This is a revised version of a post I wrote for Thinking of God in August 2015.

It’s great to find a new word and to realise it is one you’ve been looking for — even if it turns out to be hard to pronounce. The word for me recently is “elenctics”. I was vaguely aware of it, but hadn’t really understood what it means or how useful it is.

I found it as I’ve been thinking about apologetics.

Here is some background. William Lane Craig defines apologetics as  trying to give a “rational warrant for Christianity’s truth claims”. ¹

Someone like Myron Penner thinks that this style of apologetics buys far too much into modernist assumptions about knowledge and finding truth, and so he wants the “end of apologetics”.² I think he is probably right. Craig’s kind of definition asks too much of apologetics and offers too little. It is too much in the sense that ‘warrant’ — a valid reason to believe — is more than any ‘rational’ argument can provide. God’s revelation subverts autonomous reason and transcends redeemed human reason. We just cannot argue rationally from unbelief to belief, nor provide a valid ‘rational warrant’ for belief.

On the other hand, ‘apologetics’ has do a whole lot more than simply provide reasons to believe. It’s that side that I am thinking about here.

There is an important place the defence of the claims of the gospel and ourselves as witnesses for Christ. (The word apologia  was used of a legal defence in the New Testament world). Jesus told his disciples that when they are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, they should not worry about their defence, because the Spirit will provide the words (Luke 12:11-12). The apostles regularly defended themselves before formal courts and in front of crowds. 1 Peter 3:15-16, the classic proof text for apologetics, encourages us to be ready to offer a ‘reason’ for our hope (NIV) — the word translated ‘answer’ is apologia.

Any defence we give of the gospel or ourselves should be aimed at proclaiming Christ. The defences in Acts, often don’t offer much actual ‘defence’. In fact they often seem to make the trouble worse! Before the Sanhedrin Peter courageously reasserts that Jesus is the risen Lord and insists that the apostles will continue to witness to Jesus despite orders to silence (Acts 4:8–20; 5:29–32). Stephen’s speech confronts the Sanhedrin with Israel’s long history of sin culminating in the rejection of the Messiah (Acts 7:51–53) and leads to his execution. Paul is ready to appear before the rioting crowd in the theatre in Ephesus and has to be dissuaded from that by the disciples and some of the local officials (Acts 19:28–31). The implication is that his attempt at a defence was likely to end badly. Similarly, Paul’s defence after his arrest in Jerusalem would have ended with his death, apart from the protection of the Roman authorities (Acts 22:1–22). Paul’s speeches before Felix, Festus and Agrippa (Acts 24-26) don’t win his freedom, but do provide opportunities to speak about Christ (Acts 24:24–25) and finally result in his journey to Rome to testify before Caesar.

Acts 17, probably the archetypal apologetic encounter, is also a rather puzzling ‘defence’. Paul takes the opportunity to present the claims of the gospel. One commentator suggests that Paul’s argument “begins with the epistemological assumptions of its hearers” and “builds on a common understanding of the cosmos”. ³ I’m sure that is not correct. Rather than share approaches to knowledge, Paul tells the Athenian philosophers about the God they worship as ‘unknown’ and he unfolds a very different view of God to that of any Greek philosophy. Paul presents the claims of the sovereign God who has appointed Christ as Lord and Judge in terms which the Athenians would recognise, yet the difference between his God and their gods would have been very striking.

Apologetics should show that God’s truth comes with his authority. Apologetics does not proceed by accommodating the claims of Scripture nor by suggesting to listeners that the gospel is a perspective which they may wish to consider. Paul’s message is God’s message to the world: God “commands all people everywhere to repent, for he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed” (Acts 17:30–31). One of the strengths of covenantal apologetics (or presuppositional apologetics) is that is starts from this assertion: “God’s covenantal revelation is authoritative by virtue of what is” so an apologetic “will necessarily stand on and utilize that authority in order to defend Christianity”. ⁴

That’s where the term “elenctics” comes in. “Apologetics” should not be just a defence, it has to present the gospel and challenge people with the claims of Christ. That means it has to have a critical edge. That’s what “elenctics” does.

The term “elenctic” comes from the Greek word for convict (elegcho), used in John 16:8-11 which says the the Spirit “will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:7–8). Elenctics seeks to “unmask non-Christian ideologies as pseudo-religions and offer elengchos (conviction) to the adherent of that pseudo-religion by proclaiming the gospel of Christ, so that the unbeliever will confess his guilt before God and will convert to faith in the Triune God”. It is not a general critique of alternative views, but one which presses to the spiritual root of the matter and asks the unbeliever “What have you done with God?”.⁵ This particular approach is based on the conviction that humans, as image bearers, cannot escape the claims of God, no matter how they suppress his truth. It is exactly what Paul did in Athens — showing that their religion was not acceptable worship of the true God and the risen Jesus makes all the difference.

Elenctics is a critique, yet as we must engage in it with gracious gentleness and respect. The two NT texts which give explicit instructions about dealing with outsiders emphasise the graciousness we should show. “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,” (1 Peter 3:15) and “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone” (Col. 4:6).

So the call of the apologist is to understand the culture and its accusations against and objections to Christian faith, and to not simply ‘defend’ against the objections but to present the claims of Christ in a gracious elenctics which seeks to convict people of their rejection of God. That takes plenty of of study, practice and prayer.

NOTES

1. William Lane Craig, Christian Apologetics: Who Needs It?
2. M.B. Penner. The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013.
3. Charles, “Engaging the (Neo)Pagan Mind” TJ 16 (1995), 55
4. S. Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics, Crossway, 2013, 49, and see link.
5. C.J. Haak, “Missional Approach: Reconsidering Elenctics (Part l)” CTJ 44 (2009):37-48