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Chapter 3

Tools of the Trade

Logic, Arguments, and Evidence

What is Truth?

Just as surgeons require particular instruments in order to operate on patients without killing them, and archeologists need special tools to unearth ancient ruins without ruining them, so too, apologists must use their own unique set of tools if they want to draw others toward the truth rather than drive them further away. No matter how sincere or enthusiastic you may be, if you don’t know which tools to use, your apologetics efforts will likely fail. As the famed inventor Thomas Edison once put it, “Enthusiasm is a good engine, but it needs knowledge for fuel.” I’ve shared this maxim many times over the years with people who are just starting out in apologetics. It’s a lesson I myself had to learn (and relearn) when I got my start in apologetics long ago.

There are countless untrue “truth-claims” out there competing for people’s attention and allegiance. Many of them are subtle, complicated, and not easy to expose as false. But if you have the right tools and you know how to use them, you can help people shake off error and embrace the truth. Keep in mind the old saying: If the only tool you have is a hammer, you’ll tend to approach every problem as if it were a nail. An apologist must rely on an array of different tools, including the Bible, the facts of history, and most important of all: logic.

It’s God’s grace, of course, that enables any good apologist for the Faith to be successful. And I don’t mean successful in the way the world thinks of “success” (i.e., numbers, quotas, and statistics). Rather, I mean success in terms of being able to clearly, accurately, and convincingly share divine truth. The barriers of ignorance, prejudice, bad information, and lack of opportunity are almost always what prevent critics, scoffers, objectors, and dissenters from seeing and embracing the truth. Only rarely do people seem to know with certitude that something is true and yet still obstinately oppose it. Far more often people’s objections are sincere, if misguided and misinformed.

That’s why an apologist is really in the solutions business. He’s not “selling a product.” He’s not trying to get someone to “buy” something. When you get right down to it, an effective apologist doesn’t need to convince the other guy that “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Nobody likes to be proven wrong. So the apologist’s job is to get the other guy’s attention, so that when he points toward the truth, saying, “See? Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it good?” the truth’s irresistible beauty and abiding gravitational pull will do the rest.

And when that happens, Jesus’ promise is fulfilled in that person’s heart and mind: “I am the way, the truth, and the life”; “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 14:6; 8:31–32). God, especially as he has chosen to reveal himself in Jesus Christ, is the personification of truth. He is truth. And yet, that great truth is sufficiently inaccessible to us, and our limited intellects struggle to process its meaning, so we must also consider truth in the sense of the truth of things and how closely our ideas of things conform to the truth.

The Apologist’s Tools

You can’t get people’s attention if you don’t know how. So now we’ll consider the apologist’s indispensable “tools of the trade.” They’ll help you remove obstacles so that people you encounter can move toward the truth. One Bible verse that’s always helped remind me that it’s God’s grace, not human ingenuity, that makes an effective apologist is Proverbs 3:6: “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

Logic and Arguments

Let’s start with the following definitions of the key tools of apologetics drawn from two respected logic textbooks,⁷ followed by examples drawn from real-world apologetics discussions. The first tools we’ll examine are logic and arguments.

Logic: Over the past nearly thirty years that I have been working in the field of apologetics, I have had to study logic assiduously as part of my work. Even though I have a B.Phil. in philosophy, I’m still learning from those who, like Peter Kreeft (our generation’s preeminent philosopher/apologist), have dedicated their lives to teaching people how to think clearly and to use logic in defense of the Faith. So, rather than simply repeat their teaching in my own words, I’ll let them explain what every apologist needs to know about the art of constructing cogent, persuasive arguments. Logic is the “science that evaluates arguments…. The aim of logic is to develop a system of methods and principles that we may use as criteria for evaluating the arguments of others and as guides in constructing arguments of our own.” Mastering the art of logic will “increase confidence that we are making sense when we criticize the arguments of others and when we advance arguments of our own.”⁸

Logic enables you to construct valid arguments in defense of a truth-claim (e.g., “God exists, Jesus Christ is God”), and it helps you “troubleshoot” truth-claims (your own and those of others) by checking them for errors, also known as logical fallacies. It detects and corrects errors when they are found.

