How to Do Apologetics. Patrick Madrid
he suggested I explore. When the plane landed, we shook hands, exchanged business cards, and agreed to stay in touch and continue our conversation via e-mail.
Over the next few weeks, I made good on my promise and watched a few of the Islamic apologetics videos Khalid had recommended. I studied the arguments closely, checking a few claims here and there, and made every effort to allow the best possible arguments for Islam and against Christianity to have a fair hearing.
Some of the arguments the speaker offered were clearly fallacious and easily refuted; others were more sophisticated and required an effort on my part to research the facts. But in the final analysis, after subjecting my Catholic belief in the Trinity and in Christ as my Savior to as rigorous a challenge as the Muslim apologist could muster, I came away not only unconvinced that Islam is the true religion, but also more convinced than ever that the message of Jesus Christ is not only true but eminently defensible. I could say with perfect honesty that yet another series of challenges to my faith in Jesus Christ and my Christian beliefs had been decisively answered and reinforced for me.
I was a bit disappointed, though not really surprised, that although Khalid quickly answered my first follow-up e-mail asking what I thought of the Muslim videos, he did not respond subsequently to the books, DVDs, and website links I sent him. Once he knew that the Muslim videos had not persuaded me to become Muslim, he never responded again. I can only hope that something in the materials I sent him and in the testimony of my Christian faith will at some point have a positive effect on him. Who knows? Perhaps someday he will come to faith in Jesus and become Christian. Perhaps I will one day meet him in heaven where we’ll have an eternity to discuss the truth.
Conversations such as that one have been an important part of my life as a Catholic, especially early on, as I sought to test the truth claims of the Catholic Church. I wanted to find any flaws, ferret out the untruths, and face up to whatever facts might disprove the Catholic Church’s teaching. Although I have encountered much undeniable evidence of the deplorable things that some Catholics have done, I could not uncover anything that could actually refute Catholic teaching.
I have found that the more one grapples with the biblical, historical, and logical facts involved in Catholic doctrines the more difficult it becomes to explain away the evidence. And the more likely it is that that person, if he’s open to the evidence, will be persuaded by it and will, in due time, become Catholic.
As I have seen with my own eyes and felt with my heart and mind, Catholic truth has an irresistible gravitational pull. Countless converts to the Catholic Church have told me as much over the past twenty-five years. Though journeys taken by these converts vary widely, it seems they all have one thing in common: to their surprise, the very things they once were certain are false — the Catholic Church and its teachings — turned out to be true.
John Henry Newman again comes to mind as an example of a man once so dead-set convinced that Catholicism was of the devil that he preached sermons about the pope being the Antichrist. Eventually, however, as he investigated the evidence in favor of Catholic teaching, he revised his opinion of the Church so dramatically that he embraced the Faith he had once reviled. And he spent the remainder of his life explaining and defending it to those who, like he himself once had, attacked the Church and its teachings without really understanding them.
I’ve seen it happen many times before. Take, for example, the hardcore, committed Protestant folks who attended a public Catholic/Protestant debate and wound up converting to the Catholic Church afterward.6 One former Calvinist woman I know told me that she attended a 1995 debate I did with two Calvinists and a Lutheran expecting to see the Catholic Church get “stomped on” (her words). She even brought a carload of her Catholic friends to the debate in hopes that they would “see the light” and abandon the Catholic Church in favor of Protestantism. I marveled as she explained what happened: She declared that she had never heard the Catholic response to the standard Protestant arguments against the Catholic faith. And she had never before heard the Catholic critique of the Protestant principles of sola Scriptura (i.e., Scripture alone) and sola fide ([justification] by faith alone). The debate shook her up so much that she felt compelled to start investigating the Catholic Church. Within the year, she had converted and was received into the Church. From time to time, she sends me a note or an e-mail letting me know how she had given a CD set of that debate to a Protestant acquaintance who then decided to convert.
I must hasten to point out that such debate-related conversions, when they happen, are surely realized in spite of my many flaws and failures as a debater. But conversions often do follow in the wake of public debates. I believe this happens because the truth of the Catholic Faith is powerful and attractive. It has its own powerful gravitational pull. Whether the issue at hand is the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the existence of God, the divinity and Resurrection of Christ, the communion of saints, or the Catholic teaching on Scripture and Tradition, whatever it may be, these truths are beautiful and coherent, not always easy to comprehend but always attractive, sometimes alarmingly so, when viewed for the first time in the full light of reason.
This is why apologetics is important. It is the perennially necessary task of clearing away whatever obstacles might prevent someone from laying claim to the truth, something all have a right to because God created us to know the truth as fully as humanly possible.
“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31–32).
Chapter 3
Tools of the Trade
Logic, Arguments, and Evidence
What is Truth?
Just as surgeons require particular instruments in order to operate on patients without killing them, and archeologists need special tools to unearth ancient ruins without ruining them, so too, apologists must use their own unique set of tools if they want to draw others toward the truth rather than drive them further away. No matter how sincere or enthusiastic you may be, if you don’t know which tools to use, your apologetics efforts will likely fail. As the famed inventor Thomas Edison once put it, “Enthusiasm is a good engine, but it needs knowledge for fuel.” I’ve shared this maxim many times over the years with people who are just starting out in apologetics. It’s a lesson I myself had to learn (and relearn) when I got my start in apologetics long ago.
There are countless untrue “truth-claims” out there competing for people’s attention and allegiance. Many of them are subtle, complicated, and not easy to expose as false. But if you have the right tools and you know how to use them, you can help people shake off error and embrace the truth. Keep in mind the old saying: If the only tool you have is a hammer, you’ll tend to approach every problem as if it were a nail. An apologist must rely on an array of different tools, including the Bible, the facts of history, and most important of all: logic.
It’s God’s grace, of course, that enables any good apologist for the Faith to be successful. And I don’t mean successful in the way the world thinks of “success” (i.e., numbers, quotas, and statistics). Rather, I mean success in terms of being able to clearly, accurately, and convincingly share divine truth. The barriers of ignorance, prejudice, bad information, and lack of opportunity are almost always what prevent critics, scoffers, objectors, and dissenters from seeing and embracing the truth. Only rarely do people seem to know with certitude that something is true and yet still obstinately oppose it. Far more often people’s objections are sincere, if misguided and misinformed.
That’s why an apologist is really in the solutions business. He’s not “selling a product.” He’s not trying to get someone to “buy” something. When you get right down to it, an effective apologist doesn’t need to convince the other guy that “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Nobody likes to be proven wrong. So the apologist’s job is to get the other guy’s attention, so that when he points toward the truth, saying, “See? Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it good?” the truth’s irresistible beauty and abiding gravitational pull will do the rest.
And when that happens,