Engaging Unbelief: A Captivating Strategy from Augustine & Aquinas

The Christian church has faced a variety of "epochal challenges" during its existence over two millennia. Author Curtis Chang, InterVarsity campus minister and apologist, defines an epochal challenge as a "paradigm shift" or the emergence of a new weltanschauung (German for "worldview"). This new worldview perspective, or comprehensive outlook on life and the world, directly challenges how people once understand such critical concepts as truth, reality, knowledge, goodness, meaning, and purpose. The Christian church through the centuries has felt somewhat unsettled during such shifting times with its accompanying changing norms. Accordingly, Christian thinkers have had to strategize as to how to best confront these new perspectives with the enduring truth of the gospel message. Today's epochal challenge is postmodernism, which, according to Chang, "now challenges all norms and truths." Postmodernity as a philosophical outlook is broadly characterized, critically speaking, by such views as religious pluralism, multiculturalism, relativism, and literary skepticism, all of which challenge Christian truth-claims. Is there an effective Christian strategy for confronting the multifaceted challenges (metaphysical, epistemological, moral, literary, etc.) raised by postmodernism? How, for example, does one effectively present the universal and unchanging truth-claims of Christianity to a culture that rejects the idea of absolute truth? While there have been an assortment of Christian books written in response to postmodern thinking, Curtis Chang provides a provocative and substantive answer to this question in his book Engaging Unbelief. Reaching back into the apologetic works of two of Christianity's greatest thinkers, Augustine (354-430) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Chang has indeed uncovered an interesting strategy to respond to the postmodern quagmire. Chang's view is that if evangelicals Christians are going to be genuinely successful in responding to the postmodern mindset they should heed the Apostle Paul's imperative in 2 Corinthians 10:5. "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Specifically what does Chang think this imperative actually involves? Since postmodernists prefer to speak in terms of one's individual "story" (perspective or narrative) rather than in terms of objective truth, this apologetic strategy involves engaging unbelief through penetrating the challenger's story. Chang identifies three points that he broadly derives from two classic apologetic works, Augustine's City of God and Thomas Aquinas's Summa contra Gentiles. First, the Christian apologist must "enter the challenger's story" (competing worldview) by becoming thoroughly familiar with its language, categories, and authorities, and thus speaking from a shared perspective, though always guided by the gospel. Second, the apologist engages

Curtis Chang has an excellent idea: read Augustine and Aquinas, two great Christian thinkers, compare how they explained their faith to non-Christian contemporaries of their eras, and see what we in the "post-modern" world can learn. Overall, I think he pulls it off well. Chang is a thoughtful writer, and the book is well-organized and clearly (though not eloquently) written. (Chang seems to be one of those writers whose diction remains structured and careful even when he gets a bit passionate.) I was happy to learn a bit about Aquinas (whom I had not read) and to bask in Chang's exposition of one aspect of the thought of Augustine (whom I have long appreciated). He argues that the two men entered into the stories of their non-Christian opponents, deepened them, and retold them as facets of the "metanarrative" of the Gospel. This subject particularly interests me because I am doing research on the fascinating (and long) story of how Western, Indian and Chinese Christians have related the Gospel to their cultures. Also, I wrote a book a couple years ago, Jesus and the Religions of Man, that relates the Gospel to modern religions and ideologies in a way rather similar to Augustine's approach in City of God -- maybe more by accident than by design. I think the period in which Augustine wrote resembled our own diverse, multi-cultural society in many ways, and we have much to learn from him. (And, it seems, from Aquinas as well.) I also learned a bit about "post-modernism" here, at last. (The term being unnecessarily ugly, I have previously tried to avoid finding out what it referred to. Ignore it, and it will go away!) I don't think, as one reviewer below seems to, that Chang accepts the "post-modern" view wholeheartedly, nor ask us to. "Both (A+A) . . . enter the pagan and Islamic stories still retaining their distinctive Christian identities. They refuse to give in to some confusing syncretism or an intellectual appeasement that would change the essence of the gospel." I don't think Chang is unconcerned about truth, just because he emphasizes story. (Which he calls "narrative," yikes.) Story and truth need not conflict. The Gospel marks where the two cross and become one. Chang's approach is to find truth in non-Christian philosophy, and show how the Gospel deepens and supplements it. I think that is a valid, Biblical, and rational approach to any worldview that contains truth, as "post-modernism" undoubtedly does. Chang talks about Islam in an indirect way, because he thinks Aquinas wrote Summa Contra Gentiles to help missionaries reach the educated, philosophical Muslims of his day. Islam is of course on a lot of peoples' minds, my own included. I think Chang is a bit hard on the Crusaders -- it would only be fair for us to enter their story, too, if we are going to enter that of the Muslims. Not everyone has the luxury of responding to armies with words alone. And I am not sure Aquinas was always entirely tolerant either