Kreeft explains how logic “powers” arguments, and how mastering the art of logic and constructing good arguments will benefit you and others:

Logic builds the mental habit of thinking in an orderly way…. It has power: the power of proof and thus persuasion. Any power can be either rightly used or abused. This power of logic is rightly used to win the truth and defeat error; it is wrongly used to win the argument and defeat your opponent…. Logic can aid faith in at least three ways…. First, logic can clarify what is believed and define it. Second, logic can deduce the necessary consequences of the belief and apply it to difficult situations…. Third, even if logical arguments cannot prove all that faith believes, they can give firmer reasons for faith than [can] feeling, desire, mood, fashion, family or social pressure, conformity or inertia.⁹

Your apologetics efforts will be effective to the extent that they are based on good, solid arguments. By “good and solid,” I mean arguments that are clear in their terms, true in their premises, and valid in their logical conclusions. If any of these three ingredients is missing, an argument is defective and will fail. You might get lucky and actually persuade an unsuspecting person with an argument that is unclear, false, or illogical, but that’s being right for the wrong reasons or, something far more likely, being wrong for the wrong reasons. Kreeft explains:

If an argument has nothing but clear terms, true premises, and valid logic, its conclusion must be true. If any one or more of these three things is lacking, we do not know whether the conclusion is true or false. It is uncertain.¹⁰

Let’s break down this concept into its component parts. Arguments can often be reduced to syllogisms, which have three parts:

Major premise: All squares are shapes that have four sides of equal lengths.

Minor premise: This shape has five sides of unequal lengths.

Conclusion: Therefore this shape is not a square.

Terms: Kreeft explains that a term “has no structural parts. It is a basic unit of meaning, like the number one in math or like an atom in the old atomic theory (when they believed atoms were unsplittable and had no parts).”¹¹

A term is “clear” when its meaning is clear and you use it consistently according to that meaning in an argument. However, when a term is ambiguous or used in two different ways (i.e., equivocally), it introduces a fallacy, either because of ambiguity in meaning or because of grammatical ambiguity.

An example of ambiguity in meaning is the word “cut,” which has a variety of meanings: a share in the profits, a wound made by a sharp object, being dropped from the team, a slice of meat, a cost reduction, a style of clothing fashion, a command to stop (i.e., “Cut it out!”), and so on. The phrase, “He made the cut,” could refer to an athlete who is selected for a team, or a surgeon who makes an incision, or an office manager who eliminates an expense.

Or consider this recent Wall Street Journal headline that provides another example of ambiguity:

“GOP Lawmakers Grill IRS Chief over Lost Emails.”¹²

As someone pointed out, “This type of sentence has great possibilities because of its two different interpretations: (1) Republicans harshly question the chief about the emails; and (2) Republicans cook the chief using email as the fuel.”¹³

Grammatical or syntactical ambiguity occurs when the structure of a sentence renders its meaning unclear, often because of word order or because of incorrect or missing punctuation, such as: “The typical American eats more than three Greeks”; or “The police caught the man with a net.” Or compare: “Please don’t stop” with “Please don’t! Stop!”

It’s crucial to use clear, unambiguous terms when engaging in apologetics. Here’s an example: the term “world” is used here, clearly and consistently:

Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16, emphasis added)

In the context of this passage “whoever” is universal and literal, it means everyone. Thus, you and every other human being are part of the world to which Jesus is referring. Therefore, because God so loves you, he gave his only Son so that you should believe in him and therefore not perish but have eternal life.

To contrast, “world” in the phrase “Athanasius against the world” (Athanasius contra mundum)¹⁴ is neither universal nor literal. The great fourth-century Church Father was not literally opposed by everyone in the world in his defense of the divinity of Christ, though he was by many.

Arguments: “A group of statements, one or more of which (the premises) are claimed to provide support for, or reasons to believe, one of the others (the conclusions). All arguments may be placed in one of two basic groups: those in which the premises really do support the conclusion and those in which they do not, even though they are claimed to. The former are said to be good arguments (at least to that extent), and the latter bad arguments.”¹⁵

Example of a good argument: When Jesus declared, “Before Abraham was, I am,” the Jews “took up stones to throw at him” (John 8:59). And when Jesus said, “I and the Father are one,” the “Jews took up stones again to stone him,” and said, “We stone you for no good work but for blasphemy; because you, being a man, make yourself God” (John 10:30–31). Therefore, the Jews clearly understood that Jesus claimed to be God.

(The first two premises are demonstrably factual, as evidenced by the Lord’s countless miracles, knowledge of the secrets of the heart, etc., described in the New Testament, and the conclusion — that Jesus is God — logically follows from those premises.)

