Live with Braxton Hunter (Trinity Radio): How to Stop a Bleeding Church

All right, welcome to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Elias Ayala, and today is a surprise live stream. I know everyone is stuck in their houses, trying their best not to go out too much around large crowds of people, and so I figured it would be a great opportunity to do a live stream and talk a little bit about some apologetics with a very good friend of mine, Dr. Braxton Hunter, who is the president of Trinity College and the Bible and Theological Seminary, and we'll invite him on in just a few moments, just a couple of quick announcements.

I am going to be having some guests on in the future to discuss various topics. I'm hoping to have Guillaume Bignon, who's a French theologian, and has written quite, I wouldn't say extensively, but he's worked extensively in the area of compatibilism and determinism and Calvinism in general, and so we're gonna be having him on in the near future to discuss issues related to that.

Also, I'm still in the works of getting Dr. James Anderson from Reformed Theological Seminary to talk about the nature of transcendental arguments, so hopefully we can solidify that and get that on its way.

I think the topic of transcendental argumentation and presuppositional apologetics is one of my favorite topics of research and study, and I'm a presuppositionalist myself, and I think there's lots and lots of misunderstandings with regards to the methodology, and so hopefully once I get Dr. Anderson on and do a couple of episodes related to that topic, we can clarify some misconceptions.

Also in the near future, no date set, but I'm looking to get Matt Yester on as well, who is a Christian apologist and presuppositionalist to critique capturing Christianity's presentation or criticism of presuppositional apologetics, of course, within the spirit of charity and brotherly love, right?

We have disagreements with regards to the validity of apologetic methodology, specifically presuppositionalism, and so we'll discuss that as well in the near future. All right, well, if you guys are enjoying the topics that I cover, please feel free to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Revealed Apologetics, and the podcast, Revealed Apologetics, on iTunes and other platforms.

If you want me to cover a specific topic, you can email me at revealedapologetics at gmail .com, or you can private message me. If you're a friend on Facebook, you can private message me a question or a comment or something like a topic you'd like me to cover.

So I'm looking forward to hearing from those who have some ideas. With that being said, without further ado, I'm going to invite Dr. Braxton Hunter on with me today to discuss the topic of his doctoral work, which I think is very, very interesting and very, very useful and beneficial for the body of Christ to hear about, to learn about, because we're going to be talking about apologetics and discipleship.

And so without further ado, I'd like to welcome my good friend, Dr. Braxton Hunter.

Friendship, Ministry Updates, and the Purpose of the Conversation

Hey, Eli, so glad to be here, and it is an honor to be on your show because what many people might not know is that you and I are like friends. I want to say close friends. We talk every few days for about an hour each time.

So it feels like I'm just hanging out with a bud here coming on your channel.

Well, I am joking around, but you're my favorite heretic. So, you know, I'm totally kidding. We kind of joke around. People know me as a Calvinist. Dr. Hunter is a Molinist. He's not a Calvinist. We have interesting conversations about those topics, and I have learned so much from him, and I think my friendship with him is a good thing for people to see with regards to the possibility of people who disagree being able to still have a fruitful and genuine friendship, not just a kind of, I'm just going to pick your brain when I need answers to a question.

We actually enjoy discussing issues, and I appreciate him, and I'm sure he appreciates me, and I'm just glad to have you on.

Well, thanks, man. I'm so glad to be here, so excited to be here, and I hope that anyone who sees this who is a subscriber of mine, I hope that you'll subscribe to Eli's channel because a lot of good discussions, it's not just any other channel out there, a lot of good apologetics discussions and things like that and theological issues.

So people that like my channel, I think will like your channel, even if we have the methodological difference that you're a presuppositionalist.

That's right, and I always make sure I have my daily dose of Trinity Radio. It's one of my favorite podcasts. It's up there in the top seven, right? The top seven, right? So It's pretty good. Yeah, that's good.

