What Is Apologetics? (Apologetics Part 1A)

so the class is from uh seven to nine and some nights we'll probably get out early and um but other nights we'll we'll make use of the whole two hours but oftentimes we're going to do more than just listen to me lecture so in the past when i've taught this class one thing the students have really enjoyed is doing debates so for example even tonight if we have time we could do a little bit of a debate between you guys where half of you could argue that apologetics is a good thing and we should do it and the other two could play the devil's advocate because i know you all believe in and love apologetics but two of you could play the devil's advocate and argue against apologetics and you'll see you know through the lecture tonight some objections that people have to apologetics and then you could use those objections in the debate or maybe come up with some on your own and we can do that every week no matter what topic that we're covering whether it be you know an argument for the existence of god or an argument for the resurrection of jesus having those debates really helps you think through both sides of the issue because even playing the devil's advocate i.e arguing for a position you don't hold helps you understand your own position better and maybe see some weaknesses in it so the other thing if you're taking it for credit those that are coming to my house to take it in person they are there are reading summaries that you need to do every week from your readings and then you'll discuss those with each other and what i'll probably do is have somebody different every week lead the discussion so that'll put some pressure on you to make sure you get your reading summaries together because you might be then put on the spot to lead the discussion through the chapters that you read that respective week so what i'd like to do is every week start with the lecture and then do all of the class logistics and presentations and maybe debates those sort of things at the end of the class for several reasons because those of you that are auditing it or just watching this online not taking it for credit i'm sure you just want to get the material in the lecture and you don't care about all the class logistics afterwards so we'll do all that stuff after we get through the lecture so it might seem like we're just jumping right into things but that's exactly what we'll do is we're just going to jump right into it and start out with the question what in the world is apologetics now if you signed up for the class i would assume you have at least a little bit of a background into understanding what apologetics is but maybe you don't maybe this is the class that was recommended to you by somebody else and you've never heard the term before it sounds like the english word apologize often times when people hear it for the first time they think that it has some sort of a connection to that idea apologizing when you do something wrong or when you're sad about something that you did hey come on in how are you good hey how are you hi there jenna told me about you but i forgot your name josiah it's good to meet you in person i'm adam we just started but feel free to jump in wherever you would like find a seat if there's room on that couch you always can squeeze in it's probably not social distancing per se but that's all right well we're taping the class because um a lot of folks are just taking it online but it's not live so the camera's right behind you guys we're taping the lecture and then we'll put it on youtube tomorrow or the next day for all those that are taking it online some for credit some just auditing it yeah no problem so we're diving in and just explaining what apologetics is in the first place what is apologetics it sounds like the english word apologize but that's not what it means it actually comes from a greek word apologia so the greek word apologia was used in koine greek the greek language to refer to the idea of making a case for a certain belief that you have now this could be any particular belief let's say you voted for a certain politician you believe in that politician you're advocating for that respective politician and somebody might ask you why why do you believe in them or why did you vote for them and you would give a case you would defend why you believe in that particular politician you would usually give reasons give evidence for why he or she is a good politician so on and so forth other beliefs you might defend maybe you were accused of a crime but you're innocent so it was used in the courtroom settings to explain when somebody defends their belief in their own innocence so it's a very simple word it just means to give good reasons and evidence for a certain belief that you have and when it's applied to christianity of course then christian apologetics is when we give good reasons and evidence to believe that christianity is true as i said it was a very common greek word used in koine greek and it's found in the greek new testament several times it's used in the new testament the greek word apologia one example probably the most classic famous example a lot of ministries use this verse as their oh mission statement or explanation of their ministry so first peter 3 15 and 16 says that instructing christians to always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for the hope that is in you and that word defense that's translated in english here is defense is the greek word apologia giving a defense giving an explanation with reasons and evidence why you believe something is true the verse goes on though and sometimes this part is is left out we don't want to do that it also instructs us to do this with gentleness and respect oftentimes it's just as important how you say something as to what you say to them so i think it's very important to when we do apologetics when we're giving people reasons why we believe that christianity is true we do this with gentleness and respect it's not always easy sometimes we get too aggressive i'm guilty of this but we have to fight against that temptation and try to be loving and kind to those that we are giving reasons and evidence to schaefer you'll you'll hear me mention francis schaefer often he's he's kind of my hero in this realm of apologetics so francis schaefer i think was a great example of how to do this with love and respect well let me tell you a little bit about myself and why i am interested in apologetics this is what i specialize in in ministry i became a christian when i was about 17 1994. i can do the math and see how old i am now but i became a christian i grew up in the church and so i grew up believing that christianity was true but i was trusting in the wrong thing i was trusting in what i could do to earn my way to heaven and so about the age of 17 um a fellow teenager a girl named iris sat down with me at this youth group party at her church that my friend took me to and she asked me this question that changed my life she said if you were standing before god right now adam and he asked you why should i let you into heaven what would you say and i told iris i said well god would let me in because i'm a relatively good person i haven't done anything too bad you know i tried to be nice to people so on that was my answer and she explained to me she she showed from the new testament other verses that i was trusting in the wrong thing that the standard to get into heaven based on what you could do the standard was perfection so she showed me verses like matthew 5 48 which says to be perfect therefore as your heavenly father is perfect and i realized that night february 4th 1994 that i wasn't perfect that i couldn't trust in what i could do to get to heaven but she explained to me that jesus promised anyone who puts their trust in him and what he did for us on the cross would be forgiven of all their moral mistakes and welcomed into heaven to spend eternity with him so that was the night i even though i believed christianity was true in the past i was trusting in the wrong thing i was trusting what i could do to get to heaven instead of what jesus did for me so that's the night i put my faith in christ and became a christian now all throughout my 20s i worked in the field of actuarial science which is called a science but it's actually more mathematics i priced insurance products using statistics probability calculus stochastic modeling methods for insurance companies like allstate and humana mostly life insurance so i was working in the field of actuarial science all throughout my 20s and very passionate about ministry very involved in my church and kind of thought to myself that maybe god was leading me into ministry the problem was i was wrestling with a skeleton in my closet i was wrestling with something that really nobody knew about but me and it was that thing that i was wrestling with that prevented me from pursuing full-time ministry becoming a pastor and that what that skeleton was was doubt as an analytical person you know as a mathematician logical person i was i would struggle quite often throughout my twenties with doubts about whether christianity was really true or not and it tormented me and i and it bothered me it made me feel like i was not as good of a christian seemed like everybody around me christians that is could believe and had such strong faith and my faith was so weak and it was very frustrating and embarrassing to me and that's one of the reasons i didn't talk about it it all came to a head in my late 20s where i had a full-blown crisis of faith i didn't completely walk away from christianity but i was i was about this close and it was a very emotional turmoil um just a complete topsy-turvy upside down to my life for a good solid year plus anxiety panic attacks just couldn't work couldn't eat couldn't sleep it was it was really rough and i was struggling with these doubts whether how do we know if christianity is really true or not what rescued me out of that crisis of faith was francis schaefer now he died in 1984 and so i've never met him but it was he wrote 20 plus books and it was his books that people had recommended to me when i finally you know started talking to people about what i was