Example of a bad argument: Religion entails the worship of God. Most violence in the world is caused by religion. Violence, however, is incompatible with the concept of a benign “God is love” divinity. Therefore, religious violence is evidence that God does not exist.

(The first premise is true, but the second is false, the third is ambiguous [i.e., “violence” is open to multiple meanings, such as man-caused physical violence, the violence of nature and the elements, etc.], and the conclusion does not logically follow from the premises.)

Kreeft explains these elements thus: “A term answers the question what it is. A proposition answers the question whether it is. And an argument answers the question why it is.”

Statement/Proposition: “A sentence that is either true or false … typically a declarative sentence or a sentence component that could stand as a declarative statement.”¹⁶ The essence of apologetics is evaluating, critiquing, and demonstrating either the truth or falsity of statements/propositions made about God and His revelation to the world, as well as about everything that pertains to those “meta subjects,” including the Bible, Apostolic Tradition, the Church, the sacraments, et cetera. For example,

• God exists.

• Mary did not have other children besides Jesus.

• The sacrament of Baptism regenerates the soul of the one baptized.

• The Bible does not teach the principle of sola scriptura.

Kreeft adds a further precision: “A proposition has two structural parts: the subject term and the predicate term. The subject term is what you are talking about. The predicate term is what you say about the subject. The word “subject” and “predicate” mean the same thing in logic as in grammar.¹⁷

Premises and Conclusions: “The statements that set forth the reasons or evidence, and … the statement that the evidence is claimed to support or imply…. [T]he conclusion is the statement that is claimed to follow from the premises.”¹⁸ In any argument, one or more of the premises must make a claim that it seeks to prove or infer explicitly in the conclusion, which is indicated with words such as “therefore” and “thus.”

Premise: Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate, promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church.

Premise: God cannot lie.

Conclusion: Therefore, the Church Christ established will never totally apostatize.

A claim can also be logically inferred implicitly through premises, for example, in this way:

The earliest Christians clearly understood what Jesus meant by saying, “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood” at the Last Supper.

The Apostles explained to the earliest Christians all that Jesus said and did and what he meant by what he said and did.

The Apostles knew what Jesus meant by what he said and did because they were eyewitnesses to this event and because Jesus explained everything to them (see Matthew 13:36, 16:5–12, Mark 4:34).

The next component is validity. For an argument to be sound, it must have clear terms, true premises (i.e. claims), and valid logic, in which case the conclusion will necessarily follow. Here are two examples of valid arguments, beginning with a classic formula:

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Therefore Socrates is mortal.

All two-dimensional shapes that have three sides are triangles.

This two-dimensional shape has three sides.

Therefore this two-dimensional shape is a triangle.

Hypothesis: “A proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts.”¹⁹ An example of this is the hypothesis that Jesus physically rose from the dead. This proposition adequately explains why the Apostles and hundreds of others would not only proclaim that they were eyewitnesses to his Resurrection but would also be willing to suffer and die as martyrs for this conviction. The alternative hypotheses to the Resurrection, incidentally, cannot adequately account for this phenomenon.

Different Approaches to the Truth

Deductive and Inductive Reasoning: The deductive approach to apologetics involves starting with general principles and working toward a specific conclusion. If the premises are true and logic is valid, the conclusion is inevitably true.

Also called “top-down” logic, deductive reasoning moves from one or more general statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion. When properly formed (i.e., valid), if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. The earlier examples of arguments don’t have necessarily true conclusions even though their premises are true because the conclusion necessarily goes beyond the premises, which is the very reason why we use those arguments. But a valid deductive argument only makes explicit what is already contained in the premises.

All As are green.

All Bs are As.

Therefore, all Bs are green.

If the premise(s) is false, the logic can still be valid, though the conclusion would likewise be false. For example, it could be that, in fact, some As are red, in which case the first premise (“all As are green”) would be false.

All Catholics are hypocrites.

William is Catholic.

Therefore William is a hypocrite.

The Inductive Approach: The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes is known to countless readers as a genius for figuring out obscure and complex crimes on the basis of drawing conclusions from minute and easily overlooked details. He exemplifies the inductive reasoning approach. The popular television show Monk is another example of inductive logic at work.

