As I bring this series to a close I suppose I should address the “elephant” that has been in the room since this series started. Where am I in my search? The deflecting response I offered in the first post is the most honest response given my history and circumstances. So what that question really entails is some kind of prediction, some kind of deeper spiritual insight. Perhaps something like, “God is leading me to…”

If you have been reading carefully, you can probably predict my response, or lack thereof. However, I will offer another list of three, more to the point than what I offered in the fourth post. First, I am highly motivated to study Christian apologetics, especially as it relates to science and modern culture. Second, there’s tremendous need and interest in this subject that does not seem to be shared by most of the church. Witness the growth in apologetic programs all over the country. Ministries like Stand To Reason, Reasons To Believe, and the nascent Ratio Christi are just some of the ever-growing list of para-church ministries in this field. Third, given the first two, I can’t quit. Am I “gifted” for this type of ministry? Who knows? My history and current lack of prospects could be caused by any of the following. (1) I am not suited to this ministry. (2) I am not YET suited to this ministry. (3) Avenues of ministry are rare because much of the church has not awakened to the need.

So I must simply continue. Studying, reading, listening, and waiting. If I ever get a chance to serve, then I will know the wait and process was worth it. If I never do, then everything I’ve written and studied will simply have been God’s means for keeping me close and grounded. Either way, I can’t lose. The future might hold more disappointment, but I will make bold prediction: I will not lose my faith and I will not stop growing closer to my Savior.

In this penultimate post, I would like to offer five examples from what I have learned. As I cautioned in the first installment, I am not offering advice, just sharing my experiences. Some of what follows might seem obvious, profound or even strange. Some of it has taken years to become part of my thinking. Some of it I am still working on. Finally, some things have still more painful anecdotes where I have, spiritually speaking, been beaten senseless before I realized what was wrong.

It Takes Years of Work.
I want to “teach” Christians all the reasons they can be supremely confident in the truth of historic Christianity. I am convinced that tackling such a role cannot be self-taught. There is far too much to be gained from the challenges from peers and professors to explain and defend what you think. As a Physicist and software engineer, I had almost no liberal arts background to prepare me to study these disciplines. After my 4 years, and 36 units from Biola, I will be merely primed to become a student of these fields, to continue my studies indefinitely.

As an example, consider someone like Greg Koukl. He has been my “virtual” mentor for almost two years now. If you haven’t been exposed to Stand To Reason you should check it out. Greg’s intellect, character, and ability to communicate are truly unique. As unique and gifted as he obviously is, he has two masters degrees and has been developing his gifts and talents for over 20 years.

That word “teach” needs to be considered as well. What does that mean? Perhaps we could simply agree to the idea of communicating something important to others. In that vein writing is a foundational skill, habit, and passion that make not only learning but also teaching possible. Being a neophyte to this discipline, I am not sure if this observation is not veering into more of a warning. If you don’t like to write, or you know that is a weakness of yours, be forewarned that will need to change. Biola, like many institutions attracting professionals back to academia, is on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, all of your output as a student is the written word. On the other, many of the students they attract are inexperienced as writers. Dr. Clay Jones teaches a writing class that is probably the most difficult and valuable class Biola offers.

Eventually, I would hope to also speak as part of the teaching process. There are some avenues to develop that discipline, but the hardest and most important will be whatever opportunities I am provided.

One sort of backhanded way that I believe I am called to this field is that I (still) love the process of studying. I suspect that no matter what happens, the ratio of time spent in ministry versus time preparing for it will always be an infinitesimally small number.

Be Worthy of the Role.
This phrase jumped out at me last summer. It came to mind in the context of the priorities in my life after completing my first semester and first residency at Biola. It was quite clear to me that Biola was going to develop my mind, my intellect to serve, but what was I doing about my soul, my day-to-day, moment-to-moment contact with God?

This humbling realization brought a new urgency to the time I spend in prayer. Since I am not expert or even a journeyman when it comes to spiritual disciplines, I will not offer anything from my life as a to how one might approach this topic. It is simply my contention that one must put daily effort into their spiritual life. The consequences of focusing only on the intellect can be seen in the following passages.

Chapter 3 of James, which addresses the power for of the tongue for good and evil opens with a warning that not everyone should be a teacher because, “we who teach will be judged more strictly.” The responsibility for someone who wants to teach is not only to be well informed and humble in their role, but to also be aware of the organ you may use the most, your tongue.

The opening verses of First Corinthians 13 are significant in that knowledge and spiritual gifts are meaningless if one does not have love. It is my prayer that whatever knowledge or communication skills I gain would always be used to proclaim truth. Saving someone from the consequences of a lie is, I believe, the highest calling to which anyone can aspire.

Find a Community.
This is perhaps the strongest reason, and yet is still not the primary one, for enrolling in post-graduate education as part of your search for a calling. At the risk of seeming maudlin, the relationships I have cultivated through Biola are the most significant friendships I have ever known. They have been an invaluable source of encouragement and accountability.

