Today more than ever before in the history of our country we live in a cultural context that does not recognize the Lordship of Jesus or share our basic presuppositions. To put it another way, the time and place we live in is more like 1st century Athens than 1st century Jerusalem. The need for Christians to be able to defend their faith to an unbelieving and even hostile generation is a real one. Further, if we are to be faithful to the great commission we are going to be constantly putting ourselves in position where we will be asked tough questions and given strong objections. This is the situation that young Christians are inheriting as they leave our homes and enter the world. The question is, are they prepared to handle what is coming there way? The statistics largely point to an answer of “No.” Young people are leaving the church by the droves after high school and one of the consistently highest ranked reasons given for that departure is intellectual doubt. The church has largely embraced a quiet pietism with a separation of faith and reason and it is not working out for us. We must equip our students to know what they believe and why it is actually true. We must raise up a generation of capable ambassadors for Christ.
The apologetics task given to us by the Lord Jesus and his apostles is no trifling thing. Consider the following command (and note that it is in fact a command) of the apostle Peter under the inspiration of the Spirit. “In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” (1 Peter 3:15) When you stop to think about that command at all it should give you some pause because it is in fact a tremendous thing to be prepared “always” to make a defense to “anyone.” What a daunting thought.
I have been actively engaged in apologetics training for about ten years now and have had the opportunity to make the case for the Christian faith in churches for student ministries and adults, I have spoken at collegiate ministries and church camps and I have led mission trips to do evangelism and outreach in numerous different contexts with people of very diverse religious backgrounds, education, ethnicity and in varying socioeconomic conditions. If I have learned anything in the last decade of doing apologetics it is that it is very hard to anticipate every possible question about, and objection to, our Christian faith. There are, of course, some questions and objections which are very common but even in those cases there are often unexpected twists, turns and nuances.
The range of questions that the Christian may receive is pretty wide. One person may object on grounds philosophical while another brings up a scientific issue. Further yet someone may object on literary grounds as to how the Bible ought to be understood while another person thinks he can demonstrate to you the mathematical improbability that God exists. Still further you have the challenge posed by representatives from all of the other world Religions, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, contemporary Judaism, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witness, etc., etc., etc., and then there are the historical arguments and the Jesus mythers, textual criticism issues, archaeology, and the list goes on. But even further still these are merely genus’ which themselves all have species. For a question or objection is not merely philosophical but it is ethical, or logical, or epistemological, or metaphysical, or ontological. Likewise with science and history and any other category there are specific sub-categories beneath them all.
I think I have belabored this point enough but hopefully you can appreciate the point I am trying to make, namely, the mission we have been given is no easy one. Nonetheless it is indeed our mission, a command in Scripture which we dare not ignore. The question I pose to you today is this, “How might we best prepare the next generation of Christians for the apologetic task?” I will not keep you in suspense rather I will tell you now that I believe a Classical, Liberal Arts education is the best solution to equipping believers to be ready for the apologetic task and now I will tell you why.
In order to best illustrate the usefulness of a classical education to bolstering apologetics ministry it might be helpful to discuss the ways in which apologetics training is typically delivered. Within the realm of apologetics there are three main methodological streams. There is what is known as Classical Apologetics which is a two-step approach to making the Case for Christianity in which theism in general is demonstrated and then, in light of a theistic universe where the miraculous is now on the table, Christianity is specifically argued for as the correct version of theism. The next method is known as Evidential Apologetics and this is often considered a one-step method because it argues directly for the truth of Christianity based on evidence that supports the resurrection of Jesus, the reliability of the Bible and the events, people and places it records, etc. Finally, there is what is known as Presuppositional Apologetics wherein the presuppositions of opposing worldviews are considered and shown to be internally inconsistent and/or inconsistent with the reality we find ourselves living in this world. Christianity is demonstrated to be internally and externally consistent and that by presupposing its truth we can make sense out of the world we live in and therefore Christianity is demonstrably true.
Now if you know much about apologetics you probably know that Classical and Evidential apologetics usually play well with each other but, often, proponents of Presuppositional apologetics tend to see their method as the only legitimately Christian one since it starts with the presupposition of the truth of Christianity whereas the other methods attempt to find common ground with unbelievers to start from. It goes way beyond the point of this paper to try to work through this intramural debate among brethren in Christ but I will say that I feel there is a lot less conflict between these methods than many suggest and I advocate a blended approach which utilizes all three. More often than not it is the theology of those wielding the method that clashes with the other apologists theology whereas the methods themselves are quite innocent of starting the fight.
