Tonight’s “Open Mic” question is a simple one. If you don’t get it, I’m not going to help you.
Catholics, I thought about this just being about your team, but that wouldn’t be fair.
OK. Here it is. Tonight’s iMonk Cafe Open Mic Question:
“Why are apologists….you know…..why are they the way they are?”
Some help is available here.
My sister, who is a practicing Wiccan has this cartoon laminated and up on her wall.
Hmm… Why does James White come to mind? I think with any sort of debater, whether religious or political, there is a need to appeal to the emotional side of the individual, not merely the intellectual. And theres no better way to do that in a debate or argument than the unnecessary rhetorical and tactical phrasing of your argument and cut down of your opponents.
Like the saying goes, logic doesn’t prevail when passions are high. And when passions are high debaters come out of their caves. Its just that when u get better trained for it, you end up fixing the logical part, and then your logic and passion both prevail. Sometimes this mixture causes too much confidence and brings out the jerk in a person. Afterall, when you think youre so right, its almost a license to say anything else in addition to it.
The logical explanation is that apologists are logical people. They (or should I say we) see things a certain way that makes logical sense to them (I mean us) and wonder why everyone else can’t see it that way also.
A psychoanalytical explanation would be the apologists (at least the more vocal ones) are somewhat insecure and need others to affirm what they believe in order to have it confirmed to themselves that what they believe is true.
Just a couple of thoughts.
Because it’s a confidence game, first of all.
Well, shoot, that cartoon says it all, doesn’t it?
I think that what we mostly see in apologetics is the result of a certain kind of personality set loose and financially rewarded for bombastic behavior. It’s a pretty universal phenomenon, really, check out some Muslim or Jewish apologetics sometime, or even defenses for secular folks like Che Guevara. People can get petty in defending what they love.
I read a fair amount of Alpha & Omega Ministries about a year ago when I still wanted to not believe the claims of the Church, and what I read definitively settled my mind about entering the Catholic Church. James White singlehandedly killed the last bit of Protestantism left in me with his bile.
I read the debate between Madrid and Jones you posted on the BHT, and it was childish on both sides, though one was right and one was wrong. And that is the damnable thing about modern apologetics subculture on all sides, it takes important eternal truths and so often turns it into a schoolyard brawl.
Being an a** about anything (especially of a religious or intellectual nature) is straight up a result of our personality being twisted by sin and the fall.
If we want to hold on to this darkened piece of our psyche, then, like with any other sin (like eating too much, spending money selfishly), we will come up with excuses as to why it’s OK to continue. These would include justifying our behavior as “defending the pure gospel”, “proclaiming the truth”, or exercising a God-given gift of “discernment”. More clever individuals may comb the bible for verses that serve to paint various Biblical heroes as having just as sharp of tongues as they wish to exercise.
The presence of this sin/personality defect/whatever in the lives of some apologists does not make them any less Christians. They’re just human. Just like the fat Christian, the lazy Christian, or the spendthrift Christian (this is where I can hang my head). Gosh, they can sure be obnoxious sometimes though, eh?
I’ve known quite a few apologists over the years and with some of them, I got the distinct feeling that their own faith is shaky and that they are trying to convince themselves that Christianity is true. Not all, but some. That’s why they collect and write articles, websites and books of proofs concerning Creation, the reliability of the Scriptures, Bible Codes, logical proofs for the existence of God, etc. People who are already well-settled on these issues might move on to other aspects of the Christian life but it seems to me that some folks become apologists because they are stuck on these basic issues. Again, not all, but some.
Xenia,
i think you are a little ridiculous to suggest that the apologists you knew actually have shaky faith and that they do what they do to convince themselves of the truth… You need to meet knew apologists. I suggest one: Ravi Zacharias. He definitely does not fit in with this question, like James White does!
A few theories that might almost be worth the price of this post:
1) They’re converts — and we love cheering for the rookie. From CS Lewis to Bart Ehrman to the countless Catholic and Calvinist converts, their newfound beliefs need defending and defining. Established believers like converts – at best they can bring insight and zeal to their side. At worst they are egged on by established believers to poke and prod against their former belief system (and usually the believers, too). And if they have any celebrity status to them — be it a seminary grad turned atheist or sitcom star turned Evangelical — they’ll get special treatment and more leeway.