struggling with it was his books that rescued me on so many levels rescued me emotionally spiritually psychologically even and it was so refreshing to have somebody who had also struggled himself he had a big crisis of faith early in his life well no he was more i think in his early 40s when he had his crisis of faith he was in the early 1950s but anyway since he had gone through that it felt like he was somebody who really understood what i was going through and so his books really really helped me out tremendously and it was through that process as i became more willing to talk about it i found out that a lot of other people around me also had doubts and struggles with their faith and so i was started to help other people after i had answered some of my own questions i started helping others and it just became obvious that god was leading me to serve other people in this area of apologetics the way that schaefer served me so that's what really spearheaded me down this path of doing apologetics full time a little bit more of my back story then so what i did is we moved my families married had four young kids at the time but we picked up and we moved to south carolina i grew up here in nebraska moved to south carolina in 2008 when i was around 30 years old to study apologetics with norman geisler you might have heard his name before his big name apologetics so i went to seminary for six years down in the carolinas and served as a pastor for eight years there and then i worked on my phd in philosophy for seven years so that's kind of my background of pursuing then leaving my actuarial science career and pursuing this ministry of apologetics the way that i explain it to people is i my passion for apologetics my passion to serve others in this area i usually explain it to folks by reminding them who they are burdened for because it seems like everybody has a particular burden maybe it's for a certain people group often times it's you have a burden to help people because you've gone through a similar situation so for example think of somebody maybe who was rescued out of the lifestyle of drugs and alcohol who were they burdened for well it's other people who are still stuck into that lifestyle and they have a burden to rescue people out of that for me since you know i was rescued through apologetics if you will i have a burden to help other people who are struggling in that area that's my burden as i said i searched for a pastor while i was going to seminary for eight years down in the carolinas but in 2017 i stepped down from being a pastor in order to work full time with this campus ministry called rachel christie now russia christie is a campus ministry kind of like campus crusade navigators ruf but their speciality is apologetics that's why i was attracted to them because they focus on college campuses of course but on college campuses giving good reasons and evidence to believe that christianity is true now college campuses are a great place to do that because a lot of young people even christians who grew up in the church don't really encounter objections to their faith until they hit college and so there's a lot of people who are struggling with their faith in college and i want to be there for those folks because that's who i'm i'm burdened for so it was a perfect partnership for me to serve start serving full-time with rashad christie in 2017 and that very next year i moved back to nebraska 2018 and started rocho christie here at the university of nebraska in lincoln and we've been going full steam for a couple years now i have a few people that work with me full time and casey just started this week working for rashad christie part time so we got a team of four on staff now it's very exciting the other things i do i serve as an adjunct professor teach apologetics and philosophy for midwestern baptist theological seminary in kansas city in fact that's how some of you and those of you online are taking it for credit through them this very class and i also serve as an adjunct professor at rhineland theological seminary in germany so every year my wife and i we spend about a month in germany usually april may and i teach classes at this seminary in germany and some of you i think there's 13 folks taking it through that seminary this semester taking this apologetics class so greetings to our fellow brothers and sisters in in germany excited that you could do this online we're not going to germany this year because of covet 19 and all that stuff obviously but i'm glad they're allowing us to do it online the last thing i wanted to tell you about besides working full-time for rasho christie and doing that adjunct professor type work is just recently last summer i launched my own ministry and i wanted to do i've been wanting to do this for quite a while and this ministry which we call convincing proof allows me to get out my original content there's so much good apologetic material out there and i've you know i've learned and borrowed from you know the best of them as i've tried to understand and learn apologetics but i've also been able to put together some original work and writing my phd dissertation some of my lectures and those sort of things the things i write and i wanted to venue to get those out to serve others with and so we launched convincing proof which involves a website a youtube channel and me speaking at churches and conferences and we'll just see how god uses that but my goal in it is to serve others again in this area of apologetics so that was a little bit about my background let's talk about the purpose of apologetics why do we do apologetics well there's two main purposes of it and the first one is to help christians those who have already trusted in christ who are struggling with their faith may be struggling with doubts they've made that decision to trust in christ but like me throughout my twenties they're wondering if they made the right decision if this stuff is really true or not and so apologetics is useful in that arena and then the other arena it's useful in its other purpose is to encourage non-christians those who haven't trusted in christ yet to do that to make that decision to trust in christ and so it's a very useful and helpful part of evangelism it doesn't take the place of evangelism but it's a great partner with evangelism so for example what i do my method if you will when i go out to share the gospel is i start with the basic gospel i just start kind of like with iris did to me when we were teenagers she just explained to me what jesus said about our being separated from god because of our evil choices and how we can be reconciled back to god by putting our faith in christ so i start with that simple message just so you know the person understands what i'm trying to encourage them to do and to get you know just the gospel out there so that they understand it the holy spirit can start working on their heart and then if they have objections or if they bring up reasons why they don't want to make that decision to trust in christ that's when i have you know my tool belt if you will of apologetics that i can bring out maybe any objections that they have i can bring out reasons and evidence to help them overcome their objections as long as i do it in a loving respectful way i'm going to pause now for just a moment and take a drink but do you guys have any questions at this point anything about my background that would be more of interest to you or purposes of apologetics or just what even apologetics is what uh what was the most impactful book of francis schaefer like if you had to recommend one what was given to me and it probably ended up being the most impactful was a publisher came along and put three of his books together and called it the trilogy so um it's his first book that was published the god who was there then a short little book called escape from reason and then the third book in the trilogy is he is their god he is there and he is not silent and all three of those books are put together in one that's called the trilogy so if you just look up that on amazon you'll find that book called the trilogy which includes those three books and those were that's the first one that i got and it's probably the most helpful that really provides the core of his um work and then all the rest can almost be thought of as spokes that just go into more detail or different strands yeah schaefer was a neat guy he was a presbyterian pastor um in st louis and then moved after world war ii to europe and it was in europe while he was doing missionary work that he had his crisis of faith in the early 50s but after that crisis of faith is when him and his wife started their ministry called labrie and labrie is just a really beautiful ministry i encourage you to learn more about it and it really combines good solid apologetics with loving relationships they build these labrie communities all around the world and i've spoken at the labrie in switzerland the original one and the labrie near london and both had you know amazing tremendous experiences of both of them all right i want to point out that there are three main areas of apologetics philosophy science and history and usually somebody you know if they go down this path of apologetics they'll end up specializing in one of the three i thought when i first got into apologetics that i would specialize in history and you're probably familiar with historical apologetics this would be people like oh josh mcdowell evidence that demands a verdict maybe gary habermas historical evidence for jesus resurrection lee strobel the case for christ so historical apologetics is very important and that's where i thought that i would specialize even though i have a background in actual science like i said before that's more mathematics and don't have much of a background in in science like biology or physics and philosophy you know as a young christian in my 20s i had no clue how philosophy could even be connected to apologetics and i hope to explain how that is tonight so i thought i was going to specialize in historical side of apologetics but i ended up going down the route of philosophy instead but you can see just simply from this how they're connected so philosophy we're using