So I definitely, and folks who listen to my stuff, definitely subscribe to Trinity Radio YouTube channel. Dr. Hunter is usually on with his sidekick, Jonathan Pritchett who is a very interesting fellow and kind of provides an interesting contrast to Braxton, but definitely they both have great insights and apologetic application that I cannot deny.

You will benefit from if you engage their content and listen and learn. So with that being said too, we can give a quick shout out. Why don't you share a little bit about Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary a little bit for maybe those who are interested in getting a seminary education.

Sure, so Trinity College of the Bible, Theological Seminary is at trinitysem .edu. We are happy to announce that we are the school where you can begin your courses today without fear of the coronavirus as it's all online.

And so you can take your course, but seriously, it is an online program. So if you have the technology to view what you're viewing right now on YouTube, then you have the capacity to take courses at Trinity.

One of the things, Trinity has been in existence since 1969. And for many years, the primary, well, it was always a broadly a theological seminary and Bible college, but for a long time, it was known for counseling.

But over the past, let's say 10 years, it's become more well-known for systematic theology and apologetics. We have, and your mileage may vary, but we have people like me, we have people like Leighton Flowers on faculty here.

And, but we, in terms of those doctrinal issues where even you and I would differ a little bit, we have most of the reading is from the reform tradition. Some professors are Calvinist. So it's, you know, it's, we try to be broad in that regard.

We don't want to just indoctrinate when it comes to secondary doctrinal issues we want to inform. So, but what I've done since I've been president since 2015, and of course I teach some of the apologetics courses, is I found that when I was learning, and probably you, Eli, too, when you were learning, one of the ways that I learned the best was listening to audio and watching video over and over and over again, sometimes on double speed.

And so I said, what we were doing was live streaming our courses like this. And we still occasionally do that. But I said, no, no, no, man, this is crazy. We've got people in 120 plus countries that are students.

And when it's noon here, it's midnight somewhere. So why don't we just make all these recorded lectures that people can put on double speed and watch over and over and over again? So that's what we do.

So we are very much the school for theology geeks and apologetics geeks. So, and we're probably of credible schools, I think the most cost effective that you're going to find for a credible theological education.

So, so thanks for letting me give a plug, but that's trinitysem .edu.

Yeah, and I like what you mentioned broad there. A lot of people ask me sometimes, what is a good systematic theology to pick up and study? And I think the best systematic theologies are the ones that cover topics from various perspectives.

So for example, I love the Wayne Grudem systematic theology, but it comes from a purely reform perspective, which yeah, yeah, which I hold. And I would encourage people to read something like this, like a Wayne Grudem.

But I do like those systematic theologies that cover the broad spectrum. And I think going to a school that is just from the reform perspective is fine. But I also think, pardon, that there's nothing wrong with going to a school where you have broad perspectives.

People who might be listening to my channel and heard the name Leighton Flowers. I mean, Leighton Flowers is out there and he's kind of a controversial figure, always kind of tackling the topic of Calvinism.

But you know what? I appreciate Dr. Flowers. I strongly disagree with him on certain areas, but you know what? I consider him a brother and it's a good example of iron sharpening iron. Braxton is not a Calvinist and he challenges me.

So I don't want to be existing within an echo chamber. I think it's good that when we're looking for an education that we avail ourselves of the different perspectives out there. And if the perspective you hold is defensible and true, then great.

If not, and something has been able to kind of point out weaknesses and things like that, then perhaps that's something that would cause you to go back to the drawing board. So I think that's very, very important.

So if you guys are interested, you wanna look up Trinity College of the Bi, is it Trinity College of the Bible?

Yeah, Trinity College of the Bible, not the Quran, Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary. Because there are actually a million trinities out there and they all have slightly differing names, but ours is Trinity College of the Bible.

Really what you just need to remember is trinitysem .edu. Right, and just one more piece.

Before we get into the main chunk of what I wanna talk about today with Braxton is that there might be people who are listening to this show and people who know me that I come from a strictly reformed perspective.