A Common Goal is not enough.
Almost any ministry is going to require more than one person. Unless you are striking out completely on your own, you may be tempted to join an existing enterprise. No matter how laudable, important, or significant that goal is you cannot just jump in and expect everything to work.

On two different occasions (one over ten years ago the other recently) I have fallen into this blunder. Simply put, you can’t jump into a group of people you don’t know simply because you agree with what (you think) they are about. Some time must be spent finding how this ministry works. How do the people think? What are their priorities? How do they like to get things done? Etc. etc.

Propriety (and a little bit of vanity) precludes me from getting into more details about either incident in my own life. If you know what I am talking about you have been warned or found a kindred spirit of your own mistakes. If this makes no sense, just read on.

I will belabor the connection between this topic and the previous. Advice from within your community can help you find a good place to plug in and avoid something for which you are not suited. I hasten to add; next time I will heed the warnings.

Location does not make the ministry.
There is a famous quote, I’ve found attributed to Chesterton.
“Just going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car.”

To apply this to myself, taking classes does not make me an apologist or a teacher. It is certainly a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient one. For those who are fond of the philosophical terminology, you could summarize this series as “My search for a set sufficient conditions to be in ministry.”

Another way at looking at this last subject is in terms of experimentation. I have tried several different ministries within the Church. To strain the analogy, and risk contradicting one of the above comments, “you may to spend some time in a garage to decide if you like cars.”

In my next and final post I will answer the question, “Where am I in my search?”

In a previous post I described, praying that the desire to teach would be removed from my life. Like many prayers in the Christian life, owing to my own ignorance or something else God may have in mind, the answer I received was “not quite yet.” Thus at two different churches over the past 20 years I have sought out elders and teachers in the hope that I could be mentored. That I could learn what I needed to know, or learn more directly why I was ill suited to the role of teaching. The net result of those observations has led me to the following conclusion: when it comes to certain roles the (evangelical protestant) churches I’ve attended are social cliques. They are not about cultivating and nurturing the laity to serve.

Putting aside arguments why the church could benefit from developing teachers from a variety of disciplines, I want to draw a comparison from career as a software engineer. I have worked for seven different companies. At some level each of these strived to be a meritocracy. Demonstrate some ability and reason to be trusted and you will be given more. Find something you really enjoy and you may be “rewarded” (with work and responsibility) ten-fold. Every domain where people interact is driven by social dynamics, however those considerations should not trump other priorities.

Back in Part 2, I described discovering the possibility of an old Earth view being compatible with Biblical inerrancy. As my reading expanded, I still held on to the lessons of my past. No matter how transformative this seemed to me, I did not believe this new perspective on my faith would extend much beyond my immediate circle (of family and co-workers).

Then in the summer of 2009 I heard Greg Koukl interview Mary Jo Sharp about, among other things, her experience in the Master of Arts in Christian Apologetics program at Biola University. The quality of the program and the capacity to do most of the work online stuck with me the rest of the summer. In the fall, I finally went to the Biola site I found out about the Science and Religion program. All I can say, looking back two years later, is that I felt compelled to sign up. I did not, at that time, have a “calling” to enter into some specific ministry. I was simply certain that it was something I wanted to do.

The journey that began in January 2010 with my first classes has been, please forgive the cliché, transformative. I am more certain of my faith than ever and don’t know what to do about it. I recently found a quote defining apologetics as: “You’ve got reasons for what you believe, and you’re ready to talk to anyone who’s got questions.” (Mikel del Rosario, on Apologetics 315). I would take that sentiment a step further and argue there are many in the church that don’t even know there are questions, let alone answers.

Given the experiences I have described in this series, I have all but abandoned serving in my local church. As I have become more aware of the wider community of people studying, aspiring to teach and actually teaching apologetics, I have found this to be all too common a reaction.

So now what? For the moment I still have no idea, but three things motivate me. First, I believe God has given every believer something they can use for the kingdom. Second, I do not want to be the idiot who buried his talent in the ground (Matthew 25:14-29). Third, I believe we are wired to be passionate about what we are intended to do for the Kingdom.

In my next post I would like to offer the lessons I have learned through my struggle to find a calling.

When I was a new Christian I heard a sermon on the radio (back when the messages of many well known pastors were broadcast on radio, what people used to listen to before iPods). The topic was discerning God’s will for your life. The advice was deceptively simple. First get as close to Jesus as you can (via spiritual disciplines) and then do what you want to do. The perfectly valid assumption being that a disciple of Christ would not do anything against what He taught. However, when it came to serving in the church, especially if any kind of spiritual gift was involved, then it should be “confirmed” by the church. Unfortunately, the pastor never elaborated on that last bit. I have always taken it to mean encouragement or invitation to continue. Perhaps a more blunt way to put it would mean that failure would indicate you’ve chosen the wrong type of service.

As I mentioned in the previous post, as a new Christian I was immersed in many types of study, growth and discipleship. I attended Bible Study Fellowship for five years, was a voracious reader of materials on apologetics. At that time my church was starting small groups for fellowship and Bible study. The easiest way to be in a small group was to simply lead one.

