LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
The True Task of Apologetics
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
9/2022
The True Task of Apologetics
It will already have appeared how far apologetics may be defined, in accordance with a
very prevalent custom (e.g. Sack, Lechler, Ebrard, Kubel, Lemme) as “the science which
establishes the truth of Christianity as the absolute religion.” Apologetics certainly does
establish the truth of Christianity as the absolute religion. But the question of importance here
is how it does this. It certainly is not the business of apologetics to take up each tenet of
Christianity in turn and seek to establish its truth by a direct appeal to reason. Any attempt to
do this, no matter on what philosophical basis the work of demonstration be begun or by what
methods it be pursued, would transfer us at once into the atmosphere and betray us into the
devious devices of the old vulgar rationalism, the primary fault of which was that it asked for a
direct rational demonstration of the truth of each Christian teaching in turn.
The business of apologetics is to establish the truth of Christianity as the absolute religion
directly only as a whole, and in its details only indirectly. That is to say, we are not to begin by
developing Christianity into all its details, and only after this task has been performed, tardily
ask whether there is any truth in all this. We are to begin by establishing the truth of
Christianity as a whole, and only then proceed to explicate it into its details, each of which, if
soundly explicated, has its truth guaranteed by its place as a detail in an entity already
established in its entirety. Thus we are delivered from what is perhaps the most distracting
question which has vexed the whole history of the discipline. In establishing the truth of
Christianity, it has been perennially asked, are we to deal with all its details (e.g.H.B. Smith), or
merely with the essence of Christianity (e.g. Kubel). The true answer is, neither.
Apologetics does not presuppose either the development of Christianity into its details, or
the extraction from it of its essence. The details of Christianity are all contained in Christianity:
the minimum of Christianity is just Christianity itself. What apologetics undertakes to establish
is just this Christianity itself — including all its “details” and involving its “essence “–in its
unexplicated and uncompressed entirety, as the absolute religion. It has for its object the laying
of the foundations on which the temple of theology is built, and by which the whole structure
of theology is determined. It is the department of theology which establishes the constitutive
and regulative principles of theology as a science; and in establishing these it establishes all the
details which are derived from them by the succeeding departments, in their sound explication
and systematization. Thus it establishes the whole, though it establishes the whole in the mass,
so to speak, and not in its details, but yet in its entirety and not in some single element deemed
by us its core, its essence, or its minimum expression.
V. DIVISION OF APOLOGETICS
The subject-matter of apologetics being determined, its distribution into its parts becomes
very much a matter of course. Having defined apologetics as the proof of the truth of the
Christian religion, many writers naturally confine it to what is commonly known somewhat
loosely as the “evidences of Christianity.” Others, defining it as “fundamental theology,” equally
naturally confine it to the primary princi-pies of religion in general. Others more justly combine
the two conceptions and thus obtain at least two main divisions. Thus Hermann Schultz makes
it prove “the right of the religious conception of the world, as over against the tendencies to the
denial of religion, and the right of Christianity as the absolutely perfect manifestation of
religion, as over against the opponents of its permanent significance.” He then divides it into
two great sections with a third interposed between them: the first, “the apology of the religious
conception of the world “; the last, “the apology of Christianity “; while between the two
stands” the philosophy of religion, religion in its historical manifestation.” Somewhat less
satisfactorily, because with a less firm hold upon the idea of the discipline, Henry B. Smith,
viewing apologetics as “historico-philosophi-cal dogmatics,” charged with the defense of “the
whole contents and substance of the Christian faith,” divided the material to much the same
effect into what he calls fundamental, historical, and philosophical apologetics.
The first of these undertakes to demonstrate the being and nature of God; the second, the
divine origin and authority of Christianity; and the third, somewhat lamely as a conclusion to so
high an argument, the superiority of Christianity to all other systems. Quite similarly Francis R.
Beattie divided into (1) fundamental or philosophical apologetics, which deals with the problem
of God and religion; (2) Christian or historical apologetics, which deals with the problem of
revelation and the Scriptures; and (3) applied or practical apologetics, which deals with the
practical efficiency of Christianity in the world. The fundamental truth of these schematizations
lies in the perception that the subject-matter of apologetics embraces the two great facts of
God and Christianity. There is some failure in unity of conception, however, arising apparently
from a deficient grasp of the peculiarity of apologetics as a department of theological science,
and a consequent inability to permit it as such to determine its own contents and the natural
order of its constituent parts.
