LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
HISTORY 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
5/2022
HISTORY OF APOLOGETICS
The term apologetics is an almost exact transliteration of the adjective ἀπολογητικóς used
substantively. The root verb, ἀπολογε[symbol omitted]οθαι, meaning to answer, to account for,
to defend, or to justify, gives an indication of what apologetics has actually been and what one
may expect it to be, no matter what the technical definition. In the large sense of giving an
answer, accounting for, or defending, the Judeo-Christian tradition has a rich apologetic history
reaching back to the very earliest records of God's intervention in human history.
Old Testament.
To give an account of Yahweh's great deeds is the purpose of the Old Testament itself. As
has been so often noted, the narration is not simply the detached recital of past acts, though
the Old Testament is sometimes this, but rather the theologically interpreted account of
Yahweh's activity in relation to His chosen people. Thus there is, in the broad sense of the term,
an "accounting for" God's actions, or what might be described as an apologetic concern. To cite
an instance, Yahweh's covenant relation with the Israelites is central to the OT experience. "I
will be your God and you shall be my people" (Jer 7.23). This covenant bond literally founds the
religious experience of Israel. [see covenant (in the bible)].
Obedience to the Mosaic law, loyalty to the covenant relationship, is always related to the
history of Yahweh's choice of Israel. The apologetic element that one finds in most of the OT
and especially in covenant history is precisely the attempt of the authors and of those who
stood behind the tradition to render Yahweh's activity in history both comprehensible and
credible. The activity and demands of Yahweh are not presented primarily for study but for
acceptance. Thus when the Israelites find themselves in exile and their temple destroyed, the
Deuteronomist explores various explanations—the word of god as a promise to the Patriarchs,
the Word considered in the covenant, which allows the possibility of a curse, the Word as
prophetic and therefore giving hope for the future. In 2 Kings ch. 17 the Deuteronomist reflects
mournfully on the exile, for he has not solved the problem of the exile except to affirm that the
ways of Yahweh toward men are just. He is thus giving "an account of," or "answering for," or
"justifying" Yahweh's activity in history, an activity that man is to embrace and accept in faith.
In this type of event and in its portrayal by the Deuteronomist one sees an essential demand for
faith.
New Testament.
The historical evidence of the NT indicates that Jesus worked miracles and that His words
and deeds led His disciples to believe that He was the Christ, the Son of God. Hardly anyone
would deny that the tradition of the above occurrence was formed and written with some, in
the large sense of the term, apologetic intent. Hence the very structure of the gospel may be
considered to be apologetic in the sense that the thinking from within faith from which the Holy
gospels emerged was again a thinking and a witnessing that directed itself to religious
persuasion, to giving an account of God's activity in Christ (see witness, chrisian).
Very clear indications of apologetic intent can be seen in Mark—probably the least
apologetic of the four Gospels—which apparently intends to answer evident questions that
would occur to early Christian readers. If Jesus performed so very many miracles, how is it that
the Jews refused to believe in Him? If Jesus were the Son of God, could He not have saved
Himself from the Crucifixion? To these questions Mark proposes the fact that people in general
did accept Jesus, and in Jerusalem people listened gladly to Jesus. In fact, Mark narrates, it is
this very success with the people that induced the leaders to arrest Jesus by stealth and have
Him crucified very shortly after. And in ch. 8, 9, and 10 Mark gives the three prophecies of the
Passion, death, and Resurrection in which Jesus affirmed the necessity of His suffering and
dying. Thus the Passion and death did not come on Jesus by surprise but rather as part of His
redemptive task.
This same general notion of apologetics in the NT is found in 1 Pt 3.15, where the writer
asks that the believer be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, a procedure that is
exemplified in the Lukan accounts of the very first preaching. In an analysis of this first
preaching in Acts, one sees OT quotations used apologetically. An analysis of Acts on the basis
of form criticism discloses a further apologetic intent in the very structure of the speeches and
of the narrative material, e.g., the account of Cornelius. Thus an apologetic concern is deeply
involved in the intention, the structure, and the contents of the NT.
Early Apologetics.