reason and logic to discover what's really true and if christianity is really true then we can use reason and logic to make a case for it science is when you study inductively empirical evidence to know what's true and that is very useful in the area of apologetics especially when we try to discover if there really is a god or not by looking at nature his creation and then historical apologetics like we talked about is you're looking um using the historical method you're studying inductively historical evidence to try to discover what is true so some other names um in scientific apologetics you might recognize people like william dempsky michael b he hugh ross and his ministry reasons to believe in california philosophy would be people like william lane craig alvin planiga if you've heard of him richard swinburne at oxford those are the type of folks that specialize in philosophical apologetics i do want to take a little bit of time though and share with you the exciting thing that's been going on in the field of philosophy not only is it because i specialize in this area of apologetics but i think it's really exciting and i love to share what's going on in this field because it's rather amazing there's a there's a resurgence of christianity taking place within the field of academic philosophy specifically analytic philosophy let me just give you a little bit of background on this analytic philosophy started in the early 1900s as an extreme form of modernism now early analytic philosophers they rejected as meaningless anything that couldn't be proven scientifically that's why i said they're an extreme form of modernism so they rejected all moral beliefs all religious beliefs all metaphysical transcendent beliefs because they said you can oh you should only believe in things you could test empirically or prove scientifically and since analytic philosophy was so hostile to religious ideas throughout the 1900s most christian philosophers and even theologians operated within continental philosophy now if you know anything about philosophy one of the first things you'll learn is that there's these two camps kind of like um think of our political system right we got democrats and republicans and maybe there's some other smaller camps but those are the two big camps and in a lot of situations there's two main positions and then some other minor positions well within philosophy there's two main camps all throughout the 1900s and continuing to today there's been two main camps analytic philosophy and continental philosophy and since analytic philosophy began in the early 1900s is so dismissive of religious ideas most christians operated within continental philosophy now just so you know continental philosophy has always been more open to religious beliefs as long as they're not based on reasons and evidence i'm oversimplifying here but within continental philosophy religious beliefs are more welcomed as long as their subjective beliefs as long as they're more leaps of faith irrational leaps of faith as long as they're more based on subjective experiences not reason and evidence but something interesting has happened over the last 50 years starting in the 1970s the extreme form of analytic philosophy has mostly died out the extreme version of it was called logical positivism and this is pretty much died out now within analytic philosophy they were the ones that were most extreme against religious beliefs and then there's been a resurgence of christians working in this field of analytic philosophy christianity has made a huge comeback in this field of academic analytic philosophy usually analytic philosophies associated with the uk and america and then continental philosophy is usually associated with you know the european continent france germany spain that's not a hard line that's just kind of where the names came from and the background to them obviously there's continental philosophers in america in the uk as well as they're being analytic philosophers on the continent but that's just naming conventions that's how it happened now these uh christian philosophers then who are involved in analytic philosophy the resurgence there they're called analytic because they use the analytic style of making very precise logical arguments based on reasons and evidence so the analytic side of philosophy is much more into reason and evidence objective things i'm oversimplifying again but continental philosophy is more into the subjective things so not as much into reason and objective reason and evidence now this resurgence of christianity in philosophy has surprised many people and i want to show you a brief excerpt from an article in time magazine because time magazine took note of this resurgence and wrote a whole article about it so this time magazine obviously is in the christian magazine but this has become such a big thing that even time noticed it so take a look i'm just going to read this excerpt from this time magazine article and this was written i think in the late 80s early 90s and it's become an even bigger resurgence since then so written in time in a quiet revolution in thought and arguments that hardly anyone could have foreseen only two decades ago so yeah the 60s god is making a comeback most intriguingly this is happening not among theologians or ordinary believers but in the crisp intellectual circles of academic philosophers where the consensus had long banished the almighty from fruitful discourse now in the article a philosopher by the name of alvin planica is called america's leading orthodox protestant philosopher of god and i want to tell you a little bit more about alvin planika because he's played a huge role in this christian resurgence here's a quote from planika he said what i've always wanted to do as a philosopher is defend christianity so you can see how his philosophy is tied to apologetics defend a christian way of thinking about things and argue that to be a christian is not to be irrational or senseless or silly now i'm going to show you a video that they put together about planica when he won the templeton prize a couple years ago this is a multi-million dollar prize in academia that's given to somebody usually for a lifetime achievement of honor in their field and he won this a few years ago he's retired now but he's spent the last few decades of his career at notre dame which is the top philosophy of religion school in the world so take a look at this video and it'll recount some of the things that i've been saying about this christian resurgence in philosophy the last 50 years in the middle of the 20th century philosophy had come close to a dead end philosophers have largely given up on the big questions the meaning of existence the purpose of human life good and evil instead they were engaged in ever smaller and more technical debates philosophy in the 40s and 50s was still in the grips of this view called logical positivism basically they were trying to make philosophy a lot smaller basically trying to make philosophy a branch of the sciences and if you couldn't verify a claim the same way you verify a scientific hypothesis then they wanted to say it was it was an extremely secular ethos or atmosphere science for them was at the center of the philosophical curriculum so philosophy of science was the big thing well the question of the existence of god philosophers despaired of making progress in fact a host of young philosophers concluded that philosophy had a little worth saying about god when i was in graduate school you would hear these stories about what was happening in the 1950s this small college of michigan called calvin college you would hear stories about this imposing impressive teacher named harry jeliber who taught really serious philosophy from an unapologetically religious perspective gentleman wanted us to put behind the details to the vision the understanding of god humanity the good the bad the right the wrong students flocked to him and one of these students was a young transferring artist and his class was also near walters and both of them learned from jell-o how to be philosophers and how to also be people that had religious communities at the same time as a consequence both of them went on to further work in philosophy nick went to harvard allen michigan and then on to yes i started to write papers and books by god and other minds god freed he was very much a grower so these concepts that the positives thought were ridiculous god possibility necessity essence he comes on the scene says what these actually do make sense they're really useful we can make discoveries we can make really interesting sophisticated arguments in these concepts so to just go ahead and write a vocabulary [Music] other philosophers started to notice when they started to eject the opponents did not attack the only wrong confidence he simply tackled profound philosophical questions you know anything at all [Music] okay well start there people who are atheist naturalistic philosophers how do they do their work they take for granted their assumptions they don't try to convert christians to their atheistic views before they go on to defend them they just take them for granted and they go from there and try to work out their their worldview that's what christians should do planning a sentence the momentum continues to this day [Music] philosophy is often seen i think as a competitive endeavor where one person wins by knocking holes in another person's arguments or my criticizing and one of the the gifts that planning and others have given to the field of philosophy is to see it as a mutual project we're trying to not win but to understand better and this has shaped at least two generations of philosophers the society of christian philosophers is now the largest single group within the american philosophical association there's a whole generation of younger philosophers who bring faith and their influence is not just in the western [Music] al is reluctant to take credit for all this but for very significance [Music] now don't have anything to be ashamed of and can address those sorts of religious concerns and issues with a renewed sense of mission and vicar you get to have a voice to this debate philosophy doesn't have to