What’s Wrong With Apologetics

Balthasar again: “For fundamental theology, the heart of the matter should be the question: ‘How does God’s revelation confront man in history? How is it perceived?’ But under the influence of a modern rationalistic concept of science, the question shifted ever more from its proper center to the margin, to be re-stated in this manner: ‘Here we encounter a man who claims to be God, and who, on the basis of this claim, demands that we should believe many truths he utters which cannot be verified by reason. What basis acceptable to reason can we give to his authoritative claims?”

Balthasar says that asking the question in this manner sets us off on the wrong track to begin with: Either “he can believe on the basis of sufficient rational certainty,” but then faith is not a response to divine authority and it’s not Christian. Or, “he can achieve faith by renouncing all rational certainty and believing on the basis of mere probability; but then his faith is not really rational.”

Again, the theory of sign is the underlying problem: “This is the kind of apologetics that distinguishes between a content to be believed which remains opaque to reason and the ‘signs’ that plead for the rightness of this content, signs which, alas, prove either too much or too little.” But this position assumes that Christ is merely a sign among signs rather than the visible form of the invisible God.