How to Do Apologetics. Patrick Madrid
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A Case Study in Apologetics Conversations
Years ago, I had to catch an early morning flight out of Orange County’s John Wayne Airport. Stepping into the first-class cabin,4 I was pleased to see that it was largely empty, so I’d likely be able to have plenty of room with no one seated next to me. I glanced at my boarding pass to see what my assigned seat was, and was dismayed that the window seat next to mine was already occupied by a stern-looking Middle Eastern man in his mid-forties. Not knowing if other passengers would arrive just in time to fill up the other seats, I plopped down in my assigned seat with the intention of moving to another seat as soon as the flight was ready to depart.
“Hey, once everyone’s boarded, I’m going to move to another seat so we’ll both have more room,” I told the man next to me. I figured he’d appreciate the extra elbow room if I moved.
“Oh,” he said, unsmilingly. “Does this mean you do not want to sit next to me? Is it because I am a Muslim?”
I was embarrassed that he would suggest such a thing and, I must admit, also chagrined because I had, in fact, felt a mild pang of anxiety when I noticed he was Middle-Eastern.
“Of course not!” I said, not wanting to offend him. “I just figured you’d want extra room.” I realized then that, like it or not, I’d be sitting next to this guy even if the rest of the seats were wide open. After no more than two or three minutes of obligatory small talk he got down to business. I’ll call him Khalid.
“I am a Muslim,” Khalid said matter-of-factly, searching my face to gauge my reaction. “I believe that there is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet. What about you? Do you believe in God?”
Suddenly, I was very happy with my assigned seat. If nothing else, I knew this would be an interesting flight. Man, was I right about that.
“Oh yes. I believe in God!” I smiled broadly. “I’m Catholic and believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah and Savior of the World.”
“Allah does not have a ‘son’!” he parried emphatically. “Jesus, peace be upon him, was a great prophet, but he was not God. In fact, he was a Muslim.”
“Right on!” I thought to myself as I mentally rubbed my hands together in anticipation, “this is going to be a really good flight.”
For the next several hours, Khalid and I had a lively but friendly discussion about Christianity and Islam. He wasted no time getting down to his appeal to me to become a Muslim. I told him I would be happy to listen to any and all reasons he wanted to give to support his beliefs under one condition: When he had said his peace, he must agree to listen with an open mind to my reasons for believing in Jesus Christ. Both of us followed through on this promise. After about an hour of his giving me an uninterrupted series of arguments intended to convince me that Islam is the only true religion, it was my turn.
I spoke first about my personal faith in Jesus, how I had come to believe that he is indeed God, not a god or a godlike being, but God incarnate. It was necessary to explain before all else that Christianity is not, as Muslims mistakenly think, “polytheistic.” The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three gods, they are not separate beings, as Khalid was convinced Christians believe. I did my best to explain the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, that there is One God in Three Persons. This is a profoundly mysterious yet still, to some extent, knowable truth. God, I explained to Khalid, is pure spirit. He is eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, all good, all holy, utterly transcendent (i.e., outside of space and time and therefore immaterial), and is personal, not some kind of amorphous “force” à la Star Wars. So far, so good. Khalid agreed with all of these beliefs.
“Now,” I pressed further, “because God is infinite, that means there can be no barrier, no limit to his knowledge and his love. The same is true of his freedom and his power.” Everything in the universe, every thing, is finite, no matter how large it may be. The only thing that exists that is infinite is God himself. So, while God knows every thing in the universe perfectly, because each thing is finite, at a certain point it “runs out,” and therefore there is a finite limit to what can be known about it. But God’s knowledge is infinite, I explained. Khalid agreed with this.
I proceeded to say that the only way God’s knowledge could be infinite would be if there were some infinite thing, something that itself had no limits, that he could know infinitely. The only thing that God can know infinitely, I said, is himself. From all eternity, God has known himself. His self-knowledge, in fact, is similar to the image of yourself you see reflected in a mirror. That image of you in the mirror is an exact reflection of you, but it is not you. However, with God, the image of himself, his self-knowledge, his word about himself, cannot be separate from him or else there would be a second “infinite” thing. No, this infinite self-knowledge is in fact not something separate from God himself. It is his Word, a person, the very image and reflection of the Father. Christians know him as the eternal, unbegotten Son of God.5 The Father and the Son know each other perfectly, infinitely, equally, and eternally. This must be so, or else there would be some sort of division or hierarchy in God. And they also know each other perfectly, infinitely, equally, and eternally. This infinite mutual love between the Father and the Son is also a Person, the Holy Spirit. Thus, I explained to Khalid, the Catholic Church, far from teaching that there are three Gods, teaches rather that there is only One God, there is only one divine substance or nature, and that it is shared equally by the three persons in the Trinity.
I wasn’t able to spend anywhere near as much time as I would have liked explaining this key concept to Khalid, but at least, when I had finished with this part of my apologia for Christianity, he admitted that he now had an idea of what Christians mean by the Trinity. Before our discussion, he admitted, he thought Christianity was simply a polytheistic religion that just talked about “one God” but didn’t really mean it.
Next came my explanation that, as it says in the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 14, “The word of God became flesh and dwelt among us.” Jesus Christ is the incarnate Son of God, not in the sense that God produces offspring the way human fathers do, but in the sense that the eternally begotten Son took flesh for our salvation. I spoke about how humanity had become stranded in sin and alienation because of Adam and Eve’s original sin.
God in his mercy freely willed to save us from this disastrous predicament. And because we human beings are powerless to save ourselves, he became one of us; he came very near to us, in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ to save us from our sins.
For this reason, I explained, Christ’s three-year public ministry of preaching the Good News of salvation, casting out demons, performing miraculous healings, and raising the dead, was followed by his arrest, torture, and crucifixion. And after his body had lain for three days in the tomb, he rose again from the dead, just as he promised he would.
It took the better part of an hour to explain carefully all of the above as I spiraled in toward the central point I wanted to make to Khalid: Jesus Christ is God, sent to redeem and save us by his atoning death on the cross. We are all sinners in need of God’s mercy and grace, and the way to receive that is to obey God’s commandment “that we should believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another” (1 John 3:23). In other words, I told him, Jesus is your savior, and you need to become Christian to accept his free offer of salvation.
Khalid’s reaction was about what I had expected. He brushed aside my claims saying that Islam is the true religion and that I must become Muslim. I wasn’t the least bit bothered that he hadn’t been persuaded by my explanations. I know that for some people, such as Muslims, it can be extremely difficult to break out of the preconceived biases and misconceptions people have given them about Christians and Christianity. I told Khalid I’d be happy to send him some follow-up materials to help him study the issue further.
By the time our flight was on its final approach to our destination, Khalid and I had each done our best, given the time available, to lay out our respective cases for our beliefs. It was obvious to me that he was not persuaded by my case for Christ, but I could see that he at least