Apologetics (from Greek απολογία, "speaking in defense") is the discipline of defending a position (usually religious) through the systematic use of reason.
Early Christian writers (c 120-220) who defended their faith against critics and recommended their faith to outsiders were called apologists.[1]
In modern times, apologists refers to authors, writers, editors or academic journals, and leaders known for defending the points in arguments, conflicts or positions that receive great popular scrutinies or are minority views.
Contents |
The term apologetics etymologically derives from the Classical Greek word apologia. In the Classical Greek legal system two key technical terms were employed: the prosecution delivered the kategoria (κατηγορία), and the defendant replied with an apologia. To deliver an apologia then meant making a formal speech or giving an explanation to reply and rebut the charges, as in the case of Socrates' defense.
This Classical Greek term appears in the Koine (i.e. common) Greek of the New Testament. The Apostle Paul employs the term apologia in his trial speech to Festus and Agrippa when he says "I make my defense" (Acts 26:2). A cognate term appears in Paul's Letter to the Philippians as he is "defending the gospel" (Philippians 1:7 & 16), and in 1 Peter 3:15 believers must be ready to give an "answer" for their faith. The word also appears in the negative in Romans 1:20: unbelievers are αναπολόγητοι (anapologētoi) (without excuse, defense, or apology) for rejecting the revelation of God in creation.
The legal nuance of apologetics was reframed in a more specific sense to refer to the study of the defense of a doctrine or belief. In this context it most commonly refers to philosophical reconciliation. Religious apologetics is the effort to show that the preferred faith is not irrational, that believing in it is not against human reason, and that in fact the religion contains values and promotes ways of life more in accord with human nature than other faiths or beliefs.
In the English language, the word apology is derived from the Greek word, but its use has changed; its primary sense now refers to a plea for forgiveness for a wrong act. Implicit in this is an admission of guilt, thus turning on its head the "speaking in defense" aspect of the original concept. An uncommon secondary sense refers to a speech or writing that defends the speaker or author's position.
Christian apologetics is a field of Christian theology that aims to present a rational basis for the Christian faith, to defend the faith against objections and misrepresentation, and to expose perceived error within other religions and world views. Christian apologetics have taken many forms over the centuries, starting with Paul of Tarsus, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, and continuing today with the efforts of many authors and speakers from various Christian traditions, such as Cornelius Van Til, James White, John F. MacArthur, Hank Hanegraaff, Ravi Zacharias, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, C.S. Lewis, William Lane Craig, Jack Wellman and J. P. Moreland. Apologists claim to have based their defense of Christianity on historical and archaeological evidence, theological and philosophical arguments, scientific investigation, and other disciplines.
There are apologists who specialize in Mormonism, including several well-known Mormon apologetic Organizations, such as the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (a group of scholars at Brigham Young University) and Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research (an independent, not-for-profit group), which have formed to defend the doctrines and history of the Latter Day Saint movement in general and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in particular.
As the world's religions have encountered one another, apologetics and apologists from within their respective faiths have emerged. Some of these apologetics respond to or fight back against the arguments of religions and secularism; others are pure defence.
Apologists for Islam have defended the Quran using rationalist and empiricist arguments, and using cosmological arguments in an attempt to prove God's existence. Muslims have actually developed their own form of creationism, Islamic creationism. Islamic apologists have also challenged both Jewish and Christian beliefs. The late South African Islamic apologist, Ahmed Deedat, was a prolific popular writer who debated Christian evangelists by arguing over discrepancies in the Bible, and claiming the Gospel of Barnabas is the only authentic record of Jesus' life.
One of the earliest Buddhist apologetic texts is The Questions of King Milinda, which deals with ethical and intellectual problems. In the British colonial era, Buddhists in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) wrote tracts that challenged and rejected Christianity. In the mid-nineteenth century, encounters between Buddhists and Christians in Japan prompted the formation of a Buddhist Propagation Society. In recent times A. L. De Silva, an Australian convert to Buddhism, has written a text designed to refute the arguments of Christian evangelists. At a sophisticated academic level, Gunapala Dharmasiri has challenged the Christian concept of God from a Theravadan Buddhist perspective.
Hindu apologetics was an inevitable consequence of the confrontation with Christianity during the British colonial period. A number of Indian intellectuals had become critical of the British tendency to devalue the Hindu religious tradition. As a result, these Indian intellectuals as well as a handful of British Indologists were galvanized to examine the roots of the religion as well as to study its vast arcana and corpus in an analytical fashion. A desirable repercussion of this endeavor was the drive to decipher as well as to preserve Sanskrit. Many translations of Hindu texts were produced which made them accessible to a broader reading audience.
