Penner, Myron Bradley. The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in
a Postmodern Context. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013. 180 pp. $19.99.
In
this brief two-part series, I will interact extensively with Myron B. Penner’s The End of Apologetics, published in
2013 by Baker Academic. The primary
content of these blog posts has previously been published in Philosophia
Christi 17.1
(2015): 241-47. In this initial blog
essay, I will summarize the primary thrust and arguments in Penner’s book, and
in my follow-up I will engage in a spirited critique of his work.
Myron
Penner earned his Bachelor and Master’s degrees at Liberty University before
completing a Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh. He has served on faculty at Prairie Bible
College (Three Hills, Alberta, Canada), and as an Anglican priest in my
hometown, Edmonton, Alberta. Penner
currently is pastor of Trinity International Church in Santa Cruz de la Sierra,
Bolivia. The End of Apologetics is Penner’s polemic diatribe opposing the
modern apologetic enterprise, exemplified (for Penner) most clearly by William
Lane Craig. Penner’s overarching thesis
is that in our postmodern context, apologetic endeavors mired in the concerns
and paradigms of Enlightenment modernity are doomed to failure—indeed, they are
a “curse,” and the one who utilizes them “is a second Judas who betrays the Christ.” (9) To replace Craig’s modern apologetics, Penner
advocates a post-modern Christian witness that edifies by adhering to an ethic
of belief and witness.
The End of Apologetics consists
of an introduction and five substantial chapters. Penner’s robust Introduction (‘Against
Apologetics’) sets the tone and agenda for the rest of the work. Relying heavily on Kierkegaard’s critique of
(for him) contemporary Christianity, Penner insists that, given our postmodern
context, a new way forward is needed. He
gives a cursory definition of postmodernity “as a kind of self-reflexive
condition that emerges as modernity becomes conscious or aware of itself as
modernity.” (13) Rather than defending the coherence or benefits of
postmodernism, Penner presupposes postmodernism as a starting point to see what
happens to Christian apologetics and witness. (14-15)
In
Chapter 1 (‘Apologetic Amnesia’), Penner launches his trenchant critique of Craig’s
contemporary apologetics. Penner
highlights Craig’s distinction between knowing
Christianity is true (via the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit)
and showing others that Christianity
is true (via rational arguments and empirical evidence). Craig’s apologetic goal, Penner says, is
combining rational arguments for Christianity
with reasonable responses to attacks against
Christianity to demonstrate that Christianity is the most plausible worldview
one could adopt. Penner then chastises
Craig for utilizing an apologetic method that makes sense only to “someone
thoroughly immersed in the perspective of modernity.” (26) Penner employs
Charles Taylor’s identification of secular modernity to argue that Craig is
caught playing within an anti-Christian worldview. Furthermore, Penner argues, Craig is
convinced that “being a Christian amounts to giving intellectual assent to
specific propositions.” (31, 42) Finally, Craig is not defending the Gospel “or
even an aspect of Christian doctrine,” but rather a set of modernist
philosophical assumptions. (42) Penner insists that modern apologists have
departed drastically from the examples set by “the church’s earliest
apologists,” (44) although he unfortunately provides no examples of early
apologetics.
Penner
proceeds (Chapter 2, ‘Apologetics, Suspicion, and Faith’) to castigate the
modern emphasis upon expert testimony, or what Kierkegaard calls ‘the genius.’ The modern genius, Kierkegaard says, “becomes
the default authority” who dictates what is and is not reasonable to believe
and practice. (50-51) Penner juxtaposes the modern genius/expert with his
preferred apostle/prophet, who “appeals not to reason but to revelation.” (51)
Among the problems with the genius/expert model is the failure to recognize the
finite and fallible nature of human reason; instead, reason is seen to be
untarnished and able to obtain objective absolute truth on its own strength.
