Green Baggins

Posted by David Gadbois

The prolific Christian apologist and blogger Steve Hays died earlier this month. While most people probably knew him from his usual beat at Triablogue, he had a presence in the combox of this blog in earlier years, and often took the fight against unbelief to the “streets” of Facebook.

I always assumed I would meet Steve Hays in person, at some point. And sadly, I was wrong. Though he had been generous with his time in corresponding with me, as was the case with many other saints he corresponded with, he remained a faceless, online friend until the end. I literally did not even know what he looked like, although I imagine he must have seen pictures of me and my family on my Facebook profile. In any case, it was easy to recognize the intellectual firepower he had on deck, all guns blazing in defense of the Gospel. Tirelessly, ceaselessly. And for many years I had tried to take advantage and pick his brain on the tough subjects I was wrestling with, although there was no shortage of chat about lighter issues that we mutually found compelling.

He was certainly a strange duck. While he had a rare intellect, he never parlayed this into either a flashy or lucrative career. He was never a keynote speaker at whatever Reformed conference du jour. No public, oral debates. No Youtube clips of him lecturing. Apparently he wasn’t interested in any academic credentials beyond his M.A. He was never a professor. He was never even an elder or deacon at a church, at least the last time I asked him about it. And very little of his work was ever published in academic journals or dead-tree books, although he self-published e-books for free distribution. Non-stop blogging on Triablogue was his primary outlet, with a healthy smattering of Facebook debates on the side. And this was all semi-anonymous, he never used a picture of himself in his avatars. His posts were just marked with “Posted by steve”. Lower case “s”!

I can’t remember exactly when I started following Steve at Triablogue. From 1997-2002 I was earning my engineering degree, and providence led me to the Reformed faith, by means of multiple and sometimes unexpected channels, during these college years. Besides Berkhof’s Systematic Theology, I’d have to credit John Frame’s “Doctrine of the Knowledge of God” as one of the pivotal books that set my course from that point forward. Whenever I found Steve’s writings, it must have been a few years later, I realized I had found a kindred spirit whose theological and apologetic orientation dovetailed with my trajectory. As Steve was something of a Frame protege, he served as a helpful bridge out of the surreal Toon Town of pop-presuppositionalism and introduced me to thinkers like Greg Welty, James Anderson, and Paul Manata. There are many other fellow-travelers that I could mention that Steve introduced me to (or, for some, re-introduced me to), from many different fields and orientations: the whole staff of T-Blog, Jonathan McLatchie, the McGrews, Vern Poythress, Michael Kruger, C. John Collins, Richard Hess, and on and on.

As an engineer I really connected with the way Steve thought and wrote. The way he organized his thoughts and broke things down in a bullet point-like format. Exhaustive, yet clear and orderly. And this certainly influenced and improved my own writing. Again, I think we have John Frame to thank for this feature in his writings. His manner, at least in the printed word, was often rather curt, or abrupt. Again, as an engineer I sort of appreciated this, although it no doubt rubbed many others the wrong way. Part of this is that he didn’t believe in wasting time with verbal kid gloves for those whom he saw as culpable proponents of destructive falsehoods. There would be no quarter for those targets, rhetorically speaking.

Steve was like a nuclear reactor, pumping out daily content that was amazing, both in its quality and quantity. In contrast I felt more like the Drinking Bird toy that Homer Simpson employed, that nearly melted down the nuclear power plant. Comparatively, I’m just a “weekend warrior” apologist, but his tireless effort encouraged me to always stay in the fray, in whatever capacity I could.

He was wildly eclectic, in practice, in defending the Christian faith. While he was at his core, still some species of presuppositionalist, one would almost never know it from the diversity of approaches and tactics he employed. He borrowed freely from thinkers of any and all backgrounds; if it was a good argument, he wanted it in his arsenal.

His areas of apologetic interest were also also immensely diverse (he once mentioned that this was why he didn’t care to advance into a more specialized, advanced degree). Of course he covered the usual topics one would expect: defending the reliability of the Bible, the historicity of the resurrection, the deity of Christ, Calvinist soteriology, predestination, dealt with both proofs and objections to the existence of God (including many valuable points on the Problem of Evil), evolution/Intelligent Design, along with no small amount of ink tackling Roman Catholicism and various cults. My guess would be that atheism and Roman Catholicism were his biggest targets, if one were to go by cumulative word-count over the years. But he also addressed topics that were off the well-beaten path: modern miracles, philosophy of time, and paranormal phenomena. He was also interested in current events and the culture wars. And he always stayed abreast of the latest biblical commentaries.

To my knowledge Steve never married. As his parents both died before him, I dearly hope he had some extended family and church brethren to give him comfort and company in his final days. Apparently his fire never dimmed until the very end, I see that his final post was June 3rd, 2020, only 3 days before his death (a critique of various Roman Catholic apologists, it happens). I suppose for selfish reasons, I sure wish he had sought treatment for his maladies. Of course I was not privy to the trade-offs and probable outcomes of such treatment, so one can’t judge about those hard decisions. While it is hard to say that anyone who lives to 60 has been robbed of a full life, in our modern era it is still on the young side to die at this age. Sad, especially since he retained all his faculties and mental acuity, as evidenced in his final writings.

He never told me, nor most others, of his terminally failing health. I suspect there was, perhaps, an impish impulse on his part to just “ghost” all of us, in the urban dictionary sense. That is, to disappear without warning or salutation, so as to go unnoticed. I don’t think he wanted the sentimental attention, no matter how sincere and understandable. No, as long as he could still pound out a blog post on a keyboard, he was going to load up the big guns and send out a final volley or two. Like the gigantic, WW2-era battleships firing their 16″ cannons one last time on their way to mothball. It is quite clear that he wanted to make the most of the precious few, final days at his disposal. And my best guess is that he saw grief and pity from others, no matter how understandable and legitimate, as an inordinate tax on this quickly-diminishing share of time. That’s my best guess, anyway, knowing him in the limited capacity that I did.

I could say much more, especially concerning our e-mail correspondence. He provided personal encouragement and guidance at important junctures. Very recently, we talked about our mutual love of the use of boys choirs in sacred music. A few months back we had an interesting exchange on the recent UFO phenomena with Jason Engwer. His last direct e-mail to me was on April 19th, although he jumped into some Facebook conversations over the subsequent month. I’m actually not sure why he was so open and seemingly eager to correspond with me. I could only take, and had little to give in return to someone like him. I think he was more than a little curious about the aerospace biz…but other than that I can’t say.

Lord, this is a tough one. By your mercy, dress us all in the White Robes of Jesus Christ, that we will all be re-united one day in glory. Amen.