Christian Apologetics as Personal Affirmation

Most Christians aren’t Christians for rational reasons. They are either born into Christian families or, later, become Christian due to a given religious experience (which occurs in a Christian context) and, thus, become Christian because it is the only religion that they are familiar with.

This is not specific to Christianity of course and would apply equally to Buddhist contexts producing Buddhist converts, Islamic contexts producing Muslim converts, etc.

Despite so few (if any) coming to Christianity on purely rational terms (e.g., as one might with respect to a historical point or political philosophy), once an individual becomes Christian they tend become radically committed to the “rational” defense of their new religion.

The reason for this is, arguably, that they themselves are uncertain as to the status of the truth claims of Christianity and, to justify their recent religious experience and newfound beliefs, they thus engage in apologetics more so as self apologetic, i.e., to convince themselves of the truth claims of Christianity.

It is my contention that the entire endeavor of Christian apologetics is nothing more than an attempt at convincing oneself (and other Christians of course) of the truth claims of Christianity. This is why Christian apologetics has a notoriously low success rate at winning converts. Let’s call it what it is - indoctrination.

This seems to me to demonstrate the lack of certainty (psychological and epistemic) that the belief system provides to the believer and this makes sense given the fideistic nature of said system. A rational defense of a primarily fideistic system seems, intuitively, contrary to me.

Most Christians do not live with absolute confidence in the truths of their faith and very few (if any) are truly certain of the salvation of their souls which is the very point of their religion. If even Thomas, an apostle of Christ, doubted the resurrected Jesus, how much more so must the doubt be of today’s Christian over 2,000 years removed from the time of Christ?