BENNO VAN DEN TOREN and KANG-SAN TAN. Humble Confidence: A Model for Interfaith Apologetics. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022. Pp. 296. $32 (US)
In his first letter, Peter encourages his readers to “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15, NRSVUE). His advice is understandable, given the fact that Jesus’s parting words to his disciples were a command to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. . . . ” Again, this isn’t surprising, considering a significant element of Jesus’s own work was telling people about and explaining the Kingdom of God. There has always been an element of both proclamation and apologetics at the heart of the Christian movement.
The problem is that the type of apologetics that has stood the test of time for centuries is wobbling. This common approach relied on logic, intellectual arguments, and Scripture, and was aimed at Western thinkers who had at least passing knowledge of Christianity, even though they made no commitments to the dominant religion in their context.
Van den Toren, who is Dutch, and Tan, who is Malaysian, are clearly aware of the shift away from that framework. Having lived and worked in Europe, Africa, North America, and Asia, they have had ample opportunity to attempt to put into practice Peter’s advice. Based on those life experiences, they wrote this text because “we believe that many of the dominant approaches to apologetics are ill-equipped for the cosmopolitan, multireligious, and multicultural environments in which we find ourselves today. Western Christian apologetics is too often insufficiently contextual, because it focuses on questions Westerners . . . might ask” (1-2). Additionally, the authors believe, “Christian apologetics are at the same time too often insufficiently Christian, because they are . . . further indebted to particular Western ways of reasoning rather than focusing on ways of reasoning that are determined by the specific content of the Christian message: the foolish wisdom of the crucified and risen Christ” (2).
The book is intended to be a “contribution to an academic debate” (4) that draws upon a “broad range of relevant experiences and insights” (5). These elements include basic Christian beliefs especially focused on how the triune God interacts with humanity and creation, interreligious conversations and witness, diversity of conviction between and within various religions, and people’s experiences of conversion to Christianity (5). Ultimately, they describe their approach as “a creative synthesis of these insights coming from different disciplines and contexts” (5).
Tan and van den Toren lay out their case in two sections. The first, “Reimagining Interfaith Apologetics,” primarily establishes a theoretical framework and foundation for their understanding of how Christian apologetics can work in our complex world. This section consists of seven chapters. I especially resonated with chapter five, “Apologetics as Accountable Witness to Christ” (78-94). As the chapter title suggests, this new apologetic approach radically focuses on Christ and, in particular, his resurrection. Everything associated with their methodology of witness draws validity from how well it lines up with Christ. As they note, “Testimony is almost never a witness to a meaningless historical fact . . . . (90). Rather, “It is an invitation to a whole new outlook on life, a whole new relationship with God, ourselves, the world, and our fellow human beings” (91). The Gospel is central because it transforms and re-orients our entire beings.
The second section, “Contextual Apologetic Witness to Particular Audiences,” shares specific instances in which the Gospel can be shared. These contexts include most major world religions as well as primal religions, Western secularism, and late-modern spiritualities. This portion of the book is more accessible, in large measure due to the fact that it is driven by practical concerns. One element I found particularly insightful is that almost every chapter drilled down on a unique manifestation of a given religion. For example, Islam is just as complex as Christianity. We are aware that we should take this complexity into consideration if we are witnessing to a nominal Roman Catholic or a nominal Protestant, but are we also aware that there are multiple manifestations of Islam and our witness cannot be “one size fits all” for a Muslim? And so, this section also underscores their basic argument that context is crucial, simply because there are so many different contexts that we will happen upon in the course of our witness.
What we find at the end of a book is often nearly as important as the book itself. In this respect the authors and publisher have provided the reader with useful information. Study questions and additional readings are provided for each chapter (243-252) and there is an extensive 23-page bibliography. The documentation of the book’s arguments is well noted in footnotes as opposed to endnotes.
While this book is an important contribution to the subject of apologetic witness in a complex contemporary world, it isn’t targeting lay persons who desire to share their faith with their neighbor who is committed to some form of “new age” religion. The IVP summary sheet for the book clearly states the target audience is “Academics working in the fields of apologetics, missiology, and interfaith relations.” This is a complex volume, and the argumentation is detailed, especially in the first section. Having said that, this is an important text and certainly worth the effort to process it.