(54-57) Accepting that modern paradigm, Penner says, is “tantamount to
conceptual idolatry and methodological blasphemy,” and renders belief in God
entirely dispensable. (62) Penner then suggests that we replace modernism’s
concern for epistemological justification with a postmodern concern for
hermeneutics. (67-68) He notes that Christianity is inherently hermeneutical
because of its emphasis on written texts and the textual basis in the revealed
Word of God. (71)
In
Chapter 3 (‘Irony, Witness, and the Ethics of Belief’), Penner turns his
attention to edification. The prophet,
Penner insists, receives his message from God and delivers it directly to
situated individuals, and emphatically does not
“waste a lot of time or energy arguing with their audience about whether their
message is rationally justified.” (85) He then states that the prophet’s
example shows that it is not merely the content
of our message (or beliefs) that matters, but also the manner of delivery. (87) Hence, an ethics of belief (contrary to
modernist apologetics) focuses upon how
we live, not what we believe. Penner then ties in Rorty’s notion of irony,
noting that language is incapable of describing reality truly. (96-97) The
postmodernist therefore turns from the pursuit of ‘objective’ truth to
‘edifying’ speech, which shares what has been found to be true in one’s own
life and seeks to build others up by sharing that subjectively-appropriated
truth. (97-99) Hence, Christian witness is not argumentative in form, but
rather confessional. (100-03)
Penner
turns his attention in Chapter 4 to the nature of truth and its place in
apologetics and witness (‘Witness and Truth’).
His goal: “I now wish to redescribe truth by changing metaphors from
‘correspondence’ to edification.”
(110) According to Penner, the notion of truth as correspondence is a modernist
compromise, caving into secular anti-Christian epistemology. As such, a turn to edification helps reclaim
the proper Christian understanding of truth.
Penner insists that the move to edification is not a total abandonment
of objective truth: instead, he redefines objective truth as the communal,
shared aspect of individual edification. (110-11) His primary desire is to move
beyond the modernist infatuation with an unobtainable metaphysical truth.
(113-15) Penner suggests that Christian witness (and apologetics) be understood
via the analogy of attestation rather
than argumentation. (124) That
attestation, in turn, has more to do with our lives than with the truth-claims
we profess. (125-26)
In
his final chapter (Chapter 5, ‘The Politics of Witness’), Penner seeks to tie
everything together by advocating a new ethics of witness that eschews
modernist argumentation (which he pejoratively calls coercion) in favor of
non-rational appeal. (143-44) First, Penner connects colonial oppression and
exploitation to Christian apologetics (137-38), although he never explains or
defends that assertion. Second, he
insists that any communicative act that is not edifying cannot be (or convey)
the truth. (140-41) That
leads to his stark dichotomy between coercion
and appeal. In a rare invocation of Scripture, Penner
utilizes 1 Corinthians to insist that Paul never seeks to rationally compel
Christian belief, nor stresses his own superiority or authority; rather, he
identifies himself with his readers and appeals to them as brothers and
sisters. (146-47) At this point, I
found myself asking whether Penner has read all of Paul! Second Corinthians
10-12 is traditionally understood as Paul’s adamant defense of his apostolic
authority. Paul’s apologetic example throughout the book of Acts clearly
exemplifies a reasoning ministry that, while not coercive, is certainly intended to be persuasive in bringing about recognition of the truthfulness of
Christianity and, ideally, conversion to the faith. As one example, in Acts
17:2-3, Paul “reasons” with a Jewish audience, “explaining and proving that the
Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead.” Penner notes that apologetic discourse can be
guilty of rhetorical violence by being indifferent to the dialogue partner as
an individual subject. (148) He returns to his emphasis on edification,
charging that Christian witness (including apologetics) is done in agape love,
and accordingly can only build up, never tear down. (154-55) In closing, he
notes that his edifying notion of truth may cause considerable consternation,
upheaval, and even trauma (168), but nonetheless provides the only promising
way forward “with the hope and the means to confess the truth of Jesus as Lord
faithfully in these postmodern times.” (171)
In
a second post this week, I will critically analyze much of the content of The End of Apologetics. Stay tuned!
