I begin every semester of teaching my undergraduate apologetics class with a unit on “meta apologetics.” That’s a fancy-sounding phrase, but it simply refers to the study of the nature of apologetics. In other words, before launching into apologetic answers and arguments, time needs to be given to careful reflection on the nature of apologetics itself.
In this unit, we discuss topics like the biblical justification for apologetics, the history of apologetics, the relationship between apologetics and other disciplines like theology, and the underlying assumptions of apologetics. I also introduce students to various strategies and approaches to apologetics including evidential, presuppositional, and existential apologetics.
The point that I always make when discussing these different approaches is that strategy is always dependent on context.
Apologetics done well and effectively must be deeply contextual. It requires that we actively listen to the questions and concerns of the skeptic before offering a response. Further, it requires that we are sensitive to the cultural context in which the skeptic lives. The aspiring apologist who has read a handful of books or watched a few YouTube videos can produce some fine-sounding arguments, but if she hasn’t taken the time to understand the context in which the defense of the gospel is taking place, all her arguments will land with the effectiveness of dissonant gibberish.
“Apologetics done well and effectively must be deeply contextual.”
The contextual nature of apologetics demands an approach that could be called “cultural apologetics.” This is the argument made in the recent book The Gospel After Christendom. The book was written by a group of contributors associated with the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics including Alan Noble, Gavin Ortlund, Tevin Wax, Christopher Watkin, Rebecca McLaughlin, and others.
Overview of The Gospel After Christendom
The central claim of the book is twofold. First, we undoubtedly live “after Christendom.” The status, relevance, and power of the Christian faith within Western cultures have shifted. The gospel, as the story that makes sense of life, is no longer what philosopher William James called a “live wire” for a great many people. It no longer resonates as a realistic option. To the extent that the gospel is thought about at all, it is thought of as a dusty relic of a now alien world.
Most of those reading this will not be surprised by such an appraisal. This shift is evident to anyone who has been paying any amount of attention. This is by no means the first book to make this observation and prescribe a path for the church in such a “post-Christian” world. Aaron Renn’s recent book, Life in the Negative World, is just one example.
The second, related, claim of the book is that living after Christendom requires a particular apologetic approach. This approach, in the words of Tevin Wax, “requires us to listen carefully and then enter the story of a culture so we can ‘renarrate’ someone’s outlook on the world.” Only once we have performed the task of careful listening to our culture are we ready to “shine the light of the gospel in a way that affirms their God-given deepest longings and aspirations while exposing the misdirection that leads to lies, half-truths, and unhappiness.”
“Living after Christendom requires a particular apologetic approach.”
Key Takeaway of The Gospel After Christendom
In the introduction to the book, Collin Hansen calls this the work of a “cultural climatologist.” He observes, “We need people not just responding to the immediate events in our daily newsfeed (‘the weather’) but also studying and assessing the deeper-rooted values, ideologies, narratives, and patterns at work in our culture (‘the climate’).”
If I could offer a different metaphor, much of our cultural analysis looks like a person who mistakes the fizz on the top of the soda for the soda itself. We make use of shallow observations of fleeting phenomena, using a popular movie as a hook for a sermon series or subtly changing our worship style in order to more closely align with the popular music of the moment, instead of carefully responding to the deeper ideas, assumptions, habits, and longings that animate our culture. We are all fizz and little substance.
Of course, the benefit of an apologetic that plumbs the depths of culture is that this is where we address people’s hearts. So much of what we might call “standard apologetics” does a good job of addressing the head. We make arguments that are based on logic and historical evidences. We offer syllogisms proving the existence of God, archaeology supporting the reliability of Scripture, and theodicies to explain the presence of suffering. I love these arguments, but I also know they are limited in their power. Most people living after Christendom are not waiting around for someone to make a logical case for Christianity. What they are waiting for (although they likely don’t know it) is for someone to show how Jesus makes sense—sense of their lives and sense of the world. 
“The benefit of an apologetic that plumbs the depths of culture is that this is where we address people’s hearts.”
The authors acknowledge they aren’t making a new claim about apologetics. In fact, one of the book’s contributors, Paul Gould, wrote a book on the topic called Cultural Apologetics several years ago. In the distant past, Justin Martyr, Augustine, and Pascal modeled this type of contextual or cultural apologetic. In more modern times, C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer approached the task of apologetics by accessing the deep narratives of the human heart.
In the New Testament, we observe Jesus engaging in what we might call cultural apologetics in his conversations with Nicodemus (John 3) and the Samaritan woman (John 4), and Paul memorably contextualized his apologetic for Jesus in Athens (Acts 17). Frankly, it’s impossible for me to imagine a defense of Jesus that isn’t cultural or contextual. The authors are merely calling for us to reflect on what a cultural apologetic looks like today. Just as Paul had to be sensitive to the different contexts of Pisidian Antioch and Athens, we have to be sensitive to the shifting contexts in which we are ministering today.
Strengths/Weaknesses of The Gospel After Christendom
This book does an excellent job of explaining the virtues of cultural apologetics. The contributors are each skilled communicators very much in the line of Timothy Keller. I recommend this book along with Gould’s book as introductions to cultural apologetics. You will find in this book helpful reminders and articulations of important, if not necessarily new, ideas.
My only disappointment with this book is that while it defines and celebrates cultural apologetics, it doesn’t really do cultural apologetics. One might expect that a book with the title The Gospel After Christendom would dedicate a little more space to analyzing culture after Christendom.
“The contributors are each skilled communicators very much in the line of Timothy Keller.”
There is an opportunity in a book like this to explain some of the “through lines” of our contemporary culture and how a cultural apologetic could address them. For instance, how does a cultural apologetic address people who are increasingly living as atomized individuals in what one philosopher has labeled a “burnout culture?” How does a cultural apologetic speak to the deep longings of people living in what another philosopher calls a technological society?
Perhaps I wanted more than what one book could reasonably accomplish. To be fair, there are literally dozens (maybe hundreds?) of books that do cultural apologetics, so perhaps a good introduction to the topic written by a number of very talented scholars is exactly what we need.
