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Apologetics
Apologetics as the Handmaid of Faithby Peter A. Kwasniewski
T
he noble art and science of apologetics has as its purpose the presentation of rational evidences, that is, readily ac cessible facts or truths, on the basis of which a non-believer may reasonably accept the claims of the Catholic Church and seek conversion. Apologetics is an art because, like the classical arts of logic and rhetoric, it fashions different kinds of arguments appropriate for different situations. It is also a science because it carries out its work in accordance with definite first principles and uses a wide array of probable and demonstrative arguments. A good apologist balances the art of speaking to a particular audience with the science of making manifest the reasonableness of the Catholic faith. Perhaps the most difficult skill for an aspiring apologist to acquire is learning how to adapt what he has studied about his faith to a very specific set of circumstances, to people with varying degrees of education, prejudice, and good will. One quickly finds out that the same method or proofs cannot be used generically in every discussion; one must try to ascertain exactly where the other person is “at,” as the phrase goes, and begin from whatever premises he is willing to grant. As St. Thomas Aquinas wisely observes in the Summa Contra Gentiles, when debating with pa gans, one should use reason; with Jews, the Old Testament; with heretics, the New Testament. In each successive case, one has available the previous means as well as an additional means to work with. Hence, apologetics may be defined as the art of leading another person to examine his opinions about religion in order to help him reject what is false and arrive at what is true, and the science of presenting Catholic evidence thoroughly and coherently.Some of the doctrines with which an apologist deals are truths naturally available to reason; others, far the greater number, are truths made known to us through divine revelation and approved by miracles, the witness of conscience, and the worthiness of the teaching itself. The goal of Christian apologetics is not to demonstrate the contents of the Faith — something that could never be done without error — but to show convincingly that an act of faith in Christ and His Church is reasonable, commendable, and salutary. Apologetics removes objections to and misunderstandings of the Christian creed in order to pave the way for the inquirer to acquiesce freely in an act of faith. Those unbelievers who are “intellectual,” or who think themselves possessed of unanswerable objections, must first be convinced that the content of the faith is not only not susceptible to these objections, but also that it is the highest and noblest doctrine one could profess. Those, on the other hand, who are inclined to reject the Faith because of some wayward passion or bad habit need to be brought to the truth more slowly; they will resist almost every step of the apologetic journey, and one is already moderately successful if one has forced them merely to consider a different way of thinking about life and what is truly worth living for. The most that an apologist can do, no matter whom he addresses, is to reveal something of the beautiful coherency and satisfying wholeness of the Faith, in order that the intellect may discern its goodness, and (as a result) the will may freely submit to it, even if the person ad dressed cannot understand the meaning of the whole of the Creed.
Although it would take another article to go through the host of very fine Catholic apologetic works written for the average modern unbeliever or for typical Protestants, it is appropriate to mention some of the books that perform the task described above with admirable clarity and persuasiveness. Many conversions have been motivated by a serious reading of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. Despite that book’s gaps, it is a marvelous tonic to wake people up, like a dousing of cold water. Frank Sheed’s Theology and Sanity, as well as his Map of Life, can be used to good effect with lapsed Catholics or people who are open to learning about the Faith. Karl Keating’s Catholicism and Fundamentalism is a treasure trove of arguments refuting the usual anti-Catholic objections urged by fundamentalist evangelicals. In recent years, Ignatius Press has brought out quite a few excellent books written by former Protestants, Scott Hahn being the best known among them, describing their journey to the Catholic faith; any of these books could serve as useful tools both for learning apologetics and for gaining a foothold in the minds of Protestants open to reading them. For people who have time and a hearty intellectual appetite, Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine remains an unparalleled defense of the unity and continuity of the Catholic faith down through the centuries. There are many other worthy authors, cousins to Newman and Lewis, who pitch their defense of Christianity upon what the scholastics call “probable reasons” — often tremendously powerful reasons that must be taken seriously by any honest person. Even if no book can sculpt an image of the truth so real that it comes to life, such works nonetheless engage the intellect at its highest level and encourage the heart to be docile. It should be added that a large number of these books, along with many new presentations of doctrine — for instance, those of Fr. Hardon and Scott Hahn — have been recorded on audio and video tape, making them more accessible to the men and women of our times, who are not as much inclined to reading books as were past generations.
