Apologetics
“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear,”
Christianity has never asked anyone to check their mind at the door. These are the big questions people ask about the faith, with a plain answer, the Scriptures that speak to each one, and the words of Christians who wrestled with the same questions across nineteen centuries.
1. Does God exist?
Christians have long pointed to several lines of evidence that work together. The cosmological argument asks why anything exists at all: everything we see depends on something before it, and that chain needs a first cause that is not itself caused. The design argument notices that nature is full of order and purpose, which points to a Mind behind it.
The moral argument observes that every person knows some things are truly right and truly wrong, not just disliked, and a real moral law points to a real Lawgiver. The ontological argument, from Anselm, reasons that God is the greatest being we can conceive, and such a being must exist in reality, not just in our heads.
In more recent times, discoveries such as the universe having a beginning and the fine-tuning of physical constants for life have given these old arguments fresh discussion. Scripture adds that the evidence is already in front of us and written on our hearts.
Scripture
- Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God. The expanse shows his handiwork.
- Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity, that they may be without excuse.
- Romans 2:14–15 (for when Gentiles who don’t have the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience testifying with them, and their thoughts among themselves accusing or else excusing them)
- Acts 17:24–27 The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands. He isn’t served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath, and all things. He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons, and the boundaries of their dwellings, that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
- Hebrews 11:6 Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to him, for he who comes to God must believe that he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.
From the writers
“The existence of God can be proved in five ways. The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion.”
“There cannot be design without a designer; contrivance, without a contriver; order, without choice”
“WHAT art thou, then, Lord God, than whom nothing greater can be conceived?”
“Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”
2. Is the Bible reliable?
The New Testament is the best-attested book of the ancient world. Thousands of Greek manuscripts survive, some within a few generations of the originals, along with early translations and quotations by church leaders. Comparing them lets scholars recover the original wording with remarkable confidence, and the variations that exist do not change any core teaching.
Archaeology has repeatedly confirmed the Bible's places, rulers and customs. Finds such as the Dead Sea Scrolls showed how carefully the Old Testament was copied over a thousand years. Fulfilled prophecy, especially the many details about the Messiah written centuries before Jesus, was the early church's favorite evidence.
Jesus himself treated the Scriptures as the word of God that cannot be broken, and the apostles wrote as eyewitnesses who were willing to suffer for what they reported.
Scripture
- 2 Timothy 3:16–17 Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that each person who belongs to God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
- 2 Peter 1:16 For we didn’t follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
- 2 Peter 1:20–21 knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit.
- Luke 1:1–4 Since many have undertaken to set in order a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to you in order, most excellent Theophilus; that you might know the certainty concerning the things in which you were instructed.
- Isaiah 40:8 The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God stands forever.”
- John 10:35 If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture can’t be broken),
From the writers
“Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense”
“The narratives of the sacred writers, both Jewish and Christian, abound in examples of this kind of evidence, the value of which is hardly capable of being properly estimated.”
“Whenever you find a difficulty in the Bible frankly acknowledge it. Don’t try to obscure it. Don’t try to dodge it. Look it square in the face.”
“Since, then, we prove that all things which have already happened had been predicted by the prophets before they came to pass, we must necessarily believe also that those things which are in like manner predicted, but are yet to come to pass, shall certainly happen.”
3. Did Jesus rise from the dead?
Everything rests here; Paul said that if Christ is not raised, our faith is useless. The case starts with facts that even many skeptical historians accept: Jesus died by crucifixion, his tomb was found empty, his followers were convinced they saw him alive, and the movement exploded in Jerusalem, the one city where it could most easily be disproved.
The disciples went from hiding in fear to preaching boldly, and many suffered and died rather than deny what they had seen. Skeptics like James and persecutors like Paul were turned around. Alternative theories, such as a stolen body, the wrong tomb or hallucinations, each fail to explain all the facts together.
Early Christians also pointed to the ongoing evidence of changed lives: a dead man does not keep transforming people.
Scripture
- 1 Corinthians 15:3–8 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers at once, most of whom remain until now, but some have also fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as to the child born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also.
- 1 Corinthians 15:14 If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith also is in vain.
- Luke 24:36–43 As they said these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace be to you.” But they were terrified and filled with fear, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. He said to them, “Why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is truly me. Touch me and see, for a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While they still didn’t believe for joy, and wondered, he said to them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb. He took them, and ate in front of them.
- Acts 2:32 This Jesus God raised up, to which we all are witnesses.
- Acts 1:3 To these he also showed himself alive after he suffered, by many proofs, appearing to them over a period of forty days, and speaking about God’s Kingdom.
From the writers
“The apostles were either deceived or deceivers. Either supposition has difficulties; for it is not possible to mistake a man raised from the dead”
“Judge. What say you? Are the apostles guilty of giving false evidence in the case of the resurrection of Jesus, or not guilty? Foreman. Not guilty.”
