Spare Me the Apologetics

 

Sometimes, it seems for personal torture, I read blogs of people of a variety of theological perspectives. Many are good and many are awful. It strikes me that the ones that are ‘apologetics’ are among the worse. Christian apologetics is a field of Christian theology which aims to present a rational basis for the Christian faith, defending the faith against objections. Most of them are done poorly and are essentially making arguments as to why that person and his or her tradition is right and the others are wrong.

I was just reading one the other day. I will leave the writer’s tradition out of this as its pretty irrelevant. He is well educated and a seminary student who has mastered the fine art of pious platitude sharing and a belief that his tradition is right and the other traditions are wrong. His essential instrument is to pick and choose portions of other traditions and make them caricatures for him to pick apart. It’s the class ‘straw man’ argument. The student is studying theology and philosophy and just seems to delight in using some of the newly learned concepts and applying them, rather poorly I might add, to make his point.

I say this recognizing that many people do this. Like many people who delve into apologetics so gleefully, straw men and paper tigers are mandatory.

He most recently decided to delve into the ever delightful topic of trying to rationally determine if people outside of his tradition can go to Heaven. He makes a long argument using some theological terms that aren’t really part of the discussion until he makes them a part of his conversation. Ultimately he comes to the conclusion that his tradition and Jesus are pretty much interchangeable and that ultimately there are people who go to Heaven even though they weren’t a part of his tradition. Except, in a brilliant stroke of logic, he determines they actually WERE a part of his tradition but didn’t know it.

Let me exhale here and suggest that I really need to stop reading people who take a stab at apologetics. I mean, seriously….

Okay, back to my post.

This blog post is actually 14 double spaced pages and in those 14 double spaced pages he wanders from hither to yon and never once uses the word ‘grace.’ Not once. A central word, a central theme of the New Testament is never mentioned. Not once. Lost in the pious platitudes and philosophical and theological terms aptly misapplied was the word ‘grace.’

This is what happens when we decide to dance with apologetics. Classically Christianity has dealt nicely with ‘didache’ (teaching) and ‘kerygma’ (proclamation). Those two things are adequate. We really do not need to defend ourselves from people who disagree with us. Christian and how we practice it is a choice people make. It is not an argument to be defended, it is a choice to walk on a faith journey. Instead of intellectually or philosophically trying to defend our choice, we need to simply teach what we believe (learning it first helps!) and proclaim what we believe. No more is really necessary.

And for those who believe they have to assert why people need to belong to their particular tradition or denomination to go to Heaven I have a request. Please get over yourselves. You are doing no one a favor with this silliness.

Thank you.