APOLOGETIC APPROACH

The problem that faces apologetics is that straight rationality almost never convinces the skeptic. Reasoning, no matter how rigorous or consistent, will not stand up to the scrutiny of someone who is looking for any excuse not to believe. The challenge, then, is to engage the skeptic in a way that gets behind mere cognition and appeals to, or "reasons with", his entire being. While it cannot be an anti-intellectual approach, it also cannot be a merely intellectual approach. James Como put it well in describing C.S. Lewis' apologetic. He states: "... Lewis understood that we had to have an oblique approach, as he put it, you have to sneak past the watchful dragons of self-consciousness." The challenge, of course, is how such a thing is done.