Sometimes perhaps social norms and taboos about thoughts or subjects are good: maybe out of politeness we avoid asking a particular question of a person at a specific moment because it could offend them or stifle conversation, or perhaps we choose to prevent our mind from wandering down a subject because we know it won’t work in our favor, perhaps distracting us from something important. But sometimes that taboo isn’t coming from within or maybe hasn’t been instilled in us for as beneficial a reason, instead being used to limit and restrain our thoughts.
I’ve brought up before in this blog about the ways I see Christian pastors in churches around the country appear to purposely be limiting their congregation’s understanding of the text they worship by omitting details that many of them would have had to encounter in seminaries, and how that limitation played out in my personal life through anxieties about asking particular questions related to the Bible, but today I want to highlight another element of the problematic Christian church system: Christian apologists.
Christian apologetics can be summarized in two parts: (a) objective reasons and evidence that Christianity is true (it corresponds to reality) and, (b) the communication of that truth to the world.
I thought what separated an apologist over someone merely stating an opinion boldly was through honest study. I assumed the best advocates for the Bible spent their adult life carefully seeking out as many possible answers they could find in earnest and then applying logic and prayer to the answer pool until the truth was made obvious to them (perhaps even through a miraculous or spiritual revelation). This search for answers would likely require them to understand the original languages or to consult with someone learned. Maybe a historian would need to be questioned for answers about what was going on during the time period when each book of the Bible was written in order to understand the context for each of the verses included in the canon. And in reference to canonization, church history would have to be an important part of one’s education to provide good answers for questions like, “Why are texts like the Book of Enoch not included in most Bibles despite being integral to modern-day understandings of Christianity?”
But despite Jesus’ prayer that his authority and position would be made known through the unity of his followers, I see a lack of coherence in the messaging from apologists. There is no unity among them; they fight and bicker about every little detail, subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) casting doubt on the authenticity of their opponents, even down to the truth claim of their professed faith! Every one of them claims the same authority and source: God; Jesus; the Holy Spirit; prayer; even simple logic, but there still remains disagreement. Can an obvious truth from a perfect source be so regularly misunderstood without at some point causing one to have doubts about the interpreter — or worse, the source?
Paulogia
Apologist Attacks Fellow Christian on Danger of Apologetics (feat Dr CJ Cornthwaite)
What happens when a Christian scholar dares to say that apologetics is actually hurting the church? In this video, @cjcornthwaite — a former evangelical with a PhD in Christian Origins — explains why he believes Christian apologetics is driving intelligent believers out of the faith. But when William Lane Craig responds, the conversation takes an unexpected turn. Is CJ still a “real Christian”? Are apologists ignoring real scholarship? And could apologetics be doing more harm than good?
Apologists aren’t trying to find truth: they’re trying to find convincing reasons to support what their pre-existing opinions that they already deem to be true. This is a profoundly flawed way of finding evidence or seeking truths, but this kind of process is endemic in apologetics. Magical thinking pervades the profession, where limited access to information is seen akin to a virtue and hiding from uncomfortable evidence is boasted as protecting one’s faith rather than limiting one’s intelligence. Profound and continued ignorance amidst the profound volume of contradictory and more convincing evidence is what apologists promote.
I don’t want to fully pick on apologists here, as they do come by this view of evidence honestly. There are several verses in the Bible that can be used to support this self-imposed intellectual prison: verses like Hebrews 11:1, which states that one’s beliefs are ”the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” and should anyone see that as a definition that could be used to disenfranchise people to education, 1 Corinthians 2:14 would protest that the critic “does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit,” so any perceived potential problems with the Bible are not due to a misunderstanding on the part of the believing reader, but rather solely the fault of the critic, who, by virtue of leveling that criticism, shows themselves to lack faith.
This is a thought prison! Once a skeptical listener realizes the formula, the process apologists use to avoid the most honest answers becomes profoundly apparent. An apologist would be willing to attest that doubts are good, but their replies would show they accept a doubt only if it doesn’t extend too far. Questions are good in the realm of apologia, but only if the questions are asked of certain people. Challenging and novel answers to deep questions are good, but only the answers come from particular acceptable sources. Should the questioner break any of those unwritten rules too frequently, they risk becoming a fraudulent believer, one of those “progressive” or “liberal” Christians who would likely be rejected by Jesus should they ever come in contact with him. The apologist might wonder aloud if those weak Christians ever were Christians at all; maybe the questioners have been lying to themselves the whole time, or maybe they’re actively lying to everyone else! The entire process of seeking truth is a farce in the realm of the apologist, for the answer can ever only conclude with the preconceived acceptable solution, no matter if the truth leads in a very different direction.
We don’t have to do live like this. One’s faith in whatever shape it may be is one’s own and need not be shaped by the opinions of others brashly shared. Truth should be one’s goal, not safety. If reality is what one seeks, fantasy need not be one’s first choice when seeking answers for why things are the way things are.