might prevent someone from laying claim to the truth, something all have a right to because God created us to know the truth as fully as humanly possible.
“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31–32).
Chapter 3
Tools of the Trade
Logic, Arguments, and Evidence
What is Truth?
Just as surgeons require particular instruments in order to operate on patients without killing them, and archeologists need special tools to unearth ancient ruins without ruining them, so too, apologists must use their own unique set of tools if they want to draw others toward the truth rather than drive them further away. No matter how sincere or enthusiastic you may be, if you don’t know which tools to use, your apologetics efforts will likely fail. As the famed inventor Thomas Edison once put it, “Enthusiasm is a good engine, but it needs knowledge for fuel.” I’ve shared this maxim many times over the years with people who are just starting out in apologetics. It’s a lesson I myself had to learn (and relearn) when I got my start in apologetics long ago.
There are countless untrue “truth-claims” out there competing for people’s attention and allegiance. Many of them are subtle, complicated, and not easy to expose as false. But if you have the right tools and you know how to use them, you can help people shake off error and embrace the truth. Keep in mind the old saying: If the only tool you have is a hammer, you’ll tend to approach every problem as if it were a nail. An apologist must rely on an array of different tools, including the Bible, the facts of history, and most important of all: logic.
It’s God’s grace, of course, that enables any good apologist for the Faith to be successful. And I don’t mean successful in the way the world thinks of “success” (i.e., numbers, quotas, and statistics). Rather, I mean success in terms of being able to clearly, accurately, and convincingly share divine truth. The barriers of ignorance, prejudice, bad information, and lack of opportunity are almost always what prevent critics, scoffers, objectors, and dissenters from seeing and embracing the truth. Only rarely do people seem to know with certitude that something is true and yet still obstinately oppose it. Far more often people’s objections are sincere, if misguided and misinformed.
That’s why an apologist is really in the solutions business. He’s not “selling a product.” He’s not trying to get someone to “buy” something. When you get right down to it, an effective apologist doesn’t need to convince the other guy that “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Nobody likes to be proven wrong. So the apologist’s job is to get the other guy’s attention, so that when he points toward the truth, saying, “See? Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it good?” the truth’s irresistible beauty and abiding gravitational pull will do the rest.
And when that happens, Jesus’ promise is fulfilled in that person’s heart and mind: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”; “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 14:6; 8:31–32). God, especially as he has chosen to reveal himself in Jesus Christ, is the personification of truth. He is truth. And yet, that great truth is sufficiently inaccessible to us, and our limited intellects struggle to process its meaning, so we must also consider truth in the sense of the truth of things and how closely our ideas of things conform to the truth.
The Apologist’s Tools
You can’t get people’s attention if you don’t know how. So now we’ll consider the apologist’s indispensable “tools of the trade.” They’ll help you remove obstacles so that people you encounter can move toward the truth. One Bible verse that’s always helped remind me that it’s God’s grace, not human ingenuity, that makes an effective apologist is Proverbs 3:6: “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”
Logic and Arguments
Let’s start with the following definitions of the key tools of apologetics drawn from two respected logic textbooks,7 followed by examples drawn from real-world apologetics discussions. The first tools we’ll examine are logic and arguments.
Logic: Over the past nearly thirty years that I have been working in the field of apologetics, I have had to study logic assiduously as part of my work. Even though I have a B.Phil. in philosophy, I’m still learning from those who, like Peter Kreeft (our generation’s preeminent philosopher/apologist), have dedicated their lives to teaching people how to think clearly and to use logic in defense of the Faith. So, rather than simply repeat their teaching in my own words, I’ll let them explain what every apologist needs to know about the art of constructing cogent, persuasive arguments. Logic is the “science that evaluates arguments…. The aim of logic is to develop a system of methods and principles that we may use as criteria for evaluating the arguments of others and as guides in constructing arguments of our own.” Mastering the art of logic will “increase confidence that we are making sense when we criticize the arguments of others and when we advance arguments of our own.”8
Logic enables you to construct valid arguments in defense of a truth-claim (e.g., “God exists, Jesus Christ is God”), and it helps you “troubleshoot” truth-claims (your own and those of others) by checking them for errors, also known as logical fallacies. It detects and corrects errors when they are found.
Kreeft explains how logic “powers” arguments, and how mastering the art of logic and constructing good arguments will benefit you and others:
Logic builds the mental habit of thinking in an orderly way…. It has power: the power of proof and thus persuasion. Any power can be either rightly used or abused. This power of logic is rightly used to win the truth and defeat error; it is wrongly used to win the argument and defeat your opponent…. Logic can aid faith in at least three ways…. First, logic can clarify what is believed and define it. Second, logic can deduce the necessary consequences of the belief and apply it to difficult situations…. Third, even if logical arguments cannot prove all that faith believes, they can give firmer reasons for faith than [can] feeling, desire, mood, fashion, family or social pressure, conformity or inertia.9
Your apologetics efforts will be effective to the extent that they are based on good, solid arguments. By “good and solid,” I mean arguments that are clear in their terms, true in their premises, and valid in their logical conclusions. If any of these three ingredients is missing, an argument is defective and will fail. You might get lucky and actually persuade an unsuspecting person with an argument that is unclear, false, or illogical, but that’s being right for the wrong reasons or, something far more likely, being wrong for the wrong reasons. Kreeft explains:
If an argument has nothing but clear terms, true premises, and valid logic, its conclusion must be true. If any one or more of these three things is lacking, we do not know whether the conclusion is true or false. It is uncertain.10
Let’s break down this concept into its component parts. Arguments can often be reduced to syllogisms, which have three parts:
Major premise: All squares are shapes that have four sides of equal lengths.
Minor premise: This shape has five sides of unequal lengths.
Conclusion: Therefore this shape is not a square.
Terms: Kreeft explains that a term “has no structural
