Inspirational Quotes on Apologetics

“While we are often willing to spend time reading the Bible, praying, or participating in church programs and services, few of us recognize the importance of becoming good Christian case makers.”

“I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.”

“That hierarchical inequality, the need for self surrender, the willing sacrifice of self to others, hold sway in the realm beyond Nature. It is indeed only love that makes the difference: all those very same principles which are evil in the world of selfishness and necessity are good in the world of love and understanding.”

“We've been given a mind innovated by the Holy Spirit to know God, as well as a heart to love him and a will to choose him. We need to function in all three areas to have a maximum relationship with God and to glorify him.”

“In a culture where image is more important than information, style more important than substance it is not enough to possess the truth. [Christian] case makers must also master the media.”

“Though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroys belief.”

“It should not be forgotten in this connection that the minister's duty is increasingly that of an apologist for Christianity. The general level of education is much higher than it has ever been. Many young people hear of evolution in the high schools and in the college where their fathers never heard of it except as far as a distant something. If the minister would be able to help his young people, he must be a good apologete, and he cannot be a good apologete unless he is a good systematic theologian" (pg. 24).”

“City of God interprets all of the human story, from Creation to the Last Judgment, as the drama of divine providence and human free choice, especially the choice between the two most fundamental options of membership in one or the other of the "two cities." The City of God is the invisible community of all who love God; the City of the World is all those who love the world and themselves as their God.”

“Descriptions all fall flat and tame unless the Holy Ghost fills them with life and power”

“Christianity did not begin with a group of people trying to remember and follow Jesus' teaching even though he was dead. It began with the belief that God had vindicated Jesus as the Messiah by raising him from the dead. This is why one would be completely mistaken to think that Jesus was a good teacher whose followers eventually developed a myth about his being the Son of God. There would be no Christian movement today if his original followers had not been convinced that he had really risen from the dead.”

“. . . not only our works, but also our thoughts, are open before God.”

“We also have volumes of writings by the "apostolic fathers," who were the earliest Christian writers after the New Testament. They authored the Epistle of Clement of Rome, the Epistles of Ignatius, the Epistle of Polycarp, the Epistle of Barnabas, and others. In many places these writings attest to the basic facts about Jesus, particularly his teachings, his crucifixion, his resurrection, and his divine nature. "Which of these writings do you consider most significant?" I asked. Yamauchi pondered the question. While he didn't name the one he thought was most significant, he did cite the seven letters of Ignatius as being among the most important of the writings of the apostolic fathers. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch in Syria, was martyred during the reign of Trajan before A.D. 117. "What is significant about Ignatius," said Yamauchi, "is that he emphasized both the deity of Jesus and the humanity of Jesus, as against the docetic heresy, which denied that Jesus was really human. He also stressed the historical underpinnings of Christianity; he wrote in one letter, on his way to being executed, that Jesus was truly persecuted under Pilate, was truly crucified, was truly raised from the dead, and that those who believe in him would be raised, too. Put all this together- Josephus, the Roman historians and officials, the Jewish writings, the letters of Paul and the a”

“The goal in most conflicts is to destroy your opponent. The goal in apologetics is to win your opponent.”

“If I were a blind man and were told by you that you possess a faculty called sight, I should be unreasonable if I railed at you as a conceited enthusiast.”

“Whoever were the inventors of such tales, whether fact or fiction, or facts concerning others and fictitiously attributed to Jove, words fail to express what a low opinion these fable-mongers must have formed of human nature to assume that men could endure such lies with patience.”