People might message me later saying, why are you promoting an establishment where someone like Braxton Hunter or Leighton Flowers teaches, you're giving a platform for people we disagree with. Chill out, it's not that serious.

I think as the body of Christ, we can all learn from one another. And so I wanna encourage that spirit, the spirit of kind of just being okay with interacting and learning about differing perspectives and hopefully with the purpose of growing your own perspective and grounding it in scripture the best that we can.

All right, so with that being said, the title of this specific, I guess, episode is How to Stop a Bleeding Church. Okay, and that's where I think Braxton's doctoral work is gonna highlight why we labeled it that and how what he's been studying relates to that.

Go for it.

Apostasy, Intellectual Doubt, and Why Churches Are Bleeding

Yeah, so I appreciate you letting me talk about that. And just on the last point that you made, my favorite professor of all time was Ronald Nash and he was reformed and taught at Reformed Theological Seminary and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

So yeah, but yeah, so it's a little bit click baitish, but not entirely. We are gonna deliver on that title in part because honestly, there are a lot of reasons that people slip away from the church. And again, soteriological issues aside, whether you believe that someone, that apostasy means that someone abandons their salvation or loses their salvation or is not possible, apostasy in that sense is not possible, that the right way to think about apostasy from an eternal security or perseverance of the saints standpoint would be something like just leaving the church, but they went out from us because they never were of us, that kind of thing.

However, you wanna frame that up, okay? What we know does happen is people who were among us, who've, by all outward appearances anyway, seem to be among the faithful, seem to be believers and perhaps intellectually, believing all these things and yet drifted away and became atheist or just became who knows what, one of the nuns that we have so many of, N-O-N-E-S, nuns that are out there and who don't identify as a particular religion.

And so there are a lot of reasons why that happens. And honestly, as an apologist, I don't like to say this, but someone from your methodology could easily say this. The reality is when that happens, there is often a moral component.

It may be that there's some sin that a person wants to commit and they don't like the idea of God looking over their shoulder. It may be that someone in the church hurt them. It may be the problem of evil, that their child died or something, God forbid, and now they are mad at God, but that is dressed up as, I don't believe anymore.

You know, it could be any number of things and it's not necessarily intellectual reasons. It's not necessarily that they weren't convinced on evidence basis that the Christian message is true.

Why don't you define for us real quick, what do you mean by a bleeding church? So when we say how to stop a bleeding church, what does it mean for a church to be bleeding?

So a church that's bleeding members or attendees. Church that we could say that the church in America today is bleeding. This is the language that John S. Dickerson uses in his book, The Great Evangelical Recession.

He talks about, this is also the book that Tom, the term that Tom Rainer uses, and I think his book Breakout Churches or whatever, is that this church bleed is happening. We know that it's happening among young people.

There is, I have all the data on that in my major writing project for this doctorate, but it's also happening, believe it or not, among single women. It's happening among 30 to 50 year old men. It's happening across the board and for a lot of reasons, even if it's mostly happening, or the largest segment is younger people.

So it's something that we have to address. And when I was looking at the journal articles on this, what I found was a lot of the journal articles, some in ministry, some people were saying, well, what we need is we need to make sure that there's biblical illiteracy in the church.

And what we need to do is we need to address that biblical illiteracy in our preaching and foster a community of biblical literacy. Well, absolutely, that's certainly true. And they would mention other things like making sure your children understand what the Bible says about this, that, or the other.

But what I kept coming back to was in many of the cases, if you look at, I don't have it in front of me, but there's a great work, Christensen is the guy's last name, that goes through, he did a multi-year study of young individuals who, from the time they were like 10 years old till about, I don't know, 25 years old, to see what's happening with them religiously.

And what he found was that people in what we could call emerging adulthood are slipping away and much of the time they're saying, now you and I as Christians, we can talk about this under the hood, but what they're saying much of the time has to do with intellectual reasons not to believe that Christianity is true or that God exists.

There's always gonna be moral reasons. There's always gonna be other things that are attached to that. And even my atheist listeners who are friends of mine should understand that. None of us are completely non-biased.