2) They can’t shut it off. A friend and I came up with the term awhile back, explaining how some can’t stop researching, questioning, listening, debating, criticizing, or defending their faith. I really think it’s in some people’s minds to have to have everything figured out — and if it isn’t, there’s a problem. At best, this results in some very compelling arguments and works for others in the faith to benefit from. At worst, it creates someone who is defensive about everything and comes off as an odd mix of self-assured and wildly insecure.
3) Lack of Social Skills. Certainly not all apologists by any stretch, but there does seem a subset where the art of listening to those who disagree (or listening in general) is a foreign concept. All discussions are potential battles, and every hill is a hill to die on. Having so much apologetics done from the convenience of a home computer where you’ve got a group of cheerleaders in the comments and hyperbolic quotes get you virtual high-fives doesn’t help this problem.
At least that’s my experience. Again, while it’s certainly not all apologists, but there does seem to be a subculture where being like the guy in the comic is endorsed.
I agree with JustinV. It is the converts who have all the emotion and passion. Their zeal often inflames their delivery.
Those who are not converts tend to be the good ones. I like Geisler.
Matt, I said “some.”
But I agree, I am often ridiculous.
Most apologists are academics. Often divorced from everyday living apologetics are dry and worthless. Combine this with sin and you have a horrible witness.
I appreciate Francis Schaeffer when he said, “Biblical Orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.” Schaeffer was also right in his “The Mark of A Christian” when he said that when Christians do not love each other, work with one another for kingdom purposes, as expressed in their catholicity (unity) then God gives the world the right to question our salvation.
The most powerful apologetic is done in the context of a gracious, welcoming church community. Examining Acts one finds that this is one of the chief reasons Christianity started with a bang.
You see this even in church history when it was the Christians who cared for the neglected and unwanted of the Roman Empire and paganism.
Not enough fiber in their diet.
Most of us have been taught that apologetics is the act of convincing others that you are right and they are wrong. If you are going to do this you must be wholly convinced that you are right. Most of us assume that this conviction leaves no room for doubt (at least doubt that we will admit).
We’ve been taught that apologetics is about certainty and proof, not about humility, grace and love. To many humility and certainty are irreconcilable. Their certainty gives them license for arrogance and rudeness.
Thankfully there are many who have passionate faith, logical coherence and Christlike love and grace.
They weren’t loved enough by God when they were children.
I think it is a wider question. There are jerks everywhere.
Why? Because some people are jerks.
apologists can be jerks because…
atheists can be jerks because…
salespeople can be jerks because…
lawyers can be jerks because…
customer service reps can be jerks because…
Here are jerk-there a jerk-everywhere a jerk-jerk
oh yeah-i did like the cartoon!
Well, taking it from the cradle Catholic side, and warning you all well in advance that the following is my own personal opinion and not in any way, shape or form to be construed as Official Church-Type Teaching about anything, I would put forward the hypothesis that lay apologists are enthusiastic about sharing the faith.
Yes, we’re all supposed to be that way, but most of us aren’t, and so those who do take it seriously enough to walk up to total strangers and say “Have you ever considered, y’know, becoming part of the international global conspiracy to plunge the world back into the Dark Ages and stamp out all reason, science, and logic?” really have to have thick skins and pushy personalities.
(Yes! Got the sarcasm in straight away!)
Though my general point is that apologists do have to be a little pushy – what else can you call selling the best points of one’s particular denomination? – and this does come across sometimes as a hard sell. Also, it’s terribly easy to get into slanging matches with opponents where more heat than light is generated. And a side effect of that is a tendency to ‘get your retaliation in first’ by jumping all over prospective arguments before the other person has even opened their beak, so that makes you sound like a jerk.
