Persuasion: the right stuff

We are all experts in persuasion. From the cradle to the grave, we exercise and refine our abilities in this area. Consider the high-impact persuasion of a crying baby craving milk! Then a few years later, the child develops their technique: “Mum, I’ll tidy my room if you buy me an ice-cream!” This bargaining approach has a lot of staying power: “Dad, I’ll mow the lawn if you lend me the car.”

When someone arrives at parenthood, they are forced to draw heavily on their accumulated skills. A father tries to persuade his toddler to eat: “Here comes the choo choo!” he enthusiastically utters as the spoonful of goop approaches the infant’s mouth. Fifteen years later, he finds the same child stashing cigarettes (or something worse) in their bedroom and desperately draws upon a raft of methods, such as reasoning, bargaining, shouting, crying and grounding.

Some methods of persuasion can be quite effective—the bargain, for example: “If you do X, then I’ll do Y”. Others, such as the idle threat, are less so: “Eat your greens or I’ll cancel Christmas!” Some methods are socially acceptable: “Here comes the choo choo!”, while others certainly are not: “Pay up, or I’ll send the boys around!”

Regardless of persuasion’s widespread use, I noted in my last post a strong suspicion of it in our culture. Despite this, I argued that when it comes to evangelism, persuasion is not necessarily a dirty word: ethical persuasion can be very helpful in gospel proclamation. But which sorts of persuasion might we use, and which should we avoid?

The Book of Acts is very helpful in this regard.¹ Acts is all about evangelistic mission: Jesus’ followers take the gospel message out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. The account highlights the crucial importance of communicating the whole gospel and the importance of prayer, while also revealing the helpful supplementary role played by persuasion.

Acts reveals three main forms of persuasion that were deliberately employed by the evangelists: the use of the Old Testament, reference to witnessed supernatural events (especially the resurrection of Jesus) and interaction with Greco-Roman sources of authority. It also reveals one prominent form of persuasion that was never utilized.

In his Pentecost speech, Peter cited the Old Testament for persuasive purposes and argued that Jesus fulfils these Scriptures (Acts 2:22-36), concluding with: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (v. 36)

Not long afterwards in Acts 3, Peter was evangelizing in the Jerusalem temple after having healed a crippled beggar. He told his audience, “You killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know” (Acts 3:15-16; emphasis mine) Both the witnessed resurrection of Jesus and the witnessed healing possessed persuasive force.

A few years afterwards, when Paul was proclaiming the gospel in Athens, he made use of various Greco-Roman sources of authority for persuasive purposes. In his speech, for example, he referred to an altar with an inscription, “To the unknown god” (Acts 17:23) and later cited a Greek poet: “as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring’” (Acts 17:28). His use of extra-biblical sources is, of course, done in a way that is consistent with scriptural truths.

A bit of knowledge of the ancient world reveals that there is one form of persuasion that is glaringly absent: the evangelists did not use, or threaten to use, physical force. This form of persuasion was very common at the time. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus wrote in his Jewish Antiquities of the coercive persuasive practices of various Jewish leaders from the centuries immediately preceding Christ: the Jewish priest-king Aristobulus “made war on the Itureans and acquired a good part of their territory for Judea and compelled the inhabitants, if they wished to remain in their country, to be circumcised and to live in accordance with the laws of the Jews” (13.318; see also 13.257–58). The genuineness of the threat is seen when a subsequent priest-king, Alexander Jannaeus, destroyed the city of Pella “because the inhabitants would not agree to adopt the national customs of the Jews” (13.397).

Today, we may chose whether or not to use the specific forms of persuasion found in Acts. For example, reference to the reliability of the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection may still possess significant persuasive force, whereas citing ancient Greek poets may not. Regardless, in our evangelism, we should adhere to the principles of persuasion evidenced in Acts and remember that the ancient evangelists chose methods that sought to persuade the mind by highlighting the truth, appeal and relevance of the gospel message.

¹ If anyone is interested, I did a PhD on evangelistic persuasion in Acts. An amended version has recently been published: Stephen Liggins, Many Convincing Proofs: Persuasive phenomena associated with gospel proclamation in Acts, Beilhefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZNW) 126, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2016.