A few more points that Mark makes on this.
"Arguments may point someone to God’s action and even intellectually dispose him to faith, but the grace of faith is still necessary if someone is to believe.
…this helps explain why intelligent people can listen to well constructed arguments for the faith and still not believe.
When the apologist sets out to defend an article of faith, the best he can hope to accomplish with an unbeliever is to show that the doctrine in question does not contradict reason and that there is evidence that God has revealed the truth in question. The former shows that the doctrine can reasonably be believed, while the latter shows that it *should *be believed.
The challenge for twenty-first-century Catholic apologists is to maintain a balance, to integrate both the objective and the subjective dimensions of apologetics."
Well said. Excellent advice.
If I understand rightly, we should:
- Establish that the doctrine (or belief or article) can legitimately be believed (i.e., that it is not actually or necessarily contrary to reason); then
- With the evidence available (that God has revealed it?), that it actually should be believed.
#2 seems to aim at binding the conscience, so that the individual’s own conscience compels the individual’s will toward acceptance or belief. This is the point I find when people tend to mutter and want to walk (interiorly, run) away, but have a hang-over of internal or interior wrestling notwithstanding, which leads them either to investigate further so as to find evidence to rebuke the doctrine and so assuage their conscience, or otherwise to accept it (for ultimately the same reason), perhaps gathering more evidence to confirm or justify it.
Getting to #2 is rather more difficult than #1 and a lot trickier, as that is when it can become tempting to fall into that overly aggressive style of proselytism that the Church really does not like, and for good reason: it does more harm than good (cf.
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=9919785&postcount=52). Our Lord seems to have tended to use parables at about this point.
For (an admittedly rough and crude) example,
For #1, someone’s objection might be that science tells us that the earth or universe is very old and, therefore, the bible cannot be true. There can be many ways to answer this objection, but one might be to say that Adam was created with age; likewise, God could have created the universe with an enormous history already included in it. Because to deny the latter is to deny what everyone grants about God by definition (His omnipotence), the objection’s force in reason is lost or weakened (however imperfectly). What the apologist has done, though, is give a rational or plausible explanation for the belief, notwithstanding apparently contrary or contradictory evidence.
At this point, we can say that the Bible’s doctrine (if taken literally) is not necessarily contrary to reason. (Again, this is only an example and meant to be perfect.)
The difficulty now is to move to step #2: What evidence might be given that Adam and Eve really existed as the first humans, and that all mankind is descended from these?
Finally, #1 seems necessary for satisfactorily defending the faith and confirming Catholics in it; whereas, #2 does not seem necessary, except for evangelism. Could an apologetics site stick to neutering objections and not proceed to #2? Should there be a distinction made between #1, which we might call simply defending the faith or apologetics; and #2, which we might classify as evangelism or spreading and promoting the faith?
Quite often, the people who share their thoughts and personal experiences with apologetics are more helpful than they realize.
It is a most fitting capstone to underscore a major point of how NOT to share our faith.