All of this aside, when apologetics is taught as a class or a program the instructor will more often than not choose a side in this debate and teach their students how to wield a particular method of apologetics. They are taught a system, they are introduced to the most frequent kinds of objections to Christian faith and they are taught how to give good answers to some tough questions. All of which is a good thing insofar as it goes. Methodology is a helpful tool. Knowing the top 10 list of apologetics problems and how to deal with them will be very helpful. But, that said, it is isn’t everything.
Now my primary point isn’t to criticize the good work that various Christian programs are doing in apologetics training. I myself received a Bachelor’s degree in Religion and Apologetics from Luther Rice University, which was very much in the vein of the classical/evidential approach, and I can tell you that it was instrumental in helping me work through some very hard questions I was dealing with at the time. I am thankful for it. But, again, as I have engaged in apologetics ministry I have come to realize more and more that such a program can hardly equip the Christian for everything they will possibly encounter. It is in light of this fact that I argue a thorough Classical education will do much in the way of preparing the believer for this task and if it is coupled with intentional apologetics training I think it will produce superior apologists as opposed to those who have had a typical public school education (like I did) and then received apologetics training (like I did).
Like many of you, I am sure, I started to get a classical education later in life. I was in the middle of my bachelor’s degree when I first learned of the existence of classical Christian education. I was working for a community college as an admissions recruiter when I did a High School visit at a curious little school in Topeka Kansas called Cair Paravel Latin School. I am very ashamed to admit that, at the time, I had no idea what Cair Paravel was and the fact that it was a “Latin School” made no sense to me. I am thankful to report, however, that I have since spent much time as a sojourner in the land of Narnia and Aslan has taught me much.
Upon my visit to the Cair Paravel I had only one student come and listen to my presentation on the community college I was representing but by the time I packed up my things to head back I had been so impressed by the one student I talked to, the others I saw in the hall and the general air of the school as a whole, I went to the office and asked if they could give me an information packet. They did give me one and I took it home to my wife and, as a result, we have been classically educating ourselves and our kids ever since.
In the process of getting and giving a classical education I have come to see its powerful effect on my ability to be an effective apologist. I submit to you by way of analogy that Classical education is to apologetics as virtue ethics is the field of ethics. In the philosophy of ethics there are many different methods for ethical decision making. There is deontology which appeals to an authority for ethical decision making, there is Kantian ethics which uses Kant’s Categorical Imperative, there is Utilitarianism which says the ends justify the means, etc. But among the discussion of philosophy of ethics there is a weird kind of outlier in the discussion and it is known as virtue ethics. Virtue ethics does not stand necessarily in opposition to a particular methodology of ethical decision making (just as classical education does not necessarily oppose any kind of formal method of apologetics) but rather it suggests that we need to ask a more fundamental question. The question we ought to be asking is, “What kind of person is most likely to make virtuous decisions.” In other words, it focuses on developing the person into a virtuous human being, developing their character into the kind of person who is likely to do the right thing when a tough decision comes their way. In virtue ethics methodology may be important, but being virtuous is of first importance. In the same way I argue that apologetics methodology has much value but what is primary is developing the well rounded people who are most likely to deal well with tough questions of any kind.
Classical education does at least six things which serves to develop students into the right kind of person to answer anyone about anything concerning our hope in Christ. First, Classical education teaches students the grammar of academic disciplines so that students can speak intelligently on a broad range of subjects. Second, Classical education trains students to think critically and enables them to evaluate arguments, exposing faulty reasoning and also to develop good arguments in their place. Third, Classical education trains students to express themselves well through written and oral communication so that they may persuasively promote the Christian faith to a wide range of audiences. Fourth, Classical education inculcates an active imagination which allows people to be inventive in their communication of ideas. Fifth and finally, a Classical education, rightly received, produces humility which is something sorely needed in apologetics ministry and is too often under-represented.
1. Classical education teaches student the grammar of the academic disciplines so that students can speak intelligently on a broad range of subjects.
