Gracious debating

The day after William Windsor and Kate Middleton announced the news that they are to marry, I happened to be in a coffee shop reading The Times (free copy). Tucked away amongst the mountain of waffle about the royal wedding was a fascinating interview with Professor John Lennox about his latest book God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?. I hadn’t read much of Lennox’s work nor seen him in action, so I did a bit of digging around and the more I’ve read and heard the more impressed I’ve become.

John Lennox is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science, and Pastoral Advisor at Green Templeton College. He’s developing a sideline in debating the New Atheists including Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Lennox has also turned his sights on Stephen Hawking following Hawking’s claim that the laws of physics, not the will of God, provide the real explanation as to how life on Earth came into being. The Big Bang, Hawking argues, was the inevitable consequence of these laws 'because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.' You can read more of Lennox’s response to Hawking in this article.

However, the point I want to make is not so much about Lennox’s arguments, but about the manner of the way in which he engages in debate and approaches his task. Lennox is both reasonable and reasoned. No frothing at the mouth. No raging against the dying of the light. Rather, Lennox has a commitment to get to know and understand his opponents and to engage in friendly debate. He has confidence in the truth, doesn’t believe it can be imposed on any one and has a real desire to set his beliefs out in the public square for consideration. Underlying his approach is the conviction that as Christians we are called to love the Lord our God with our minds as well as with everything else.

If I was to sum up John Lennox’s approach to Christian apologetics it would be to describe it as a confident humility. To me that seems to be a good approach to take, as opposed to some of the defensiveness and special pleading from other quarters. Judge for yourself…