Furthermore, Paul writes to Philippian believers that he is “put [there] for the defense (apologia) of the gospel” (Phil 1:16 [ESV]). In other words, Paul was explicitly placed in Phillipi to make an apology or a defense of the gospel. Apologetics is not a role reserved for some highbrowed theologians or philosophers, but for every believer to be prepared to give a defense for the hope that is in them. According to the author of The 12 Points that Show Christianity is True, Dr. Norman Geisler, “Positively: [Apologetics] builds a positive case for the Christian faith by defending the objective nature of truth, giving reasons for God’s existence, providing a defense of miracles, arguing for the credibility of the Gospel record, providing evidence of the deity of Christ, and reasoning for the Divine authority of the Bible. Negatively: it answers objections against the faith.”

Apologetics paves the way for the gospel and is, therefore, pre-evangelism. There are four reasons to do apologetics 1) the Bible commands it, 2) Culture demands it, 3) the Church needs it, and 4) results confirm it. If God is a God of reason, who created people with reason, He will not bypass the mind on His way to the heart. As C. S. Lewis explains, “To be ignorant and simple now—not to be able to meet the enemies on their ground—would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered” (The Weight of Glory, 50).

We have entered into a post-Christian world. The social, political, and intellectual communities have sided with atheistic ideologies, and the fallout is death and chaos. As Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky once proclaimed, “If God is dead, then everything is permitted.” Today, Americans live their lives as if God is dead, and they believe that they are the measure and arbiter of justice. Truth is no longer objective and knowable but subjective and relative. The colleges and universities have snuffed out any semblance of objective morality and seek to demonize those who proclaim a universal standard of right and wrong. Christians are labeled bigots, racists, and misogynistic for merely trying to squeak out a counterclaim in this echo chamber of wicked ideas. Why are those who champion tolerance the most intolerant to those who do not share their same ideologies? More importantly, where is the courageous Christian who says, “it stops now! And I will not be intimidated!”?

Where are those who love God with all their hearts, all their souls, and all their minds? Is this not the greatest commandment? The problem consists of believers who can not articulate and rationalize what they believe. Their religious experience is emotive and based on fleeting existential experiences. The pulpits in America spout out worldly rhetoric that temporality satiates emotional desires but leaves the hearts as vacuous as it was before they entered the sanctuary. Time has forgotten that the minister was the intellectual and spiritual authority in the community. For instance, the Puritans were highly educated people who founded colleges, taught their children to read and write before the age of six, and studied art, science, philosophy, and other fields as a way of loving God with the mind. Theology was at the heart of liberal arts education; the knowledge of God supplied the objective substance to all the subject matter.

It is time to combat the anti-intellectualism that has plagued the church for over a century. All truth is God’s truth! God first reveals Himself in what He has created (General Revelation) and all that has been created points back to a creator. Natural Theology consists of looking at the effect (creation) and tracing it back to the cause (God). God is all-knowing (omniscient), and the more we know about His creation, the more we learn about His nature. I charge every Christian to “destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5).