Our God is a consuming fire. (Heb 12:29)
For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west,
so will be the coming of the Son of Man. (Mt 24:27)
Jesus said to them, ``The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, lest the darkness overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes.'' (Jn 12:35)
If you'd like to copy any document to you own site, you are welcome to do so, so long as you abide by three conditions:
In Christian apologetics we can do nothing other than talk
about Jesus Christ--outside of Christ, we Catholics have nothing.
Christ is the basis of our faith, and once the world comes to know the
burning love within his Sacred Heart, it can only be set ablaze with
love.
The temptation in apolgetics is to take the rationalistic
approach--to deal with the sundry problems people have with the
Church. Such apologetics are needed to an extent, but they lose the
forest for the trees. The real reason people don't believe is that
they don't want to, and they don't want to because they don't know
Christ. (On this note, I recommend reading Matt Davis's piece on Fundamentalism
and Its Motivation for a good discussion of some of the
non-rational motivations for people's beliefs.)
But how is an electronic apologetics page going to help people
to know Christ? By itself it cannot. People cannot know Christ from
writings alone. They need to know his person, and persons are best
communicated by personal contact. That is why it will not suffice to
hand someone an apologetics essay and disappear; Christians, to be
effective, need to deal with people--people are the aim of
apologetics. Forgeting this human factor is a mistake too easily
made: people need to see living examples of faith; they need the
encouragement of friends, and in order to see the goodness of their
Faith and to desire that goodness for themselves, they need to have
confidence in people who live their faith joyfully. There will be
exceptions to this ``friendship principle,'' but they will be those
rare people God has graced with a special affinity for truth.
It should go without saying that that one should never
instrumentalize friendship. In other words, one should never become
``friends'' with someone simply to convert him. That would not be
true friendship and would be easily seen through. A true friend is
valued for his own sake, and this has to be the motivation behind
bringing others closer to the Faith: because one wants to share the
joy and peace that one has found in the Faith with one's friends.
But who can one communicate the person of Christ unless one
already knows Christ? But like can only be known by like, so to know
Christ, one must become like Christ, must live his very life. How can
one become Christ, if not by the means he has established and which he
recommends to us through his bride, the Church? What are these means?
In our apologetics, we have given our best to present
faithfully the Church's teaching. We ask to be informed of any
errors or even misleading phrasing. Please note that, when in
doubt, the definitive presentation of the Faith can be found, barring
availability of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him, in the
Catechism of the
Catholic Church.
The word toolkit is meant to evoke the spirit that
pervades the Web, the UNIX environment, and the GNU General
Public License. (This spirit has a place in the social doctrine of the Church, as
well.) Two pertinent aspects:
These tend to lend authority, and besides, some of the
greatest writers and thinkers of history have written on behalf of the
faith; who can claim to write more persuasively than the likes of St.
Paul and St. John Chrysostrom, anyway? Another benefit of quoting
heavily is that it allows the apologist to disappear, as all
apologists should, and allow the truth of the faith to speak for
itself.
The truth is that there can be no true freedom and no true
unity among men without Jesus Christ. The political and economic
freedom for which men strive is a sign of and serves as its most noble
end the true freedom to be found in Christ. Too, man cannot truly
unite with his fellow men unless the origin of his love for them is in
Christ. Unless the order of the World be build on the truth of
Christ, the turmoil under which the world labors will end for the
worse.
This time of change is an age for apologetics.
The true Christian is very happy to live in this age
because he sees how much there is to be done. It pains him to see the
sadness of men who do not love one another, who invent new forms of
martyrdom for one another. He sees that the Church is persecuted;
that his brothers are exhausted....
Anyone who complains about the age in which we live is not
young. Anyone who spends his time thinking of the great days gone by
is an old man. The youth of to-day must live fighting and never sit
down to rest. The Christian loves youth, always brave and generous,
and, therefore, he is happy to live through the struggles of our time.
He is not envious of times gone by, nor of a vague peace in the
distant future. He uses all his energy, all his love, in living the
present, and that requires continuous effort.
J. Urteaga, Man the Saint, Scepter Press, p.
88.
History will likely mark the interconnection of human
knowledge throughout the world as the major technical advance of our
age, and the part of the United States in its development as this
country's greatest contribution. But as with any technical
advancement, its service or hindrance of man's ultimate end earns it
the designation of good or evil. Though some have already begun to
misuse the freedom that the new technology affords, we hope to put
this small freedom at the service of an even greater freedom.
No totalitarian regime can prevent the preaching of the
Gospel in a world where information is so vital and so available.
With this page we hope to uphold the great tradition of apologetics of
the English-speaking people and we hope in some small way to set the
stage of the new millenium, so that our civilization of death can
metamorphisize into a civilzation of love.
In a very real way, the battle has already been
definitively won by our Lord's victory on the cross; in the end Christ
will be victorious.
Yet, he still asks our free cooperation in spreading his
redemption among men in the times and places in which we live, in our
communities, among the people we know and love. In these particulars,
to use a quotation attributed to Edmund Burke, all that is
necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
The major problem with the Apologetics Toolkit is that what
little we have been able to write has been writen in great haste.
Serious polishing is needed desperately: spelling, style, citations,
anchors, etc. Plus, there are many topics that we would like to
address (most listed in the main index) that we have not had the time
to investigate.
Since the members of the Augustine Club are students and
always short on time, we appreciate any help or suggestions offered
from those outside the Club. Please contact me or the Club (augustine@columbia.edu)
if you would like to help.The Purpose
Why a `Toolkit'?
Engineering Specs of the Tools
The most important principle to keep in mind when doing
apologetics is the freedom of the person one is
addressing (``you can lead a horse to water...''). It is not possible
to force a person to accept the truth, and throwing the truth
in a person's face is not only ineffective but also self-indulgent.
To get the truth across to them, the apologist needs to enter into
their subjectivity (cf. Karol Wojtyla's (a.k.a. JP II) The
Acting Person).
In constructing the tools, we have tried to devise some
criteria to effectively communicate the truth while respecting
people's freedom.
graded progression
People need to be talked to on their own level, with a clear
appreciation of the truths they believe (every position has
some truth). Like a child who won't let go of a small, old
toy in order to enjoy a newer, better toy, they need to be coaxed from
the small cell of their limited world-view to the bright outdoors of
divine truth. We've tried on this page to begin at a more basic,
generally (though no two souls are identical) acceptable level, and to
establish truths a little at a time. When possible, the tools are
ordered in this way.
heavy use of quotations (from original sources when possible)
succinctness and accessibility
Brevity is not only the soul of wit, but length taxes people's
attention span, especially in our rapid electronic age. We've also
endeavored to make it easy to get information rapidly by using
anchored headings.
Motivation of this Apologetics Page
These are momentous times. Even though man is not free of the
evil that he perpetrates on himself, the promise of a better world
shines just below the horizon. We see great signs of change. One
trend is the universal longing of people for freedom. Another trend
is the realization everywhere that the whole of humanity forms one
people. Great hope springs up in man's heart at these signs, but man
is still far from the land of promise for which he longs.
What Is Wrong with the Toolkit
John Keck, Special thanks go to Fr. Bob Connor, without whose
dogged study and explications of the Pope in season and out of season
this page would not be possible.
We would also like to acknowledge out deep debt to the World Wide Web
Bible Gateway
page maintainer
Thanks to
Mark Barker of Peninsula at Harvard
Michael Pakaluk
Evan Smith
Chris Stoughton
Claudio J. Urbano
augustine@columbia.edu