It's a myth of neutrality. So you have to admit that there's always gonna be something like that in there. So obviously the church is trying to focus on the biblical literacy. They're trying to focus on the counseling, emotional aspects of someone dealing with the problem of suffering.

They're trying to focus on people not getting hurt in church or offended in church or how we should respond to that. All that is being done at the pastoral level. But what has not, what I don't think has been addressed properly is the response to the intellectual reasons to doubt.

Now, I know I'm talking a lot here, but let me just finish saying that the reason why that's important, even if there are these other underlying reasons, these other motivators that are not the intellectual reasons of, well, evolution means I can't believe, or the intellectual problem of suffering and pain that means I can't believe, or one of these kinds of things.

When you peel away those intellectual reasons, it reveals revealed apologetics. It reveals what the real reasons are so that they can assess those. And at the very least, those intellectual reasons are no longer roadblocks to affirm faith.

So in wrapping up, I had for years been doing apologetics at conferences and often doing breakouts with church people, trying to get them to use apologetics for evangelism. And I have a book called Evangelistic Apologetics.

I consider myself to be an Ephesians 4 .11 evangelist before I'm an apologist. So I wanna see apologetics used to see people come to faith in Christ. But what I noticed was in these breakout sessions, many of the attendees came to realize they are, despite what they thought, they are able to understand some basic apologetic principles and explain them back to me so they could explain them to unbelievers.

The problem is they didn't have the confidence, they were scared to talk to unbelievers, but then it clicked in my mind one day, I now have a method for giving a seminar that will help people to understand apologetics so that then they can use it, but they're scared to use it with unbelievers.

But we have this problem with bleeding from the church. Maybe they could use it as a form of discipleship with people that are professing believers, but who are experiencing intellectual worldview doubt.

So the major writing project is not aimed at unbelievers in this case, it's aimed at believers who are sitting on the pew right next to you who are experiencing intellectual worldview doubt. And the goal is, can we get lay church people, because the pastors or elders can't do everything, and in many cases, they're not prepared for this, but can lay church people be equipped to have discipleship relationships with other lay church people who are experiencing intellectual worldview doubt?

And so I carried out empirical research to that effect.

Fear, Confidence, and the Role of God's Sovereignty in Apologetics

Now, what do you find is the major fear that a lot of people have within the church in engaging in apologetics? Do you think it's kind of just this idea that I might be asked a question that I don't know the answer to?

What is the thing that you think is preventing a large portion of the church from engaging in apologetics?

Well, there are three things. I think they're very obvious, and two of them are exactly what you would expect from regular personal evangelism ministries that we've been doing in the church for decades.

Those first two that are the same with personal evangelism and with using apologetics, even with lay church people, but especially with unbelievers, is one, they are afraid that they're scared to do it just because of the confrontational aspect of it.

And then number two, they're afraid they're gonna say the wrong thing and they're gonna confirm someone in a wrong belief or in unbelief. And the answer to those two simple issues is the same now as it would have been for personal evangelism stuff years ago.

And it's kind of like my tagline. I always say this. You can be a Christian apologist today, even if this video on revealed apologetics is the first time you've ever heard of apologetics, you can do it today because even if you can't yet be an answer giver, you can be an answer finder for people by going, and if someone brings up a question or something you don't know the answer to, you say, yeah, that's an interesting question.

I don't know how to answer that, but I'm gonna go find out and we'll continue this conversation later. The only reason it's dangerous in evangelism or apologetics to have conversations about worldview is if there's a chance, you're not gonna know the answer to something and you're going to try to give an answer even though you don't know an answer.

When I was growing up as a young pastor, I thought that, I don't know how I got this in my head, maybe from other preachers, but I had this idea that you have to be able to thump the pulpit and say, thus sayeth the Lord, even if you don't know what the Lord does sayeth about that.

