LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
How can we engage in apologetics with gentleness and respect?
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
How can we engage in apologetics with gentleness and respect?
What does the Bible say about how we should engage with our opponents?
Love
First, we must listen to Jesus’ unsettling words in the Sermon on the Mount: “Love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:43). Before we open our mouths to
defend our faith, we must ask ourselves, “Am I loving my enemy here? Or am I just seeking to
slap them down?” If we think our aggression is justified because it’s in Jesus’ defense, let’s
remember how Jesus responded when Peter drew a sword to protect him.
The King of the universe wondrously calls us to speak for him. If we keep silent, the stones
will cry out. But he does not need us to protect him from opponents any more than a lion needs
protection from the claws of a mouse.
Gentleness and Respect
Second, we see in Scripture that honoring Jesus in apologetics is tied to two qualities for
which apologists are sadly seldom known. “In your hearts,” writes Peter (having learned much
since the sword-drawing incident), “honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to
make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with
gentleness and respect” (1 Pet. 3:15).
Honoring Jesus before those who disbelieve in him is a vital task to which we are all called.
We must give reasons for the hope we have, and not wallow in intellectual laziness. But those
reasons must be given with gentleness and respect.
What does that look like when someone is comparing the Bible to Harry Potter? Truth be
told, I felt the temptation to go in guns blazing. I can often feel frustrated in conversations with
people who hold beliefs that I know to be indefensible—especially if they are claiming an
intellectual high-ground. There’s a piece of me that wants to take them down, to feel the
satisfaction of conquest. Too many times, I’ve let that instinct lead. But I know how little
anyone is persuaded by attack, and that love is both the scriptural response to our enemies and
the best way to win them for Christ.
A loving attempt at online civility
My best attempt at love on Jan. 9 was to affirm what I could of my opponent’s jibe,
sidestep the name-calling, and return to the main point of the book:
“The Gospels are certainly ancient! But @DrPJWilliams point is that if you subject them to
the same kind of analysis as you would other historical documents from the ancient world, they
actually stand up remarkably well—better, indeed, than many texts we take to be
authoritative.”
Of course, the Dawkins-fan responder disagreed, and we went back and forth. At every
stage, I tried to see the best in his or her comment, while also offering a counter case. My
interlocutor claimed that Jesus never actually existed: a claim that most dyed-in-the-wool
atheist historians would laugh at. But mocking and shaming them wouldn’t be loving my
enemy. Nor would failing to tell them the truth.
He or she responded, “Secular scholarship already exists in this matter. Don’t need review
of a book. You need data and analysis. You can find all the info online. Acedemic [sic] journals
are superior to book since the formal [sic] attempts to eliminate bias—books do not or at least
aren’t required to.”
I replied, “Agreed! Can you point me to the academic journal articles you have in mind? If
they are recent and published in leading journals, I’d be quite curious to read the best skeptical
scholarship on this question.”
I could have added the sarcastic phrase, “I’ll wait.” But I didn’t. I wasn’t there to own this
person, but to win them.
Meanwhile, other Christians had started weighing in, like spectators at a boxing match,
cheering their champion, and adding their own punches to the fight. In the end, the Dawkins-
fan retreated from the field. This person had no answer to my gentle question. But I fear the
Christian pile-on had also not left him or her feeling loved.
In an increasingly aggressive public square, it’s easy to think that what we need is more
attack. And in one sense we do. If we Christians do our homework, we’ll find we hold the cards
of reason in our hands, and we must be prepared to play them. We need more scholarly,
rigorous, accessible books—like Peter Williams’—to train our team. We need to raise our
intellectual game. And we need to find the thousands of Christian professors whom God has
raised up in the secular academy and learn from them, so that our arguments are drawing from
the best of Christian thought, and we’re not guilty of recycling half-truths and indefensible
claims—like the atheist claiming Jesus never existed.
But when we go on the offense with our apologetics, it must have love at its heart, and
gentleness and respect on either hand. People like me, who are prone to intellectual point-
scoring, must fight this temptation just as we would fight lust or laziness.
