This paper explores two disciplines largely considered and practiced separately: apologetics and expositional preaching. The challenges from expressive individualism, New Atheism, pragmatism within the church, apathy in the West towards the supernatural, and the 21st-century renaissance in Christian Apologetics present an opportunity to reclaim the ancient practice of exposition through an apologetics lens. I will argue for integrating these two disciplines as a model for engaging secularism.
I suggest integrating apologetics and expositional preaching for the following reasons. First, if apologetics is the art of providing a reasoned defense with gentleness and respect, it should be an essential ingredient of persuasive expositional preaching. For the listener, apologetics serves as an analytical digestive enzyme for robust exposition that may otherwise suffer because of a myriad of worldview roadblocks. Second, this practice of expositional preaching through an apologetics lens is historically evidenced in church history. Third, this model serves as a tool in the difficult task of contextualizing expositional preaching.
To meld these disciplines together, I suggest the following steps: First, leverage the strong explanatory power of Christian theism for basic moral sensibilities, namely human value. Second, activate the Pauline appeal to the ally of the conscience (Rom. 2:14-16). Third, aim for precise exposition with maximal cultural awareness to remove foreseeable reservations to Christian theism. Fourth, avoid the false dichotomy of equating persuasion with pragmatism by leaning into God-ordained means of effective communication. Fifth, speak to the intellect but eventually highlight Jesus’s references to how heart affections affect intellectual predispositions (Jn. 3:19-21). Sixth, aim for intellectually and emotionally absorbable truths that serve as pebbles in the shoe, working towards a cumulative case rather than relying on emotionally charged but overextended claims. Finally, while reasonableness can win over reasonable people, I will suggest how developing versatile and engaging rhetoric may enhance intellectual engagement and lower emotional reservations.