A range of Indian philosophers including Swami Vivekananda and Aurobindo Ghose have written rational explanations regarding the values of the Hindu religious tradition. More modern proponents such as the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi have also tried to correlate recent developments from quantum physics and consciousness research with Hindu concepts. The late Reverend Pandurang Shastri Athavale has given a plethora of discourses regarding the symbolism and rational basis for many principles in the Vedic tradition. (The Vedic texts are the ancient scriptural verses written in Sanskrit). In his book entitled "The Cradle of Civilization", David Frawley, an American who has embraced the Vedic tradition, has characterized the ancient texts of the Hindu heritage as being like "pyramids of the spirit". Such individuals have tried to construct an intellectual defense of Hinduism during a phase when the fundamentalistic elements of other faiths have sought to denigrate the ancient religion in an effort to gain converts.
The publication, "Hinduism Today", was founded on January 5, 1979, by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. It is a nonprofit educational activity of the Himalayan Academy. Based on its website, one of its chief aims is to dispel the misinformation and misrepresentation of Hinduism and to preserve the true essence of its teachings. It also endeavors to nurture the renaissance which appears to be transpiring within the Hindu brethren worldwide. As a publication written in English, it has also served to unify the disparate branches of the Hindu Diaspora. The archives of the "Hinduism Today" publication appear to be a solid and faithful storehouse of Hindu theory and practice; they seem to be an ideal starting point for those interested in this ancient religious tradition. Moreover, the publication also seems to be energetically carrying the torch of Hindu apologetics in the field of comparative religion.
Some pantheists have been formed organizations such as the World Pantheist Movement and Universal Pantheist Society to promote and logically defend belief in pantheism.
Tertullian was a notable early Christian apologist. He was born, lived and died in Carthage. He was the first great writer of Latin Christianity, thus sometimes known as the "Father of the Latin Church". He introduced the term Trinity (Latin trinitas) to the Christian vocabulary[2] and also probably the formula "three Persons, one Substance" as the Latin "tres Personae, una Substantia" (itself from the Koine Greek "treis Hypostaseis, Homoousios"), and also the terms Vetus Testamentum (old testament) and Novum Testamentum (new testament).
In his Apologeticus, he was the first who qualified Christianity as the 'vera religio' ("true religion"), and symmetrically relegated the classical Empire religion and other accepted cults to the position of mere 'superstitions'.
Early uses of the term (in the first sense) include Plato's Apology (the defense speech of Socrates from his trial) and some works of early Christian apologists, such as St. Justin Martyr's two Apologies addressed to the emperor Marcus Aurelius.
An additional early use of the term, is Augustus Caesar's apologia or defense of his accomplishments as Roman Emperor inscribed outside of his tomb, at his death in 14 A.D. on pillars of bronze, called The Deeds of the Divine Augustus (in Latin: Res Gestae Divi Augusti). They were widely copied and distributed throughout the Roman Empire. It is regarded as one of the more important apologias of the ancient world.[3]
Arngrímur Jónsson was an Icelandic scholar who wrote the book Brevis commentarius de Islandia in Latin as a "defense of Iceland" where he criticized the works of numerous authors who had written about the people and the country of Iceland.
John Henry Newman (February 21, 1801 – August 11, 1890) was an English convert to Roman Catholicism, later made a cardinal, and in 1991 proclaimed 'Venerable'. In early life he was a major figure in the Oxford Movement to bring the Church of England back to its Catholic roots. Eventually his studies in history persuaded him to become a Roman Catholic. When John Henry Newman entitled his spiritual autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua in 1864, he was playing upon both this connotation, and the more commonly understood meaning of an expression of contrition or regret.
At the end of the 19th and the beginning 20th Century a group of arch conservative American economists and social scientists appeared who have been called the American Apologists. In spite of their different theoretical orientations they were apologists for the status quo and rose to defend the new industrial age and condemn the unions and populist causes.[4]
They included Simon Newcomb at Johns Hopkins, John Bates Clark at Columbia, James Laurence Laughlin at Chicago, Charles F Dunbar and Frank William Taussig at Harvard, Arthur T. Hadley and William Graham Sumner at Yale, and controlled the American university system in the East. This was backed by the cleansing of American higher education from “socialist” reformers after the Haymarket affair, an 1886 incident in Chicago.
Udo Schaefer is a lawyer and author of Making the Crooked Straight;[5] and prominent Baha'i apologetic.
In a famous speech called Red Jacket on Religion for the White Man and the Red[6] in 1805, Seneca chief Red Jacket gave an apologist argument for native American religion.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||