Avoiding “Dirt Disorder” in Apologetics
How something George Brett said can make you a better defender of the Christian faith
Every semester, I have the joy of teaching an introductory apologetics class that includes both graduate and undergraduate students. Most of these students have never taken a class in apologetics, and many of them have no coursework in philosophy. Each year when updating my syllabus, I’ve searched for a brief introductory text that presents the primary apologetics methods in a way that appeals to students with no background in philosophy or apologetics.
Nothing that I found really worked.
And so, a couple of years ago, I started making plans to craft the book I was looking for. The forthcoming book Understanding Christian Apologetics: Five Methods for Defending the Faith is the fruit of this process.
In this book, four apologists—Melissa Cain Travis who teaches at Colorado Christian University, Sean McDowell from Biola University, James N. Anderson from Reformed Theological Seminary, and D.A. Horton at California Baptist University—join me to discuss five perspectives on how best to defend the Christian faith. All of us argue for a particular approach to apologetics. Travis contends for classical apologetics, McDowell makes a case for evidential apologetics, Anderson says presuppositional apologetics is better, Horton reminds us not to forget cultural apologetics, and I make a plea for a return to premodern apologetics. In addition to these contributions, Keith Plummer from Cairn University has provided a thoughtful and helpful foreword.
One of the key factors that makes this project different from so many others has to do with its simplicity and practicality—which is precisely what I wanted and needed for my students. I suspect this practicality has to do with the fact that the contributors engage in practical apologetics day by day.
Or, to put it another way, none of the contributors suffered from “Dirt Disorder.”
Apologetics and the Problem of “Dirt Disorder”
Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame baseball player George Brett once described a “Dirt Disorder” that afflicts players after they stop playing baseball. His point was that, if you’re not regularly performing a task under pressure, it’s easier to criticize how well others accomplish that task. The further you get from the dirt of the baseball diamond, the more likely you are to disparage those that are still laboring in the dirt.
This disorder isn’t limited to baseball.
I’ve met more than a few strong proponents of particular apologetics methods who suffer from Dirt Disorder too. These scholars are dogmatic and harsh in their critiques of other apologists, yet they themselves are not consistently sharing and defending the gospel among ordinary people.
Understanding Christian Apologetics has been, I’m delighted to report, free from Dirt Disorder. All of us have disagreed with each other about apologetics methods, but each disagreement has been marked by humility and collegiality. As I see it, one of the reasons for this amicability is because each contributor spends significant time in the “dirt” of practical apologetics.
My Hope and Prayer for This Book
If you happen to use this book for your own personal enrichment or in the formation of others, my prayer is that what captures your heart and the hearts of your students is not any particular apologetics method but the wondrous beauty of the truth that apologetics defends.
To take a look at this new book, click here: Understanding Christian Apologetics: Five Methods for Defending the Faith.