And so what I realized is, no, if you can say, I don't know, but I'm gonna go find out, there's nothing to be afraid of. And so that third issue that is unique to apologetics, I think is, and I don't think this gets talked about enough, but for many people, they are, no matter how much you as a reformed person or me as a Southern Baptist person wanna preach eternal security or perseverance of the saints, there are people in your church and in my church who just because of a lack of trust or theological knowledge about this or whatever, no matter how much we preach it, they're gonna think, but if I do X sin, I'll lose my salvation.

Or what if I'm not really saved because of this or that? And many times what they attach to it is, if I don't believe hard enough, maybe I'm really not saved. Or if I ever experienced doubt, maybe I'm not really saved.

And I know from conversations that you and I have had where we differ a little bit on epistemology and things, we would both agree just because you experienced doubt doesn't mean you're lost. And so, but they think, but this is a hidden doubt is if like, I don't want anything to make me maybe doubt because then my salvation might be in jeopardy.

So if you're telling me to have worldview conversations with someone who's gonna bring up questions that might cause me to doubt, that could challenge perhaps my own salvation. And no one wants to protect anything more than their own salvation.

So those are some of the main hindrances to people doing this with others.

Apologetics, Sovereignty, and the Assurance of Salvation

Now, that's great. I wanna make this somewhat practical for the person who maybe doesn't have any experience in apologetics, but they really wanna just, we wanna look at this. How can I say this? How can we frame this within the perspective of God's sovereignty without getting into the issues of debating the different differences there?

How can a firm grasp on God's sovereignty help in overcoming those first two reasons? This idea of fear, this idea of kind of like, I don't wanna say something that's gonna push someone away. How is understanding God's sovereignty so important in approaching that topic?

Well, I think, I don't think it has to be a difference between our soteriological positions. I think it's fair to say that everyone should keep in mind that in any evangelistic, or what we're talking about specifically here, a discipleship relationship between believers who might be where one person might be experiencing doubt.

We understand that ultimately, William Lane Craig, I know he gets a lot of heat among presuppositionalists, but what he would even say that I think presuppositionalists would somewhat resonate with is, apologetics can help us to show that Christianity is true, but it's by the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives that we know that Christianity is true.

And so that's, in some sense, a recognition of God's sovereignty. God's in control. My salvation doesn't rest on whether or not I have all of my questions answered. My salvation is in Him. And in fact, I have a great, if I can find it real quick in my major writing project, I may not be able to, but I have a great quote from C .S. Lewis where basically C .S. Lewis is saying, we apologists take our lives in our hands because we tend to think, we tend to, oh, here it is.

He says, I have found nothing is more dangerous to one's own faith than the work of an apologist. That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands and we can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments as from our intellectual counters into the reality from Christian apologetics to Christ himself.

And I think that's something we remind people of when they're experiencing doubts, we remind ourselves of, listen, the evidence is important and we wanna, and thank goodness, we have plenty of good reasons to believe that can help with doubting Christians, but ultimately your salvation is not bound up in your intellectual capacity to reason up to God.

It's not bound up in whatever evidence we have in front of us. Ultimately, your salvation is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think that's important. The Holy Spirit is how we know that Christianity is true.

Awesome, awesome. And that's important to know.

Jess, I hope she doesn't mind me posting what she has here. I think it's important to bring a scripture into this. And I think this is a good scripture that will help us put into perspective the reality that we should not be so much worried or worried to the point that we don't say anything in defense of the faith or sharing the faith.

Isaiah 55, 11, so will my word be which goes forth from my mouth. It will not return to me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. I think that's very, very important, right?

When we are used of God, when we allow ourselves to be used by God, he will accomplish his purpose, even with our clumsy attempts. Have you ever had a situation? I mean, this is good coming from a seminary president who people would perceive as this guy has so much experience and you do.

But by the way, if you haven't already, you should definitely check out Braxton's debate with Matt Dillahunty, which I think he did a superb job, even if we are completely different in our apologetic methodology.

I thought you brought up so many great points in that debate, but someone who's experienced as you, have you ever had an experience where you just messed it up and how did you frame that? What was the context and understanding that for yourself?