And on that last, I’d just like to say in regard to all those who have pointed out to us benighted Papists that we’ve left our brains at the door and turned off our critical reasoning abilities in order to swallow a barrel of hogwash:
Me are too smrt! I do be thinking deep thinky-type stuff alla time! I even haveta be able to count alla way up to fifteen (decades of the Rosary) and I’ve only got ten fingers, so that’s really, really, hard to do! Some peepuls in our cult even havta count alla way up to twenty (if you factor in the new Luminous Mysteries) but they’s the *really* smrt, advanced ones
I think the most fitting answer to the question is that a lot them, not all mind you ( I love listening to Ravi ) is that they are nothing more than pains in the asses that have to be right about everything whether they are convinced of it or not. They would probably argue with the apostles about doctrines or dogmas of the Church if they could. I’ve met some amatuers tha fit the bill and I can’t get away from them fast enough. One of them told me of an incident where they ran into some kids from a mainline protestant church collecting money for something and proceeded to tell them how wrong their church was on doctrine and just about everything else. Know-it-all-ism.
Take a breath and be civil people. Keep it between the ditches.
Sam, if you are labouring under the delusion that Catholic apologetics pays well, let me remind you that we don’t have tithing in our church
As some have already pointed out, neither is it limited to apologists, nor are all apologists thus afflicted.
Many of us wonder, Why are (tel)evangelists … you know … why are they the way they are?
Leaving the field of professional religion we frequently (and depending on where we are ourselves just then) ask the same question about cops, teachers, drill sergeants, social workers, politicians, etc.
The answer seems to be that some activities, when engaged in more or less fulltime over an extended period, bring out the worst in some of the people most drawn to these activities; I think the commenter(s) pointing to pride vs humility and insecurity vs confidence have a point.
Finally, in my experience we all are, with a very few exceptions (and I’m not one!), jerks in one way or the other. The more public our life and ministry, the more obvious and glaring this becomes.
I think it’s because a lot of Apologetics is designed specifically to win arguments with very little focus given to winning hearts and minds. Since entering a discussion with the sole intention of winning the argument (which none of us ever do, oh no :p) is a little bit of an selfish thing to do, it’s no surprise that most apologists appear to be jerks, nor that Apologetics itself seems to attract a lot of jerks too it. A very wise professor of mine once said that when you get into a discussion, you should both walk away with a deeper understanding of both your faith and theirs. Even non-Christians and *gasp* Atheists have some wisdom and insights that we can use.
Regardless mere arguing and discussion never converted anyone. It is only through an encounter with the Risen Christ that people are changed. At that’s reflected best in how we live, not how we speak.
Peace,
Josh
Could the Biblical Greek for “fool” also be translated “jerk,” as in “We are jerks for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored!” ICorinthians 4:9-11
Jesus complex? Think about it. People hated Jesus for what He had to say; therefore the more people hate you, the more Christ-like you become.
I think it’s also because some apologists (and evangelists) mistakenly think it is their job to make people have faith. Still sounds like Jesus complex to me…or maybe the Spanish Inquisition.
Maybe we need more disciple-makers, in-line with the Great Commission.
I think it also because evangelicals find no room for doubt. Doubters just need to read more apologetics, right?
The major difference in the character of modern Jewish congregations and Christian denominations is exactly this point.
Jewish scholars do not even agree as to who was the “righteous” one in “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” There is a running argument among Jewish Bible scholars as to whether the “he” is God and the “him” is Abram. or vice versa. Apparently the Hebrew is unclear on this point. This is theologically earth shattering for us. Religious wars decades long have started over less in Christendom. But Jews would be lost if they didn’t have such things to argue among themselves about. “Two Jews, three opinions.”
The cartoon says to me that if you’re a Christian with an opinion, sorry — you don’t get in ….
I hate apologists.
There, I said it.
Don’t you think Paul was a bit… you know…
Also there’s a germane story on the Ad Dominum blog today with an interesting parable about this same topic. I encouarage you all to read it.
Mack –
I apologize.
There — I said it ….
I would disagree with the converts-tend-to-be-jerks theory. I was not a convert, but I was most definitely a jerk. (I’m a recovering jerk.)
I did not come to Christ through logical argument; I came to Christ because my mother shared her testimony with me when I was four years old. I never realized—was never taught to realize, either—that testimony was a relevant way to share the gospel, despite the scriptures reiterating it so often. I didn’t recognize it was my mother’s kindness that made Christ so compelling. I just figured, “Hey, I believe this; it’s true; you ought to believe this too, or you’re an idiot.”
