How to Do Apologetics. Patrick Madrid
Holy Communion is not “cannibalism.”
• The Holy Bible nowhere claims to be the sole, sufficient rule of Faith for Christians.
The Kataphatic Approach: From the Greek καταφατικό (kataphatikó), meaning “affirmative.” The opposite of apophatic, the kataphatic approach affirms certain truths that make other truths clearer. Examples of such affirmations in an apologetic setting:
• God is all good (omnibenevolent), all knowing (omniscient), all powerful (omnipotent).
• Everything God creates is good.21
• The Bible declares that Tradition is necessary and important.
• Jesus is Lord.
• Unaided by Divine revelation, the human intellect is capable of arriving at the fact that God exists.
Demonstrative and Probable Evidence
Every apologetics encounter involves an appeal to evidence of some sort. Evidence (i.e., facts, data, information, artifacts, documentation, testimony, etc.) is the “raw material” of apologetics. The method of argumentation is the blueprint or schematic that conforms that raw material into an instrument that conveys truth. In apologetics, this instrument also functions as a monument or sign that points toward those true conclusions that are warranted or even necessitated by the evidence.
For example: Your coworker insists that Jesus never existed and that the “Jesus myth” is simply the result of centuries of stories, folklore, and fables that began with the chicanery of the earliest Christians who sought (successfully) to dupe people into believing in a “Jesus” who never really existed so that they could garner power, wealth, and influence.
You respond to this claim with an appeal to evidence in the form of historical documents written by Jewish and pagan authors who, being contemporaries or near contemporaries of the Apostles, corroborate the fact that Jesus actually existed in a particular place and time. You then show how the corroborating evidence provided by those non-Christian sources matches the chronology and geography of the descriptions of Jesus’ life and times in the Gospels. Your truth-claim (i.e., Jesus really did exist and was not a myth) is based on historical evidence presented with an argument from authority (i.e., those authoritative Jewish and pagan writers [whose own existence is unquestioned] verify that Jesus actually existed) that entails the following deduction:
If someone as spectacular and intriguing as Jesus really existed, some contemporary witnesses would have written about him.
Some contemporary witnesses did write about him.
Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus really existed.
The alternative conclusion would be that even though various contemporary authors (who did not know each other) did write about Jesus as a real historical person, he did not really exist and they wrote about him for … what? For no reason? Multiple contemporaries separated by language, cultures, and great distances, for some reason all independently decided to write historical fiction about a previously unknown character? This conclusion is illogical in that it does not follow from the evidence.
This is an example of what’s known as “evidential apologetics,” which, historically, has been the most common and most effective method of defending Christianity. A minor and far more recent counterpart to the classical evidential apologetics is known in Protestant (especially Calvinist/Reformed) circles as “presuppositional apologetics,”22 which seeks to prove Christian truths by way of first presupposing the “self-attesting” divinity of Jesus Christ and the “self-attesting” nature of the Bible as inspired, inerrant revelation. While it is certainly true that Jesus is true God and true man and the Holy Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant, the presuppositional apologetics technique23 is generally less effective than the evidentialist approach. But it is also inadequate as a means of engaging modern culture with its relentless demand for “evidence” before it will believe in something.24
Avery Dulles, S.J., describes presuppositional apologetics, as “practiced by Protestants,” as a position that “normally rests on the premise that human reason has been so damaged by sin that evidential apologetics is useless. Presuppositionalists therefore begin by assuming that the teaching of the Bible is true. Setting out from this axiom, the apologist argues that biblical revelation yields a coherent explanation of our experience in the world and that other worldviews are, in comparison, incoherent. Some add that it is impossible to live or think without logically presupposing the reality of God, the source and measure of all truth.”25 One of my own books, The Godless Delusion (coauthored with Kenneth Hensley), is a kind of hybrid between pre-suppositional and evidentialist apologetics, incorporating the useful elements of the former (e.g., that the existence of God sufficiently explains the reality of incorporeal realities such as truth, love, and knowledge and that atheism cannot adequately explain them) and welding them to the evidentialist chassis of making the case for God by an appeal to the overwhelming evidence that he exists.
The evidentialist approach to apologetics seeks to make use of principles of evidence that are commonly agreed upon by both Christians and non-Christians, even atheists, e.g., historical evidence, eyewitness testimony, et cetera. As we have seen, the two primary categories of arguments are deductive and inductive.
Deductive arguments are structured as either a modus ponens (Latin: a way of putting) or a modus tolens (a way of taking). An example of the former is:
If Jesus performed miracles such as raising people from the dead, then it seems likely that he was more than a mere human being — possibly God.
Jesus did raise people from the dead.
Therefore it seems likely that he was more than a more human being — possibly God.
An example of the latter approach (modus tolens) is:
If the Apostles were lying about Jesus rising from the dead (knowing that he did not rise), it seems likely that they lied for some kind of personal gain, such as wealth, concubines, worldly prestige, et cetera.
The Apostles did not gain wealth, concubines, or worldly prestige but were, instead, scorned, hunted, and eventually martyred because of their message about Jesus.
Therefore, the Apostles were not lying about Jesus’ Resurrection.
When you make an apologetics argument based on documentary evidence, such as an appeal to early pagan, Jewish, or Christian authors to corroborate your claim that Jesus was a real historical person, the more examples you offer the better they help to corroborate and support your hypothesis. Another example would be that the early Church believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. To make this case, you should adduce quotations to that effect from significant and authoritative early witnesses such as St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, et cetera. Providing multiple examples to support your position is far more compelling than a single example, which may or may not be adequate support.
Be aware of and be prepared for counterexamples. For example, when you explain the biblical doctrine of the interlocking, interdependent nature of Scripture and Tradition in the Church26 by quoting passages that demonstrate the importance and necessity of Apostolic Tradition (e.g., 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, etc.), be prepared for counterexamples that may be raised against Tradition, such as Matthew 15:1–9, Mark 7:1–14, and Colossians 2:20–23. If you have carefully prepared a response to those counterargument verses, you will not be flustered or deterred when they are raised.
Remember also arguments from correlation — that is, causes and effects. A good example would be if someone raises the objection against Catholic Marian doctrines such as the Immaculate Conception or Mary’s role as the Mother of God (Greek: Θεοτοκος; Latin: Mater Dei). You should explain the correlation between the relative absence of writings about these Marian doctrines during the first two centuries of the Church and the fact that the Church in