Well, I don't know that I can think of a specific example, but I know that I've screwed it up many times. I remember when I was, this isn't an apologetic type issue, but because of my growth in knowledge as I've aged, in my early ministry, I was pastoring from the time I was 20 years old, probably too young to be pastoring, but I had pastored two churches by the time I was 26 years old.

And one thing that I, I listened back to some of my sermons and I think that's completely wrong. What was I thinking? That's like, who did I mess up by telling them that? And when I can, I try to contact people and say, hey, you remember when I said this?

And they never usually remember anyway.

You ever just preach a sermon and then you shake everyone's hand at the end, and you're like, that was heresy.

That was way off. Yeah, but you might mess it up and it's important to tell people that you know that you, but you know, that's an interesting thing. What she mentioned is true. Scripture is gonna be powerful.

The word of God will not return void. And that, so we always wanna include, in fact, in the, I haven't really gotten to what I did for my empirical research, but involved in that was an explanation to the participants of the biblical foundation for each thing that we were gonna be doing.

Because I think it's important to lay out that biblical foundation and show that what we're doing is not foreign to scripture. This is based in scripture. And because of that, we are only doing that, which we think that the apostles did, or even in perhaps what Jesus himself was advocating for or doing.

So I think that scripture has to be a major part of this. It has to be all over this. We shouldn't do anything or say anything that doesn't, that is in conflict with scripture. And I advocate for us to only do that, which it has some underlying basis in scripture.

Grounding Apologetics in Scripture and the Word of God

That reminds me, you did do a very brief video a while back where you talked about how you were so much into apologetics that you had to kind of step back. I think it was some professor or someone kind of pointed out the fact that we need to be grounded in scripture.

Why don't you share that a little bit? I think that's important for people to know, especially people who know who you are. You're very much engaged in online apologetics and you've done public debates and things like that.

Why don't you explain to us briefly, and then we'll jump right back into some of the details of your study. Why don't you kind of express your journey in apologetics and where you kind of noticed, I need to step back a little bit.

And ground myself in scripture. Yeah, so it'll involve a little bit of my testimony, not my testimony of salvation, but just my testimony in a life as a Christian. I have a close friend, he's still a friend, who was raised the same place and way that I was, but he began to experience same-sex attraction and he decided very early, I've got to choose between living a biblically faithful lifestyle or living out this lifestyle, and so this homosexual lifestyle, and he ultimately chose against the biblical lifestyle.

And that began, again, however we want to frame this up, soteriologically speaking, that led to a degradation in his beliefs to the point that he is now an atheist. And he began to challenge my faith, and so I began to, I was rattled by it, but not in the sense that it really made me doubt, but I wanted to give an answer I didn't know how to give.

So I began reading books, Case for Christ and things like this, read a lot of Norman Geisler, read John Frame, to throw in a reformed character there, but read a lot, read widely, but wanted to learn how to do apologetics and how to give an answer.

Well, by the time I was 26, I was in full-time evangelistic ministry, traveling and speaking in churches and conferences, and so I included apologetics in my evangelistic ministry, and so I was focusing primarily on writing sermons and learning apologetics, but it became disproportionate, and I was mostly learning apologetics.

And I knew the Bible better than the average Christian, of course, and I knew the Bible probably as well as most pastors do, but it was seriously disproportionate toward apologetics, and so somewhere about three or now probably four years ago, I recognized this listening to Steve Gregg.

Steve Gregg has had debates with well-known atheists and has had the theological debates, but what I found interesting was he had, and that's where I found him, was through debates, but he has verse-by-verse through the entirety of Scripture and not sermons, but verse-by-verse lectures, and he goes off on every theological rabbit trail, and what I appreciated about him was he didn't just say, here's how it is.

He'd say, here's four views. I'm gonna explain them all to you fairly, and you decide. I'm gonna tell you which one's mine, but you decide. And so I went through almost the whole Bible with him, all of the New Testament, most of the Old Testament, and somewhere early on in that process, I decided I gotta put down the apologetics.