As I have already said one of the major difficulties in fulfilling the apologetics mission is the sheer number of directions questions and objections may come from. Historical, Literary, scientific, philosophic, theological, etc., these are all angles from which people might ask a challenging question or pose an objection. What this means is that the effective apologist is at least conversant with the basic grammar of many disciplines. This is, in fact, one of the missions of a classical education, to expose students to a broad range of learning where they can learn to speak intelligently on a wide variety of subjects and be free to pursue those disciplines with the tools to understand them.
Modern education tends to point students toward skill based learning and this only gets worse on the college level. Intense specialization, which compartmentalizes human knowledge and separates the disciplines from one another, creates a kind of intellectual autism in which people find it very difficult to communicate with others. The person who knows only science or only philosophy or only art or only mathematics or only history, or only any given subject or a subset of any one of these disciplines finds themselves unable to communicate their ideas with people who do not know their discipline's jargon.
A recent article on the 20th of January from a publication called The Imaginative Conservative shared the following interesting information:
Professors usually spend about three-six months (sometimes longer) researching and writing in order to submit a twenty-five page article to an academic journal. And most experience a twinge of excitement when, months later, they open a letter informing them that their article has been accepted for publication, and will therefore be read by… an average of ten people. Yes, you read that correctly. The numbers reported by a recent study are pretty bleak. Eighty-two percent of articles published in the humanities are not even cited once. Of those articles that are cited, only twenty percent have actually been read. Half of academic papers are never read by anyone other than their authors, peer reviewers, and journal editors.
What might be among the reasons for these largely unattended academic works? The article tells us one real problem is increased specialization in academics.
Increased specialization in the modern era...is in part due to the splitting up of universities into various disciplines and departments that each pursue their own logic. One unfortunate effect of this specialization is that the subject matter of most articles make them inaccessible to the public, and even to the overwhelming majority of professors….increased specialization has led to increased alienation not only between professors and the general public, but also among the professors themselves. All of this is very unfortunate. Ideally, the great minds of a society should be put to work for the sake of building up that society and addressing its problems. Instead, most Western academics today are using their intellectual capital to answer questions that nobody’s asking, on pages nobody’s reading. What a waste.
A Classical education helps students avoid this over-specialization where they forget how to speak to normal people. There is no point in speaking or writing if there is no one there to listen or no one who can understand you if they do.
A further problem created by over-specialization is that otherwise bright people will say the most absurd things because of their ignorance of other disciplines. Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, is an excellent case in point. There is little doubt that Dawkins is a brilliant scientist but, even so, he is a terrible philosopher. In an attempt to to refute an Intelligent Design argument Dawkins refers to God as the “Ultimate Boeing 747” suggesting that God is ever so much more complicated than an airplane and that he would require a designer himself. The humorous thing about this is that it shows Dawkins is completely ignorant of both philosophy and theology. Asking “Well then, who made God?” as pithy retort to the teleological argument betrays the fact that the person asking doesn’t understand issue of necessary beings, sufficient causes, etc. Further his suggestion that God is more complex that a Boeing 747 shows that he does not understand that theologians actually believe God to be a very simple being. Enough picking on poor Richard, but hopefully the point is made. Biologists would be served to know something about theology and philosophy. Indeed, any of us, no matter what our primary discipline may be, no matter our first love in learning, should seek to be meaningfully conversant with other areas of human learning.
A classical education focuses on the Liberal Arts. They are Liberal in the sense that they are disciplines of free people who could pursue many lines of discourse or vocation and are rarely in a place where they find themselves without any knowledge of what is being spoken of around them. The person who knows one thing can do only one thing, think only one thing and be only one thing. Historically that has been called slavery. We want a better future for our children and for our nation, we want them to be free to be whomever God may call them to be. We want them to be able to speak with knowledge and wisdom about whatever they may encounter. The primary purpose of education is not job training it’s about personal formation of character, it’s about seeking wisdom, it’s about being a well rounded human being and, ultimately, it’s about glorifying God. A classical education is a significant step towards students being able to be conversant with anyone who asks them for a reason why they have hope in Jesus.
2. Classical education trains students to think critically and enables them to evaluate arguments, exposing faulty reasoning and also to develop good arguments in their place.