After a particular meeting of my small group someone commented that I should teach on Sunday mornings in the young adult class that a few of us attended. That prompted me to ask my pastor if such an opportunity was possible. That led to my speaking on two occasions as part of book studies. On another occasion I spoke on systematic theology using the catch phrase, “What God cannot do.” I discovered two things about myself I did not expect. First, I was one of those people who, rather than fear public speaking, I actually enjoyed it. Second, the process of study, preparation, and presentation of truth about God inspired me like nothing I had ever experienced.

The feedback I received from friends and peers was, as well as I remember, positive. One individual who visited the day I spoke on systematic theology actually asked me if I was a recent seminary graduate. It was around this time I sought specific feedback and advice from my pastor. I told him that I wanted to do more of this, and I asked him what I should do to get better at it. His response was that I should try teaching a class in children’s church, for example the third grade boys.

At the time, this seemed like complete rejection and failure. This created a dissonance in my spiritual life from which I have not completely recovered. In the short time I had been teaching, the process of preparing and studying had energized my spiritual life in a tremendous way. When my “delusion” of being gifted to teach was shattered my desire to study the Bible was taken as well. The connection between teaching and studying made the latter a painful reminder of my disappointment. Since I am being completely candid, I even prayed for a long time for the desire to teach taken away from me.

I have had my share of trials and difficulties as a Christian. One of the most difficult was watching brain cancer take the communication faculties of my father in less than a day. I saw that and other struggles as being evidence of evil. I don’t know why, but I have never struggled with presence of evil alongside the character and attributes of God. However, the struggle I had with teaching left scars I am almost ashamed to admit. I could not grasp how such a passion could be ignited in my life only to be told it was an illusion, something I had no business pursuing.

While it took a very long time to accept, I put aside the idea of pursuing any kind of teaching ministry. I met a tremendous Christian woman who has been in my life for over 20 years. We have a wonderful teenage daughter and all three of us are blessed in so many ways. In hindsight, my idea of serving God became focused on my roles as a husband and father. To the extent that I still served at Church it was almost always with my wife: from teaching a two-year-olds class to automating the church library. My family and career have given me purpose and joy for which I have always thanked God.

However, that is not the end of my story. Apparently, years of family and career are not enough to snuff out something as powerful as my interest in scholarship and teaching. In my next post I will offer some observations about the church and what has dragged me back into the search for ministry.

In this post I want to offer some of my background as a Christian and how I came to see the Christian worldview as a comprehensive system of thought.

I am the youngest of four sons. My father had a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering and worked in the defense industry his entire career. The oldest brother has multiple degrees in applied math, electrical engineering; the next one has degrees in chemistry, biochemistry, and chemical engineering. The two youngest sons simply got bachelor degrees in physics. Get the picture? We were overly educated, scientifically savvy people.

However the religious tradition of our parents held to a strong belief in biblical inerrancy. As I have come to learn in my studies at Biola, inerrancy is an important doctrine within the Christian faith. What can be troubling is when an interpretation of the Bible is given the same inerrant status of the text itself. Yes, I am talking about the view known as young earth creationism. One of my brothers was effectively driven out of the church by a high school pastor who dismissed nearly all of science based on this view. I felt a similar tension when I was in college studying physics. Yet, no matter how far I wandered from God during those years, I never abandoned my theism. I never stopped believing that God was responsible for creation and that science, ultimately, was always about studying the works of God.

When I became a Christian after college, I pushed aside all the things I enjoyed about physics and astronomy for the sake of the really important truths found in the Bible. I began what became over a decade of being a “schizophrenic Christian.” I was immersed in many types of study, growth and discipleship. I attended Bible Study Fellowship for five years, was a voracious reader and listener of materials from the Christian Research Institute. Defending the inerrancy of the Bible via hermeneutics seemed to entail many views from the young earth perspective: a global flood, literal 6-day creation week, no animal death prior to the fall, etc. The necessity of a literal Adam and Eve and their rebellion became the top of a house of cards that rested on the young earth view of creation.

Then about 5 years ago I started reading Hugh Ross, which reawakened my love for studying theology. Dr. Ross founded Reasons To Believe in 1986 with the mission to demonstrate that God’s revelations in the Bible and nature cannot contradict each other. In his writings I found a Christian and a scientist who held to an inerrant Bible and an ancient creation.

A tremendous barrier had been removed from my thinking. I began to believe that living as an integrated Christian, where God’s special revelation was relevant to every part of life was not only possible, but also necessary. My reading even expanded into the realm of Intelligent Design. William Dembski’s The Design Revolution, perhaps the most comprehensive response to objections to intelligent design was my introduction to the field. I almost never try and correspond with anyone famous, but I e-mailed Dr. Dembski to thank him for his book, it made me feel like an “intellectually fulfilled Christian.”

In my next post I will describe my own journey to find a purpose for myself in the Church. Something that started with such passion and hope ultimately became a 20-year exile in my own spiritual wilderness.

