RamistThomist
Puritanboard Clerk
Willard, Dallas. The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus.
The goal of apologetics is to use my reason in service to the Holy Spirit to remove barriers to belief in Christ. Willard suggests that we best capture the nuance of “disciple” if we see it to mean “apprentice.” This is not an apologetics textbook. It’s more along the lines of “how you should behave so that people don’t think your an oaf or a jerk.”
Willard covers some of the same ground as Knowing Christ Today, with a pointed critique of “Strong Scientism.” If all that counts as knowledge is what the hard sciences can give us, particularly via the scientific method, then we have to ask whether the Greek alphabet, for example, counts as knowledge. It seems it does; therefore, hard scientism (and many of the recent court rulings in the US) is wrong.
Willard invites the apologete to think like Jesus by living like Jesus, having Jesus’s disposition. It’s more than a cliche, though. How would someone who is gentle help someone who is impressed by the problem of evil? It’s not enough simply to show that it is logically flawed. Willard invites the reader to work through not just the problem of pain, but the nature of pain. For example, is pain the worst thing in the world? The objection implies that it is. But if pain isn’t the worst thing in the world, if they are goods that people can pursue in the midst of pain, then it isn’t clear why God is obligated to remove pain from the world.
His section on the “hard parts of the Old Testament” is interesting. God always meets his people in history, in their history. Would it have made sense for God to drop the UN Resolution on Human Rights to Joshua as he was about to execute Achan? No. That probably would have gotten in the way. It would have been unintelligible.
Willard ends on the spiritual life of the apologist. Not just praying to God, but talking to him. And listening. And how to listen.
The goal of apologetics is to use my reason in service to the Holy Spirit to remove barriers to belief in Christ. Willard suggests that we best capture the nuance of “disciple” if we see it to mean “apprentice.” This is not an apologetics textbook. It’s more along the lines of “how you should behave so that people don’t think your an oaf or a jerk.”
Willard covers some of the same ground as Knowing Christ Today, with a pointed critique of “Strong Scientism.” If all that counts as knowledge is what the hard sciences can give us, particularly via the scientific method, then we have to ask whether the Greek alphabet, for example, counts as knowledge. It seems it does; therefore, hard scientism (and many of the recent court rulings in the US) is wrong.
Willard invites the apologete to think like Jesus by living like Jesus, having Jesus’s disposition. It’s more than a cliche, though. How would someone who is gentle help someone who is impressed by the problem of evil? It’s not enough simply to show that it is logically flawed. Willard invites the reader to work through not just the problem of pain, but the nature of pain. For example, is pain the worst thing in the world? The objection implies that it is. But if pain isn’t the worst thing in the world, if they are goods that people can pursue in the midst of pain, then it isn’t clear why God is obligated to remove pain from the world.
His section on the “hard parts of the Old Testament” is interesting. God always meets his people in history, in their history. Would it have made sense for God to drop the UN Resolution on Human Rights to Joshua as he was about to execute Achan? No. That probably would have gotten in the way. It would have been unintelligible.
Willard ends on the spiritual life of the apologist. Not just praying to God, but talking to him. And listening. And how to listen.