I am a logic teacher and I love it. I took a logic course in College but it did not go anywhere near into the depth that I get to take my 7th and 8th grades. Sometimes when I tell people that I teach Logic they assume I must be a college professor because they can’t imagine “middle school kids” doing something like that. But the truth is they can totally handle it. As classical educators we spend the first six or so years filling up their cups with information and then as they reach an age where they are able to start dealing with abstraction it is only appropriate that we teach them to do something with all that information.
In Logic we teach students to think critically and evaluate information. We are constantly receiving data every hour of every day of our lives. Whether it be reading a book, watching television, talking with another person, we are constantly receiving propositional information and we must make distinctions between true and false, valid inference and invalid inference. But people are generally very bad about separating wheat from chaff. We tend to be great sponges for information but not so great at judging between kinds of information. It is for this reason that a Classical education is so important. The reason Formal logic is challenging is simply because we are so good at thinking incorrectly. It is a painful process fitting our minds into the molds of logic but it is a sanctifying experience.
I teach my students that Logic is theology, it is a study of the mind of God. The Gospel of John, which opens with such familiarity to many of us, reads “In the beginning was the Word.” The Greek is “Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος” and it is of some notable interest that the word “logos” which is typically translated as “word” can also be translated as “logic.” In the beginning was the Logic and the Logic was with God and the Logic was God. Regardless of whether you translate logos as the traditional “Word” or you translate it as “Logic” you really have the same truth either way, the rational communication of God to man in the person of His Son, Jesus.
Logic, rationality, is an essential attribute of God’s own nature and it is, thankfully, one of God’s communicable attributes. God has incommunicable attributes such as his omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, etc., but many of his attributes He has shared with us in His creative act wherein he made mankind. One of the ways in which we are like God, a way which separates us from the beasts of the field, is our rationality (or at least our ability to be rational). To think properly is to think the thoughts of God. Right thinking is godly thinking.
God in his omniscience and his immutability (that is his non-changing nature) does not think like man thinks. God has perfect knowledge, he knows things apart from any process of coming to conclusions from inferences. Another way to put it is that God never learns anything. We, however, are linear existing beings who are imperfect and have room to change in a positive fashion towards the good, towards the acquisition of true knowledge. As we learn truth and separate it from falsehood we become more like God who already, from eternity, knew that truth. So you see, studying Logic is theology and it is worshipping God with our minds (something many Christians forget we are called to do).
In the job of the Christian apologist the practice of logical principles is critical. We have to be able to not just receive information but to critically evaluate data and categorize it. Ideas are not all created equal and they should be weighed against Scriptural teaching and also good reasoning. Sometimes arguments can sound true but, in fact, their conclusions are drawn invalidly from the premises upon which they rest. Often what sounds true to many is in fact not an argument at all but rather a fallacy of some kind wrapped in creative sophistry which wins people’s affections while deceiving their minds.
Scripture tells us that we must learn to not be taken in by everything that comes our way. The apostle Paul tells us that “he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Ephesians 4:11-14)
We teach our students Logic so that they may not be taken in by everything that gets thrown their way. But we also teach them Logic so that they may go on the offensive for the sake of truth. In 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 Paul writes, “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” As Christians we should be about the business of destroying arguments raised up against the knowledge of God. After destroying faulty arguments we can construct positive arguments for the truth of Christianity.
The classical arguments for God’s existence are usually represented as Deductive syllogisms of various forms, often Modus Ponens or Modus Tollens. Evidential arguments are typically formed by the methods of inductive or abductive reasoning. Something I found to be true is that I used these kinds of arguments before I really understood their mechanics. By going back and really learning logic myself and now as I get to teach it, I find that I am in a much better position to not only use those arguments but explain why they work and are very difficult for skeptics to overcome.
Again we see that a classical education is an ideal precursor to effective apologetics ministry because it equips students to think hard and think carefully, to destroy bad arguments and construct good ones. If Jesus is indeed the logos, then we should embrace the rationality of the word and wield it to the glory of God.
3. Classical education trains students to express themselves well through written and oral communication so that they may persuasively promote the Christian faith to a wide range of audiences.
