The case against apologetics
Among the best-known Christian apologists of my era are Josh McDowell and Ravi Zacharias. Of course, there are others, some of whom are listed on this page: https://crossexamined.org/top-20-apologists/ I have an issue with apologetics: I don’t see much of it in the New Testament. The most compelling statements that lead people to put faith in Jesus as the Messiah are revelatory rather than rhetorical (by which I mean persuasive). If this point is true, then the old claim that you ‘can’t argue anyone into the Kingdom’ has real substance. The arguments the Pharisees dragged Jesus into didn’t lead to their conversions, but to them holding to a more intractable position against his claims. And what were Jesus’s claims? That he was the bread of life; the light of the world; a dispenser of living water; the shepherd of the sheep—the good shepherd. The sad case of Ravi Zacharias and the double life he lived while winning arguments against atheists and pagans points to the spiritual toot...