“the cardinal feature in each is the empty tomb, and the message to the women, and through them to the disciples, that the Lord had risen.”
“death was the payment of the debt, but resurrection was the public acknowledgment that the debt was paid.”
4. Who is Jesus?
Jesus is not merely a good teacher or a prophet. He claimed to forgive sins, accepted worship, called himself by God's own name, and said that to see him was to see the Father. The New Testament calls him the Word who was with God and was God, through whom all things were made.
The incarnation means the eternal Son became fully human without ceasing to be fully God. He did this to save us: only God could defeat death and pay for sin, and only a man could stand in our place.
The early church, guided by Scripture, confessed him as one person with two natures, truly God and truly man.
Scripture
- John 1:1–3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made.
- John 1:14 The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
- John 8:58 Jesus said to them, “Most certainly, I tell you, before Abraham came into existence, I AM.”
- John 20:28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”
- Colossians 2:9 For in him all the fullness of the Deity dwells bodily,
- Philippians 2:5–8 Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, yes, the death of the cross.
From the writers
“the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God comes to our realm, howbeit he was not far from us before. For no part of Creation is left void of Him”
“But He comes in condescension to shew loving-kindness upon us, and to visit us.”
“who with the Father and the Spirit is to be served and worshipped, and from whom all that the Christian longs for is to be expected.”
“The Christ of the Fourth Gospel is no unhistoric, idealized vision of the later, dreaming church, but is, as it practically claims to be, the picture drawn by “the disciple whom Jesus loved”, an eye-witness”
5. Are miracles possible?
If God exists and made the world, then miracles are not hard to believe: the One who wrote the laws of nature can act within his creation. A miracle is not a violation of reason but God doing something nature alone would not do.
Rejecting miracles in advance is a philosophical starting point, not a scientific result. The right question is a historical one: is there good testimony that it happened? The Gospels give that testimony, often from named eyewitnesses.
Many Christians, including Pentecostal believers today, also bear witness that God still heals and works wonders in answer to prayer.
Scripture
- Jeremiah 32:17 “Ah Lord Yahweh! Behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm. There is nothing too hard for you.
- Luke 1:37 For nothing spoken by God is impossible.”
- John 20:30–31 Therefore Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.
- Acts 2:22 “Men of Israel, hear these words! Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God to you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him among you, even as you yourselves know,
- Hebrews 2:3–4 how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation—which at the first having been spoken through the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders, by various works of power and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to his own will?
From the writers
“The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.”
“A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature.”
“If twelve men, whose probity and good sense I had long known, should seriously and circumstantially relate to me an account of a miracle wrought before their eyes, and in which it was impossible that they should be deceived”
“But to us, probability is the very guide of life.”
6. Why is there evil and suffering?
This is the hardest question, and the Bible does not dodge it; whole books like Job and the lament psalms wrestle with it. God made the world good. Evil is not a thing God created but a twisting and loss of the good, which entered through the free rebellion of creatures.
A world with real love requires real freedom, and freedom brings the possibility of evil. God allows suffering for reasons we often cannot see, yet he works even through it for the good of those who love him.
Most of all, God did not stay distant from our pain. In Jesus he entered it, suffered unjustly, and rose to defeat death, and he promises a day when he will wipe away every tear. Without God, by contrast, there is no real standard by which to call anything evil at all.
Scripture
- Genesis 1:31 God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
- Romans 8:18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed toward us.
- Romans 8:28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.
- 2 Corinthians 4:17 For our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory,
- Revelation 21:4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more. The first things have passed away.”
From the writers
“For evil has no positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name “evil.””
“And I sought “whence is evil?” And sought in an evil way; nor saw I the evil in my very search.”
“Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.”
7. Why Christianity and not another way?
Every religion says something about God, but Christianity stands on a historical claim: God became a man, died and rose again. That claim can be tested, and if it is true, Jesus' words carry final authority, including his claim to be the way to the Father.
Christianity is also unique in its message of grace. Other paths tell us what to do to reach God; the gospel tells what God has done to reach us. Salvation is a gift received by faith, not a wage earned.
This is not a claim that Christians are better than anyone else. It is an invitation, offered with respect and love to every person, to come and see who Jesus is.
Scripture
- John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.
- Acts 4:12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that is given among men, by which we must be saved!”
- Ephesians 2:8–9 for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast.
- 1 Timothy 2:5–6 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony in its own times,
- Matthew 11:28–30 “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
From the writers
“Christ alone, by ordinary language, and by men not clever with the tongue, has throughout all the world persuaded whole churches full of men to despise death, and to mind the things of immortality”
“At least five times, therefore, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist sceptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died.”
“two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.”
“I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.”