You may have noticed that, among other things, I am moving through the trivium in this presentation. Classical education gives students the grammar of the disciplines so that they may be conversant with many areas of study, it gives them logic so that they may evaluate information and claims that are made and discern the truth and it gives them the rhetorical skill to write and speak persuasively for the truth. The primary distinction between a Rhetorician and a Sophist is there respect for the truth. The skills they utilize are largely the same but their commitments are very different. The Sophist is committed to person gain, the Rhetorician is committed to truth telling. The tools of persuasion are a dangerous thing to give to a person who has not yet fallen in love with truth, goodness and beauty. It is for that reason that we will have ideally planted a love for those things in the hearts of our children from early on.
The effective Christian apologist does not only know how to be conversant with people from many corners of life and the academy, nor does he stop at being able to detect fallacies and to construct sound syllogisms, but he must know how to persuade individuals and audiences to see the same truth he does. The weapons of the Rhetorician, are Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. Logos is the appeal to reason, Ethos the appeal to ethics or character, and Pathos is the appeal to the emotion. Every person we meet and every crow we stand before is different. The good Rhetorician is sensitive to his audience and he observes what moves them. No two presentation of a message are the same because the audience changes.
The obvious goal of Christian apologetics is to win the person over to the truth of Christianity and to the Lordship of Jesus. Some people require logical arguments and have intellectual concerns that hold them back from Christianity. To them we must appeal largely to logos. Others have, perhaps, had bad experiences with Christians and lost confidence in people associated with the church. To them we must embody ethos, win their confidence both in us as a representative of Christ and ultimately in Christ himself who never fails to be good. Some people are essentially separated from Christ because of emotional pain, the loss of a loved one whom they feel God should have saved or some other sort of thing. To them we must respond with appropriate Pathos, demonstrating the deep love of Christ who also knows what it is to lose those he loves and who has suffered with us and for us.
Of course there is often a call for a combination of the three areas of persuasion. No one is purely rational, purely ethical, or purely emotional. These are elements that make up our humanity and the good news is that Christianity meaningfully engages all of these aspects.
A Classical education gives Christians the tools they need to judge their audience and speak to the need of the moment. Rhetoric is not trickery, it is sensitivity and caring enough about your audience to address the things they are concerned about with their ultimate good in mind. The Sophist seeks his own good, the Rhetorician seeks the good of those to whom he is trying to persuade. We need Christian apologists who are seeking the good of others and who are creative in the delivery of their information. We must learn to break free from rigid, one size fits all, presentations of the gospel and learn to be sensitive to where people are. Classical education can aid us in this goal.
4. Classical education inculcates an active imagination which allows people to be inventive in their communication of ideas.
I learned about Jesus in childhood through the typical Bible stories and songs. I learned about Jesus in Bible college and wrestled with his teachings. But when I read The Chronicles of Narnia, I think I finally understood some things about Jesus that I was blind to before then. His wildness, his unrelenting love, his closeness. Somehow between childhood stories and theology class I just didn’t see Jesus as someone I could be really close to. Yes, I loved him. Yes, he was my savior. But he was distant. Narnia helped that change for me. C. S. Lewis, in his essay entitled On Stories, writes the following:
The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity’. The child enjoys his cold meat (otherwise dull to him) by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savoury for having been dipped in a story; you might say that only then is it the real meat. If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. This applies to the treatment not only of bread or apple, but of good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys. By dipping them in myth, we see them more clearly.
Getting to know Jesus as a Lion named Aslan was one of the best things that ever happened to my Christianity. Not because I can’t separate this fictional work of Lewis’ from the Jesus of Scripture and history but because somehow my time in Narnia helped me to see the Jesus of Scripture and history more clearly. He actually became more real to me than he had been before, more personal. This may sound odd to some, but I dare say others can relate to what I am saying now.
One of the greatest things about a classical education is that our whole minds get dipped in myth while simultaneously we are given the tools to tell the difference between truth and falsehood. But there is sometimes a distinction to be made between myth and falsehood. Fairy tales, fantasy epic adventures like Lord of the Rings, the actual Greek and Roman and Norse mythologies and so many more things that we expose our kids to, they swing wide the gates of imagination and creativity. This enables students to talk about truth while ornamenting the truth with beautiful allusions, references, and allegory. The communication of truth, goodness and beauty need not always come in the form of a philosophical or theological treatise. Sometimes the truth is better apprehended in story. The Bible itself, though full of doctrinal discourses (and they are important) is also largely a narrative, a grand story. It is a true story, but a story nonetheless. Lewis, in fact, called it the myth that is true.
