a little theological reflection

All right, I'm gonna stick my neck out here and offer a little of what I've been reading again this morning. By way of explanation the thoughts in the following paragraph were part of a spiritual search I was on a number of years ago. As a teen I began reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth's name kept popping up. When my wife and I moved to Chicago I had more study time on my hands and I began mining our huge library downtown of its Bonhoeffer collection. One day I stumbled on this book After Fundamentalism by Bernard Ramm and it was like finding a key to the prison of so many of my doubts about what I believed, the chief issue being Apologetics. My spiritual awakening took place in the late 1980s and at the time Apologetics and Evangelism were joined at the hip. I may be wrong but I suspect that the vast majority of Evangelicals are still so situated. But when I read Hume, Voltaire and Neitzche, and took their positions seriously, I realized that Apologetics so situated with Evangelism just doesn't work. Its an obfuscation of the Enlightenment. Ramm calls it obscurantism. Now this is not to try to shatter Thomas Aquinas or the classic arguments for God's existence. Its simply to say that to think that reason forms the basis for Evangelism is to not see the big picture. America has nearly 230 years of experience with Evangelicalism. To say that Christianity is the only reasonable choice is to claim that all rational arguments in opposition are denying the obvious. To me that is not a conversation starter. Well my lead-in is now longer than the quote:

"One of Barth's basic presuppositions with reference to the truth of the Christian faith is that if something external to the Word of God is necessary to establish the Word of God as true, then it is greater than the Word of God. He states this in many ways and in many contexts. Or, one could say that it is a very weak Word of God that needs external supports. Barth's maxim is that what establishes is greater than what is established. But there can be nothing greater than the Word of God. Therefore the Word of God establishes itself. If the lion needs gophers and rabbits to announce his kingship, then the lion is no longer king of the beasts. Barth takes as axiomatic that it would be very strange if Christian could believe the faith only if there were external assurances for it. If Christianity is tested for truth, then the test is greater than Christianity."
[from Bernard Ramm, After Fundamentalism: The Future of Evangelicalism, Harper & Row, 1983., pg. 61.]

To me Lee Strobel is the case in point here. His maxim (with his books The Case for Christ, The Case for a Creator, and his TV show on Pax ) all claim to want to dialogue with Mainstream America. Instead what he does is misrepresent all opposing views, tell the reader or viewer what he believes they want to hear (his opinion) and then draw a straight line from his point of view to Jesus. His testimony is that of having been a liberal radical atheist who wanted to attack Christ to becoming a far right wing conservative because of the facts. I surmise there's more to his story. This is the essence of Apologetics and Evangelism gone wrong. To me what is really being said is: "If Christianity can't be made to suit an agenda (mine) then it can't be true." I say that any real survey of worldwide Christianity shows that Jesus is much too colorful and influential for different reasons than to be fit into any one person's box.

Ok, with all of that said, there are many good and honest folks involved in Apologetics and Evangelism. And Karl Barth's deemphasis of Apologetics was quite honestly his own form of bias due to his background.  Political conservatives coopting the Apologetic conversation form no final reason to completely disregard a place for Apologetics. CS Lewis is a great example of a Lay apologist as is Josef Pieper. Various contemporary Christian philosophers all do a good job. But I think even these would shy away from claiming an epistemology (how we come to faith) that is all encompassing.