Since January of 2010 when I first enrolled in the MA in Science and Religion program at Biola, I have dreaded the inevitable question, “What are going to do with your degree?” It is with an uncomfortable amount of candor that I usually respond, “I have no idea.” However, as much as God has changed me spiritually and intellectually, I cannot escape the hope that God will use this knowledge for things beyond my own life.

As a final introductory comment, I want to emphasize that I am not seeking or offering advice. I am responding to the prompting of a friend I respect and trust that this series will be encouraging and helpful to other believers whose circumstances and experiences resonate with my own.

In the posts that follow I will cover the following topics: my journey from Christian belief to a more “intellectually fulfilled” Christian belief, my struggle with finding and losing a calling, how I see the Church and ministry today, and finally what I have learned through my journey. At the risk of offering a spoiler, in spite of my track record and cynicism, I don’t think I’m done searching yet.

One approach to the “problem of suffering” is to deny that evil and suffering exist at all. Perhaps pain is an illusion. Or perhaps it is innocent suffering that is the illusion: perhaps those who suffer did something wrong, in this life or a previous life, and so they deserve what they get. Or perhaps there is no such thing as evil: we are merely smart animals, and ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are nothing more than synonyms for ‘I like it’ and ‘I don’t like it.’

But denying the reality of suffering and evil works better in theory than in lived reality. For when it comes down to it, how do we account for our asking the question in the first place? We perceive that pain and evil are anomalous; we experience suffering as a departure from the way things ought to be. At some deep level, we know that that beauty, peace, joy, love and happiness are the template for existence, and that something has gone badly wrong.

Others take suffering as evidence that God does not exist, or at any rate that God as Christians understand Him does not exist. If  God exists, and is good and loving, why doesn’t He do something about suffering?

Are we really interested in the answer to that question? Or is it just a rhetorical way of saying “If I were God, I’d handle it differently”?

Because God has, indeed, solved the problem of suffering definitively – but not the way anyone could ever have expected.

Reasoning things out can give us a pretty decent answer about why evil and suffering exist in the world.  God created human beings, making them in His own image, with the ability to make choices. Having free will means that we are free to do evil as well as good – and our actions have consequences. The world is as it is – a fallen, broken place – because we have made it so. Evidently God values free will sufficiently that it is worth allowing us to make a mess with it. This is an entirely reasonable and, I think, true answer, yet it is not enough. We continue to wrestle with the question. We need not just an answer, but a solution.

Evil exists. Suffering is real. What has God done about it?

What He has not done – contrary to a lot of popular ideas about Christianity – is sit up in heaven and dole out pie in the sky rewards for those who are willing to put up with a lot of crap through life on earth. If that were the Christian creed, there’d be an excuse for dismissing Christianity as a pack of lies to pacify the masses. But it’s not.

The reality is more interesting, and quite a lot more shocking.

For God has not merely responded to our situation, but entered into it.

He has done so by acting in the world – by intervening, directly and dramatically and literally, in the messy, physical world of history. Not spiritually, not metaphorically, but in actual time and space, God sent His Son to become one of us, to be incarnate as a human being, to live and suffer and die – and to be raised from the dead, and to continue on in glorified life. He has not ameliorated our suffering, but rather redeemed it.

It is in the Incarnation of Christ and his death on the Cross we find God’s definitive answer to the problem of suffering.

In his suffering on the Cross, Jesus confirms our deepest intuitions about pain. Suffering does exist – he felt it too. Evil exists – he experienced it, an innocent man being tortured to death.

The Cross is God’s gracious response to the problem of suffering and evil – gracious beyond all imagining, so gracious that it seems hardly possible to be true, except that it happened. The Incarnation, the Cross, and the Resurrection are events in history. They really happened.

We have to grasp the significance of God entering into time and space to deal with the problem of pain.

You see, suffering is irrelevant in the abstract. Suffering only matters when it is realized in a specific instance: a loved one dead, a dreadful loss, a wicked and cruel act.

Abstract responses to suffering are worthless in the face of actual pain: when one is starving, it does not help to understand the way the digestive system works.

When we experience the agony of grief, the dull ache of loss, the dead chill of depression, the knife of anxiety, no philosophical answer satisfies. We need action. To the hungry man or woman, we give bread, not words of comfort.

And this is what God has done. He has given His Son, who freely carried our pain – past, present, and future – to the Cross, where he takes it (and us) through death into life.

How does that work? I would not presume to know – any more than I presume to know “how it works” to fall in love. We do not need to know how something works to experience it.

Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, when we suffer we can know that we are not alone in our suffering. There is One who has gone ahead of us, and who is with us. He does not deny our pain, but enters into it with us.

Whatever our suffering is, Christ has borne it. On the Cross, he bore the weight of all our sins – the sinless one taking the burden of sin upon himself, that he might cancel our debts and set us free to come to the Father. But equally on the Cross he bore the weight of all our pain, deserved and undeserved. He knew the mental agony of pain to come; he suffered humiliation and mockery; he was cruelly tortured and left to die in agony; he saw all his dear friends abandon and deny him at the very moment he most needed consolation; he was made utterly helpless and alone.

