The Pathos of the Apologist

I read yesterday a book, apparently a classic of Christian Apologetics, entitled Your God is too Small:  A Guide for Believers and Skeptics, by J.B. Phillips.  It is an easy read.  It leads me to ponder the pathos of the apologist.  It seems to me that apologists, especially those who defend religion or, more generally, the belief in God, always disappoint when sincere.

It's better to disappoint than induce contempt or, at best, amusement.  Dr. Strangelove was delightfully amusing in his defense of his plan to use mines to protect the rich and powerful from the Doomsday Machine and repopulate the world, or at least the American part of it.  The religious apologist in defense of religion is never, never amusing.  In my experience, though, the religious apologist is sad.

A lawyer is familiar enough with special pleading.  In a sense, it is what lawyers do.  So, I think I know it when I see it.  I see it in Phillips' book, alas, and have seen it in the books of others like C.S. Lewis and Chesterton.  I moves me to wonder why such books are written.

Phillips, in what I think is a fairly perfunctory fashion, first describes and criticizes views of God which he feels are "too small" and therefore out of place in the modern world (the book was written in 1952).  He does so by the way of acknowledging, also I think in a perfunctory fashion, the problems with views held by certain, and it seems too many, Christians.   God viewed as "resident policeman" for example.  God as a revered, but very old and therefore old fashioned, gentleman.  These and other views he claims very naturally lead modern men and women to think Christianity to be out of touch with modern reality, and especially the discoveries of modern science.

He also maintains, however, that those who think of the God of the immense universe as necessarily detached from we humans and our concerns also view God as "too small."   According to Phillips, that's because we think God incapable of having a personal interest in us, something we shouldn't do of the Supreme Being.  He claims those who think God impersonal think of God merely as a great and powerful human, a kind of "managing director" too busy with other matters to pay attention to us as he naturally does by virtue of what he really is, a Father.

Well, I don't think that works.  I think it fairly evident that those who think God impersonal, at least in comparison with the exceedingly personal God of Christianity don't feel God is incapable of loving us in the manner we humans understand love because God is too busy.  Instead, I think that they do so because such a God isn't human.
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Be that as it may, having decried various views of God, even some Christian views, as "too small" Phillips then proceeds to tell us why only Christianity provides the means by which we escape the view of God as "too small."

He does so in a way I find interesting.  To a certain extent, he uses C.S. Lewis' idea that Jesus must have been God because he said he was God.  The argument is something like this:  Jesus was not a lunatic; only a lunatic would say he was God if he wasn't God; Jesus said he was God; therefore, Jesus was God.

The logic of it aside, a problem with this view is that the only evidence Jesus said he was God appears in a Gospel written decades after his death, while the other Gospel's do not claim he said he was God.  It's extremely likely that if he said he was God, this would be mentioned in the other Gospels.  The fact it isn't makes one wonder if he ever said what the Gospel of John claims.  In any case, one can't simply assume he ever said such a thing.  It's not a very solid foundation for an argument.

In writing this Phillips is merely repeating the argument of Lewis, though.  Most striking is his argument that (and now I paraphrase) if you really believe Jesus is God, you'll accept that he is God; you'll even know he's God in the sense that it will make perfect sense to you that he's God, and, well, that's as good as it gets when it comes to showing God exists.

There's other stuff in the book as well.  That the God of the universe had to become human in order to show us the way, etc., and this reconciles the impersonal God with the personal God.  Where do we get our conceptions of Beauty, Truth, Goodness than from God (well, I would say more than likely from interacting with the rest of the world and others than from somewhere or some being existing outside of time and space--whatever than means).  I confess I grew impatient.

Again, why bother?  I can understand that a believer would grow frustrated and angry at the assaults of the angry non-believers.  I suppose it's natural to defend what you believe in.  But I very much doubt that apologists convince anyone, and think that apologetics is simply "preaching to the choir."  If the arguments I've seen are representative, they aren't persuasive.  So, to believers and non-believers I say--believe, or don't believe, and be content, but most of all be silent.  That's my guide to believers and skeptics.