be dictated by one religious athlete it's kind of a license to wonder about the questions that really engage them in their tradition [Music] i just find that really exciting and encouraging and it's one of the things that drew me more to specialize in in philosophy those of you watching online might have a hard time seeing that on the tv so we'll put the link below where you can just watch it directly on youtube yeah go ahead so when time came out with that article you know they say secular sources we're seeing the resurgence of god and analytical philosophy and apologetics what what are they using as like a to measure that and um how do we continue to see that you said it's grown since then what how what's the evidence for that and like how do you i don't know how you measure that so i don't know if it's a number of articles or something that'd be one way another way too would just be formal surveys are done often to see kind of what are the majority positions within academic philosophy so like you know take any philosophical position you know internalism versus externalism and then surveys are done just so everybody's kind of aware what the most common position is on things and then one of the you know things often that's surveyed then is do you as a philosopher believe that god exists or not stuff like that so that's one way to measure it objectively but also books um articles conferences where as they said in the video you go back to the 40s 50s logical positivism was in its heyday there was virtually no christians working in this field of academic philosophy and now i mean it's still the minority it's not like i'm saying 80 90 of philosophers or christians but to go from zero to what 15 maybe 20 percent i mean that's that's pretty big and as they mentioned um the society of christian philosophers is the largest society or club if you will it's the largest group within the american philosophical association so which i'm a part of you know i'm part of the apa which is just a you know professional group but then within the apa there's different subgroups like continental philosophers would have a subgroup well of all the subgroups within the apa the biggest subgroup that people have joined is the society of christian philosophers which is pretty crazy i give a paper i presented a paper at the society of christian philosophers i've been a member of that subgroup for years but i presented a paper of mine at their meeting in la a few years ago and it was really neat to meet the other folks and see them and talk to them and you know a lot of most of them are full-time professors so it was really neat those are kind of the ways that it's measured okay let me tell you besides planet guy i just wanted to introduce you to a few of these other folks so robert adams is another christian in academic philosophy he's got degrees from princeton oxford cornell he's taught pretty much everywhere yale oxford university california rutgers i think he ended his career at the university of north carolina another robert robert audi got his phd from university of michigan and he he was actually my philosophy professor at unl back in the mid 90s when i was studying actuarial science there as an undergrad he was the chair of the philosophy department at unl for a long time i want to say 20 plus years and i didn't even know he was a christian at the time when i took philosophy with him i just took philosophy 101 because i wasn't a philosophy major but i remember in that philosophy class studying arguments for and against the existence of god and things like that and it was only later as i started working on my phd in philosophy that i found out that in fact he's well known worldwide even as a christian philosopher we're bringing him back to unl he moved from unl to notre dame but we're bringing him back to speak uh this april as part of the russia christie at unl when i gave that paper in um la at the society of christian philosophers i was able to see him again 20 years later and i said you're not going to remember me because you had thousands of thousands of students but i did take your philosophy 101 class at university of nebraska and now i'm working in the field of philosophy so it was neat to reconnect with him and we've been emailing back and forth the logistics of bringing him to the university of nebraska to speak this spring so very exciting another one is richard swinburne i mentioned him before he's a professor of philosophy at the university of oxford has been for decades and just a little bit of my genealogy so greg welty got his phd at oxford under swinburne and then i got my phd in philosophy under greg welty so that's just a little bit about my academic philosophical genealogy where i trace back to in this field so you can even see you know one of the names of his books is faith and reason how those two things he argues should work together okay i want to move on and talk now about apologetic methods and then we'll probably take a break bathroom break get a drink chat for a while but does anybody have any more questions before we move on i know that was kind of a footnote diving into philosophy a bit but i'm excited by that i find that other people get excited when they hear about what's been happening in academic philosophy too so i wanted to share that okay we'll keep going so this is different than uh dif areas of apologetics areas of apologetics include science history philosophy this is more about your methodology when you're doing apologetics so as an apologist how are you going to go about doing your apologetics and this is a huge this is a huge discussion sometimes bigger than it probably should be but as you can imagine just like among pastors or any profession you know doctors there's disagreements as to how they should go about doing their respective practice what is the best methodology for doing apologetics so i'll put my cards on the table i'll explain you know my method and try to defend it lovingly and respectfully and critique the other methods and where i see they go wrong so the first method of apologetics is traditional apologetics sometimes it's called classical apologetics and what makes them different than the others is that they traditional apologists they start with and really emphasize arguments for the existence of god so norman geisler is a well-known traditional apologist william lane craig would be another one rc sprole presbyterian theologian and pastor so there's a lot of traditional classical apologists out there and this would be my approach as well not only because i was trained in this approach but because i think this is the right approach i think this is makes the most sense if you will and we'll i'll explain i'll defend my approach more as we go through the class outline now another methodology is evidentialism evidential apologetics and this would be people maybe more like um this often goes hand in hand with historical apologetics so people like gary habermas people like josh mcdowell lee strobel giving you historical evidences right now evidentialists evidential apologetics they start with and emphasize historical evidences so that's what distinguishes them from traditional apologetics now i'm totally in favor and appreciate the importance of historical evidences but i just think what's primary is the existence of god i think that's the proper place to start and that should be the main emphasis because as you'll see in the class outline if somebody is wavering on whether god exists or not then historical evidences for jesus's resurrection or things in the bible are really not going to be very impactful to them or meaningful to them if they don't think that there isn't even a god that exists so we'll see why traditional apologists do things in the order that they do now if i'm talking with somebody in practice and they already believe in a supreme being they believe that there is a god out there who created the universe i don't have to go through all that right i don't have to go through and make arguments for god because they already believe that there is a god so then in practice i can go right into historical evidences that jesus is god or that jesus was resurrected right that jesus is the savior i can bypass that step however if they don't believe that there is a god i'm not going to move to that step until i at least present a case for believing that there is a god so that's where the emphasis is in my approach and for other traditional classical apologists now the other type that i want to talk about with you a little bit is called presuppositional apologetics and this is often not exclusively but this method is often associated with uh those in the reformed uh branches of christianity so presbyterians reformed churches calvinists not exclusively but often those two things go hand in glove with each other now we have to be careful and even i'm over generalizing a little bit with traditional evidentialists but i uh it's it's always a danger right to over generalize for the sake of simplification but then when you do that you paint with too broad of a brush and you say things about people in camps nobody likes to be labeled or over-generalized so i tried to break out at least three different types of presuppositionalists that are out there and i want to walk through them very carefully and try not to misrepresent them so for example you have what i call they might not use this term themselves but i think i don't think that they would mind it practical presuppositionalists and francis schaefer would be a a key example of a practical presuppositionalist and all that francis schaefer would mean by that when he called himself a presuppositionalist is that he emphasizes the importance of presuppositions so for example one of schaefer's strategies or approaches when he talked to a non-christian was to point out contradictions in a non-christian's belief system contradictions between their presuppositions and their beliefs i'll give you an example so schaefer would often talk with atheists or naturalists who believe that nothing exists but the material physical universe right all that exists is nature they're naturalists and so schaefer would talk to these folks and more often than not these naturalists