Seven years after the death of the wellknown English apologist C.S.Lewis his friend Walter Hooper published a book with a collection of essays that were never published under the title: God in the dock. In chapter 12 (part II) Lewis explained what he meant by that: it is a chapter on apologetics: how to communicate the truth to a non-christian audience. That is far from easy in Europe to-day. After the description of three basic difficulties (religious, historic and linguistic) he comes with the fourth and what he called the ‘greatest barrier’ in communication, and that became the title of the whole book: for the consciousness of western man God is ‘in the dock.’
[“in the dock” means “on trial,” like a person accused of a crime, waiting to be judged as guilty or innocent]. In the sixteenth century Luther asked: how can I ever find a merciful God? He saw himself as in the dock, and saw God as the judge. This was true for all ancient men, but for a modern man the roles are reversed. On this point I would like to begin my lecture to-day on pitfalls of apologetics. What C.S.Lewis described for the seventies is still and perhaps even more true to-day. God is in the dock and before we know what happens we step into the role of defending Him. Spontaneously we take up the position that modern man offers us: the seat of the lawyer or the advocate, and we start to defend the accused. But it is a pitfall. Because we start with an affirmation of these positions in the courtroom, and we even have done this without defining who will be the judge!
Stepping now out of this metaphor: I believe that one of the pitfalls of apologetics is: defending God. It has sometimes be based on a wrong translation of the classical verse in 1 Peter 3:15: ‘always be ready to apologise, to give a defense (an apology) of the hope that is in you...’ but this translation of the greek word ‘apology’ is wrong: it meant originally something much more “on the offensive”(in the meaning of : stepping forward to attack) : give a salted and gracious explanation that challenges the people you talk to. ‘Apo’ in ‘apology’ means ‘counter’, as we have in the word ‘a counter-attack’, it is offensive and not defensive.
What is wrong with defending God? We read about that in the book of Job. It was the mistake of the friends of Job, who saw it as their task, face to face with Job’s suffering to defend the Almighty. In fact this happened already in the first pages of the bible. Is not this the first pitfall in which Eve fell? The serpent in Genesis 3 opens it very cleverly: is not it that God has said: you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?! Knowingly he turns the facts 180 % around! And immediately Eve steps into this trap and starts to defend God: of course we may eat it! From all of them!.. but as she is talking in defense of Him she steps into that bizarre image that the serpent gives of God and an inner distance from the Lord takes place . What she should have done when the serpent approached her was not to defend God but to give back to the serpent what he actually said about God to her. In recent psychology they call this: to mirror. Show him as in a mirror what kind of image of God he cherishes: she should have said to him: do you realise what you are saying: A god like that would be a sadist: to first plant beautiful trees around man in order to tell him later on : keep your hands off [all of them]! Sometimes this is enough to clear up the mind of the partner and is a further discussion hardly necessary. But at other occasions it might be necessary to push the friend a step further in the consequences of his or hers own thinking. Imagine indeed that the universe (envisioned as a person or taken impersonal) would be sadistic. Is that true to reality as you see it, is it consistent? , can you live it?
PITFALL
2.
