What does an Apologist Apologise For?
Painting: St. Paul Preaching at Athens, Raphael (1483–1520)
Have you ever been questioned by friends or relatives about certain aspects of your Catholic faith and found yourself having to attempt to offer an explanation to them? There is a special term for this exercise of explaining your faith to those who ask. It is called “apologetics”.
Many people think that the term “apologetics” involves going from town to town, city to city, saying “sorry” to the people we meet for being Catholic! Far from that, it is a daunting task that requires a healthy level of proficiency in the Catholic faith in order that we may provide sensible answers to people who have queries about our beliefs and practices.
The word “apologetics” comes from the Greek word apologia, and from the Latin word apologetikos. In ancient Greece, this word referred to the exercise of defending or explaining one’s belief in a certain idea or philosophy. For example, the great philosopher Plato, in his Apology, documents how his teacher Socrates defended his philosophical ideas before the ancient court of Athens. He was being charged for failure to recognise the “official” Greek gods and for inventing new deities, thereby contaminating the minds of the young people of ancient Athens with corrupted religious and philosophical beliefs. In this dialogue, Socrates was compelled to defend his particular belief in the immortality of the human soul by helping his hearers to make sense of this idea or concept.
This word apologia appears several times also in the New Testament of our Sacred Scripture, in contexts that involved the early Christians having to help other people to understand why they believed what they believed. For the early Apostles, there was a need to communicate the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ to those who had not known of it or understood its meaning. So what did they have to do then? Why, they had to engage in apologetics, of course!
Painting: Saint Paul (c. 1611) by Peter Paul Rubens
St Paul, perhaps the greatest evangelist and apologist the Church has ever known, as he travelled from city to city in ancient Turkey and Greece, had to stand before crowds to respond to their concerns about this seemingly “new faith” he had embraced and was trying to preach. He had to try to win the crowds over with hopefully persuasive arguments for why his faith was reasonable and true. It certainly was not an easy task, as many of the listeners in his audience were intelligent people and were well-studied in ancient Greek philosophy. Had St Paul not been well-versed with Greek philosophy himself, he would probably have made a fool of himself attempting to persuade these men.
Another great example of an apologist in the New Testament context is St Peter, who had to address the crowd at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon the Apostles as tongues of fire. As the disciples of the risen Lord spoke in different languages (or dialects) that amazed the bystanders, Peter had to explain to them what was happening. He also took the opportunity to centre their attention on the fact that Jesus Christ had risen and had conquered death.
As Christianity grew, this “new faith” became a threat to both the Romans and the Jews. Thus began the terrible persecution of Christians under the reign of the emperor Nero beginning from 64 AD. These early Christians were gravely misunderstood and found themselves being falsely accused of child sacrifice, sexual depravity, and even cannibalism. This hatred towards the Christians became so serious that they often had to hide in catacombs, dark alleys, and sewers for their safety.
Can you just imagine how the catechesis of the Christian faith must have been like during such a dark season of the Church’s history? Teachers of the faith must have had to emphasise a lot on helping the suffering Christians to make sense of their beliefs so that they would know this faith was worth suffering for.
And this was just the beginning of Christian apologetics. In every age and at all times, the Church has encountered interrogators who have questioned various aspects of its beliefs and practices, queries that demanded intelligent responses. This is why the Catholic Church has had a long-standing 2,000-year tradition of apologetics. This is because there is hardly a dogma or practice in the Catholic faith that has not been the subject of hostile interrogation in history.
You may have heard of ancient names like St Irenaeus, St Justin Martyr, St Athanasius, St Jerome, or St Thomas Aquinas (a great theologian of the medieval era who was famous for making sense of the Church’s teachings using Aristotelian philosophical categories), St Francis de Sales, Blaise Pascal, St Cardinal John Henry Newman, or more modern names like Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen, G.K. Chesterton, or someone as contemporary as Bishop Robert Barron. These are all distinguished apologists of the Catholic faith, among the many other things that they are.
Over the centuries, apologetics has become such an important field of study even in the seminaries, it has now come to be known by the more “official” or technical name, Fundamental Theology. If we are to be effective evangelists of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we cannot escape the need to be formed in the art of apologetics. In our verbal sharing of our faith with others, there will often – if not always – arise the need for us to help other people to overcome certain misperceptions or lack of understanding in regard to the faith that we live and seek to share. This does not mean that we must all be professional theologians. But what it does mean is that we are all obliged as Christians to be students of our faith in order that we may be able to reasonably explain it.
Christians in every context need to be able to defend their faith by providing reasons for their beliefs. This is true even of Malaysia, especially in the recent years when we have become acutely aware of how certain religious groups intrude into our religious communities to proselytise in unlawful, even immoral, ways. It may be late, but never too late for us to garner all our resources together to ensure that Christians in our nation are properly formed in the faith, well-informed about their beliefs, and able to respond intelligently to any sort of devious attempts to sway them from their God-given faith that has been passed down from generation to generation.
This need for the fortification of our faith goes beyond merely understanding our faith, even if understanding is a very positive first step. But it extends to the acute need to be able to find the language to articulate what and why we embrace this faith together with all its beliefs and practices. This would equip us to dialogue with people of other religions around us; not to force-convert or to deviously compel others into acceptance, but to dialogue in a friendly and mutually respectful manner.
There are three levels of questions that the science of apologetics seeks to address:
Painting: Trial of the Apostle Paul, Nikolai K. Bodarevski (1850 - 1921)
The first level deals with why there is a need to even believe that a God exists. This first level therefore seeks to dialogue with people who do not believe in the Great Divine at all, commonly known as atheists. Examples of some questions dealt with in this category are as follows:
What proof can those who believe (in the existence of a God) offer that God actually does exist?
If God exists, why does He not eradicate all the evil and suffering in this world?
In addition to that, since He does not stop evil and suffering, how can He be a good God?
If God exists, would He not encroach upon human freedom?
The second level of apologetics deals with why the Christian faith, among all existing religions, makes the most sense. This second level seeks to dialogue with people who have some conceptions of the Divine (whether it is “God” or some other manifestation of the Divine). It focuses mainly on the Christian assertion that God has revealed Himself in many ways, but supremely in the coming of His Son, Jesus Christ. Examples of some questions dealt with in this category are as follows:
How can God be Three Persons in One? (Holy Trinity)
How can God have a Son?
If Jesus is the Son of God, how could He die?
What evidence is there that the Son of God resurrected from the dead?
How can we know that the Christian Bible is truly the Word of God?
The third level of apologetics is directed towards those who have already believed in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, but who have failed to recognise that the fullness of the ancient Christian faith is deposited with the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. It attempts to help non-Catholic Christians to see why being merely Christian is insufficient, and that one needs to belong to the Holy Catholic Church, which is the official and sole divinely appointed custodian of the fullness of truth passed down by Christ and His Holy Apostles. Examples of some questions dealt with in this category are as follows:
How do we know that the Catholic Church is the only Church that preserves the deposit of the Christian faith? Isn’t the Church just a gathering of people who can fall into error too?
How do we know that there should be seven Sacraments? Are the seven Sacraments biblical, or are they just a creation of men?
Why must the Church have a Pope, and what is so important about him that we have to be obedient to this papal office?
How can we say that the Catholic Church is truly the original Church, the Bridge of Christ, when Catholics have committed so many immoral atrocities throughout human history?
It is more curial than ever now for each one of us to understand that as Christians, there is a call for us to be bearers of the Word of God. And in being bearers of the Word of God, we also need to be honed as apologists who, in the words of St Peter himself, “always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15, New Jerusalem).
