Humble Apologetics — Book Review

John Stackhouse is fast becoming one of my favorite writers. His book Humble Apologetics is a winsome approach to offering our apologia — the reasons for the hope that is within us — in our pluralistic world.

A substantial strength of this book is Stackhouse’s admonishment that we engage in apologetics that are appropriate to our cultural time and place. The Church no longer dominates western society, and basic Christian truths are no longer assumed. for many who are engaged in the culture wars, these facts are cause for, well, war. But as Stackhouse notes,

[w]hat is not so clear to many Christians . . . is that multiculturalism and extensive religious plurality can offer an opportunity for Christians to shed the baggage of cultural dominance that has often impeded or distorted the spread of the gospel. It may be, indeed, that the decline of Christian hegemony can offer the Church the occasion to adopt a new and more effective stance of humble service toward societies it no longer controls.

This call to an apologetic based on service is much needed today.

Stackhouse also helpfully critiques apologetic efforts that require one person to answer every question and provoke a moment of crisis in order to close the deal. As Stackhouse notes,

“[w]hen it comes to anything important in life as a Christian, and particularly in apologetic conversation that aims to benefit the neighbor, we remember this cardinal principle: You can’t do it all no matter what you do, so don’t try! We are part of the Church, which itself is only one corporate player in God’s great mission of global peacemaking. We must do just what we each can do, and trust the ret of the Chruch and God himself to do their parts as well.”

A key point here is that apologetics, like every other endeavor in the Christian life, is about love, not about “winning” arguments.

Like all work on apologetics, Stackhouse’s broader project is epistemological — the question “how do we know and what can we know it” relates directly to the question “what reasons can we present to others for belief in Christ.” I’ll quote a key passage at length because it’s so important:

[g]iven historic Christian teachings regarding the finitude and fallenness of human beings and of our thinking in particular, we must be careful not to claim too much for what we believe. We Christians should not need postmodernists to tell us that we do not know it all. We should not need anyone to tell us that all human thought is partial, distorted, and usually deployed in the interest of this or that personal agenda. We can be grateful for those postmodern voices that have reminded us of these truths, but we believe them because our own theological tradition says so.

Thus we are as committed as we can be to what we believe is real, and especially to the One whome we love, worship and obey as the Way, the Truth and the Life. We gladly offer what, and whom, we believe we have found to be true to our neighbors in the hope that they also will recognize it, and him, as true. We recognize that there are good reasons for them not to believe, even as we recognize there can be good reasons for our own doubts. Indeed, we can recognize taht God may have given them some things to teach us, and we gratefully receive them in the mutual exchange of God’s great economy of shalom.

We recognize, ultimately, that to truly believe, to truly commit oneself to God, is itself a gift that God alone bestows. Conversion is a gift. Faith is a gift. God alone can change minds so that those minds can both see and embrace the great truths of the gospel, and the One who stands at their center.

Not surprisingly, some rationalist evangelicals have criticized this call to epistemic humility. In my view, however, Stackhouse hits the epistemic nail on the head. A holistic apologetic, that treats others as fellow human beings rather than targets, one way or another will recognize that we don’t know it all, and will point away from ourselves to Christ. This is the ultimate goal of all the arguments and evidence we can muster.