Suffering and death still lead into darkness, but now we know that they do not have to lead to a dead end: rather, the darkness has a door in it leading out into new life, a door that Our Lord can open for us, if we wish him to.

We can’t open that door for ourselves, and that helplessness is hard to take; but here too Christ is with us, for he too knows what it is to be helpless; he did not rise from the dead on his own power, but was raised by his Father.

What a scandal it is, that the God of the Universe would condescend to be born in human flesh and suffer in body, mind and spirit – to experience our joys and our pains, and to die like us! Who would ever have thought that this would be how God would resolve our problem of suffering – not from outside, but by entering into it?

This is not a neat, tidy philosophical answer that ties up all the loose ends.

This is a messy answer.

And it is the only answer that holds up to the weight of our pain when we are crushed and broken; it is the only answer that rings true when it is tested in both agony and joy.

Apologists have a lot of work to do – and yet our encounters too often end up with both sides talking past each other.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cringed when a fellow Christian has confidently declared that “we just have to beat those atheists down!” See, I used to be one of those atheists, and the rhetorical beat-down just doesn’t work the way we think it ought to work, from the Christian perspective. When I was firmly in the “New Atheist” mode, I wouldn’t have listened to even the best Christian philosophical and historical arguments. It wasn’t until I had imaginatively engaged with the Christian faith through poetry and literature – when I had a sense of what it was that this “faith” thing might be, even though I didn’t understand it – that I was able to consider the apologetic arguments and ultimately find them convincing.

Likewise, Christians in the postmodern-influenced emerging church movement may seem to diverge from Christian orthodoxy – but they also raise important issues about the church’s over-emphasis on propositions, logic, and arguments over against community, narrative, and participation. (As a particularly egregious example: the insistence that it is not enough to simply affirm that Christ died for my salvation, but that one must also affirm a specific theory of how the atonement works in order to be saved.) The Evangelical response to thinkers in the emerging church is generally to use arguments and logic to argue that the emergents are wrong. The emerging response, quite naturally, is “See? That’s the problem!”

Over the last year or so, I’ve been seeing the way that these challenges connect. Some people do not believe because they feel that it is irrational to believe; others do not share our orthodox Christian faith because they feel that what they have is more satisfying, more suited to their felt spiritual needs. In both cases there is a missing piece: the Imagination. (In my own case, I could not even consider that God might exist until I had imaginatively entered into a glimpse of what it might be like to have a relationship with that God (in John Donne’s “Batter my heart, three person’d God”). And I would have no reason now to care about theology if I did not find that it is a way of talking about lived reality. The Trinity is worth discussing as a doctrine because reality is Trinitarian.)

Imagination, CS Lewis wrote, is the “organ of meaning.” Reason and Imagination, too long separated, must be reunited if we are to have any chance of sharing the hope that is within us to a world that so desperately needs it – yet does not recognize its need.

Several important books have come out lately that have set forth arguments for, and analysis of, the role of the Imagination in the apologetic endeavor – Malcolm Guite’s Faith, Hope and Poetry, (read my review here) and Nancy Pearcey’s Saving Leonardo of most note.

Imaginative Apologetics is an important addition to this roster , as I hope to convince you in the rest of this review. (The short version of the review is that if you are at all interested in apologetics, you should read this book.)

The book’s subtitle is “Theology, Philosophy, and the Catholic Tradition,” which may cause some hesitation on the part of Evangelical readers, so I will point out that if you think of “Mere Christian” in place of “Catholic,” you will have the right way to approach the book. The collection does have a distinctly Anglican flavor, which is one of its strengths; the authors’ perspective is just different enough from the typical Evangelical perspective as to bring new insights to the table (and to challenge hidden assumptions as well).

Imaginative Apologetics sets out its argument in four sections: Faith and Reason Reconsidered, Christian Apologetics and the Human Imagination, Being Imaginative About Christian Apologetics, and Situating Christian Apologetics.

I will begin slightly in reverse order, by considering the latter two sections. These are likely to be the most immediately accessible to the working apologist – though, as I will argue, not as critically important as the earlier sections. In the third section, Being Imaginative About Christian Apologetics, Stephen Bullivant focuses on the ways that the imagination can help with what he sees as the critical task: “we must preach the gospel – argue for Christ; constantly finding new, intellectually robust means of doing just that. But equally we must look to ourselves and strive, individually and collectively, to provide a fitting ‘backdrop,’ against which this proclamation will get a hearing, and seem plausible.” Craig Hovey follows by setting forth a case for the ways in which Christian ethics can be seen as part of the apologetic enterprise, drawing usefully on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. The final section, Situating Christian Apologetics, begins with Graham Ward’s consideration of cultural hermeneutics, in which he argues that apologists must learn to read the “signs of the times” in order to lead to effective evangelism. Richard Conrad provides a salutary overview of the history of apologetics from Pentecost to the present day, and Alister McGrath considers science and apologetics.

All to the good. But the real merit of this relatively slim volume lies in the first half of the book.

