Apologetics

Karl Barth once wrote: anxiety concerning the success of the gospel [referring to apologetics] is meaningless because the gospel is the power by which the world is overcome.

To me is possibly an overstatement but not by much. Apologetics have no power to save it is meeting Jesus and accepting who he says he is and what he says he has done that saves.

There is possibly some use in apologetics as a way to clear out some intellectual objects. But intellectual objects are rarely helpful to clear because when cleared we simply find a more difficult emotional objection which cannot be cleared.

We need to meet Jesus and see that he is beautiful and the way to see this is through the gospel of grace found in the cross.

Karl Barth on Faith

“Instead of investing energy in trying to demonstrate or prove the viability and truth of Christian belief, Barth assumes it and then seeks to describe it… From Barth’s perspective, theology could recover its essential integrity only when it came to realize that it was utterly dependent on God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, which constituted its only possible basis.  Dependence on revelation means that we cannot assume that we know in advance what reality and the nature of rationality look like and then assess revelation and Christian faith by these predetermined standards.  Instead we must begin with faith in Jesus Christ and only then attempt to explain the internal rationality and intelligibility of such faith.”