GENERAL SCHEMATIC FOR CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS

GENERAL SCHEMATIC FOR CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS

Virgil Warren, PhD

            To locate the study of critical introduction to the Old Testament within the total picture of apologetics, we give here an abstract of the flow of apologetics. Instead of beginning with objective Christian evidences, as traditionally done, we include a prior step so that evangelism and apologetics become much the same kind of thing. Coming to conviction begins in the present with (1) our sense of need to be loved, to feel innocent and meaningful, and to have something to depend on. (2) The answer in Christianity comes as a cluster of historical events surrounding the person of Jesus the Messiah, especially his resurrection and the meaning of his life, death, and resurrection for human need in any age. (3) When we begin to carry out the principles of living that Christ taught and to receive in experience Christ’s love, the purposefulness of life, the freedom from guilt, and the confidence of living under One we can trust, we confirm subjectively that the truth is also the truth for us. Living in the new condition helps us identify more clearly the real needs among, and plus, perceived needs. This stage helps us understand the message itself more clearly, and so on. The process forms an ongoing dynamic of reciprocal causations between the three “poles.”

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