My youth pastors, rather than teaching us anything about love, or taking us out to help the needy in order to demonstrate love, had us play games, sing songs, and taught us apologetics. Lots of youth leaders do likewise. I have much to say about that… but not now. Giving me apologetics when I was a teenager was like giving a medical student a scalpel when you’re supposed to give him a stethoscope. I just started slashing when I was supposed to be listening, sympathizing, and diagnosing.
So, trained in argument but untrained in love, I clubbed people with the facts, and took all the good out of the good news. And, no surprise, I didn’t lead anyone to Christ. Good thing; I’d have made them another son of hell like me.
The reason so many apologists and theologians are jerks is for exactly the same reason I was one: No love. No training in love. No encouragement in love. No love to share. No opportunities to show love. The folks I knew pooh-poohed any kind of social work—called it “works-righteousness,” and said it indicated that these people didn’t trust Jesus for their salvation, and were trying to earn it. They didn’t recognize it at all as spillover from the love that Jesus shows us. It encouraged me further in jerkdom.
Took me a while to snap out of it, recognize God’s love, embrace it, and share it.
I still like certain apologists—Zacharias, MacDowell, Strobel, et al.—but I now understand their proper place in Christendom. They help strengthen the faith of those who are in; but for those who are out, we need to preach love, compassion, and testimony, and acts of faith, and we need to teach budding evangelists to do likewise. Otherwise they will be the same clanging gongs and smashing cymbals as the apologists we all know and cringe at.
Early on in my Christian life I used to aspire to be an apologist. I believed that the truths of the Christian faith were binding upon all people and that it was important to convince people of these truths, and that the work of an apologist best furthered this end. I still believe that the truths of the Christian faith are true for all people and that it is important to convince them of these truths, but I do not want to be like a lot of the apologists that I see out there nowadays.
As to why apologists are the way they are, I think that the stronger the compulsion someone feels to defend a belief and the louder they scream in defense of it, the more of an underlying doubt is present; this compulsion and loud screaming is really all about trying to drown out that underlying doubt.
I too am a recovering apologist. By the grace of God I learned that not every hill is worth dying on. There are still some things I would be willing to still be a hardcore apologist for like Jesus Christ as the only way of salvation for instance. But fighting a knock down, drag-out battle over baptism or Calvinism/Arminianism or something else that won’t change a person’s eternal destination just isn’t worth the pain, heartache and discord in the body of Christ.
Mark Shea wrote an interesting article on the apologetics subculture titled Intellectual Fisticuffs. It’s a good read and can be found here:
http://www.mark-shea.com/fist.html
Oh, I think James White would be like that no matter what.
But I doubt that apologetics is populated by more jerks per capita than anything else. It’s just that apologists are more often in a position to tell people a bunch of stuff they don’t want to hear.
Apologists are usually better at defending their positions than are the rest of us. They have had more practice. Even if the apologist explains his faith with great charity and patience, adults don’t like the frustration of believing that the apologist is wrong while being unable to express exactly *why*.
Apologists are sometimes right. Shocking, I know, but it happens. And nothing pisses people off more than the truth.
Sometimes an apologist is a really a jerk. If you’re in the apologist’s camp, he is an embarrassment and you wish he would shut up. But if you’re NOT in the jerk apologist’s camp, his behaving like a turd is a great advantage for your side.
If you’re in the opposite camp, and the apologist is both wrong and a jerk, you can feel vindicated that you are theologically correct and socially superior. “Look how charming and right I am, not like that guy over there!” You might even get to blame the apologist’s bad personality on his bad theology, which is sometimes actually the case.
But the very best combination is an apologist who is both right and a jerk (if you’re not in his camp, anyway). That way you can get all righteously angry at him for being a jerk, and distract yourself from the horrifying possibility that he speaks the truth. If the truth he spoke rears its ugly head elsewhere, you can always blame that nasty-tempered smart-mouthed apologist for your unwillingness to give it a fair hearing. This will allow you sidestep the issue at hand because you’re too busy discussing personalities — and lucky for you, yours his better than his.