Clearing up a Confusion One might raise the following problem with apologetics. Does it not seem that a rational defense of Christianity conflicts with the notion that we do not possess intellectual proof of the mysteries revealed by God and must simply accept them “on faith”? In speaking of science and argument, do we not run the risk of giving the appearance that Catholicism can be proved much as a mathematical proposition is proved? Such concerns are certainly legitimate as warnings against a spirit of presumptuous rationalism that has sometimes crept into theological defenses in the past. But in reality, no apologist would ever say that he is demonstrating the truth of the Catholic faith; he could never make so bold a claim. As we said before, he is presenting the evidences through which assent can be seen as the most reasonable response to make when one is confronted by the Gospel. At the same time, the apologist is clearing away the thorns and thistles of faulty objections or historical prejudices, so that the full message of the Gospel can be seen in all its power and wisdom. The apologist, like any other believer, must submit his intellect to the revelation of Christ, which can only be accepted in humble faith. In religious faith the intellect has to follow the will. One of the most important contributions of apologetics, therefore, is to prepare the intellect for making this humbling submission to truths for which it cannot see proper and necessary reasons, or put differently, to prepare the will to take command in making the act of obedience required by Christ. By helping an unbeliever to see why he should believe and why his difficulties do not ultimately stick, the apologist can ease the transition from living a life by “reason alone” (or, more realistically, by unjustified opinions and attitudes) to living a life informed by the Gospel and directed by the teachings of the Church. Although the will has precedence in the practice of faith, it does not have precedence in arriving at religious faith. A thoughtful person needs to see that submitting to the unprovable revelation of a mysterious God is itself reasonable. Thus, reason is meant to lead us to faith, and the apologist has the task of facilitating this progress.But there are many paths to God, some of them through reason and others almost in spite of it. Fortunately for us, He takes advantage of them all. Considering how very difficult it is for God to penetrate our stubborn hearts when we do not invite Him in, it is very likely He will aim for any exposed flesh. A close friend of mine, now my goddaughter, told me a story that shows the “unscrupulous” methods of our merciful God. She had gone off as an agnostic to a summer study program, during which she read St. Thomas’s famous Five Ways of proving the existence of God. After reading the Fourth Way she was convinced that God must exist, and on the basis of this conviction she turned to Him in prayer. Years later, she found out that she had misunderstood the argument and that, objectively speaking, she should not have been convinced by it because she had not actually grasped the premise upon which it hinged. Nevertheless, God made use of her fortunate blunder to bring her to acknowledge His reality. After much study she now understands the Five Ways better and could demonstrate God’s existence to herself; but why shoot the breeze? She already knew that He existed — that is, God helped her to believe in Him — before she ever had the philosophical training to be able to prove it as she now can. God makes use not only of our valid insights but sometimes even of our misunderstandings, in order to prompt us to prayer and faith. All the more, then, will He abundantly bless the efforts of apologists who strive, using rational and historical arguments, to open up minds and hearts to the salvation He has mercifully wrought for us sinners.
Walking by Faith, not by Sight During the first few days after Christ’s death, the Apostles waiting in the upper room seem to have been the victims of a serious misunderstanding — and that is why they were afraid and disappointed. According to their human expectations, Christ was to secure a triumphant victory and stand forth revealed as the savior of the world. Their knowledge of His mission had no room for an ignominious death and (what appeared to be) the end of all their hopes. Despite Christ’s insistent prophecies en route to Jerusalem, they had expected better things to happen and could not grasp the deeper significance of what was taking place. What they really wanted, it seems, was the consolation of a dramatic reversal of fortunes, a palpable demonstration of the divinity of Christ, without all the violence and suffering that had to accompany their Master’s glorification. When Mary Magdalen came rushing to greet them with the news of an empty tomb, they met her with stony faces and did not believe a word she said. “A tired, impetuous woman,” they may have thought. “She’s been seeing things — can’t blame her. We are here alone, without any sign by which we could believe her incredible tale.” Peter and John raced to the tomb and found out that Mary’s details were correct. Later on, even after the Master had visited the ten, Thomas, who was absent, had not yet realized the demands of faith. He wanted empirical knowledge: “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe” (Jn. 20:25). Thomas was, it should be admitted, a very consistent empirical philosopher — but due to this intellectual self-reliance, he had not attained the blessedness of faith. “We walk by faith, not by sight,” St. Paul says (2 Cor. 5:7); Thomas the Doubter insisted on walking by sight. Christ graciously chose to accommodate his weakness, but in doing so He left a perpetual counsel to all who would believe in Him by the testimony of the Apostles themselves: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (Jn. 20:29). When Mary Magdalen came, the Twelve did not accept her word — they continued to be afraid and unbelieving. By appearing to the eleven, Christ vindicated Mary’s testimony. When the eleven in their turn testified to the odd man out, Thomas, he then treated them the same way they had treated the Magdalen. “Where is the proof? I seek indisputable evidence.” Christ embarrassed him not a little, as we read in the sacred history, and made of him an example of how not to proceed if we would please God with our fidelity.What exalts the Virgin Mary above all other mortals? “Blessed art thou that hast believed, because those things shall be accomplished that were spoken to thee by the Lord” (Lk. 1:45). The second stanza of St. Thomas Aquinas’s hymn to the Eucharist, “Adoro te devote,” reads:
Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur;
Sed auditu solo tuto creditur.
Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius,
Nil hoc Verbo Veritatis verius.
Seeing, touching, tasting fail of thee;
Only by hearing can it be believed.
What God’s Son hath said, I believe:
Nothing is truer than this word of truth.