The writers
Justin Martyr (c. 100–165)
A philosopher who found Christ after searching through the schools of his day. He wrote defenses of the faith to the Roman emperor and was martyred in Rome.
Athanasius (c. 296–373)
Bishop of Alexandria who stood firm, often alone and in exile, for the full deity of Christ. On the Incarnation explains why the Word became flesh.
Augustine (354–430)
Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. His Confessions tells how a restless young man came to faith; City of God answers critics of Christianity after the fall of Rome.
Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109)
Archbishop of Canterbury who described theology as faith seeking understanding, and first framed the ontological argument in his Proslogion.
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)
Medieval theologian whose Summa Theologica sets out five ways of reasoning from the world we see to the God who made it.
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
French mathematician and inventor whose notes for a defense of Christianity were published after his death as the Pensées.
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936)
English journalist and storyteller. Orthodoxy tells how his own search for a sane view of the world led him to the historic Christian faith. The Everlasting Man retells the story of humanity and of Christ.
Joseph Butler (1692–1752)
Anglican bishop of Durham whose Analogy of Religion answered the skeptics of his day by showing that nature and revelation raise the same kinds of questions.
Thomas Sherlock (1678–1761)
Bishop of London who set out the evidence for the resurrection as a courtroom trial in The Trial of the Witnesses.
William Paley (1743–1805)
English clergyman famous for the watchmaker argument in Natural Theology and for his careful Evidences of Christianity.
Simon Greenleaf (1783–1853)
Harvard law professor and expert on the rules of evidence, who examined the Gospels the way a lawyer examines testimony.
C. H. Spurgeon (1834–1892)
London’s great Baptist preacher, whose printed sermons still reach millions.
James Orr (1844–1913)
Scottish theologian who defended the historical resurrection against the critics of his day.
William M. Ramsay (1851–1939)
Archaeologist of Asia Minor who came to regard Luke, the author of Acts, as a first-rate historian.
B. B. Warfield (1851–1921)
Princeton theologian who wrote at length on the deity of Christ and the inspiration of Scripture.
R. A. Torrey (1856–1928)
Evangelist and first superintendent of the Moody Bible Institute, known for plain answers to hard questions.
The Fundamentals (1910–1915)
A series of essays by many evangelical writers defending the core truths of the faith; quoted here is Canon G. Osborne Troop of Montreal.
Sources
Every quotation is word for word from a public-domain text. Summaries are our own.
World English Bible (WEB)
All Scripture on this page. Public domain, with no copyright.
Justin Martyr, First Apology and Dialogue with Trypho
Translated by Marcus Dods and George Reith, Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 1, ed. Roberts & Donaldson (American ed. 1885). Public domain.
Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word
Translated by Archibald Robertson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, vol. 4 (1892). Public domain.
Augustine, Confessions
Translated by J. G. Pilkington, NPNF Series 1, vol. 1 (1886). Public domain.
Augustine, City of God
Translated by Marcus Dods, NPNF Series 1, vol. 2 (1887). Public domain.
Anselm, Proslogion
Translated by Sidney Norton Deane, St. Anselm: Basic Writings (Open Court, 1903). Public domain.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1911–1920 ed.). Public domain; CCEL marks it Public Domain.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Translated by W. F. Trotter (1910). Public domain.
G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
First published 1908 (John Lane). Public domain in the US; CCEL marks it Public Domain.
G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
First published 1925; US copyright has expired (works published before 1931 are public domain in the US). CCEL marks it Public Domain.
Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion
First published 1736. Public domain. Quoted from Butler’s own Introduction.
Thomas Sherlock, The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus
First published 1729. Public domain. Quoted from a 19th-century printing scanned by Internet Archive.
William Paley, Natural Theology
First published 1802; quoted from an 1833 edition. Public domain.
William Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity
First published 1794. Public domain.
Simon Greenleaf, The Testimony of the Evangelists
First published 1846; quoted from the 1874 edition. Public domain.
C. H. Spurgeon, “The Believer’s Challenge,” Sermon No. 256
Preached 1859, New Park Street Pulpit. Public domain; quoted from CCEL’s Spurgeon’s Sermons Vol. 5.
James Orr, The Resurrection of Jesus
First published 1908 (Hodder & Stoughton). Orr died 1913. Public domain.
William M. Ramsay, The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament
First published 1915. Public domain in the US (pre-1931).
B. B. Warfield, The Lord of Glory
Published 1907 by the American Tract Society. Public domain in the US (pre-1931).
R. A. Torrey, Difficulties in the Bible
Copyright 1907 (Fleming H. Revell); public domain in the US (pre-1931). Quoted from a later reprint of the 1907 text.
The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, vol. 1
Essays first issued 1910–1915; quoted from the 1917 Bible Institute of Los Angeles edition. Public domain in the US (pre-1931).