these atheists he would talk to would also believe that love was real they loved their children they love their spouse they love their friends they love they believe that love was real and what he tried to do lovingly is point out how their presuppositions their atheism and their belief that love is real was actually a contradiction they had contradictions within their belief system between their presuppositions and their beliefs for example that love is real and then he would work to point out how if naturalism is true if atheism is true then really there's no good explanation for love being something real if naturalism is true the most likely explanation of love is that it was a chemical reaction that nature selected for because it led to greater chances of survival and reproduction and so to believe in love as an atheist was actually contradictory and he would try to lovingly point those out and had a lot of success in encouraging people to adopt presuppositions or beliefs that fit more in line with what they actually believed and christianity is a much better explanation of how love could be a real thing than atheism and so that's what i mean here by practical presuppositionalism and i am wholeheartedly in favor of that approach that method shaffer did it in a very loving way pointing out contradictions and other people's belief systems it can be a very feisty experience because it can be uncomfortable people get defensive but he was masterful at it i do have concerns with it sometimes because it's easy to oversimplify your opponent's belief system i just did it real quickly trying to show how atheists atheism and believing that love is real seems contradictory but there are atheists who have very sophisticated the average atheist you meet on the street is not going to have much of an explanation for how love can be real but there are very sophisticated atheistic philosophers who have a very sophisticated explanation how love could be real more than just a chemical reaction and so we don't want to oversimplify with this method we want to deal with those you know sophisticated arguments that atheists make for the existence of real morality real love so that's one danger i see with practical presuppositionalism the next one is what i refer to as theological presuppositionalism and this is actually a very common position here in the midwest when i lived on the east coast i didn't see this as much but i've kind of learned the genealogy of these things and where they come from and how they get an influence and this theological presuppositionalism is pretty big here in the midwest and i think it's traced back mostly to a professor at grace seminary in indiana named john whitcomb and he was a professor there for decades and had trained obviously a lot of people here in the midwest being in indiana and this form of presuppositionalism says look we need to start out presupposing god exists and that the bible is from god in other words we don't bring any reasons or evidence to the table we just start out in our own belief system and as we try to encourage others to trust in christ we tell them that they should just presuppose that god exists and the bible is from him well why that might seem kind of strange well their their explanation for why they hold that is because they believe it's god's word the bible and the holy spirit that convinces people to trust in christ not reason and evidence so we just start out presupposing that god exists not with any arguments and presuppose that the bible is from him and they would make the case then that traditional and evidential apologetics are a waste of time all we need to do is just preach the gospel and when it's combined with calvinistic understandings of things we preach the gospel and the elect those that god choose will believe and the non-elect won't and that's all we really have to do is just preach the gospel and let the holy spirit do what only the holy spirit can do and so they see traditional and evidential apologetic methods as at best a waste of time and at worst unbiblical and unspiritual and i'm very familiar with this way of thinking um because i held this sort of position for over 10 years so i kind of grew up as a christian in this mentality and this was my position so i understand it from the inside out having held it myself for over 10 years so uh oftentimes you'll hear they'll quote charles spurgeon charles spurgeon has this famous quote that they use often when they make their case they say look you don't need to defend a lion right you don't need to defend a lion you just need to let a light let the lion loose and it'll defend itself and so they charles spurgeon was making the point as well that they use also when people quote him that it's the same thing with the bible we don't need to defend it we just need to get it out there and let it loose and let god's word and the holy spirit do its work because that's what encourages convinces people to trust in christ not reason not human reason so you know my response to this and i've written you know you can go to my website and read i've written several papers respectfully arguing against this position first of all i want to say i agree that only the holy spirit and only god's word can convince somebody to trust in christ right so i affirmed that part of the position however i think they make a huge and i made a huge mistake when you see or when you think that that's mutually exclusive with giving reasons and evidence to believe it's not an either or i would consider it a both and and so i've really come to appreciate a general revelation i've really come to appreciate the god-given reason that we do have and the importance of it and as you'll see at the end of this semester i'm going to do a whole lecture arguing that classical traditional apologetics is biblical because i think this position theological presuppositionalism has a difficult time arguing that traditional apologetics is bad because i'll show that in the bible god moses jesus and paul all do apologetics so if it's unbiblical and unspiritual we've got a major problem apologetic here that kind of seems like something that a physician that would stand outside of apologetics and just say don't do that like how is it considered uh it does yeah and i understand what you mean they might probably say well that's my evangelistic method [Music] and they might still see apollo some use for apologetics for christians who are struggling but you know even i waver at that because i remember being in this way of thinking and wanting to have apologetics to strengthen my faith when i was struggling with doubt and feeling that that was somehow wrong or unspiritual for me to do that so yeah they might be more comfortable saying that's my evangelistic method not my apologetic method but when i was in this camp i would you know consider myself a presuppositionalist so maybe that's what they would do they wouldn't say i'm a presuppositional apologist they would just say i'm a presuppositionalist i hear them say that often and i did as well okay the last one and then we'll take a break is philosophical presuppositionalism and this one this one can be hard to wrap your mind around and it shares some similarity with theological presuppositionalism but it's more philosophical and i'll just i'm going to oversimplify here and this is largely based on the work of cornelius van till so if you're familiar with van till he would be the you know most well-known name in this camp philosophical presuppositionalism also like the theological presuppositions they would say we need to start out both in our evangelism and in our own thinking we need to start out presupposing that god exists and the bible is from him because here's the difference because unless you start there you can't even trust your own reasoning abilities to begin with so that's why they think it's a huge mistake for traditional or evidential apologists to go out and try to appeal to people's reason because people shouldn't even trust their reason in the first place unless they believe that christianity is true let me try to explain what they mean by that again it's kind of that contradictory type thing i mean if you believe in atheism or if you believe in naturalism then why should you even trust your own rationality your own ability to know truth this is kind of like planiga's evolutionary argument against naturalism if you're familiar with that or darwin's doubt sometimes it's called because it even goes all the way back to darwin where darwin wrote several times in his books look if our minds developed from lower life forms like um apes or worms i think he said in one quote if our mind developed from them why should we even trust the beliefs that our mind forms i mean who would believe who would trust the beliefs in the mind of a worm and if we just developed haphazardly through this evolutionary process why should we trust that our minds are actually connecting with objective truth out there right and so this goes all the way back to darwin and other naturalists recognize this problem and so they just take this it's called the transcendental argument kant makes it as well but um they start these types of presuppositional and start with this and say look um you can't even trust your own reasoning abilities unless you presuppose in the beginning that god exists and the bible is from him i.e christianity is true then you have reason to trust your mind your rationality your reason and then you can talk about arguments or historical evidences and stuff like that so they want to presuppose god and the bible for different reasons so my response to this and then we'll take a break i i do appreciate the transcendental argument you might remember those of you who were at we brought robert coons a philosopher from the university of texas at austin here to nebraska last year and had him speak and he actually gave a very similar argument so i appreciate this transcendental argument and i do you know have it as one of those tools in my tool belt but i i wouldn't take it as far as they do that it's the only methodology to use that you can't talk with reason or you can't talk with non-christians about reason and evidence that you have to somehow