Five Views on Apologetics: An Introduction

Apologetics, as defined by Steven B. Cowan; “the defense of the Christian faith against charges of falsehood, inconsistency, or credulity.” At first, I only have a little idea what apologetics is. All I know is that in it, you have to argue or debate with other people about what they know regarding religious matters. Little did I know that it is what people do, especially religious people in order to defend what they claim to be true. And in Christianity, we also have this practice, and knowing apologetics is also a must.

Apologetics, derived from the Greek word “apologia” which was used before as a speech to defend oneself or a reply to a message. It was a practice in the ancient world in their courtrooms after an accusation is given, the defendant was given a time to refute the accusation making his defense or his “apologia”. I can still remember some of my Greek vocabularies of which I learn from my Greek Subject. The Greek word “apo” is a preposition word which means “away”, while “logia” comes from the Greek word “logos” which means “word” or “speech”. So it is making sense to me now that when you are making an “apologia”, you are speaking away a thrown accusation against you, or you are defending yourself through words or reply.

While reading the introductory part of the book “Five Views on Apologetics”of Stephen Cowan, I learned and realized so many things about this Apologetics. Using his argumentative strategy from his observation upon the works of Gordon Lewis and Bernard Ramm (from which the former uses two distinct methodologies; pure empiricism and rationalism, while the latter sticks only on rationalism), he came up and classified different schools of Apologetics from them. I can’t imagine how rigorous his works before in order to draw these different schools of Apologetics. This is so complicated from my perspective that even just by reading and trying to comprehend his works I almost give up.

After scrutinizing meticulously the works of Lewis and Ramm, Cowan introduced his own proposal on which he labeled it as “A Tentative Taxonomy of Apologetic Methods” on which after he gave us a brief summary of each schools of Apologetics. These methods are, namely; The Classical Method; The Evidential Method; The Cumulative Case Method; The Presuppositional Method; and The Reformed Epistemology Method.

But if I am to rank all of the five schools of Apologetics that were presented by Cowan, I would put The Classical Method and The Presuppositional Method competing on my number 1 list. For example in Classical Method, I agree in their stance that Christianity presents the best version of theism for it alone can best defend or explain the truths of God. Or rather, they are the ones that present the only valid theism among other religious groups. Another thing which I agree on them is that God’s existence must be the starting point or the ground in order for things or events to be properly interpreted. While in The Pressupositional Method, just like Van Til and Bahnsen, I also agree that Christian revelation in the Scriptures is the framework through which all experience is interpreted and all truth is known. Both of these methods starts from God and His revelation so I am torn between these two schools. Another thing that I came to agree with the latter method is that they believe that there is no common ground between believers and unbelievers; the regenerate and the unregenerate that would allow followers of the first three methods to accomplish their goals from which I also believe the former also fall short from it. The unbelievers or the person who doesn’t have Spirit cannot comprehend the things from God but consider them as foolishness according to Apostle Paul.

For now, the remaining three schools [for me] failed to convince me or to support themselves. Like the Evidential Method, I think it suggests that in order for the truth of Christianity to be proved, various historical and other inductive arguments are needed to prove it. In the Cumulative Case Method as I understand it, it suggest that Christian should start in accumulating certain truths and form a hypothesis in order to prove an argument. And lastly, the Reformed Epistemology Method, their stance doesn’t yet convince me enough and I think I need to learn more of this particular school of Apologetics.

For my additional comment, I was also so amazed by Cowan on how he saw and concluded that there are three families or types of Apologetic systems, particularly when he studied Ramm’s works. The first one emphasize Christian experience, while the second emphasize natural theology, and then the last stresses revelation. The first one for me is too subjective for it depends on one’s experience or preference. While the second one fails to recognize the noetic effect of sin, and I think it is too human dependent and it fails to balance faith and reason. But I totally agree and go on the last one as I see myself weighs more on the Presuppositional Method. There is a balance between faith and reason, for reason here is based on faith in God’s revelation. It doesn’t neglect either one of those. And also as a Christian, I saw that I should always start my defense of faith and belief in the objective truth of the revealed Word of God for I acknowledge it as the only valid source of truths of God.

The point that I can see in studying Apologetics is that, as Christians, we must learn every little things about it and know how to use it properly, for it is truly, a must. We have to, from time to time defend our faith and the truths of God against those who oppose it. From these schools of Apologetics that was presented by Steve Cowan, I find it very useful for me to determine which method I can classify myself so that I can development my way of defending and sharing my faith to others.