Examples of inductive reasoning in apologetics would include:

1. Tabulating all the times Simon Peter is mentioned by name in the New Testament (195 times), and then comparing that statistic to the number of times the next most often mentioned Apostle is named (John, 29 times), suggests that Simon Peter was the most prominent figure among the Twelve Apostles.

2. Noting that things continually come into and go out of existence and are therefore contingent (i.e., unnecessary) and do not have to exist because at one point they did not exist. But yet they do exist. This suggests that there must be a being, which we call God, who must necessarily exist in order to explain the existence of this vast number of contingent, unnecessary beings.

3. Examining all the details of the life of Jesus Christ as they are presented in the pages of the New Testament — his miracles, teachings, reading the secrets of the heart, claims to be God, claims to forgive sins, and rising from the dead — so as to draw the conclusion that he is in fact truly God and not merely a man.

The Apophatic Approach: From the Greek ἀπόφασις (apóphatis), meaning “denial.”²⁰ The apophatic approach uses negation to arrive at a clearer understanding of the truth. By asserting things that are not true, you can clear away erroneous and misleading claims that deny or obscure the truth. Examples of true statements that are expressed negatively in order to eliminate erroneous alternatives:

• God is not evil; He is not limited; He is not subject to change.

• God is not the author of evil.

• Human beings do not have the natural ability to save themselves from damnation.

• The Holy Spirit is not merely an impersonal “force.”

• Receiving Holy Communion is not “cannibalism.”

• The Holy Bible nowhere claims to be the sole, sufficient rule of Faith for Christians.

The Kataphatic Approach: From the Greek καταφατικό (kataphatikó), meaning “affirmative.” The opposite of apophatic, the kataphatic approach affirms certain truths that make other truths clearer. Examples of such affirmations in an apologetic setting:

• God is all good (omnibenevolent), all knowing (omniscient), all powerful (omnipotent).

• Everything God creates is good.²¹

• The Bible declares that Tradition is necessary and important.

• Jesus is Lord.

• Unaided by Divine revelation, the human intellect is capable of arriving at the fact that God exists.

Demonstrative and Probable Evidence

Every apologetics encounter involves an appeal to evidence of some sort. Evidence (i.e., facts, data, information, artifacts, documentation, testimony, etc.) is the “raw material” of apologetics. The method of argumentation is the blueprint or schematic that conforms that raw material into an instrument that conveys truth. In apologetics, this instrument also functions as a monument or sign that points toward those true conclusions that are warranted or even necessitated by the evidence.

For example: Your coworker insists that Jesus never existed and that the “Jesus myth” is simply the result of centuries of stories, folklore, and fables that began with the chicanery of the earliest Christians who sought (successfully) to dupe people into believing in a “Jesus” who never really existed so that they could garner power, wealth, and influence.

You respond to this claim with an appeal to evidence in the form of historical documents written by Jewish and pagan authors who, being contemporaries or near contemporaries of the Apostles, corroborate the fact that Jesus actually existed in a particular place and time. You then show how the corroborating evidence provided by those non-Christian sources matches the chronology and geography of the descriptions of Jesus’ life and times in the Gospels. Your truth-claim (i.e., Jesus really did exist and was not a myth) is based on historical evidence presented with an argument from authority (i.e., those authoritative Jewish and pagan writers [whose own existence is unquestioned] verify that Jesus actually existed) that entails the following deduction:

If someone as spectacular and intriguing as Jesus really existed, some contemporary witnesses would have written about him.

Some contemporary witnesses did write about him.

Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus really existed.

The alternative conclusion would be that even though various contemporary authors (who did not know each other) did write about Jesus as a real historical person, he did not really exist and they wrote about him for … what? For no reason? Multiple contemporaries separated by language, cultures, and great distances, for some reason all independently decided to write historical fiction about a previously unknown character? This conclusion is illogical in that it does not follow from the evidence.