The Greek apologists of the 2d century defended Christianity through four arguments. The
first argument was from the moral effects of Christianity, especially from the exercise of
Christian charity. Justin Martyr, writing about 150, pointed out how Christianity made men
change from the practice of magic to the worship of the good God, changed a craving after
wealth to a common possession of goods and a sharing of wealth with the poor and needy,
altered hatred to charity, self-gratification to self-restraint, selfishness to generosity. Second,
the apologists argued from the predictions of both Christ and the Prophets. The third argument
was the proof from antiquity. This argument emphasized the coherence and unity of the Old
and New Testaments, for the prophetical books of the OT received their highest fulfillment in
the NT. Thus, Christianity was not a new religion, one that had come on the scene only lately,
but a religion that went back to Moses, who lived before the Greek poets and sages. The fourth
argument, the one least used, was the proof from the miracles of Christ. Miracles were not
widely used as apologetic proofs because at that time there were wandering magicians and
pseudo-Christs, who seemed able to perform wonders, apparently through demonic assistance.
The high point of 2d-and 3d-century apologetics was probably reached by Origen (c. l85–c.
254) in his Contra Celsum (246–248). Origen used all the four arguments listed above. But he
went on to point out that the greatest miracle is that of the Resurrection, and he stressed the
demonstration of the Spirit, the power of the Spirit to demonstrate and persuade one of the
credibility of Scripture and its contents. In general, the highly gifted Origen employed a
tremendous variety of arguments sufficient to answer the individual difficulties brought up by
Celsus. Particular arguments for Christianity were virtually unlimited, especially in the hands of
skillful dialecticians. Tertullian, for example, on occasion used the argument that Christian
teachings were quite similar to those of pagan poets and philosophers. The effort was to relate
the Christian demand for faith to the concrete man as be existed in a well-determined set of
historical circumstances.
Medieval Period
In the Summa contra gentiles Aquinas began with principles that he knew his opponents
would acknowledge, the principles of Aristotelian philosophy. In the light of these mutually
acknowledged principles Aquinas sought to answer objections to the faith. Aquinas further
evolved the argument of the superiority of Christianity over another religion that would win its
adherents by promising carnal delights, for instead of carnal delights Christianity offered only
spiritual benefits and, indeed, suffering. Thus the enigmatic fact that Christianity existed at all
was a proof, really, that miracles did take place and did, therefore, guarantee the truth of
Christian revelation. On the other hand, a fully developed apologetic in the modern sense of the
term did not really exist in the medieval period because people born into a Christian
community assumed that faith was the normal status of man and was a communal possession.
Thus the medievals did not grapple with the problem of the nonbeliever coming to the faith, for
the medieval community was a social entity in which it was connatural to believe.
Reformation.
The Reformation generated a polemic apologetics largely limited to an apologetic of the
Church. Bellarmine, de Sales, and others explained the necessity of the Church in opposition to
the reformers, who believed in Scripture but not in the external Church as it existed in the 16th
century. The treatise on the Church that emerged at the end of the 16th and the beginning of
the 17th century proceeded from the marks of the Church to a proof that the Roman Catholic
Church was the true Church, and as the true Church had the right and the authority to judge
controversies. The 16th century was the period when apologies abounded. Religious divisions
and the antipathies aroused among the contenders turned the apologetic arguments into a
form of attack and counterattack. The argument from authority remained basic. Scripture was a
quarry from which theologians and apologists could hew quotations to use against each other.
In general, because of the climate of controversy, polemic intruded into the area of theological
understanding.
After the Reformation
descartes (1596–1650) greatly, though unintentionally and unknowingly, influenced
apologetics. His scientific criterion of not accepting anything as true unless it is perceived to be
evident by the knowing subject was transferred to theology. And Descartes's basic principle was
that all nature is intelligible through a disciplined scientific method and the proper use of
reason. True in itself, this principle was incorporated into a book, Forma verae religionis
quaerendae et inveniendae (Naples 1662), written by Miguel de Elizalde. [Some writers find the
beginning of the manual form of apologetics in Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) and his book De
veritate religionis christianae, published in 1627.] The basic premise of the work was that
Christian faith should be justified by a speculative, articulated, and antecedent knowledge of
the fact of divine revelation. At this point a new factor enters Christian apologetics—some
anterior certification for the future commitment and knowledge of faith. After de Elizalde,
treatises on De vera religione multiplied and were dominated by the Cartesian mentality, viz,
that there must be a clear, precise, and ascertainable reason for everything, as is so in
mathematical procedure.
