Reference
Apologetics
Apologetics is the defence of the Christian faith: being ready, when someone of another belief or none asks why you believe, to answer with a reason, and to do it with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15-16).
Each belief system below has its own page. Every page has the same eight parts: what they hold, described fairly enough that they would recognise it; where you agree; where Christianity stands, why, and what is at stake; the passages to have read first; how to make the case in a real conversation; the arguments that lose it; the objections you will actually hear, with answers you can give; and case studies: sample conversations, with what worked and what to avoid.
The traditions
Islam
One God, a line of prophets ending with Muhammad, Jesus honoured but not divine and not crucified, salvation by mercy and deeds weighed on the last day.
The three questions that matter most
- 1.Who is Jesus: prophet, or God the Son?
- 2.Did he die on the cross?
- 3.How is anyone saved: by deeds weighed in the balance on the last day, or by grace, through faith in what Christ has done?
Hinduism
A family of traditions rather than one creed: one ultimate reality under many names, the eternal self, karma and rebirth, and liberation over many lives.
The three questions that matter most
- 1.Is God a personal Creator distinct from the world, or the one reality beneath all names?
- 2.What is wrong with us, and what fixes it: ignorance, answered by liberation over many lives, or sin, answered by forgiveness in this one?
- 3.Is Jesus one descent of the divine among many, or the one Son who came once in history?
Latter-day Saints (Mormonism)
The church restored through Joseph Smith, additional scripture and a living prophet, God the Father with a body, Jesus as the firstborn spirit, and exaltation through covenant obedience.
The three questions that matter most
- 1.Is God eternal spirit and unlike anything he made, or an exalted being with a body?
- 2.Is Jesus the eternal Word of one being with the Father, or the first spirit child of the Father?
- 3.Is eternal life a gift received through faith, or exaltation earned through ordinances and obedience?
Jehovah's Witnesses
One God, Jehovah; Jesus as his first creation and the archangel Michael; the holy spirit as a force; salvation through the ransom and loyalty to the organisation; a paradise earth after Armageddon.
The three questions that matter most
- 1.Is Jesus fully God, the eternal Word, or the first and greatest creature?
- 2.Is the Holy Spirit a person or a force?
- 3.Do you come to God through Christ alone, and can you know today that you have eternal life?
Buddhism
The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path: suffering, its cause in craving, its end, and the way; no creator, no lasting self, and liberation from the cycle of rebirth.
The three questions that matter most
- 1.Is there a personal Creator to whom we belong, or is awakening the whole answer?
- 2.Is the self an illusion to be seen through, or a person made in God's image to be redeemed?
- 3.Is suffering escaped by ending attachment, or entered by God and one day ended by him?
Secular and atheist friends
No creed: atheists, agnostics and the simply unconcerned, who trust science, ground morality in shared humanity, see religion as a human construction, and take suffering as evidence against God.
The three questions that matter most
- 1.Is the universe the kind of place where persons, reasons and moral obligations are at home, or accidents?
- 2.Did Jesus rise from the dead: a claim about history, not about feelings?
- 3.Is what is wrong with people fixable by information and effort, or does it need forgiveness and new life?
Before any conversation
Know what they believe before you answer it
Every page here begins with a description the other person would recognise. An argument against a belief nobody holds persuades nobody, and it tells your friend you never listened.
Say where you agree, first and out loud
Common ground is not a tactic; it is the truth, and it is where the conversation can stand. Paul in Athens quoted their own poets before he named the God they did not know.
Make the case about Jesus
The existence of God, the reliability of Scripture, the problem of evil: all real, all worth knowing, and none of them the centre. A man was crucified and seen alive. Keep returning to that.
Gentleness and respect are part of the answer
Peter puts them in the same sentence as the reason. A case won with contempt is lost. The person in front of you is not a position; they are someone Christ died for.
Nothing on these pages quotes another tradition’s scripture; beliefs are described in our own words and cited by reference so you can read the sources yourself. Every section was checked for accuracy and fairness against the tradition’s own sources, and where a point is disputed the page says so. If you belong to one of these traditions and we have described you unfairly, we want to know and will fix it.