Postmodernism is a notoriously slippery subject, but in this book Curtis Chang does a good job of introducing and explaining it; he then proceeds to give a plan of action for engaging it, based upon his reading of St. Augustine's CITY OF GOD and Aquinas' SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES.To me, the most important facet of this discussion is how the Christian faith, which claims objective truth, can be communicated to people who do not admit the existence of such truth (at least in theory). The apologetic method of the past hundred or so years, the "evidence-that-demands-a-verdict" approach, isn't particularly successful anymore. Is there something that can replace it, so we can better communicate the faith to those that have rejected Enlightenment rationalism? That is the question that Chang attempts to answer here.There is, as one reviewer below says, a danger in falling under the sway of postmodernist presuppositions oneself when attempting to engage with postmodernists. He believes Chang has taken this fall to a certain extent; I do not. By emphasizing the faith as story (or as myth even, remembering that it is a myth that happens to be true) rather than as a set of propositions that need to be embraced rationalistically, one need not tumble into subjectivism or relativism. To me, Chang does a good job of maneuvering between this rock and hard place.I must also say that the previous reviewer's claim that Augustine himself fell into this trap, thus paving the way for Roman Catholicism's acceptance of devotion utilizing images and physical objects, is more than slightly wrongheaded. This reviewer is repeating (whether he knows it or not) old iconoclastic arguments that have been dealt with by both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, and it would do him well to read some of the works that Chang refers to when discussing this subject.If there is one complaint about the book, it is Chang's reliance on contemporary, critical church history works. One is given a picture of the church of both Augustine's and Aquinas' times as muddled, ignorant and compromised. Undoubtedly there were some elements of the church that were like that (as there are today) but one needs to balance that picture by reading more positive appraisals such as Rowan Greer's BROKEN LIGHTS AND MENDED LIVES, which includes a valuable discussion of Augustine and his times.All in all, though, this is a work well worth reading by anyone who is interested in the clash between Christianity and postmodern culture.

One of the most frequently forgotten biblical truisms is Solomon's repeated assertion that "there is nothing new under the sun." Christians, certain that their age and their time is unique, struggle mightily to devise "new" responses to "new" challenges. Modern Christians seem particularly susceptible to believing that the past cannot inform the present. In this information age, how can the indecipherable volumes of the ancients speak to the sound-bite interests of the postmodern generation? In his brilliant, clearly-written work, Curtis Chang has demonstrated how the strategies and even the words of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas can bring hope to ministers struggling with "creating" a way to relate to the present age. At the mere mention of the names Augustine and Aquinas, the eyes of today's "hip" and "relevant" pastors and evangelists often begin to glaze over. This is a mistake. As Chang clearly demonstrates, the "great cloud of witnesses" that has gone before us not only observes but also reaches through the centuries to provide wisdom that is critical to today's challenge. Do not be dismayed by the book's scholarly title -- it is written for the scholar and layman alike. The writing is crisp and, at times, poignant. Through the power of Chang's pen, difficult and complex works become accessible and inspirational. It is this accessibility that is perhaps Chang's greatest triumph. Even a small mind can read the complex and then "explain" it through equally complex prose. The good mind can take the complex and clarify it so that its ultimate answers seem almost simple. If you are confused by the challenge of reaching today's alienated and tribalized culture, read Chang's book -- and allow the past to illuminate the present.