Apologetics without the hardcore bit

A few days ago I received the following note from a friend who read What’s So Confusing About Grace?

Completed the book. Loved it. Was expecting some hardcore apologetics based on your interactions with atheists, but was very pleasantly surprised by the anecdotal, memoiristic, essay style.

My friend didn’t bother to define “hardcore apologetics”, but I think I know what he means: precisely defined and defended syllogisms and clearly defined debates with non-Christians. And from that perspective, he’s right: there is a noticeable absence of hardcore apologetics.

At first blush this might seem surprising. After all, I’ve been involved in my own share of hardcore apologetics over the years: I’ve authored a book of apologetics and co-authored two more in debate with atheists; I’ve debated atheists on the radio, podcasts, written form, and in formal debates in churches and on school campuses. And then there’s all that blogging.

All that is true. But it is also true that all this work has not had a large impact on my own personal process of doctrinal reflection and formulation. And that’s what this book is about.

That said, this book is full of apologetics. Throughout I find myself in debate with inadequate conceptions of the Gospel that I received from fundamentalism, dispensationalism, evangelicalism, and charismatic Christianity. Along the way, I seek to defend particular views of hell, heaven, the Bible, and the Christian life which redeem Christianity both from an intellectually arrested faith and some of the most existentially far reaching objections to that faith.

By the end I trust the reader will have a far better sense of what it is I believe, and why I believe it. That may not be hardcore, but it most definitely is apologetics.

The post Apologetics without the hardcore bit appeared first on Randal Rauser.