My Father's Argument for Christianity
Everett Ferguson, Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Abilene Christian University, rendered a great service when he authored his brief volume Thinking~Living~Dying published in 2011 by the Warren Center. It is a publication rich in content that concerns how early Christian apologists (2nd-3rd centuries) speak to the 21st century. Describing the earliest apologists, Ferguson says they “not only won the intellectual contest with [unbelievers] but also excelled [unbelievers] in conduct. The Christian life is a powerful argument for the truth of Christianity. . . .”
Focusing on the answer (apologia, cf. 1 Peter 3:15) of the third century apologist Origen to a second century unbeliever (the philosopher Celsus) the book by Ferguson emphasizes one of the “important positive arguments for the divine source of Christianity [in] the changed lives it produces.” Ferguson is impressed with how the earliest Christian apologists “put so much emphasis on Christian living as an argument for the truth of Christianity.”
As I write this article, I recall with fond admiration and deep appreciation the memory of my own father, Charles C. Pugh, Jr. (1922-1977). His love for God, the Bible, the Christ, the church, our family, and humanity, remains a powerful affirmation and defense of true Christianity revealed in the New Testament. In my childhood I always looked at my father as a big man. As I have grown older, he has become even bigger to me in ways that matter most. I never heard a single word of profanity uttered by my father. His work ethic was impressive. He was so conscientious and honest. He cared about people and their problems. I remember times when he nearly sat all night talking with someone about a problem they were facing, and he sought to help them find a solution.
In 1976, the U. S. Bicentennial and the year before his untimely death, dad made it his practice to spend a portion of his lunch hour knocking on one or more doors in the community to tell people what he believed about Jesus and His church, while inviting them to come and hear the gospel. For a number of years, he taught a Sunday Bible class for fifth graders. There were few, if any, students in that class who did not eventually obey the gospel. The Bible was the first item he requested when he was hospitalized two days before his death. One year before this, I was able to pry from him the admission that since the early 1950s he had missed two days reading and studying the Bible. To say the Bible had changed my father’s life is an understatement.
My father’s occupation was floristry, but his vocation became Christianity. His hands were calloused from his occupation, but his heart was tender from the power of the gospel. He became a dedicated elder in a local congregation of Christians. He understood this was a ministry of shepherding the sheep and the lambs. He did it well.
John Henry Jowett (1864-1923) was a great English preacher. He was a favorite of B. C. Goodpasture to whom Thomas B. Warren dedicated his book, Have Atheists Proved There Is No God? Jowett never knew my father, and I doubt that my dad ever read Jowett. However, J. H. Jowett described my father when, commenting on 1 Peter 3:15, he asks if a man’s “trembling timidities have given place to firm and fruitful fearlessness, has he not a splendid answer to give to every man who asketh him a reason concerning the hope that is in him? The answer does not peep out in an apologetic ‘perhaps’ or a trembling ‘if’; it is a masculine ‘verily’, a confident ‘I know.’ . . . [T]he argument of a redeemed life is unassailable” (The Epistles of Peter, 73). This was my father’s argument for Christianity. It convinced me many years ago.
Charles C. Pugh III
Executive Director