks of anti-Catholic Fundamentalists and to engage Catholics who have fallen away from the Church, says Carl Olson. Olson is the author of Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”?, a Catholic response to popular fundamentalist claims about the “end times”, and co-author (with medievalist Sandra Miesel) of The Da Vinci Hoax, a critique of the anti-Catholic claims found in the best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code.
Some Catholics are joining Fundamentalist or Evangelical Protestant groups, says Olson, who was raised in a Fundamentalist home and entered the Catholic Church in 1997. But he believes that many more Catholics are leaving the Church because of lax morals, mushy thinking, and relativistic notions about truth.
“Why are many Catholics leaving the Church? Oftentimes it is due to the many ‘isms’ so popular in today’s culture, especially relativism — the idea that ‘Hey, all religions are the same,’” said Olson. “The best Protestant apologists have recognized this for years and have produced some fine apologetic responses. It’s a positive for Catholic-Protestant relations that we can learn a lot from each other.”
Making the case for Christian faith — apologetics — has always been part of the Church’s mission. As Catholic scholar Cardinal Avery Dulles details in a new and much-expanded edition of A History of Apologetics, published this fall by Ignatius Press, apologetics has gone hand-in-hand with theology and evangelization throughout the history of Christianity. From Peter and Paul on, Christians have been arguing and expounding their faith to non-believers, constantly adjusting their focus and their arguments, Dulles writes.
In their efforts to engage opposing beliefs, apologists have sometimes veered into heresy or near heresy, as Dulles details in his excellent work, the first comprehensive history of apologetics in sixty years. But the most successful apologists found common ground in the culture of their audiences, from Greek philosophy and Old Testament prophesies to, in modern times, science and Eastern religions.
Since the 16th century, Catholic and Protestant theologians and apologists have “incessantly” influenced each other, even as they engaged in fierce polemics. In recent years there has been a surprising confluence between Evangelical Protestant and Catholic apologists as they grapple with explaining such things as the beginning of the universe and the Resurrection of Christ, Dulles notes. “As long as people ask questions and pose challenges to one another, believers will be called upon to give a reason for the faith that is in them.”
This shoulder to shoulder approach to apologetics is good thing for Catholics and Protestants because they have a lot to learn from each other, says Jimmy Akin, a popular Catholic Answers apologist, www.JimmyAkin.org, and author of The Salvation Controversy, a book examining the Catholic-Protestant debate over salvation. “The Holy Spirit has prompted a warming between the two communities,” Akin said. “Also, the fact that society has turned against the Christian faith in many ways has forced Christians of different confessions together.”
The first apologetics are contained in the New Testament, which recounts Jesus’ fulfillment of Old Testament prophesies, his miracles, and of course, his death and resurrection. But each era’s apologists responded to the concerns of their contemporaries and thus each era needs its own set of apologists to meet the challenges of its age, Dulles writes.
At the same time, Dulles notes, “the same basic problems continually recur… In such a time as our own, when many Christians find it especially difficult to articulate the reasonableness of their faith, it can be particularly profitable to review the record of the past.”
While arguments are important tools in explaining Catholic doctrines, they are not sufficient for conversion — the Church teaches both faith and reason are necessary. Some doctrines, such as the Trinity, are based on faith and cannot be understood thoroughly by the human mind, Ignatius Press president and apologist Mark Brumley notes in his book How Not to Share Your Faith: The Seven Deadly Sins of Apologetics and Evangelization.
“Catholicism often captivates people by its goodness and beauty, as well as by its logical truth,” Brumley writes. “Many people’s objections to the faith are overcome in ways some apologists completely ignore: through art rather than arguments, through sanctity rather than syllogisms.”
It is not a coincidence that the rise in lay apologetics over the past two or three decades coincides with a sense of disarray, dissent, and even overt heresy within some parish churches and among some Catholic theologians and intellectuals, says Olson.
“Cultural Catholicism is a phenomenon I have never experienced with another group of Christians,” Olson said. “People will say to me, ‘I’m Catholic.’ When I ask, ‘Where do you go to Mass?’, they’ll answer, ‘I’ve haven’t gone to church in twenty years.’ You would never hear a Baptist say that — if you miss church more than two weeks in a row, you would put your status as a Baptist as serious risk.”