In the Foreword, John Milbank argues convincingly that we cannot pretend to a ‘neutral’ approach to apologetics – and that attempting such an approach often “accepts without question the terms and terminology of this world.” (Indeed – how often do we try to argue with the New Atheists on, essentially, their own ground?)

In the Introduction, Andrew Davison sets out the central claim of the book: “The Christian faith does not simply, or even mainly, propose a few additional facts about the world. Rather, belief in the Christian God invites a new way to understand everything… In this book we celebrate reason, but not so as to make apologetics rational in some cold or arid fashion. Apologetics should be a matter of wonder and desire, not least because reason at its most reasonable is itself a matter of wonder and desire.”

Stop for a moment and consider those words. In the arguments that we apologists make, how often is it the case that our words evoke wonder and desire in our hearers and readers?

Now let’s take a look at the essays in the first section of the book, Faith and Reason Reconsidered. These ought to be required reading for anyone engaging in the apologetic enterprise.

John Hughes begins by addressing the terms “argument,” “proof,” and “persuasion,” challenging us to recognize that our usual understanding of these words is not universal, but rather comes out of the project of modernity, and that “this rationalist foundationalism of faith” has “pernicious consequences.” Hughes doesn’t pull any punches: “the rationalist project of proofs has sold out the Christian faith to deism and turned the God of Jesus Christ into an idol of human reason.” However, Hughes is by no means advocating a retreat into fideism. Rather, he believes that we can address both modern rationalism and postmodern irrationalism. Hughes argues that the arguments that convince us today will not function “by some irrefutable logic” but rather “by all the powers of persuasion, by their goodness and even their beauty… It may well be that these are the sorts of arguments that will be appropriate for a twenty-first century apologetics: not proofs, but critiques, geneologies and explorations, persuasive and attractive narratives that help us to make sense of our intellectual and cultural situation and inspire us to participate in them.”

Andrew Davison picks up on this line of argument in the next essay, “Christian Reason and Christian Community.” He directly challenges what he calls the “myth of neutral reason” and its expression in apologetic arguments of the type that work from a basis of supposedly universally accepted axioms such as the principle of non-contradiction. Davison takes aim at many of the cherished ideas of the apologetics world, and will likely cause some upset in readers in America, as his arguments suggest that we may be using our intellectual resources unwisely. For instance, debating atheists seems like a powerful apologetic strategy, but do debates today actually translate into any unbelievers moving toward Christian faith?

Consider, for instance, the current refusal of any more atheist intellectuals to debate William Lane Craig. Perhaps they are cowards, as some have said. I suspect, though, that they may simply have decided that these debates do little to change the convictions of the audience, and are thus not a productive use of their time. Might we consider that the atheists have a valid point?

Davison argues, and very convincingly, that we must reconsider our approach to apologetics: “Christian apologetics witnesses to a different sense of what is real. Since these convictions are basic or axiomatic, we do not argue to them. Instead, we show what difference it makes to think this way… Apologetics is as much invitation as argument: an invitation to ‘taste and see’ what it is like to live and think differently.”

But how do we do that? The contributors to the next section, Christian Apologetics and the Human Imagination, offer some ideas.

Alison Milbank argues that “in apologetics, we do not just want to convince people of the rationality of what we believe as if it were a fact about the population of the Galapagos Islands: we want to make them understand in a participatory way.” (And indeed I can attest to the critical distinction between the two: in my own conversion process, when I accepted the rationality and indeed the truth of the Christian claim, I was not then a believer, for I still had to answer the question: What am I going to do about this?) Milbank draws on Tolkien’s insights on “recovery” in “On Fairy-Stories” and on the experience of the Eucharist as she makes the case for an imaginative apologetics that will “shock people into engagement with reality”; for the problem today, as CS Lewis put it, is that we desire not too much but too little. Milbank argues that “the whole enterprise of presenting the faith convincingly is aimed at opening this desire in others, rather than offering pre-packaged answers.”

In the next essay, Donna Lazenby picks up on the cultural task of the apologist, noting that the contemporary apologist must be able “to read the signs of the times.” She considers a number of examples from literature, pointing out that these are “diagnostic spaces” where we can “discover… what people are spiritually hungering for.”

The final essay in this section is Michael Ward’s “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best: C.S. Lewis on Imagination and Reason in Apologetics.” If we have been reading and thinking carefully, at this point we should be convinced (if we were not already) of the value of the imagination in apologetics. But how does it work? Ward uses CS Lewis’ analysis of the role of imagination to build a convincing case for how imagination and reason are both necessary for the apologetic endeavor. He begins by considering Lewis’ own conversion experience: “When Lewis understood that the story recounted in the Gospels, rather than the commentary upon and outworking of that story in the Epistles, was the essence of Christianity’s meaning and that the Christ-story could be approached in a way similar to the way he approached pagan myths, it was a huge breakthrough for him.” The problem for Lewis was not that he could not understand the doctrines of Christianity; rather, he had not yet seen the more complete truth beyond them.

