Os Guinness: Why Balaam's Ass Is the Patron Saint of Apologetics and Christians Need to Recover the Art of Persuasion (CP Interview 1/2)
CP: If you were to ask most Christians to describe a good apologist, they would probably describe someone who is really smart and a good debater. How would you answer that question?
Guinness: Well clearly, when Peter wrote to the early Christians in 1 Peter 3 that they should "always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you," he wasn't talking to intellectuals, or to a caste of specialist apologists. He was talking to ordinary Christians. We believe in the priesthood of all believers and the calling of all believers, and we should also believe in the apologetics of all believers. Spiritual specialization is always a danger.
We all need to know who it is we believe, why we believe what we believe, and be able to give a case for it, a reasoned defense of it to other people.
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There's no doubt that apologetics often goes off course by reflecting its conversation partners rather than its biblical principles. In the Middle Ages, for instance, the conversation partners were philosophers and apologetics became very heavily philosophical. Today, the New Atheists major in science and we have to remember that apologetics must go far wider than science. We must always shape our apologetics by biblical truths such as creation, fall, the incarnation, the cross and the Holy Spirit.
In sum,we should all have an understanding of what it means to give an answer for the hope that it within us. Apologetics is for everybody, not just specialists.
CP: Right, so it's for all Christians.
Guinness: All Christians. And I say in the book, one of the things I love, is that the patron saint of apologetics is Balaam's ass. The Lord used a dumb donkey to speak when the prophet was resistant to it. You can see there something that's very humble, somewhat ridiculous, and the Lord is able to use him. Many of us don't have the answers to all the questions but are we prepared to be used by the Lord. That is the key.
CP: You say that three people influenced this book — C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer and Peter Berger. You wrote that people misunderstand why Francis Schaeffer a good apologist. You knew him personally. What made him a good apologist?
Guinness: Schaeffer was the best person-to-person apologist I have ever known. It grew out of two features of his approach. The first was his love for people. He talked to people and within two or three minutes, you could see his eyes welling with tears of empathy because he got into their stories with incredible compassion.
The other secret was he had a deep understanding of what you might call the "spiritual anatomy of unbelief," and his understanding of apologetics, going back to passages such as Romans 1:18, and the idea that unbelievers are holding the truth of righteousness. This means that no one, whatever their worldview, no one is completely wrong, false, or erroneous. Everyone is holding the truth, though in unrighteousness. And Schaeffer had an uncanny wisdom to know whether to press on with what was false in their worldview and push them out, or to focus on what was true in their worldview, though they didn't have a grounding for it. So, on the one hand, he had an amazing compassion and on the other hand an extraordinary grasp of the biblical understanding of how apologetics works.
CP: And you think people don't understand that because they just read his books and never saw him in action?
Guinness: Well they view his apologetics far too theoretically. Many of them just didn't see him in action. I think with any great master, including our Lord, you learn the deepest "under a master, from his authority and in experience," because even the master can't put all that he knows into words.
In other words, with the deepest things in life there is always more to knowing than knowing will ever know. That's why Socrates had a disciple, Plato, and why Jesus (we're told in Mark 3) chose the 12 "to be with Him" to be sent out. Being with Him was the heart of their discipleship. They saw Him and were able to model their lives on Him in ways that even He didn't put in His teaching. That was certainly true of Schaeffer too.