Mary could do one of two things: acquiesce or not acquiesce. The question put to her was not, “Do you wish to behold the coming of the Messiah?,” but the far more demanding: “Will you be his mother?” Throughout her life, she protected her Son from harm and from the vain curiosity of others; after He had left her for His public ministry she had to watch her son suffer contempt and pain without her being able to do anything about it, without seeing his immediate vindication. Yet still she believed and never faltered. That is why, as our Holy Father never tires of preaching, she is the Woman of Faith, the model for us believers who must spend our lives at the foot of the Cross, as she did, without seeing the triumph of Christ in a dark world that hates and persecutes Him. The words of our Lord to Thomas “the twin,” our twin, capture the essence of faith: “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.” What does it mean to “believe without seeing”? No matter what we may know or feel to be certain, we must always take a leap of faith. Even if the leap itself is reasonable and justified, still one has got to make this leap into the arms of a hidden God. Religious truth necessitates action on our part. Not blind action, of course, for we know what we are doing and why. But there will always be more, much more, that we do not see and will never see. Our life as a faithful member of the Church is spent believing in the reality of the unseen, the mysterious, the supernatural, the realm of truths we cannot clearly perceive.
The Christian Faith Demands a Response Either the Gospel is fiction and thus worthless save for the entertainment of scholars, or it is the promise of salvation and thus worthy of the sacrifice of our entire lives. Whatever else it may be, Christianity cannot be a mere “opinion” or set of opinions, as modern men, with the superficiality of newspaper journalism, make it out to be. Christianity is either true or false. It is not “true in a higher,” or “true in a poetical,” sense. It presents itself as fact, not as a metaphysical interpretation of the human condition or as an elaborate mythology. Either Christ was born of a Virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit or He was not. Either He performed miracles testifying to His mission or He did not. Either His death on the Cross effected the redemption of man kind, or it did not. Either He rose from the dead, or He did not. Either He is truly God and the Son of God — not in a manner of speaking, or in the same way as anybody can be called a “child of God” — I say, either God or a mere man; either He was sent uniquely from God to proclaim the truth and bring salvation, or He was a ridiculous crank. Christ is the absolute Either/Or. You must accept Him for who He is or reject His claims altogether. There is no middle road, unless one wants to be flippant before God by denying the principle of non-contradiction. You cannot merely praise Christ’s “teachings” or “moral attitude” or “ex ample” and be done with it. This is dishonesty in the face of the Gospel. If you do not get down on your knees and worship Him as God — if you do not, and yet He is God, then I should not want to be in your position on the day of judgment. It was Christ Himself who said: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mk. 16:15-16).The problem is, moderns often introduce too much sophistication into their primary and first-level understanding of Christianity. It is not a “story,” it is not a philosophy, it is not an attitude. It is the power and wisdom of God revealed as fact in the Person of Jesus Christ, who is our Lord, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, our sole access to the Father from whom we have been estranged by sin. Only when we have accepted the factual, that is to say, incarnate basis of the Christian faith, only then may we talk about the allegorical, metaphysical, mystical meanings of the life and words of Christ or His followers. But modern man is tempted to jump to these other areas without appreciating even for a moment the startling realities we are called upon by Christ to accept in humble faith. Kierke gaard says the problem with modern Christians is that they want to make Christianity look “profound,” they want it to vie with trendy philosophies, with ac claimed scientists, poets, thinkers. But to do so would involve a complete misunderstanding of what the Gos pel is really about. Christianity, no matter how deep its mysteries, is a simple, direct message straight to the heart, accessible to all and issued to all; it does not strive to be “profound” in a worldly sense. Indeed, one cannot think of anything Christ would have cared less about. The message Christ brings has but one concern, one goal: the redemption and salvation of man kind. It presents itself, therefore, as an Either/Or, as something that must be embraced or rejected: there is no compromise, no sitting on the fence. Far from being compatible with human secular “wisdom,” there will always remain an irreducible element of folly or absurdity to the Cross and the religion that makes the Cross its boast, as St. Paul vehemently says to the intellectuals of Corinth. Such a recognition of the limits of man’s mind when contemplating God is at the center of the Apostle’s preaching. But the Cross is not the folly of error or defeat; it is the folly of a wisdom whose innermost radiance is hid from us, a triumph whose everlasting glory has begun to transform us from within. When Christianity preaches “folly,” it is that of God, whose weakness is greater than man’s strength, whose foolishness is wiser than man’s wisdom.
True faith is possible only in and through the Incar nation, which in a way takes place anew in the heart of every believer when he believes: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Col. 3:16). All faith is an incarnation of spirit in the world of mankind; it descends like the dove over the head of Christ in the river Jordan. Faith is the work of Christ. Everything we do should contribute to the perfection of His work. We are called to be missionaries who spread the good news of His eternal love throughout the world. Our defense of the faith must have as its aim our own eventual irrelevance: we are instruments and we must not get in the way of the Master’s hand. “He must in crease, but I must decrease” (Jn. 3:30). It is our Lord alone who draws forth an act of faith and a life of faith in hearts where we, through prayer and effort, have planted the seeds of the Gospel. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6-7).
Peter A. Kwasniewski is studying for a Doctorate in Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, concentrating on medieval philosophy.