In chapter two, The Biblical Basis for Apologetics, Groothuis states that “the task in this chapter is to tighten up our understanding of apologetics by explaining its basis in Scripture.”
Christian apologetics is the rational defense of the Christian worldview as objectively true, rationally compelling, and existentially or subjectively engaging. The word apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia…. In the days of the NT “an apologia was a formal courtroom defense of something (2 Timothy 4:16) …. The term is used specifically for a rational defense of the gospel in three texts: Philippians 1:7, 16, and most famously in 1 Peter 3:15-16.”
Read moreIn chapter one, Introduction: Hope, Despair, and Knowing Reality, Groothuis states that “the very concept of objective truth is under fire today.” Yet without a belief in objective truth men die in despair. The late psychiatrist Victor Frankl who was a prisoner in Hitler’s death camps wrote “The gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinda, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared….at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosopher.” Frankl noted that those captives with a sense of meaning that reached beyond their immediate experiences maintained hope and dignity, even in the Nazi hell. Those without the benefit of this conviction tended to atrophy and die in the pressure cooker of evil, even if they were spared the gas chambers.
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