Bible vs. apologetics

The interview question was put to Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias: "What do you say to a pastor who says, 'Apologetics is just philosophy and we do not need that. All we need is the Bible'?"

Zacharias replied, "When pastors believe and teach 'all we need is the Bible,' they equip their young people with the very line that gets them mocked in the universities and makes them unable and even terrified to relate to their friends. . . . That line will not get them anywhere. Even the Bible that Christ gave us is sustained by the miracle of the Resurrection."

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

Let me agree with Mr. Zacharias wholeheartedly, as far as I am able to. It wouldn't work at all if every time you're standing around the water cooler, all you did was quote the ESV or KJV in answer to your colleagues' queries. Even people who would say "all you need is the Bible" know they necessarily use words outside the Bible when they speak. There is a continuum from "only Bible" through "paraphrase" to "only philosophy."

But if "all we need is the Bible" has its dangers, apologetics has more---and for precisely the reason stated in the interviewer's question: If you don't watch it, apologetics tends to philosophy. And if you don't watch philosophy, it gets unhinged from Biblical truth.

Zacharias may be right that the "all we need is the Bible" attitude is problematic. But honestly, it is not the problem I most often observe. It seems to me there are a lot more "apologists" than people who can give me good Bible thoughts to chew on. Seminarians are full of people who will argue you into a corner and leave you cold. What I need is the Word of God. What saves is the Word of God.

Peter said to always be "prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15), but what makes us so sure that "defense" is a philosophical one? The example Mr. Zacharias cites to prove that even Christ used apologetics works against his case: Jesus' adducing of the Resurrection is pure Bible! Peter, Stephen, and Paul all play it very close to the Scripture text when doing apologetics (Acts 2, 7, 23). And I'll bet even Paul's famous defense in Athens (Acts 17) was mostly Bible. The purer apologetics is, the more it looks like the Bible.

If I have to choose, give me an "all we need is the Bible" guy any day.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.