“So what?” – this was the reply of one of my agnostics friends after a long conversation about the evidence of Jesus’s bodily resurrection.
I see a lot in common between how Plato and many Christians have done apologetics over the years: using persuasion with classical arguments, morality benefits in particular and human flourishing in general, and internal consistency as well as external coherence with our world.
Which brings me back to my friend, I think that sometimes there’s a risk to overestimate the power of reason. Humans for sure are not brains on sticks; so how can persuasion be more effective? I recently read “The Augustine Way: Retrieving a Vision for the Church’s Apologetic Witness by Joshua Chatraw and Mark Allen (2023), and it resonated with me. In it, the authors are arguing that Augustine’s City of God shows us a more nuanced, pastoral approach to apologetics.
Reply to “Laws X: How does Plato’s approach to apologetics compare to that of modern Christian apologetics?”