Apologetics, Discipline of

Note: Last Updated 7/29/2024.

C. S. Lewis:

     One last word. I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that Faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate. For a moment, you see, it has seemed to rest on oneself: as a result, when you go away from the debate, it seems no stronger than that weak pillar. That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands and can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments, as from our intellectual counters, into the Reality — from Christian apologetics into Christ Himself. 

(C. S. Lewis, “Christian Apologetics;” In: C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970], p. 103.)

C. S. Lewis:

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

(C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory;” In: C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes A Toast: And Other Pieces, [London and Glasgow: Fontana Books, 1965], pp. 94-95.)

M. de Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet):

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him [Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer].

(Voltaire, “A L’auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs;” In: Œuvres Complètes de Voltaire: Tome XIII, Poésies, Tome Second, [Paris: P. Dupont, Libraire-Éditeur, 1825], Épitre CXCVIII, p. 386.)

Note: Because we cannot function as individuals or societies without necessarily presupposing Him.

Blaise Pascal:

Order. Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is first to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good men wish it were true, and then show that it is. Worthy of reverence because it really understands human nature. Attractive because it promises true good.

(Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer, [London: Penguin Books, 1966], # 12 (187), p. 34.)

Cardinal César de La Luzerne (1738-1821 A.D.): 

Our goal is less to make you see how true religion is than to make you feel how beautiful it is. [Notre but est moins de vous faire voir combien la Religion est vraie, que de vous faire sentir combien elle est aimable.]

(César de la Luzerne, Instruction Pastorale sur L’Excellence de la Religion, [Lyon: Giberton et Brun, 1838], p. 5; trans. Avery Cardinal Dulles, A History of Apologetics, [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005], p. 226.)

George MacDonald:

The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is—not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. 

(George MacDonald, “The Fantastic Imagination;” In: George MacDonald, A Dish of Orts: Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakspere: Enlarged Edition, [London: Sampson Low Marston & Company, 1895], p. 319.)

C. S. Lewis:

Suppose I think, after doing my accounts, that I have a large balance at the bank. And suppose you want to find out whether this belief of mine is ‘wishful thinking’. You can never come to any conclusion by examining my psychological condition. Your only chance of finding out is to sit down and work through the sum yourself. When you have checked my figures, then, and then only, will you know whether I have that balance or not. If you find my arithmetic correct, then no amount of vapouring about my psychological condition can be anything but a waste of time. If you find my arithmetic wrong, then it may be relevant to explain psychologically how I came to be so bad at my arithmetic, and the doctrine of the concealed wish will become relevant — but only after you have yourself done the sum and discovered me to be wrong on purely arithmetical grounds. It is the same with all thinking and all systems of thought. If you try to find out which are tainted by speculating about the wishes of the thinkers, you are merely making a fool of yourself. You must first find out on purely logical grounds which of them do, in fact, break down as arguments. Afterwards, if you like, go on and discover the psychological causes of the error.

     In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it Bulverism. Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third —‘Oh you say that because you are a man.’ ‘At that moment’, E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.’ That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.

(C. S. Lewis, “Bulverism;” In: C. S. Lewis, God In the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1970], pp. 272-273.)

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria