The Context and Content of Apologetics

Toward integrated Christian apologetics

For decades, Ravi Zacharias had been one of the most widely respected voices in Christian apologetics. I had devoured his books in college, marveled at his rhetorical skill, and directed skeptical friends to his videos. Then, after his death in 2020, the devastating stories emerged: years of sexual misconduct, abuse of power, and far-reaching deception. It was more than one man’s shattered reputation. It was an international organization that impacted numerous Christian apologists, all respectable in their own right.

The thing that shook me most was the sobering realization that all his eloquent defenses of Christianity's moral vision now rang hollow. Zacharias’ story makes it painfully clear how decades of defending the faith is instantly undermined by moral failure. A life that contradicts the message it is supposed to proclaim renders that message null and void.

This is the reality: No message can be separated from its messenger.

The believability of the message is bound up with the credibility of the messenger. This is why Jesus spent nearly all his time showing his followers how to be good people rather than how to give good arguments. This is why many people followed Jesus without an argument. Jesus’ character was the perhaps the most convincing thing about him. So, for those of us interested in apologetics that is truly Christian, doing it the way Jesus did, then we should have as much a concern for being good people as we do for making good arguments—if not more so!

In Allure of Gentleness, Dallas Willard makes a crucial distinction between the context of apologetics, the life of the Christian, and the content of apologetics, the arguments for Christianity.

Christian apologetics typically focuses on content, the arguments, evidence, and rational defenses of the faith. We've built impressive arguments to demonstrate why Christianity is existentially reasonable, historically grounded, and philosophically coherent. This work matters deeply. But the context of apologetics receives far less attention by comparison. In other words, we’ve spent more time on crafting the message than on transforming the messenger. The character, spiritual formation, and lived experience of the Christian is just as important.

This is a problem because when we treat defending the faith as merely an intellectual exercise, we miss the biblical vision for apologetics and misunderstand what makes Christianity worth believing, namely the person of Jesus Christ.

The fact is the best argument for Jesus is a person with the character of Jesus.