Sanctified Apology
Apologetics attracts people with egos: people who like winning debates, who really enjoy doing a victory dance over the supine carcasses of their opponents while receiving the adulation of the masses who already agree with them. I know this all too well—from the inside, one might say.
That is not the apologetic to which we are called. Unless we die to self, unless we have truly “sanctified Christ as Lord in our hearts” (the part of 1 Peter 3:15 we usually neglect to quote while going on about the defense we are supposed to make to those who ask a reason for the hope that is in us), we are almost guaranteed to do more harm than good. Even when we win.
Especially when we win.
Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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more from the online archives
24.5—Sept/Oct 2011
on Wondering or Wandering Through College Education by Anthony Esolen
27.2—March/April 2014
on C. S. Lewis & the New State Paganism by W. E. Knickerbocker
29.5—Sept/Oct 2016
on the Loss of True Community & Rising Political Desperation by Karl D. Stephan
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