2. So the first pitfall in apologetics is: to think we are the lawyer of God. The second one closely connected with this first one can easily be explained when we stay for one moment longer in this metaphor of the courtroom and when we come back to the question we first stepped past, namely: who in this trial is the Judge? If God is in the dock and modern men the accuser, who is the judge? Christian apologetics has often failed or even done harm to people because they were not sufficiently aware of the fact that their apology tried to please, convince, or even beat Reason. The judge that should have the final say in the courtroom has been and still is for many modern people the goddess of Reason. Yes God can justify Himself if only he would give sufficient evidence before the throne of this judgment seat
It is a real pitfall for apologetics to try to deliver that proof. This is the second part of my lecture, stepping out of the courtroom metaphor, I am dealing here with the subtle change in the outfit of reason in the flow of our western culture. At first it was a warm way of trying to understand the world around us, but later on ** the whole atmosphere changed: only proofs counted. Arguments were not valid any longer: verificational or at least falsifiable proofs should be delivered. . This shift took place at the time of the Enlightenment, politically the time of the french revolution, when indeed they removed literally all the sculptures out of the Cathedral of Notre Dame and carried into it instead of them the [sculpture of the] ‘goddess of reason’. It is possible therefore that before that time christian apologists naively talked about ‘proofs’ for the existence of God. They never meant ‘proofs’ in a modern way, they meant powerful arguments. Starting from Revelation. Psalm 36: “in your light we see light!”. As arguments they are still powerful : today f.i. especially the teleological argument : the ‘fine tuning’ of the universe, that amazes all natural scientists, but today one cannot call them ‘proofs’, because of the change in the outfit of reason. Reason became ‘autonomous reason’ after the enlightenment and it suddenly has demands that no christian can ever fulfil. It comes with the request that the reality we believe in can only be there if it by reasonable means it can be demonstrated convincingly for all human beings. As if God would be geometric formula or worse a UFO. If this rule would be applied to the fullness of human reality how much must then be cut out! Think of our deepest convictions and our warmest emotions and our deepest commitments. All realities that go beyond reason! It is this reason that Goya had in mind when he painted the man in despair surrounded by bats, with text underneath: in spanish: ‘the dream of reason produces monsters’.
Apologetics that try to deliver proofs, takes over the weapons of the enemy and subsequently falls into its own sword. It will not work. Karl Barth has spent many pages in his church dogmatic to describe what happens when we try.I,2,94ff. Many of us older people have memories of that. You try to convince somebody with reasonable arguments, but it works out exactly the opposite. You bring in the so-called proofs for the existence of God, but not even the best one, which I think is the argument from design, has any convincing power: it only leads to a more and more strong conviction in the friend we talk to that he is right. Why this could happen? It is because I took over for a moment the hidden presuppositions of my opponent: namely that reason is the only way to find the truth. Luther called that kind of reason a prostitute: “Huren-vernunft”. In each communication with modern man we must first mirror, take time to bring out in the air what the friend we talk to really expects from this conversation; What are you after, is this what you believe about reason? Is it the warm thinking which is not disconnected from the whole of life (the sponge)? or is it the dangerous rasor-blade? Sometimes Jesus pointed to a resistance against the knowledge of God and said: this spirit will never go out, but by fasting and praying!.
3. The third pitfall:
I guess that some listeners have already thought: is this encounter with the
force of reason not completely out-dated? I mentioned already: the older ones among us must have had experiences
as I just described! The younger ones will not know what I am talking about.
Because we have moved in the meantime away from modernism to post-modernism,
away from the modern culture and its search for a rational foundation (called
today: foundationalism) to postmodernism. In post-modernism there is no need
at all to fight for truth which is universal. Quite the opposite. Each universal
truth is felt to be dangerous. Think of the ideologies in the 20th
century that we happily have left behind. You better recommend your viewpoint
because it is good, than because it is true. And the last thing you can say
is that it is true for every-one! Here we meet a different atmosphere. All
belief-systems are to be regarded as equally valid and plausible and that
you are a christian is because it means a lot to you. It gives you strength
and comfort. But also this has its own pitfall. Real life is like walking
on the sharp edge of a sword, You can fall off into two directions and easily
we flip from the one pitfall in talking to modern man into the other pitfall that opens up in
talking with post-modern man. Which is: let us give in to the demand and only
talk about the Gospel in its meaning for me. And suddenly we catch
ourselves as being advertisers of the truth instead of being witnesses
and proclaimers.
C.S. Lewis in his already quoted book must have felt
this coming when he wrote in God in the dock: “One of the great difficulties is to keep before the audience’s mind
the question of truth. They always think you are recommending Christianity
not because it is true but because
it is good .And in the discussion they will at
every moment try to escape from the issue ‘True- or False’ into
stuff about a good society, or morals, or the .. Spanish Inquisition.. or
anything whatever. You have to keep forcing them back, and again back, to
the real point that.. christianity is a statement which if false, is of no
importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be
is moderately important.” P.101.
And that is exactly the only place that a post-modern man is willing to give
to what they would call ‘the christian tradition’, helpful up to
a certain degree (morality f.i.) but don’t carry it too far and give
it its place among the many other religious traditions!