force them to presuppose god before you can even talk about those things like reason and evidences so let me say it this way let me wrap it up if you can't trust your reason until you accept christianity as true how can you understand what christianity and christianity even is to begin with right it seems like you have to trust your reasoning ability to even understand what christianity is to begin with for you to believe in it um let me illustrate this with an example so what if i came to you and i said look you can't trust your mind you can't trust your reasoning abilities until you believe this phrase first you have to believe that phrase and then you can trust your mind now if somebody would bring that to me or say that to me i would say well i need to be able to understand this phrase if you're asking me to trust in it and to understand this phrase i need to use my reasoning abilities to understand grammar to understand concepts to understand the noises that are coming out of your mouth and how they form sentences and words and they create concepts for me to digest and then decide to believe in all that process is using my reasoning abilities so i just don't think it's it's impossible to even start without trusting your own reasoning abilities does that make sense it seems to me and this is what schaefer said this is why schaefer would respectfully disagree with this form of presuppositionalism but schaefer said look we've we don't really have a choice we all have to start out trusting that our cognitive abilities are working correctly at least halfway well we just don't have a choice you have to to even understand words grammar concepts so we just don't have a choice as finite creatures we're not omniscient we have to all start out trusting that our minds are working right however as schaefer pointed out after you start out then you can circle back and say okay of the different belief systems what best explains why we should trust our minds you know if we have to start out trusting our minds we don't really have a choice but then if you look at you know atheism um buddhism you know all these different belief systems which one best explains why we should trust our minds to work right in the first place and then from that you can argue that you know christianity is the best explanation of why we can trust our minds to even begin with and i think that's a legitimate way to argue but see that's different than what these presuppositionalists are doing now the last thing i'll say is if you want to um dive into this more if you're interested in this maybe you want to write your paper for the class on this apologetic methodology and the differences between these camps here's a resource that i might recommend of someone within the calvinistic camp right as i said before presuppositionism and calvinism often go hand in hand but here rc sprole is a very well-known presbyterian you know reformed calvinistic theologian and he was a traditional apologist and debated presuppositional apologists on this methodology and even wrote a book defending the classical approach and as you can see the subtitle here it's also a critique of presuppositional apologetics so that might be a resource i would recommend to you okay let's go through the class outline and uh in through doing this i'll also be you know making a case for my approach which is the classical traditional apologetic method so it's a really hard to read small font to get it all on one i'm going to zoom in here and just look at it section by section with you but you have this at the end of your class schedule so if you have your class schedule available either in print form or electronically pull that out now and you guys might need to i don't know if you got the email or did you okay i'll let you look at mine while we're going through it so this is kind of the blueprint or the map if you will for the class and it's also you know how i would lay out as a traditional apologist how i would lay out the case for christianity and so we'll just go through um these and you can see what we'll cover in each lecture here in the parentheses so tonight we're doing lecture one what is apologetics and then really you can see that there's three major things that i'm going to be making a case for showing you how to make a case for the first one is the existence of god second one is to argue that jesus is god and the third one is to the third in the order and the approach is to argue that the bible is from god so a presuppositionalist would do it exactly the opposite right they would start here just assuming or maybe making some sort of a case that the bible is from god and then believe that god exists and jesus is god because the bible says so whereas a traditional does it the other way around and i think this makes a lot more sense and you'll see why as we go through this so let me zoom in to these three sections so we can look at them in a little bit greater detail so this is the first section making the case that there is a supreme being which we in our english language use the word god to refer to the supreme being interestingly enough the word god is not found in the bible that is a word that we created in our germanic english language to refer to a supreme being so it's just a generic term it actually the etymology of the word comes from odin thor's dad so odin in our norse mythology northern european languages english german developed from that and the term god comes from that but it's just a generic term that we use in our language to refer to a supreme being the word god is not found in the bible of course the bible wasn't written in english it was written in hebrew greek and aramaic and those languages have different words for a supreme being theos yahweh jehovah et cetera et cetera but god is what we use in our language so i'll be using that to refer to the supreme being if there is such a thing and i will be making a case that there is a supreme being and we'll go through uh several classic arguments for that and also some arguments against the existence of god specifically evolution and the problem of evil now we can't stop there as christians and this is sometimes why traditional apologists get criticized because they our critics will say well it's not enough to argue that god exists we have to argue for the god of the bible and i wholeheartedly agree so the job is not done here because as you well know even among those of us who believe that there is a supreme being there are different descriptions or ideas of what the supreme being is like so muslims will have a different description of what this god is like than christians so we need to go a step further than just arguing that there is a supreme being and that's the next step which is to argue specifically that jesus is this supreme being and i'll lay out how i make that argument first of all was there even a man named jesus who existed in history because there are some people they're pretty extreme but there are some people who will try to make the case that there wasn't even a jesus in history's complete myth made up but i will show based on good historical evidence we have very good compelling reasons to believe that there was a man named jesus who lived in the first century the next question to ask is well did this man then if he existed in history did he really claim to be god or was that a legend that just arose about him later in history and we'll see no there's good historical evidence that this man jesus did claim to be god in the flesh well i think it's legitimate to ask you know if i'm a non-christian i think it's very legitimate at this point to ask why should we believe his claim look if somebody comes up to me on the street claiming to be god probably not going to believe him so what reasons what evidence would cause me to believe that he really is god i'm going to say the key evidence or the key reason to believe that jesus is god is his miracles not the only reason but i think it's the most compelling reason to believe that jesus was god is because of his miracles a caveat here and you'll see maybe why traditional apologists think it's so important to argue for the existence of god first before we go through this procedure is that somebody might say at this point well why miracles aren't possible why why why should we believe that miracles can even happen and if we've done our work as a traditional apologist and made a good case for the existence of god then if god exists we have to believe that miracles are possible because if there's a god who created the entire universe certainly he could cause somebody to walk on water or raise somebody from the dead that would be no problem for such a being so this is a huge strategic point to the approach or methodology of arguing in this um uh manner in this order now this doesn't mean that we should automatically believe every miracle claim that we hear of right just because there is a god that exists that can do miracles it doesn't mean every miracle claim is true we don't want to be gullible we should when we hear a miracle claim we can't immediately dismiss it if there is a god but we shouldn't automatically believe it either we should look at the respective evidence for that particular miracle and that's what we'll do with jesus's miracles so we might ask ourselves well how do we know about jesus's claim to be god how do we know about his miracles and the answer is mostly from the new testament i say mostly because as we'll see there are other ancient documents and other historical sources we have that talk about jesus's claim to be god and his miracles but for the most part we know about these things from the new testament next logical question would be well why believe that the new testament is historically reliable and there's a couple questions involved in that showing that the new testament is historically reliable the first one is what makes us think that we have an accurate copy of the original new testament to begin with i mean hasn't it been corrupted hasn't uh errors creeped into the manuscript over the centuries hasn't it been translated so many times what makes us think that the original new testament written in the first possibly early second century is at all