The difference between doctrine and divine reality is a critical point for apologists today who are so easily led into doctrinal debates with atheists about the nature of hell or the divinity of Christ; Ward writes, “Doctrines, though useful, are the product of analytical dissection; they recast the original, equivocal, historical material into abstract, less fully realized categories of meaning. In short, doctrines are not as richly meaningful as that which they are doctrines about.” (As a minor illustration, consider that if you want to know what a butterfly is, you will do better to observe one fluttering in the garden than a dead one pinned to a card, even if the latter can be examined more closely and is labeled with its scientific name.)

Ward goes on to point out that “It is no good arguing for ‘God’ or ‘Christ’ or for ‘the atonement’ or even for ‘truth’ until the apologist has shown, at least at some basic level, that these terms have real meaning. Otherwise they will just be counters in an intellectual game, leaving most readers cold. Likewise, apologetic arguments for the authority of the ‘Church’ or ‘the Bible’ or ‘experience’ or ‘reason’ itself, must all be imaginatively realized before they can begin to make traction on the reader’s reason, let alone on the reader’s will.”

(Think about that, and reflect on your conversations with skeptics. It is an insight that will, I think, help explain why so many Internet ‘discussions’ take up much time and produce many thousands of words but go nowhere.)

Ward goes on to move carefully through an analysis of the relationship between imagination and reason, arguing in some detail that “imagination is insufficient without reason” and that “imaginative reason is also insufficient,” and pulling the pieces together by exploring how “imaginative reason serves a purpose.” He concludes with what is effectively a warning as well as an encouragement for apologists:

“…imagination and reason together work not to serve themselves but to serve the will. The good serves the better and both the best. The best is the will, the heart of a person, and this must be reorientated by a meeting with the divine… The rationally imaginative explanations and defences of Christianity provided by the apologist (and supported by the divine) can only take one so far, and it is at the point where they fall short that the divine intervention already seen in the exercise of natural faculties may be supplemented, God willing, by divine supervention. The internal presence of God in the human subject may meet the external presence of the Holy Spirit in direct illumination, or, as may be, mediated through the more normal channels of preaching, sacrament, Scripture, prayer, absolution, fasting or other forms of askesis.”

And here we are reminded that the apologetic endeavor does not work in isolation, but rather in collaboration with the Holy Spirit and in the context of the whole outworking of the Christian life. A serious consideration of imaginative apologetics thus includes a reconsideration of the role of the imagination in the work of apologetics, a renewed vision of the way imagination and reason together facilitate the work of the Spirit, and an appreciation of the role of apologetics in the life of the church.

This is an important book – one that anyone seriously engaged in the work of apologetics needs to read carefully. Whether or not you agree with the specific points made in various essays is much less important than whether you take Davison and his fellow writers’ challenge to look seriously at the role of the imagination in the apologetic endeavor.

The only flaw is that the book is not available in the U.S. (at least not at the time of writing this review). I got my copy in England (thank you, kind staff at Blackwell’s) but although that is by far the most enjoyable way to get it, it is not the most cost-effective. Fortunately, it’s easy enough to buy from Amazon.co.uk, even if it does mean paying for international shipping. (That’s how I got my British Harry Potter editions, so I can assure you it’s not that bad.)

Go order this book – and start thinking about what it might mean for the Gospel if we were equipped with a full, rich, well-reasoned, and imaginative apologetics.

Bringing apologetics into the curriculum at church may seem a daunting task, especially if you’re starting from scratch or have no trained apologists in your church. That’s where Mikel del Rosario’s Accessible Apologetics program comes in. Mikel’s ministry is accurately described in the title of the course: accessible apologetics. That is, apologetics training that is readily available and usable for teachers and pastors in the local church, and readily understandable for ordinary people in the church who may or may not have heard of this “apologetics” thing before.

I’ve been following Mikel’s work with interest for a while now – he’s an graduate of the apologetics program that I’m finishing up now, Biola University’s MA in Christian Apologetics, which is an outstanding interdisciplinary program that equips its graduates for outstanding work in ministries of teaching, speaking, and writing. I’m impressed with the quality of his work, both in the Accessible Apologetics program and in his speaking ministry; he does a great job of connecting the top-level apologetics work being done today with the local church and individual believers.

Let’s take a look at the Accessible Apologetics curriculum.

It’s divided into five units, each of which has two sections (allowing for Accessible Apologetics to be easily run as either a five- or ten-week complete course). The first thing that I noticed is the well-thought-out progression of material. The first unit, which serves as an introduction, addresses the questions of “What is Christian Apologetics?” and “Why Defend My Faith?” This is an outstanding way to begin! As a college professor myself, I know that if my students don’t understand the reason why we’re covering a subject, they’re unlikely to really connect with it.  Too often, those of us who are excited about apologetics forget that our brothers and sisters may be encountering for the first time the ideas that we now take for granted. They may think that apologetics is just for pastors or teachers, and they may never have thought about how apologetics can help them share their faith. By these introductory lessons, Mikel covers valuable ground and establishes the value of apologetics for each person in the class.