deism, which began with J. Toland in 1696, is largely a consequence of the use of Cartesian
method in the sphere of the religious. The 18th-century Encyclopedists in France, the
Aufklärung in Germany, and an atmosphere somewhat less acrimonious than that of
Reformation days continued and developed an increasingly rationalistic apologetic.
In the 19th century, Christian apologetics was directed to the defense of the supernatural
and the historical reliability of Scripture against those who denied the supernatural and held
that both the Bible and tradition were unreliable sources of historical truth. When David F.
Strauss (1808–74) said Scripture was predominantly myth, and Joseph Ernest renan (1823–92)
sought to diminish the mysterious and supernatural element in Christianity, apologists directed
their attention to showing that supernatural revelation was possible, suitable, necessary (if God
destines man for a supernatural end), and actually took place. The same emphasis was placed
on showing that the Gospels are true historical documents and thus are to be believed. In the
mid-19th century the general form of apologetics as it would be known for the next 100 years
became fairly well settled. The pattern appeared in G. perrone's Praelectiones theologicae
(1835–42), a series that went through 30 editions. His tract De vera religione determined the
tone, content, and method of nearly all Catholic apologetics for the next century. From
Perrone's time on, apologetic treatises began with the possibility of revelation, the necessity of
revelation, the criteria of revelation, and the existence of revelation in the OT, in Christ and in
the Church.
In the latter half of the 19th century Christian apologetics centered about the historical
reliability of the Gospels, especially their testimony to the Resurrection and divinity of Christ.
The divinity of Christ was, at times, established from the OT. After verifying the authenticity and
veracity of the canonical Gospels in the historicist sense, the divinity of Christ was attested by
His preaching, His miracles, and His prophecies.
During exactly this same period John Henry new man (1801–90) was writing about the
primacy of conscience and its first principle that the world is governed by a providential
Creator. From providence and creation Newman proceeded to the fact that all nature manifests
both the intention and design of God. From this Newman went to the principle of analogy,
primarily to refute objections to the supernatural. The accumulation of probabilities and the
use of the illative sense made Newman's apologetic different from the one common in his day.
Because Newman was well aware of the depths of the human mind, and the tortuous route it
follows to religious truth, Newman's writings treat the human mind with great reverence.
Nonetheless, Newman continually proposed the perennial problems: the existence of God, the
relation of God to contemporary man, the development of doctrine, the identification of the
Church of his time with the apostolic Church.
M. blondel (1861–1949) based his immanentist apologetic on the theory that Christianity
does not come exclusively from the outside (see immanence apologetics). Some few other
apologists paralleled the apologetic of Newman, as, for example, Jean Guitton, who considered
the divinity of Jesus and the Resurrection of Jesus in the light of the rationalist, Protestant, and
Catholic approaches and asked which opinion best explains all the data.
Modern apologetics is in a state of flux and tends toward versatility of approach. Most
Catholic apologists feel that the modern option is between belief or non-belief. Thus
apologetics is tending to ask questions about the basic orientation involved in either position.
Modern apologetics is also attempting to formulate an ontology of the principles of natural and
supernatural revelation. Theologians such as Karl rahner have attempted to exploit the
openness of man, since he is spirit, to all being. Because revelation is essentially relational, both
terms in the relation are undergoing scrutiny, and apologetics is becoming more subjective to
offset the overly objective and extrinsicist apologetics of the mid-20th century. Apologists are
likewise tending to view Scripture in the light of the latest research and as religious witness and
testimony. Modern apologetics is emphasizing that since man exists in the temporal order, the
apologetic approach must be in categories and patterns taken from that order. Because man is
open to all being, the transcendent God can perpetually and permanently give stability within a
very variable and volatile temporal order.
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