So all you apologists out there, the more right you believe your faith to be, the less of jerk you should become. Nothing pleases your opponents more than to come across an asshole who is defending the actual Truth. It allows the nonbeliever to ignore the truth and focus on *you*.
I suspect there is a certain personality type that is particularly good at apologetics. That which leads people to be real sticklers about the nitty gritty of the arguments for a theological position is also fodder for giving way to a real aggressiveness. In the Catholic way of thinking, grace perfects nature, and so our natural predispositions can be the real meat of an apologetical gift. However those gifts need to be brought to the Lord and his grace for purification, that they may be imbued with love, which of course, is the greatest of these. Else we may become clanging cymbals.
Another aspect is that a lot of people go into apologetics for the express purpose of buttressing their flagging faith with a number of biblical (or whatever) arguments. Thus it becomes less about defending truth or exposing someone to Truth, but rather about making sure I stay in the truth. For to lose the debate would be to lose some rationale for faith.
Been there, done that on all counts.
Speaking for myself: I want to be right. I want to win. Unchecked, this desire warps my view of the people around me, of the topic being debated, and of my own sense of truth and morality. I just want to win.
Not pretty, I know.
More charitably than my last post, and thus drawing less on personal experience, I presume a lot of the snottiness that laces many of the apologetic arguments we hear is genuine befuddlement that someone cannot see what seems so obvious to them. This doesn’t excuse the snottiness, but can explain it, and make it more tolerable. And a lot of it also may lie in our perception. I.e., I don’t like the assumption on your part that I am somehow missing some portion of the truth, and I attribute some (not all) of the feeling that engenders to snottiness on your part. When really, it’s simply unease on mine.
I am also a recovering apologist. I even have an “Apologetics Study Bible” in the Holman translation. It is a very useful Bible. I got into apologetics not that long ago because I had questions myself on some verses or issues, or friends had questions for me I couldn’t answer and it helped me learn and answer some things. But you’ve got to pick your battles and listen. Apologetics just helped me understand and learn, and maybe there is a little insecurity there. As a kid in school I was zealous but now I’ve stripped away a lot of that zeal. I am slowly coming round…
My main problem with apologetics in the subtle dishonesty or truth bending that often occurs. This usually isn’t all out lies, so I wonder how aware some apologists are of what they are doing. Some probably more than others. It’s more of a “lying with statistics” thing or leaving out certain facts to paint one’s self in the best possible way and one’s “opponent” in the worst possible way. This really backfires if a person starts doing the legwork and investigating the primary sources themselves. I know this sort of apologetics actually shook rather than strengthened my faith, because I thought, “If they have the truth, why do they need to leave things out and stretch the facts?”
I wonder if some of the sloppiness in much of the apologetics on the Internet isn’t due to the fact that so much seems to be aimed at people who already agree with the given apologist and thus have no desire to challenge him/her.
I wonder what percentage of Christian apologetics is actually read by non-Christians and how much is just read by Christians giving each other virtual high fives.
Now, I hate to generalize. C.S. Lewis (who some TRs say wasn’t eve a Christian) and Francis Schaeffer have had tremendous positive impacts on my life, and some would call them apologists. I wonder if the Internet is just a really bad medium for good apologetics, as people can just spout crap that would never make it past a good editor (of course, the apologetics published by various Christian self-publishing vanity presses is just as bad).
I also want to add that my comments don’t just apply to religious apologists. Has anyone noticed the similarity between a lot of Christian apologetics and political talk radio (on both sides of the spectrum). It seems, from looking at blogrolls, that many also have the same audience.
It’s like there’s a “team” mentality. Politically or theologically, people pick a team, and then their guy (or theology) can do no wrong an the other guy can do no right. And of course, resistance only leads to further intrenchment. Ever listen to a serious sports fan screaming about a bad call in a game. Of course, in the stands, on the other side of the course, there are fans who are cheering because they think it was a great call. Even as I write this, I find myself increasingly more fascinated by the correlations between religion, politics, and sports.
