Apologetics: Brief History, Issues, Definition, and Message

In his book “Varieties of Christian Apologetics”, Bernard Ramm gave us a concise overview of the three systems of Apologetics and the issues surrounding this academic discipline.  He also presented a brief historical background of Apologetics where he discussed how Apologetics exist. Ramm also presented to us the three various groups of Apologetics where he called it the Systems of Apologetics.

From what I learned from Ramm, Apologetics first originated from Ancient Greek, specifically in Athens, during a legal proceedings in a courtroom where the accused who is in the hot seat had to defend himself through giving his statements of his defense or reason.  “Apologia” in Greek, which means to “speaking in defense” or to “speak away the accusations” from what I learned from our professor in the class. Ramm also saw this activity of Apologetics from the ancient world in the New Testament in the person of Jesus Christ and His Apostles, and this continued in the early church in the person of Origen and Augustine.

Learning from this article that Apologetics did not just suddenly appeared somewhere nor it was just randomly invented by a random Christian but it has a history from where it was originated, and as well realizing that the Lord and the Apostles also used this art of defending their faith, I think it just simply teaching me that as an individual Christian of this modern time I should also learn how to defend my faith from the critics and to speak away all the negative accusations the world is throwing against Christianity. Not just in evangelism but also in our daily lives where we are living up our faith, there will be many instances that our faith will be questioned by someone outside of our faith and I believe that we must be always ready to defend our beliefs and our faith from their attacks. But I know that I should balance my answer for their inquiries with truth and humility. I believe that a Christian should answer not in a way to prove that he is more knowledgeable and righteous than the others, but it should be to prove that the ground of his faith where he stands is the only right one. And not just answering in humility to win them, but also with love to win them for Christ.

With Ramm using John Frame’s definition of Apologetics, it now becomes clear to me what it really means. Christian Apologetics is the discipline where it teaches the believers how to give a reason for their hope. Probably, the key verse of Frame’s definition for this came from 1 Peter 3:15.

As Christians, it is very important that we know how to defend our faith, how to give a reason for our hope. There is no excuse for us to be completely not able to defend our faith. We should learn how to present it to others so that we too can give them this hope that we steadfastly holding on. For me, if it is possible, all of us should study Apologetics. Each of us should know what we believe in and also should know the reason why we believe it. Furthermore, we should also know how to share it to the hopeless; to those who do not have yet faith, and also should learn how to defend it from any form of attacks and critics.

There are billions of people in the world who doubt the existence of God and His sovereignty over creation. There are many people who criticize that the Bible is just a literature book full of tales and lies. And there are these false teachers who drawing the attention of many people away from Christ and His redemptive work. As Christians, we should contend to these things and instead promote the One and true God, the Christian faith and truth!

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