Creatively communicating the message of Christ can take many forms but one of them is by telling stories which in turn tell you something about the ultimate true story. I read recently an article by a man who grew up in a family of atheists. His parents carefully guarded him from religious literature because they didn’t want to infect his mind with such nonsense. They did, however, allow him to read Lord of the Rings. Interestingly the man who wrote his article traced his doubts about his atheism back to having read Lord of the Rings which he said awoke in him a sense of something more, something beyond the natural. It was a pervasive idea and longing that he could not escape from. It was not sufficient to rid him of his atheism but it was the first splinter of light that made it into his soul.
In fact these stories get into the souls of all who read them and allow themselves to get consumed by their story. A classical education dips our minds in myth and awakens something in us that never lets us go. It teaches us to tell the truth in more than one way. Just as poetry communicates what prose never can through imagery, story and myth tell us about reality in a way that more straightforward discourse can never achieve.
5. Classical education, rightly received, produces humility which is something sorely needed in apologetics ministry and is too often unrepresented.
I have never been able to understand the arrogance I have encountered among the highly educated. For many, it seems, to earn a Ph.D. in any subject is to make them the master and commander of all knowledge and wisdom. I have to say that my experience has been quite the opposite. I will be starting my doctoral dissertation this summer and as I enter the final stretch of my educational career I am more aware than ever before about how ignorant I am. The more I know, the more I know that I don’t know much. Plato tells us that Socrates was said to be the wisest man simply because he knew that he did not know. Well, I still claim to know a few things so I guess I will leave the honor of being the wisest person to Socrates, but nonetheless I’ve come to appreciate that there is more wisdom in being honest about one’s own ignorance than in feigning that one knows more than they do.
A Classical education, properly done, creates humility because it exposes students to a world of knowledge they can never hope to completely master. A good education increases your awareness of the fact that there is much that man collectively does not know, and may never know, and that as an individual what you personally know is infinitesimal compared to all there is to be known. An arrogant educated person missed a very important lesson along the way. A good education should make us feel like a toddler standing on a beach of the Pacific ocean. It should make us feel small. Small is not to be confused with unimportant or insignificant, but genuine humility is a virtue.
When it comes to apologetics I have known many who try to act as if they have all the answers neatly wrapped up in a bow. I can tell you for certain that I do not. But I find that people are very receptive to a person who is kind, humble and who can offer some compelling thoughts and arguments but still is able to say “I don’t know” when they really don’t. We need to learn the difference between confidence and bravado. Humility does not mean being wishy-washy and uncertain, nor does it mean lacking boldness. Humility is just being honest with yourself and others that you are finite human being as is everyone else.
A Classical education, which sets its students before the greatest minds of history, tells us that there is much yet to learn. Most of us will never approach the poetic skill of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, nor the philosophical greatness Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant nor the scientific brilliance of Kepler, Newton and Einstein. We will not likely write a novel as great Tolstoy, Austen or Lewis. It is a humbling thought. Hopefully, however, reading these incredible minds is not only humbling but is also inspiring. A good education keeps you grounded while you reach for the stars.
Case in Point Example: C. S. Lewis (The Ideal Apologist)
So what kind of Christian are we trying to create? When I think of the ideal apologist I think of C. S. Lewis. From Plato to Beatrix Potter Lewis had read it. From the Oxford’s History of the English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama) to stories about interplanetary spiritual warfare and epic battles with Lions and witches, Lewis wrote it. He spoke to men and women of the highest academic pedigree, he spoke to blue collar workers, he gave radio broadcasts during World War II to encourage the troops and the public, and he wrote books for children and was never beyond answering their letters asking about Aslan and Narnia. He powerfully and persuasively communicated Christ to them all through so many different mediums. Whether in a poem, a story, an academic work or in a local pub, Lewis was ready to make defense for the hope he had in Christ. Lewis had a great classical education and, I think, he embodied all of the above points I have made. May we see a generation of Lewisian apologists fill our schools and universities, our workforce of all stripes, may they become pastors and deacons, moms and dads. We need a generation ready to make the case for Christianity no matter where they go or what they do. I believe gaining a classical education is crucial to this mission.