The next unit, Faith and Reason, is again very well chosen for its place in the curriculum. In today’s culture, swamped with messages about relativism and told by the secular media that faith is just private opinion, it’s essential that Christians address the questions of “Do Faith and Reason Mix?” and “How Do I Know That Christianity Is True?”

The third unit moves toward specific apologetics questions. “Is God Real?” is the right question to ask – too often, people make assumptions when they talk about Jesus with unbelievers. If someone doesn’t believe that God is real, then talking about miracles and Jesus as the Son of God is ineffective. “Why Does God Allow Evil?” tackles one of the most challenging questions that both Christians and skeptics deal with. Both of these sections could be used as stand-alone classes as well.

The fourth and fifth units continue the focus on specific apologetics questions: revelation, why we can believe what the Bible says, whether the Gospels are history, and whether Jesus really rose from the dead.

My assessment of the content of the curriculum: Excellent!

What about presentation? That’s where Accessible Apologetics really shines. This is a complete instructional package, and by complete I mean complete. As a fairly (cough) detail-oriented instructor, I can see just how many hours of work went into each and every lesson. We’re talking double-digit numbers of hours, folks. Per lesson. Seriously.

Each lesson includes:

• A PowerPoint presentation for the lesson.
• Student lesson outlines with blanks, definitions, and works cited.
• Clear objectives.
• Detailed notes for the instructor.
• Detailed descriptions of necessary preparation for teaching.
• Specific lesson plans.
• Options for covering the material in either one or two sessions per lesson.
• Discussion questions.

But wait! There’s more! This Apologetics Guy has made this a labor of love. There are a number of small-but-important features. For instance, there are clear overview notes (very helpful in planning). The full text of key Scripture quotations is printed in the lecture notes, so that you don’t have to flip back and forth to your Bible as you’re teaching. The content is footnoted so you can follow up Mikel’s references to the source material. We even get suggestions for sample bulletin inserts and reminder and follow-up emails, as well as ideas for Facebook updates and Twitter updates (if your church is into social media!). As someone who has organized church events, I can attest that this would be a major stress reducer.

I want to highlight one last feature of this curriculum, perhaps the most impressive of all. It’s very easy for teachers to focus on just one mode of presentation, like a PowerPoint. However, people learn in different ways. Some people learn best by listening (auditory learners). Others learn visually, while others learn best by discussion in small groups (interpersonal), or by reflecting on their own (intrapersonal), or by body movement and physical activity (kinesthetic learners). The best lessons are those which engage more than one mode of instruction, so that every learner is able to connect with the material in different ways.

The Accessible Apologetics curriculum effectively includes a variety of instructional methods that target different modes of learning – visual, auditory, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and kinesthetic (bodily). There are PowerPoints to go along with lectures; discussion questions; suggestions for physical games and hands-on activities; memory verses; and handouts that help encourage productive note-taking.

In short, Accessible Apologetics lives up to its name. I don’t know of anything like it currently available: a complete instructional package, with solid content and sound pedagogy, ready to use out-of-the-box. Well done, Mikel!

You can check out Mikel del Rosario’s blog here: Apologetics Guy.

Go directly to the Accessible Apologetics page here.

There are many ways to know the truth, ways that include knowing it experientially, intuitively, and rationally;  these different ways of encountering truth are complementary to each other. For instance, the truth that Jesus rose from the dead and thus triumphed over sin and death can be understood rationally (from the study of historical records and the use of logical reasoning) and it can also be understood imaginatively (through literature, poetry, art, and music).

The truth is what it is, no matter whether we learn it or not, and no matter what we think or do about it; as C.S. Lewis put it, “A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”

Yet it matters deeply that we pursue Truth, and in so doing, pursue (and encounter) the One who is Truth. Jesus says that the first commandment is that “‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength’” (Mark 12:30 ESV) (emphasis mine). That’s a profound call to discipleship of the intellect. But notice that the command is wholistic: our Lord does not isolate heart, mind, and soul from one another, but includes them as integral parts of loving God.

And he calls us to love the Lord with all our strength: worth noting, because all pursuit of the Truth – whether through the use of Reason, or the use of Imagination – takes effort. It is the most glorious and worthwhile effort that there could be, but it’s still difficult. Doing one’s best work, using one’s gifts fully and in so doing, being stretched to one’s limits and beyond – in heart, mind, and soul – and thus learning to rely on the One who made us and has redeemed us — that is loving God with all our strength.

Apologetics and discipleship are thus intimately connected: knowing the truth, loving the truth, defending the truth all weave together and, if done with Christ always at the center, will draw us to further depths of relationship with our Lord.

Apologetics is an active discipline. The apostle Peter says, “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”  (1 Peter 1:13 ESV) (emphasis mine). Be ready!

Above all, Peter says, “in your hearts 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 Peter 3:15 ESV).

These words should be a guide to all of us as we seek earnestly to learn more about the hope that has so graciously and generously been given to us. Our reading, study, discussion, and learning are ways to honor and glorify God. Learning the reasons for our hope will strengthen our own faith, and help us share that faith with others – in a gracious, respectful, gentle way.