similar to the new testament that we have today first we have to look into that issue do we have an accurate copy of the original new testament i will argue and give reasons to believe we do and then even if we have an accurate copy of the original new testament what makes us think it's not just a collection of lies that the new testament authors wrote what makes us think that they were actually telling the truth and we'll give reasons and evidence to believe that lecture 10. so that's the main argument that all of this will be the main argument to believe that jesus is god based on his miracles it's the same approach that like john locke if you know john locke very well known enlightenment philosopher in the 1700s it's the method that he used to make the case that jesus is god but there are other reasons to believe that jesus is god and so the last thing we'll do in this section is i'll present a cumulative case several reasons to believe that jesus is god but i think the most strongest compelling one is based on historical evidences for his miracles in particular his resurrection the last section then number three if you will is i'll make a case and hopefully train teach you how to make the case that the bible is from god so we're here we're looking at the new testament but we're not evaluating it as though it's something from god yet here we're just evaluating it as historians asking the question if it's historically if they're historically reliable documents the next step after we do this is to make the case that the bible is actually from god messages from god and that will cause us to ask you know well what books should be in the bible if we're saying that the bible is from god what makes us think it's these 66 books that are messages from god and then some just because i can't help myself we have some appendixes some other things added on at the end now those of you taking it in germany at rhineland theological seminary you will not get lecture 15 i mean they'll be on youtube you can watch them if you want if you want to but you're not going to be held accountable for the material so your lectures your at the end of your semester in germany will end at 14. as i mentioned before i want to you know make the case that apologetics is biblical in particular traditional and evidential apologetics is biblical i'm going to show you that god moses jesus and paul all did apologetics i.e they all presented good reasons and evidence to believe that christianity is true so i think we're definitely in our biblical rights to do so as well and then these are some other things that we'll do together two topics we'll cover in the last lecture to cover everything that needs to be done in the syllabus for accreditation for midwestern those of you that are taking it through spurgeon college as part of midwestern seminary so that's the plan for the class you can kind of see what all the lectures the plan is to we tape the lectures on thursday nights and then within the day or two we'll put them out on youtube so you'll be able to find them on youtube and my convincing proof channel and or through my convincing proof website there'll be links to them as well so before we move on to talk about some objections to apologetics does anybody have any questions you know what since we're running so short on time um because we need to go over the syllabus and the class schedule as well so let me take a look real quick in the notes and see how far we want to go with these objections i think this might actually be a good place to stop because i think it's going to take a little bit of time to go through the syllabus and the class schedule so i hate to leave you in suspense but let's cover the objections to apologetics next week and um let's let's dive into the syllabus here so those of you that are watching it online just auditing the class not taking it for credits or anything you don't need to watch this section of course if you don't want to we're just going to be talking about the class logistics the homework and what to do when it's due all that stuff and i'm only going to be talking about the syllabus for the midwestern folks those taking it through spurgeon college those of you that are taking it in germany obviously have a different syllabus and i'll talk about that with you guys directly so tonight i'm only in this lecture going to be talking about the syllabus for those taking it here through midwestern baptist theological seminary so i thought i had a copy there that is okay if you have your syllabus go ahead and pull it out and we'll just walk through the highlights i assume you guys have looked over this ahead of time but i'll try to answer any questions you guys have obviously it starts tonight we'll be in class from seven to nine every thursday here at my house people can park if everybody else comes you can park in the local grade school right across the street that's a little bit easier than parking on the street in front of my house so there's no cars over there at night it's a grade school so you can park in their parking lot and walk over got my contact information there if you need to get a hold of me and or if you have any questions about the class or the content and to email me your assignments those of you that are taking it in person and online i want you to email me your assignments so don't print them off and give them to me email them to me so i cuz i need to keep them electronically to turn them in for accreditation purposes okay you saw the course objectives there these are the things that we're going to try to accomplish in this class i'll let you read that on your own okay so there's three books that are required reading you got the jp moreland book love god with all your mind you've got to read that the second book you have to read is by gregory i think it's pronounced gransel or gansel thinking about god and then the third book is i don't have enough faith to be an atheist by frank turek and norman geisler so those three books you have to purchase you have to read and every week there will be reading assignments due from your required reading that week you have to summarize what you've read it doesn't have to be long you know maybe a short paragraph per chapter and then email that into me by midnight of that day of class so thursdays by midnight there's another book there that's recommended reading philosophy of religion if you want to dive into this more deeply but not required okay in terms of the course assignments then this is how your grades can be broken apart there are two tests they're both worth 20 of your grade so we'll have a midterm and a final the way that i do these tests is that they are essay question exams but i give them to you to take home for a week to do them on your own so open book open note basically what you're doing is you're writing small little papers for me um it's open book open note you've got a week to do them and they're all essay questions and so you're writing your essay you can take as much time as you would like for that week writing your answers to the essay questions for the two exams the second thing then in the syllabus there is your research paper that's worth 30 of your grade it needs to be 2500 words and in this paper i want you to do something obviously about apologetics i think it would be best for you to write on something that either you've struggled with possibly believing or doubts something that you've struggled with or something that you know that others in your life have struggled with or are struggling with so that you can help them so maybe it's how do we how can we trust the new testament maybe we have or you or somebody you know has doubts about the new testament not being corrupted over the centuries how do we know it hasn't been changed or mistranslated stuff like that you could write take a one of the arguments from the existence of god and write on that issue it's really up to you i think it's going to be pretty obvious if something would be applicable for this to write on for this class or not if it has to do with apologetics it's good to go if you have any questions ask me you can write about apologetic methodology too we talked about that the next thing it's worth 20 of your class are these chapter summaries that you need to do every week we'll look soon at the class schedule what i tried to lay out is a class schedule which has all your reading per week laid out as well as the exams when the paper is due so you can put your calendar together from the class schedule which we'll go over here in a minute as i said the chapter summaries just need to be turned into me by midnight every thursday and they don't have to be long basically i just want to know that you've done the reading so a short paragraph per chapter definitely should not be more than a page total each week class participation and attendance you know this was written back when you had to take this class in person but now that you can take it online it's really up to you to watch the lectures so class attendance is more based on the honor system that you're watching these lectures and those of you that are taking it in person if you can't come on a particular night then you just need to watch the lecture on your own on youtube you can make them go faster you can turn up the speed on youtube and fly right through it i think rather slowly and i talk rather slowly and some people it just annoys the heck out of them it's nice though when i teach in germany because most of them do understand english and speak english but it's their second language so they really like that i talk slow in germany because then they can you know process it better okay the next page on the syllabus is just the grading scale you got to get a 90 percentile to get an a 80 percentile to get a b so on and so forth pretty classic grading scale uh general stuff pretty obvious at the bottom you can read through it on your own if you have questions ask me plagiarism is a big no-no obviously class attendance doesn't really apply now that the class is online have any questions about any other stuff let me know okay and then the last thing i've got about 10 minutes left is we'll just walk through the class schedule and this should be pretty