Apologetics, Imagination, and Imaginative Apologetics
In earlier posts,
I set the framework for the core material in Imaginative Apologetics, seeking to provide the lay of the land in
contemporary apologetics and the faculty of imagination. Now we are engaging the individual articles
in Andrew Davison’s edited volume, Imaginative
Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition.[1]
In this final post, I look at the 4th
and final major section of the work, and make some general comments on the book
as a whole. As a reminder, you can find
my full treatment in Trinity Journal.[2]
Situating Christian Apologetics
The fourth and
final section of Imaginative
Apologetics (“Situating Christian Apologetics”) contains three chapters
attempting to place contemporary apologetics in cultural and historical
context.
Graham Ward (University of Manchester) contributes an excellent
chapter on the need for Christian apologist to skillfully exegete the language
and signs of his or her culture.[3] He exhorts apologists to
learn from early figures like Justin Martyr: to demonstrate an in-depth
understanding of opponents’ own work and appropriate what is good and true in
it, before correcting what is erroneous or heretical.[4]
Christian cultural bubbles may help believers feel safe and secure from
external threats, but they similarly hinder the effectiveness of Christian
apologetics and evangelism. Imaginative Christian apologetics must include an
“in-depth reading of the culture” to help people understand themselves—their
lives, values, activities, and culture—and the “true orientation of the human
heart towards” the God of the Gospel.[5]
In chapter nine,[6] Richard
Conrad (of Blackfriars, Oxford) works through a historical progression of
Christian (exclusively Catholic) preachers and apologists who “sought to find
clear and imaginative language for their message” in order to “engage both the
intellect and the desires of their hearers.”[7]
Imaginative Apologetics
concludes with Alister McGrath’s (King’s College, London) knowledgeable summary
of the relationship between faith and science.[8]
McGrath notes that the contemporary picture of science waging intellectual warfare
against repressive religion is a modern myth without historical foundations and
insists that science is a secure source of knowledge and understanding only
when it keeps to its natural boundaries.[9] In
particular, McGrath notes that science is incompetent to answer questions of a
metaphysical, ethical, or aesthetic nature—those are simply outside the scope
of scientific inquiry, and attempting to bring them within the realm of science
“runs the risk of discrediting [science].”[10]
He proposes that the scientific method of “inference to the best explanation”
is a helpful epistemological tool,[11]
and that when used with regards to fine-tuning in the universe, can provide
persuasive reasons to believe in Christian theism.[12]
McGrath offers the
strongest and most accurate definition and exposition of apologetics in the
entire volume—setting forth the negative (responding to objections and concerns
about the faith) and positive (commending the rational, moral, and aesthetic
imagination of the faith) aspects of apologetics under the overarching umbrella
of showing “why it is reasonable, with the help of grace, to accept God’s
word.”[13]
While the
individual essays within Imaginative
Apologetics are of varying quality, the volume as a whole admirably
pursues McGrath’s picture of apologetics. In particular, the work is
commendable for its reminder that apologetics is not, and should never be, a
purely or coldly rationalistic enterprise—the heart of Christianity is a
conversion of will, a baptism of imagination, a reorientation of the whole
person. The Holy Spirit certainly uses arguments and even theistic proofs to
draw people to saving faith in Christ, and as Michael Ward (via C. S. Lewis)
notes, a cultural milieu of reasonable intellectual credibility is essential to
the viability of the gospel. Nonetheless, a persuasive argument requires
imaginative meaning to be accurately and winsomely conveyed.
Imaginative Apologetics
gets at the heart of conveying Christian truth accurately in the midst of a
postmodern and often post-Christian cultural context. Andrew Davison has
collected a diverse group of scholars and articles in the pursuit of broadening
the apologetic enterprise of the contemporary church. His project of Imaginative Apologetics
joins hands with other contemporary works, such as James Smith’s Imagining the Kingdom,
James Beilby’s Thinking
About Christian Apologetics, and Clifford Williams’ Existential Reasons for
Belief in God, in setting forth a complement to the persuasive and
important rational apologetics that currently populate the market (e.g.,
William Lane Craig’s Reasonable
Faith, Douglas Groothuis’ Christian
Apologetics). Christian apologetics is emphatically not solely a matter
of the head, nor
is it solely a matter of the heart. As Michael Ward emphasizes, “imagination is
necessary,”[14] but “imagination is
insufficient without reason.”[15]
[1]
Andrew Davison, ed. Imaginative Apologetics:
Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012. 169 pp. $25.00.
[2] Tawa J.
Anderson, “Apologetics, Imagination, and Imaginative
Apologetics,” in Trinity Journal
34 (2013): 229-51.
[3]
Graham Ward, “Cultural Hermeneutics and Christian Apologetics,” in Imaginative Apologetics,
115-25.
[4]
Ward, “Cultural Hermeneutics and Christian Apologetics,” 123.
[5]
Ward, “Cultural Hermeneutics and Christian Apologetics,” 125.
[6]
Richard Conrad, “Moments and Themes in the History of Apologetics,” in Imaginative Apologetics,
126-41.
[7]
Conrad, “Moments and Themes in the History of Apologetics,” 126.
[9]
McGrath, “The Natural Sciences and Apologetics,” 144-49.
[10]
McGrath, “The Natural Sciences and Apologetics,” 148.
[11]
McGrath, “The Natural Sciences and Apologetics,” 151-52.
[12]
McGrath, “The Natural Sciences and Apologetics,” 154-57.
[13]
McGrath, “The Natural Sciences and Apologetics,” 143.
[14]
Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best,” 68.
[15]
Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best,” 73.
