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I've been consciously engaged in apologetics--that is, defending the Faith--for about 6 years now, and during that time I rarely paused to ask what the purpose of apologetics is. When I first began to learn about (and apply) the myriad arguments for the doctrines and dogmas taught by our Church, I more-or-less operated under the assumption that the end goal was to convert anyone whom I engaged to the Faith. If he was an atheist, then the goal was to bring him into theism, if a theist then to make him Christian, and if a Christian then a Catholic. To some extent, this is still the end of Catholic apologetics, but apologetics alone can not accomplish this end. Indeed, apologetics has a place in conversion, but it is not the whole of conversion; rather, it is piece of the conversion puzzle, which must be combined with the other pieces in order for a conversion to take place.
Perhaps the best formulation of the role of apologetics is to liken it to philosophy: philosophy may be treated as the handmaiden of theology, and apologetics as the handmaiden of evangelization. That is to say, apologetics is a powerful tool for aiding evangelization, but it cannot replace evangelization any more than philosophy may replace theology. The well-known Christian apologist C.S. Lewis once stated that
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The Great Divorce wrote:
There have been men before now who get so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself...as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.
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When apologetics is treated this way, it ceases to evangelize and begins instead to procelytize. Dialogue becomes first debate and then argument, and in the end nothing is accomplished. A heart is not won--indeed it can be further lost--and above all, the Church is not enriched, nor is God glorified.
It is all too easy for apologetics to be wielded in this manner. I am guilty of this, and I think that there are plenty of Christians of both Catholic and Protestant persuasions who are too. It is especially easy to fall into this trap when the purpose of apologetics is forgotten. My friend Mr Nathanael Blake summarized this trap quite aptly when he wrote that
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Nathanael Blake wrote:
One of the struggles in my life has been accepting that I’m on the losing side, and there’s little I can do about it. When I was younger I tended to act on the implicit assumption that if only I argued more clearly, wrote more eloquently, reasoned more impeccably, I could change people’s minds. People didn’t believe the truth because they hadn’t been told or had it explained properly.
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The mistake made by myself, by Mr Blake, and by countless others when engaging in apologetics is the assumption that winning an argument equates to winning a heart. However, as Mr Blake and I have both come to realize, "It wasn’t so easy. People didn’t believe truth because they didn’t want to."
A far more experienced apologist concurs with this conclusion. In his e-letter from June 20, 2006, Mr Karl Keating referenced what he called a "tit-for-tat" argument between a Catholic and a Protestant concerning Matthew 1:25: "and he knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son." Writes Mr Keating*,
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Karl Keating wrote:
The writer (in this case a Protestant, but Catholics have done the same) offers up thousands of words--19,000 of them in fact--that supposedly demonstrate that his understanding of "until" is true and that his Catholic opponent's understanding is false. In fact, the most he can hope to do is to prove that this particular Catholic committed an error here or there; he can't (and doesn't) prove that the traditional Catholic understanding of "until" is wrong.
Such a waste of time!
Look, I'm an apologist, and I like engaging in apologetics, but there are limits. There are limits to what apologetics can accomplish, and there are limits to my patience. When I come across a 19,000-word dispute about the meaning of a single term, I don't think: "This is impressive work." I think: "This guy needs to get a life."
Apologetics is the explanation and defense of the faith. It comes into play only when someone asks for an explanation or attacks the faith....I think apologetics is important, and that is why I have been engaged in it for a quarter of a century. I think it is so important that I don't want to waste time writing or reading 19,000-word exercises in futility.
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Concerning the same debate over the meaning of "until," Mr Mark Shea (another noted apologist) writes that:
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Mark Shea wrote:
"Not all Catholics have this sense of perspective and it's easy to get sucked into the cramped little world of endless hairsplitting that the apologetics subculture can sometimes become. But the fact is, the Faith and the world are larger than mere theological abstractions and we Catholics don't have to live in the hothouse. Indeed, if we do, we can often communicate a radically different vision of the faith than you actually find in the world of incarnate, flesh and blood Catholics, who do not rest their entire faith on what Jerome thought of the Septuagint, who do not obsess over the meaning of heos hou in Greek, and who could not, for the life of them, articulate a detailed analysis of the Aristotelian roots of Thomas' doctrine of Transubstantiation. All these things matter in their proper place. But none of these things occupy the entire field of vision for 99.999999999999999% of Catholics in the world--or Protestants for that matter" {links in original}.
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So far, I have said what I think apologetics does not--cannot--do. I have also called it a very powerful tool for evangelization, in spite of these limitations. What, then, is the purpose which I think is proper to apologetics? To say that it is "a defense of one's faith" is to give the obvious (or trivial) solution. However, things are not so easy as this. No defense of the Faith is absolute; indeed, to step back to something even more basic, no proof of God's existence is absolute. Professor Gary Gutting--a philosopher at Notre Dame university--underscores this point in his August 1 column for the New York Times:
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Garry Gutting wrote:
The students realize that I’m not going to be able to give them a convincing proof, and I let them in on the dirty secret: philosophers have never been able to find arguments that settle the question of God’s existence or any of the other “big questions” we’ve been discussing for 2500 years....Recently, however, I’ve realized a mistake in the way that I--and most of my professional colleagues--tend to think about philosophy and faith. (One of the great benefits of getting to teach philosophy to bright undergraduates is that it makes it easier to think outside the constraints of current professional assumptions.) The standard view is that philosophers’ disagreements over arguments about God make their views irrelevant to the faith of ordinary believers and non-believers. The claim seems obvious: if we professionals can’t agree among ourselves, what can we have to offer to non-professionals? An appeal to experts requires consensus among those experts, which philosophers don’t have.