I need to grow in Bible knowledge and in my knowledge of church history. I've got to fortify myself in the Word. I wanna be like this guy who, even if I may differ from him on some secondary issues, I wanna know the Bible exhaustively like he knows it, and this is gonna sound really ambitious, but I think it's a goal that every Christian should work toward, even if they're not in professional ministry.

The Bible is as vast as it is and as deep as we can plumb its depths and never reach the bottom. It is a limited amount of information that's contained in those pages. That means it's doable. You can have at least a general understanding of the whole Bible, and so I set out on that goal that I knew I would never completely accomplish, to know the Bible as thoroughly and deeply as I could, and then it was only when I was asked to debate Matt Dillahunty that I came back into the world of apologetics.

Now, I was teaching all along apologetics, but I wasn't learning much new information, which wasn't really good for the students either, so I'm back now, and I think with a more balanced understanding of this.

It's not even balanced. The Bible should still take preeminence, but coming to apologetics with that firmer foundation in the Word.

The Dangers of Apologetic Imbalance

Yeah, and I think you hit it right on the head when you spoke of balance. I think people who are engaged in apologetics are very imbalanced many of the times because it's more of this kind of obsession of I wanna get into these arguments, I wanna debate, I wanna do this, that, and the other thing, and they're not actually engaging in some of the other spiritual disciplines, and I say other because I do think that apologetics is a spiritual discipline because when we're doing apologetics and we're doing it biblically, we're obeying scripture and that honors God, but when we're doing that to the exclusion of other, while neglecting other areas of our spirituality, I think it creates an imbalanced, and I think it's very dangerous with regards to someone's own personal spiritual health.

I know people who do apologetics and they begin to go down the trail of doubting. They begin, they're always thinking in terms of arguing, so they lack the capacity to have normal conversations with people.

Everything's a debate. You're at a Bible study and you're sitting in a circle and you're just waiting. You're waiting for that person to spout out something that even remotely sounds heretical so you can clobber it and destroy it, and I think that is something that we need to be very, very careful with.

There's another scripture here that I wanna share as someone posts. Same person, it's all right if you post. By the way, Braxton is always open to taking questions if you do have, so there is one question here, not so much theological, but here's a scripture I'm gonna put here, it's not a question, but Matthew 4, but he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

If I could edit the scriptures a little bit, and I'm just kind of joking, but man does not live by apologetics alone, but by every word, every word, that includes every God-inspired word from Genesis to Revelation, that is our foundation.

Thank you so much for that, Jess. Now, someone was asking a question with regards to your paper, which hopefully we can get into some of the details of that. Here we have, are there plans to popularize this large research paper you're working on into a book at some point?

I think that's a good question for people.

Who are interested in what you're researching. Yeah, because what I really wanna do is I wanna put it in book form, but I wanna add to it, what's not in the paper is the details of how to explain these concepts to lay people.

And I hope that's not offensive to say lay people, but I just mean people who don't have formal training in this. And I wanna explain how to conduct what I did. I did basically in eight hours, so I better just go ahead and explain this now.

And, but yes, the answer is I will release it as a book and hopefully a manual that pastors can use and small group leaders can use going forward. And I should say, as we begin this, I come from a classical apologetics background, but one could easily supplant what I did with a presuppositionalist approach, and frankly, maybe have an easier time doing it.

You mean you could have done, you could have given yourself a break by just taking a presupposition, your research would have been easier, it would have been better to fit together.

Come on, man. Probably so, probably so. So, but anyway, so what I did was I came up with a Likert scale test. And for those that don't know, a Likert scale test is a test where you have from one to five, you have a series of questions.

I had 10, I think 10 is a good number. I had more than that, but one of my, the chairperson for my committee wanted me to limit it to 10. So you have 10 questions. These questions dealt with the person's ability or current knowledge of apologetics or their confidence level in having a worldview conversation with another Christian who's experiencing doubt.