What do we do if on campus and in the media the truth-question
is a taboe and dismissed in advance?
Alistair Mc Grath wrote in ‘Bridge-building’
I.V.P ’92 p.225,226: there is no other way than to (postpone) relegate
the truth-claim to the background temporarily, for purely tactical reasons,
in order to command the claims of Christianity on grounds more acceptable
within the post-modern world-view. Christianity is profoundly attractive.
Let all people know how only the deep love of the God and Father of Jesus
can satisfy our deepest human longings. Show not in the first place that christianity
is rational, but that it is relevant.
In a way I do agree with McGrath. We can even point to
the book of Acts. There was always first the demonstration and than the proclamation.
At least it went hand in hand. People saw and felt that this Gospel was powerful.
Relevant. Than came the proclamation of the truth. Dr.Schaeffer used to say
that the final apologetics is always the healing community!
On the other hand I am uneasy about the distinction,
even temporarily, between need and truth.
It is in this regard very important to notice that the
word ‘witness’ in the N.T. never meant: just to give an emotional
report of my personal experience with the Lord, but that it meant: to witness
facts. It is a term that was taken from the language of the courtroom. The
apostles were witnesses of Christ because they could in a trustworthy way
point to what Jesus really had done. Going back to the title of my lecture
: God in the dock. No, we are not called to be his lawyer, but : yes, witnesses
we are.
Coming back to my third point: whether we live in a modern
or a postmodern time this remains the same: the power of the Gospel is in
this point of contact, in this holy moment of finding out that it is really
true, that God is really there, that I do not imagine these things but that
He is factual, real and alive. We are called to be witnesses of that truth
in the courtroom in which modern and post-modern men have put up God
However, the good side of post-modern time is that there
is more room for the whole human being. Suddenly we discover the old truth
that a human being is more than just a mind. There are at least so many resistance’s
against believing in my stomach than in my head. We have not only presuppositions
(wrong thoughts in their mind), but also pre-monitions, or pre-emotions, where healing
is needed. (See: If only I could believe’ by Wim Rietkerk ‘on psychological barriers to come to belief!
Solway,1997.
4. Finally, we
should keep talking to this a- ,non-, or anti-christian culture in which we
live. It may sound like kicking in an open door but the last pitfall I would
like to mention is the pitfall of changing the address. Switching
from talking to the non-christian to talking to an only-christian audience.
I hear several voices to-day saying: just be realistic: is there any non christian
among the people you talk to? No? then stop doing as if, forget the outsider,
and concentrate on the ones that do listen. In all types of evangelistic work
this is a temptation. What happens when we do this is a subtle shift from
real apologetics into a kind of instruction on ‘how to do’ and ‘how
to know’and we get involved into all kind of practical ideas how to make
being a christian or a church service or whatever christian activity
attractive how to reach out to the ‘world’
and how many things we can learn from non-christian thinkers, books
and films.It comes down to the level of ‘interesting’. Quickly it
becomes saltless and boring.
The reason is a shift in audience. Real apologetics focuses
always on the non-believer, even if
there is no one there. The point is that even if there is not a non-believer
in the room, the room is always filled with non-believers. Un-belief is there
always in the heart of each believer.
We saw:
1.
good apologetic is offensive and not primarily defensive.
It is even a pitfall to step in the place of the lawyer..
2.
good apologetics does not fall in the trap to unconsciously
use the weapon of the enemy, autonomous reason. It believes in arguments,
yes, but rejects the demand of proof before the judgement-seat of reason.
3.
At the same time: true truth remains its ultimate concern
, also in an age where it is very tempting
to limit ourselves to show its relevance and meeting the needs.
4.
Real apologetics is always searching for and fighting
against the enemy who would keep us in unbelief, to our own destruction. It
can better be defined in its true nature as the offensive of love. Because
what it really is, is the effort of the Lover that God is in deepest sense
to find or create an opening in the heart of his fallen children. Let us not
change the address.
Apologetics
is the offensive of Love.
God in the dock? Reason the judge? Do you believe it?
God left the court-room long ago (Philippians 2:6,7) in order to convince
his fallen children that He never gave up his love for them and that He keeps
searching for conviction and surrender of their rebellious hearts!