This line of thought ignores the fact that when philosophers disagree it is only about specific aspects of the most subtle and sophisticated versions of arguments for and against God’s existence....There is no disagreement among philosophers about the more popular arguments to which theists and atheists typically appeal: as formulated, they do not prove (that is, logically derive from uncontroversial premises) what they claim to prove. They are clearly inadequate in the judgment of qualified professionals. Further, there are no more sophisticated formulations that theists or atheists can accept--the way we do scientific claims--on the authority of expert consensus.
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Thus, Professor Gutting suggests that a complete proof for God's existence (let alone for all of the other teachings of the Church) is impossible. Some hole will always be found. On the other hand, the same may be said about "proofs" for the non-existence of God, or any other doctrine of the Faith. Apologetics not only can't replace all of evangelization, it can't even "prove" all of evangelization, either. Thus, the purpose of apologetics is not to absolutely prove or disprove anything.
It can, however, be used to show that a particular belief is "reasonable." One point to remember is that in apologetics, we can never prove something; we can, however, occasionally demonstrate something to be true beyond a reasonable doubt. As Catholics living in a largely Protestant country, we face the challenge of answering a great many proselytizers who use "proof texts" to show that one or another Catholic doctrine is in error. As Christians in a secularizing West, we face the challenge of atheist proselytizers using "science" and "reason" to prove that God does not exist. In both cases, the proper response of the apologist is to show, not that the Faith is indisputably correct, but that the Faith is not indisputably incorrect. I've alluded to this before in the context of a Catholic-Protestant discussion concerning some Marian doctrines:
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The task of a Catholic apologist, when defending his beliefs to a Protestant, is first and foremost to show that those beliefs may be reasonably held. This think can be done within the framework demanded--namely, within a framework which more-or-less demands Sola Scriptura (in some case, with occasional concessions to very-well-established oral Tradition). The doctrine of Perpetual Virginity cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt from the Bible per se, but it is not my mission nor intention to do this. Rather, I only wanted to note that the Bible does not outright reject it, to show that a reasonable interpretation exists for the passages used as "evidence" against this doctrine. This, it seems, I have done.
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More generally, the first task of the apologist is to show that his own framework is not inherently antithetical to the reasonable framework of the person to whom he offers a defense. For example, when defending the Faith from a Protestant, the Catholic might show that Tradition as a legitimate source of authority and as a part of the deposit of Faith is not contradicted by the Scriptures, but that it may even be supported by the Bible. When discussing the existence of God with an atheist, the Christian's job is to show that the existence God is not incompatible with what we know of the universe. In both cases, a "reasonable" case is made for the Faith, but choosing to accept or eject it now appears more or less like a "judgment call" to the other person. This is where apologetics has ended, but evangelization itself continues.
Envangelization does not come down to winning and losing arguments. To be sure, giving an intellectual defense of the Faith may help in a conversion. However, there is more to conversion than mere intellectual acceptance, in the same sense that there is more to faith than mere intellectual assent (see, for example James 2:14-26). I recently wrote concerning this, concluding that
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It is important to remember this in any endeavor which we as Catholics--no, even merely as Christians--undertake. God works through us, it is true, but in the end, His grace is the most important ingredient to any conversion. Our arguments may open the door, but ultimately God's grace is needed for the other person to walk through it, and the other person's must consent to taking those steps. If we but do what we are able, then we are left to trust God, for it is out of our hands.
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Our witness must therefore extend beyond mere argument. It requires witness in our own selves, in how we live our lives. If we live virtuously, faithfully--and joyfully so!--then we have already done more to evangelize than all our arguments could ever do. Second, since grace is an integral part of any conversion, we must pray. Finally, because the other person must choose to freely cooperate with this grace, we must have patience. If evangelization is our final goal, then apologetics may be important, but we must remember that there is more to a conversion than intellectual assent.
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*It is worth noting, by the way, that Mr Keating seems to contradict my assessment that Apologetics is the handmaiden of evangelization. He writes that
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Karl Keating wrote:
Apologetics is the explanation and defense of the faith. It comes into play only when someone asks for an explanation or attacks the faith. It is not the same as evangelization, which is the promotion of the faith. Apologetics is reactive; evangelization is pro-active. The two often go hand-in-hand, but they are not coterminous and should not be confused with one another.
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I do not think that this necessarily constitutes a disagreement between he and I, because I think that in promoting the faith we are often placed in a position of defending it. I've found that a good many of my friends who are converts from Protestantism to Catholicism will ask pointed questions about certain teachings of the Church as a part of the process of converting. Moreover, a part of "promoting" the faith means being able to give an explanation of it: which is the very nature of apologetics! As Bishop Fulton Sheen once said, "Most people don’t hate what the Catholic Church teaches… they hate what they think the Catholic Church teaches." Thus, setting the record straight concerning Catholic teaching can help lead to conversion; whether or not this may be considered apologetics, I leave to the reader to decide; it is certainly a part of evangelization.
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