James White feels the wrath of a more extreme form of “apologetics.”
https://aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?blogid=1&query=jeff
I went to a secular state university, so we got a lot of these guys “preaching” on campus.
Martha:
You always make me laugh. Now, don’t go bragging about how high you can count. We all know how smart you are. Think of how many prayers you have memorized!
Let’s have a competition. We can compare memory power; praise/worship songs vs. prayers.
I get the feeling that there needs to be an AA club started here at InternetMonk – Apologists Anonymous.
We could start each session of comments with “Hi, my name is WebMonk and I am an apologist.”
We need to develop some steps to help people overcome this destructive vice in our lives. Obviously seven steps would be the holy number of steps to use.
Create a support group for those who are fighting to overcome their weaknesses in this area. If we witness a brother falling down, we could comment “SNAP” right away to help them realize their lapsing. (Of course we could also comment “Hey douchebag, you’re being a jackhole again!”)
Have pins that people can earn: Bronze for going a week without arguing, er I mean “debating”. Silver for a month. Gold for three months. Platinum for a whole year.
Confused: My main problem with apologetics in the subtle dishonesty or truth bending that often occurs. This usually isn’t all out lies, so I wonder how aware some apologists are of what they are doing. Some probably more than others. It’s more of a “lying with statistics†thing or leaving out certain facts to paint one’s self in the best possible way and one’s “opponent†in the worst possible way.
We all have to do apologetics of some kind when we share our faith, “the reason for the hope within you”. I believe one of the greatest lessons we have to learn is the humility to say “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” when we don’t know, or aren’t sure. “I’m still thinking that one through” is also good – when you’re still thinking that one through. Credibility is one of your greatest assets when explaining or debating your faith, and stretching and omitting facts is one of the fastest ways to loose it.
I think people are ignoring the elephant in the living room. Gladiatorial apologetics, especially of the internet variety, is a manifestation of testosterone poisoning.
Listen, I’ve heard more than I ever want to about the horrible overrepresentation of women in Christianity, the need for a masculine faith, manly men must re-take the church, etc. Fine, so women are more religious than men. So isn’t it odd that it isn’t us ladies wielding the apologetics flamethrowers, if you gentlemen are the neglected minority?
Look how I started this post (and which I just noticed myself): “I think…” How often does James White or whoever start sentences that way? We share, empathize, talk in the triple subjective case. True that that can go to extremes, and Oprahification is the besetting religious fault of the distaff side of the population; that’s a different problem. But what Michael is talking about has a straightforward cause: the Y chromosome.
(Yes, I know there are exceptions. That’s why God invented bell curves.)
Can you imagine how awful the apologists would be if they weren’t Christian?
Of course we are generalizing here. Some people out there (like me) just like to debate. In a debate they get carried away, or they drive a point home without mercy. People don’t like that. They don’t like their ideas challenged. Hence the conviction of Aristotle. So a person who does challenge and debate is going to be found obnoxious at times. And I believe he has to have somewhat of a cantankerous attitude about him in order to take on the insults that invariably come his way for challenging the ideas of others. I think we ought to be somewhat thankful for these people, they have a thankless job in many respects. And if you get to know them you sometimes find they aren’t as cantankerous as you thought. Same times the attitude is more just a suit of armor they put on before battle.
Apologists are usually better at defending their positions than are the rest of us.
That’s not what I find. What I find is that apologists tend to be better at shouting down people who disagree with them than the rest of us. Most apologists rely on little “gotcha” tricks, smokescreens, red herrings, and a whole host of logical fallacies to tire any rational person who dares argue with them into submission. Since apologists have boundless belligerent energy, a normal person eventually gets tired and shuts down, making them appear to be the loser.
I’m with o.h. on this one.
Apologetics is more or less a sport for fat Christian men who were never good at real sports in their youth.
I don’t think that faith has all that much to do with argument, personally.
Patrick Lynch,
So then why is the Bible especially the New Testament and the Pauline Corpus, so full of arguments? Why does Peter tell us to always be ready in season and out of season to give and apologia for the faith?
And I do believe that R.C. Sproul, one of the more famous apologists out there, actually excelled at football. Not that fat either as I recall.