self-explanatory but here's some instructions right at the beginning of the class schedule of how i want you to email me in your assignments so email them to my email address there the one freed by jesus in the subject line of your email please write apologetics 2021 because that'll help me sort my email very quickly and put all of the assignments into their proper folders and then when you create your documents like your word documents name them with this a convention last name first name date of birth or date of birth date that it's due month day year and then the name of the document obviously the name of the document would be like the name of your paper when you write a paper or a reading summary for the week would be the name of the document so follow that convention and that will make it much easier for me to sort out because we've got 23 i saw the roster we've got 23 people taking the class for credit so it'll help me to organize everybody if you use that naming convention and organize your material because i've got to turn all that in to the seminary at the end of the semester so here's what we're doing it's just week by week and i want to walk through it it's going to be a little bit mundane but i don't want you to be surprised by anything so we'll just walk through it now you can kind of get a feel for how this class schedule is laid out and then you should know every week what you're responsible for so tonight's january 28th we talked about the lecture what is apologetics only thing you were supposed to have done beforehand was take a look at the syllabus the class schedule nothing was due today and then my lecture was on what is apologetics next week we will if time permits talk about some objections to apologetics but the meat of next week's topic will be starting to make the case that there is a supreme being that god does exist and we'll start with the first cause argument get quite a bit of reading i think it's 80 90 pages but what i've always do is i just break out you know i've got seven days to do it i've got x amount of pages you can easily calculate how many pages you need to read per day and it breaks down to seven you know nine i guess in this case 10 11 12 maybe pages a day but that's easily done that's not too big of a deal so some of the books you'll read from the first chapter to the last chapter some of the books i'm going to have you bounce around a little bit so just use bookmarks keep track of what you're reading utilize this and you can stay organized so what's due is reading summaries on the required reading and then the lecture i'll be giving is the first cause argument so you're getting a swing now how this class schedule works right so the next week february 11th we're talking about the design argument quite a bit of reading again reading is always heavier at the first of the semester and i'll talk about the design argument for god february 18th the next one we'll be talking about evolution and that is often used as an argument against the existence of god so we'll discuss that and how to respond to that objection quite a bit of reading i've tried my best to give you chapters to read that have to do with the topic we're covering that night it's not always going to work out that way but i tried to do that as much as possible and for you to get through all three books by the end of the semester reading summaries are due and yeah as i said we're talking about evolution february 25th moral argument for god's existence only got three chapters to read one chapter in each book and then you have reading summaries too march 4th we're going to cover another objection to the existence of god and that is the problem of evil how to respond to that a few chapters to read reading summaries are due march 11th this is where we're going to transition now where we've made a case that there's a supreme being then we're going to start asking the question okay even though there is a supreme being there's different descriptions or beliefs about what that supreme being is like and how do we know or how do we decide how do we ascertain which of those descriptions of god is correct and i'll be making the case right that the that jesus is god that the god of the bible is the right description of what god is really like is accurately like so we got some reading that week reading summaries are due and then that night march 11th is when i'll give you the midterm those of you taking it online obviously i'll well i'll email it to everybody whether you're taking it in person or online i'll email it to everybody on march 11th the midterm and then you'll have a week to do it so you'll see then when your midterm is due on march 18th you don't have much to read i was hoping not to give you any reading that week but it just worked out that you still have a couple chapters to read that week i think they're smaller chapters so you can focus that week from march 11th to march 18th on your midterm writing those essays out open book open note and then you have to email me your midterm by midnight march 18th so you'll see that's due there on that night that night march 18th we'll transition then into i'll be making the case that jesus is god focusing in on his miracles as the best evidence that he in fact is god in the flesh you'll remember from the class outline that the next thing we're going to be looking at march 25th is evidence that we have an accurate copy of the new testament and that's important because most of our information about jesus is claimed to be god and the miracles that prove his claim to be true comes from the new testament so just two chapters to read that week the chapter reading is going to go down now that we're in the second half of the semester april 1st believe it or not april fool's day we're going to be talking about why should we believe the new testament authors told the truth even if we have an accurate copy of the new testament maybe we have an accurate copy of a bunch of lies so why think that they told the truth a couple chapters to read reading summaries due now this is a bit mundane but i want you to see how the semester flows i love april 8th the hero i'm going to be making as i said jesus's miracles are the most compelling case that he's god but there's other evidences that he was god and so i'll be putting together a cumulative argument cumulative case several reasons to think that jesus is god to kind of wrap up that section of the class a few chapters to read only two that week due april 8th moving on april 15th this is the last and third part of the class where i will show you how to argue that the bible itself is from god make the case that the bible is inspired and it can be understood as messages from this supreme being a couple chapters to read couple then your reading summaries are due april 22nd follow-up question to that is okay if we're saying the bible is from god well what book should be in the bible why do we why is it these 66 and maybe not some others that we'll take a look at so on and so forth the apocrypha we'll talk a bit about pseudopigrapha books that were rejected is not shouldn't be included in the bible in the early church why did they make that decision so on and so forth a couple chapters to read okay and then april 29th is well where i'll make that case that um apologetics my approach to apologetics traditional classical apologetics is biblical i used to do that at the beginning of the class but then i thought to myself you know since i'm such a stickler about order why am i making a case from something from the bible when i haven't even established that the bible is from god yet that seems a bit odd so i move that to the end of the class so after we establish that the bible is from god only then will it be appropriate to ask if how we got to this point is approved by what we've made the case is really from god so it's interesting if you think about it we're taking this path to establish good reasons and evidence to believe that christianity is true and then we're asking then now that we've established that the bible is from god does the bible approve the path we got to get to it so i like that strategy better that order better no reading at all that week is due because i want to give you time to work on your research paper which is due the next week on may 6th you do have one chapter to read that week but i wanted to give you a good solid two weeks with very little reading so you could focus on your research paper so that's due may 6th may 6th is the the week that won't be applicable to you guys in germany so you free to watch it if you want obviously but i'm going to be talking about two topics that need to be covered as part of the midwestern accreditation but don't need to be covered for the class if you're taking it in germany at rhineland theological seminary and i think you'll be you know those of you who tune in for that one i think it'll be interesting to you even though it's we're diving deep into the weeds a little bit deeper just one chapter to read for that week then yeah your research paper is due may 6th okay i put may 13th on here there's no class um but that's when your final is going to be due so on may 6th the last class for those taking it here through midwestern i'll give you the final on may 6th and then just like the midterm you'll have a week open book open note to write in all your answers to the essay questions and then you'll have to email that to me on may 13th now there is some reading even that last week and i apologize i couldn't work it out any other way so you have to be working on your final and doing some reading with some reading summaries that are due that last week so that's just the last week of the semester you'll be you'll be busy that week i apologize so does anybody here taking it in person have any questions about the class schedule or the syllabus i was just boring logistics but we gotta i want to make sure everybody's on the same page well as always if you have questions about the content or class logistics email me and i'll do my best to help

Channel: Convincing Proof

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Id: M_ZOXdECW9s

Length: 105min 14sec (6314 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 30 2021