Apologetics in the U.K.

I love apologetics, but I love sound doctrine more. Lots of apologists do not.

J.W. Montgomery and Walter Martin

Let me explain myself.  Once upon a time, if you were an apologist, you were also a theologian.  The likes of Norman Giesler, Walter Martin, J. W. Montgomery and R.C. Sproul was the norm for the typical defender of faith forty years ago.  Montgomery was a Lutheran, Sproul was a Calvinist, Giesler was neither, but what these men had in common was a commitment to orthodox theology and a red hot zeal for protestantism.  This is no longer the case in evangelical apologetics.


I'm not saying that apologetics is dying, on the contrary, it's literately stronger than ever before.  Lee Strobel says "we’re on the cusp of a golden era in defending the faith", and he's right.  For instance, the attack from the "new atheists" backfired when it triggered a surge of apologetic interest from young people. It also didn't help that the past fifty years has experienced a resurgence in the academic world of Christian philosophy led by the likes of Alvin Plantinga.  Apologetics has never been as strong as it is in this generation and looks to only become stronger.  I'm afraid that what apologetics might lose in return for all this attention is doctrinal faithfulness.

Here's a few examples:
Molinism has become the standard belief for evangelical apologists.  Molinism is the belief that reconciles God's sovereignty with human free-will by positing that God knows all possible choices of every free creature at every possible moment (that's the best I can do in one sentence). A belief in an eternal hell is becoming unpopular. God's direct creation of life has been given up for theistic evolution and even the evangelical battle cry of innerrancy is becoming unfashionable. 

What do all these doctrine have in common? They make Christianity harder to defend.

It's become my pet peeve to meet a Christian who loves apologetics more than theology.  I'm afraid that this is where evangelical apologetics is going.

This is also why I'm so torn when I listen to the Mark Driscoll interview with Justin Brierley (see below).  I mostly agree with Driscoll's view on England, I just don't like the way he said it.  England has become dominantly atheistic (meaning all the smart people are atheists), and in order to survive the Christians there study apologetics.  As the fight between atheism and theism rages, apologetics goes up and sound doctrine goes down.  So when Driscoll leans into Brierley about whether or not he believes in the substitutionary atonement of Christ, I'm thinking "Yah! You tell em Mark!"  Then after the interview I'm thinking "Man, why did Driscoll have to be so rude about it?"

In fact, why does he have to be so rude about everything?

On an interesting note, compare his quick and sharp tongue against Brierley with his arms-wide-open attitude with T.D. Jakes a week later.

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