This is an example of what’s known as “evidential apologetics,” which, historically, has been the most common and most effective method of defending Christianity. A minor and far more recent counterpart to the classical evidential apologetics is known in Protestant (especially Calvinist/Reformed) circles as “presuppositional apologetics,”²² which seeks to prove Christian truths by way of first presupposing the “self-attesting” divinity of Jesus Christ and the “self-attesting” nature of the Bible as inspired, inerrant revelation. While it is certainly true that Jesus is true God and true man and the Holy Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant, the presuppositional apologetics technique²³ is generally less effective than the evidentialist approach. But it is also inadequate as a means of engaging modern culture with its relentless demand for “evidence” before it will believe in something.²⁴

Avery Dulles, S.J., describes presuppositional apologetics, as “practiced by Protestants,” as a position that “normally rests on the premise that human reason has been so damaged by sin that evidential apologetics is useless. Presuppositionalists therefore begin by assuming that the teaching of the Bible is true. Setting out from this axiom, the apologist argues that biblical revelation yields a coherent explanation of our experience in the world and that other worldviews are, in comparison, incoherent. Some add that it is impossible to live or think without logically presupposing the reality of God, the source and measure of all truth.”²⁵ One of my own books, The Godless Delusion (coauthored with Kenneth Hensley), is a kind of hybrid between pre-suppositional and evidentialist apologetics, incorporating the useful elements of the former (e.g., that the existence of God sufficiently explains the reality of incorporeal realities such as truth, love, and knowledge and that atheism cannot adequately explain them) and welding them to the evidentialist chassis of making the case for God by an appeal to the overwhelming evidence that he exists.

The evidentialist approach to apologetics seeks to make use of principles of evidence that are commonly agreed upon by both Christians and non-Christians, even atheists, e.g., historical evidence, eyewitness testimony, et cetera. As we have seen, the two primary categories of arguments are deductive and inductive.

Deductive arguments are structured as either a modus ponens (Latin: a way of putting) or a modus tolens (a way of taking). An example of the former is:

If Jesus performed miracles such as raising people from the dead, then it seems likely that he was more than a mere human being — possibly God.

Jesus did raise people from the dead.

Therefore it seems likely that he was more than a more human being — possibly God.

An example of the latter approach (modus tolens) is:

If the Apostles were lying about Jesus rising from the dead (knowing that he did not rise), it seems likely that they lied for some kind of personal gain, such as wealth, concubines, worldly prestige, et cetera.

The Apostles did not gain wealth, concubines, or worldly prestige but were, instead, scorned, hunted, and eventually martyred because of their message about Jesus.

Therefore, the Apostles were not lying about Jesus’ Resurrection.

When you make an apologetics argument based on documentary evidence, such as an appeal to early pagan, Jewish, or Christian authors to corroborate your claim that Jesus was a real historical person, the more examples you offer the better they help to corroborate and support your hypothesis. Another example would be that the early Church believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. To make this case, you should adduce quotations to that effect from significant and authoritative early witnesses such as St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, et cetera. Providing multiple examples to support your position is far more compelling than a single example, which may or may not be adequate support.

Be aware of and be prepared for counterexamples. For example, when you explain the biblical doctrine of the interlocking, interdependent nature of Scripture and Tradition in the Church²⁶ by quoting passages that demonstrate the importance and necessity of Apostolic Tradition (e.g., 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, etc.), be prepared for counterexamples that may be raised against Tradition, such as Matthew 15:1–9, Mark 7:1–14, and Colossians 2:20–23. If you have carefully prepared a response to those counterargument verses, you will not be flustered or deterred when they are raised.

Remember also arguments from correlation — that is, causes and effects. A good example would be if someone raises the objection against Catholic Marian doctrines such as the Immaculate Conception or Mary’s role as the Mother of God (Greek: Θεοτοκος; Latin: Mater Dei). You should explain the correlation between the relative absence of writings about these Marian doctrines during the first two centuries of the Church and the fact that the Church in the Roman Empire experienced successive waves of severe persecution that prevented its theologians from writing on this topic because the Church was fighting for its very survival and did not have the opportunity to develop those theological truths.

Remember also that correlated issues are not necessarily related: for example, the arguments raised about alleged Catholic/pagan similarities, and so forth. It does not necessarily follow that because there is a similarity there is a correlation, much less a direct cause-effect relationship.

The art of apologetics is multifaceted, and its applications can be quite diverse. But don’t let that throw you, especially if you’re just starting out in your study of how to explain and defend the Faith. Just as an experienced golfer has learned from experience and practice which of the fourteen different clubs in his golf bag to use at any given point on the course, so too you’ll learn which apologetics tools will work best for any given apologetics situation in which you find yourself. And happily, as any veteran apologist will tell you, it’s not that difficult to tell them apart and know when (and when not) to use them.

Because there’s no “one size fits all” approach to apologetics, you’ll need to understand which apologetics tools to rely on in a given apologetics situation.