Making Christian War and Peace At the Same Time

"Good apologetics involves 'speaking the truth in love' (Eph 4:15)." ~ William Lane Craig

I began my previous post by quoting Dr. Craig to the effect that Christians should "prepare for war" against non-believers by steeping themselves and their children in sound arguments for their faith and against criticisms thereof. And I think I have to agree that if one is going to be Christian, one should know a fair amount about essential Christian teachings and be able to defend them effectively and not merely count on simple emotion and devotion to carry one through the temptations and trials of life. After all, Christians in general and Dr. Craig in particular believe that the posthumous fate of one's immortal soul depends on whether one loves and obeys God in this life, and surely most of us need all the intellectual as well as emotional and social support we can to fulfill this lofty requirement.

Furthermore, it makes perfect sense for Christians who want their children to go to heaven rather than hell to give them all the intellectual as well as other kinds of support they can to keep them strong in their faith and obedience to God. Thus, as Dr. Craig says, it would be grossly irresponsible for a Christian who believes this way not to render that support.

Yet, I wonder if and where parents should draw the line between sound and suitable teaching that enhances a child's religious knowledge but preserves and promotes her autonomy on the one hand and forceful indoctrination that interferes with a child's ability to make up his own mind about religion on the other. I'm concerned that parents who vigorously ground their children, especially their minor children, in apologetics may be crossing the line from acceptable teaching into unacceptable indoctrination.

I also wonder about how to reconcile Craig's talk of Christians going to apologetical "war" with non-believing individuals and with a culture increasingly hostile to believers and his following statement: "We should be gentle and respectful. Apologetics is also not the art of making somebody else sorry that you're a  Christian! We can present a defense of the Christian faith without becoming defensive. We can present arguments for the Christian faith without becoming argumentative."

When I think of war, I decidedly don't think of people respectfully reasoning together, and I suspect that many people who try to wage war against non-belief with respectful argument fail miserably at the latter, despite Dr. Craig's observation that "the better my arguments, the less argumentative I am. The better my defense, the less defensive I am. If you have good reasons for what you believe and know the answers to the unbeliever's questions or objections, there's just no reason to get hot under the collar. Instead, you'll find yourself calm and confident when you're under attack, because you know you have the answers."

Yet, I have to say that I have great respect for Christians who engage non-believers such as myself with respectful, calm, and reasoned argument, and I surmise that if more Christians were able to do this, it would place their faith in a much more appealing light and undoubtedly lead more non-believers to embrace it.

In my next blogpost, I want to briefly address Dr. Craig's reasons for why apologetics is important.

Outline of William Lane Craig's On Guard--Chapter 1

"We’ve got to train our kids for war. How dare we send them unarmed into an intellectual war zone? Parents must do more than take their children to church and read them Bible stories. Moms and dads need to be trained in apologetics themselves and so be able to explain to their children simply from an early age and then with increasing depth why we believe as we do. Honestly, I find it hard to understand how Christian couples in our day and age can risk bringing children into the world without being trained in apologetics as part of the art of parenting." ~ William Lane Craig

I now commence my study of William Lane Craig's On Guard: Defending Your Faith With Reason and Precision by summarizing Chapter 1.


1. Apologetics is about defending rather than apologizing for one's Christian faith.

2. The Bible (e.g., 1 Peter 3:15) commands Christians to respond gently and respectfully to nonbelievers' challenges with good reasons for their faith.

3. Defend the faith and present arguments for it without being defensive and argumentative.

4. The better reasons one has for one's faith, the less defensive and argumentative one will be.

5. Apologetics is biblical. (e.g., Luke 24:25-27, John 14:11, Acts 14:17, Romans 1:20, 1 Cor. 15:3-8)

6. There are three reasons why apologetics is important:

   I. It can shape culture to make non-believers more receptive to conversion through apologetics and other means.

   II. It can strengthen believers in three ways:

      A. Make them more confident and assertive in sharing their faith.

      B. Help Christians sustain their faith through difficult circumstances.

      C. Make Christians deeper and more interesting persons.

   III. It can lead others to believe, especially by converting the most intelligent and influential people in society (e.g., doctors, lawyers, engineers, C.S Lewis).

7. Read and study the logical structure and premises of the arguments presented in the rest of the book. If you can respond to non-believers challenges with sound arguments, you make it harder for them to reject or ridicule them or you.

Terms

apologetics
secularism
relativism
argument
premise
argument map

Lee Strobel's Foreward to "On Guard"

"On Guard" begins with a foreword by former skeptic turned apologist Lee Strobel in which he praises Dr. Craig as "among the very best defenders of Christianity of this generation" and then recounts several of Craig's debates with atheists.

In the first such instance, writes Strobel, an atheist organization proposed a debate pitting one of their foremost atheists, Frank Zindler, against the best apologist Christians could muster, and the Christians put forth Bill Craig who debated Zindler before a packed church auditorium and massive media coverage in 1993, and, according to Strobel, Craig trounced Zindler, which led to several Christian conversions right on the spot and shocked the atheist community which had anticipated that they could easily debunk Christian teachings.

In another famous and much more recent debate, Dr. Craig debated the renowned polemicist writer and debater Christopher Hitchens and, according to this atheist, "spanked Hitchens like a foolish child."

Strobel then proceeds to explain that Dr. Craig, in his debate with Zindler, posed five essential arguments for the existence of the Christian God:

"First, the beginning of the universe clearly points toward a Creator (“Whatever begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore, the universe has a cause”). Second, the universe’s incredible fine-tuning defies coincidence and exhibits the handiwork of an intelligent designer. Third, our objective moral values are evidence that there is a God, since only He could establish a universal standard of right and wrong. Fourth, the historical evidence for the resurrection—including the empty tomb, eyewitness accounts, and the origin of the Christian faith—establish the divinity of Jesus. And, fifth, God can be immediately known and experienced by those who seek Him." 

Next, I will summarize Dr. Craig's key points in Chapter 1: "What Is Apologetics?"