Interview with Ken Smith (Part 2)

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Interview with Ken Smith on Worldview and Apologetics

Thank you. Welcome to Have You Not Read. I'm Michael Durham and with me are David Kassin, Chris Giesler, Ken Smith. And we are back with part two of our interview with Ken Smith, who was an elder here at Sunnyside Baptist Church and a teacher at Christian Heritage Academy.

We're discussing his classes where he teaches worldview and apologetics. And our first part of our interview, if you've not heard that yet, go listen to that first. And we have several follow-up questions and getting more into the details here.

David, take it.

Away. Well, last time, Ken, you talked all about the curriculum, that you went back several years. The CHA said, okay, we're gonna revamp how we do this. And starting in seventh, eighth, ninth grade, so seventh grade you have Old Testament, and then New Testament, and then hermeneutics, and you go into, I think you do eleventh and twelfth, where you're teaching worldview, and then in the twelfth grade you're teaching apologetics.

When we left off, we were talking about how parents can be better involved. And parents at CHA, they don't just get to drop their kids off and get them, you know, like a factory. It says, I expect you guys to do all of it.

You're really depending on your CHA parents to remain involved with their kids' lives and their education, asking them questions, and having their own students teach them some of the things that they're learning.

One of the best ways to learn something is to teach. And then we talked a little bit about kids who aren't in that environment, and that's a wonderful environment. Really amazing to have that curriculum, but most parents that have their kids in public school are fighting a different battle.

Public School, Naturalism, and the Battle of Worldviews

And what is that battle that they are fighting against? Oh, they're, I mean, it's, I think of Colossians 2 .8. That's a verse that we use for Christian worldview. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

You know, in public school, you're gonna get a great education in math and science. If you're just dealing with how to do differential equations or how to do quadratic formulas or, you know, algebra one or whatever, I mean, you're gonna get a good education in that sort of stuff.

If you're talking about, you know, basic chemistry and basic physics and that sort of stuff, you're gonna get a fine education in that. The problem is going to lie in what are the underlying assumptions to those various disciplines.

You know, there are places where I've read, we don't do this, but I know there are places that, you know, two plus two does not necessarily equal four. You know, that's just a social construct. Math is racist.

Yeah, yeah. You know, when you're looking at science like biology, okay, where did life come from in the first place? I mean, that's a huge hurdle to go from, if you take the evolutionary perspective, to go from, you know, random, inanimate matter to something that is now organized and that now is alive.

How in the world does that happen? You know, it's just assumed that it does, but how in the world could that possibly be? So, you know, they're coming at it with some basic assumptions that are huge, that rarely get questioned.

And if you do question it, well, now you're bringing religion into the into the equation. We can't do that. You know, we have to have the, it's not only separation of church and state and government, but you can't bring religion into public school classroom by raising those kind of questions.

And so, you're not even allowed to question the starting premise, the operating assumptions from a philosophical level that is, in their opinion, bringing religion into public school. Right. And, you know, we're talking in broad terms here.

I know that not every teacher is going to be in that boat, but when you look at public school generally, that's where they're coming from, is basically a materialistic, naturalistic worldview that assumes matter is all there is, and natural processes are all that's at work, and the supernatural is automatically ruled out by that.

And so, yeah, that's where you're, that's where you're coming from and all that. So, those are, those are some of the battles that parents of kids in public school, you know, are having to push back against, you know, and that's part of what brought us to Oklahoma in the first place, was for our kids to be in a school where we didn't have to fight those battles.

So, yeah, that's, and those are big, those are big battles, you know. They end up dealing with things like, okay, if that's so, what is the nature of humanity? You know, you're dealing with an anthropological issue here.

What is the nature of man? So, if you go with the assumptions of a secular, materialist worldview, then what are we? Well, Francis Schaefer would say, we're nothing more than, we're just machines. We're just clothed a little differently.

We have different, you know, different appearance, but we're just nothing, we're nothing more than machines. And so, what are machines? Machines are tools. And, which is where Marxism takes, takes all of that.

Where the human individual is really just an economic output. Yeah, means to an end. You know, so all, all of those things, when you start evaluating it, have, have consequences, ideas have consequences, you know.

And John Stone Street with the Colson Center for Christian Worldview says, and, and bad ideas have victims. Yeah, and, and so, yeah, you've got to learn to think clearly, ask good questions, understand that, yeah, ideas have consequences, and try and figure out what those consequences are.

So, that is, it, we had already talked about how parents need to be, or CHA parents need to be involved, public school parents need to be very involved, and know, know your kids' teachers, know what they're being taught, and then discuss it with them.

Well, and I would, I would add to that and say that those, those families need to take advantage of the church, be involved in the church. Don't, don't be just peripheral. You need the instruction that the church can give, and that's where the church has to be purposeful as well.

Too many churches don't teach youth serious stuff. It's lots of activity, lots of activities and fun stuff, and, and a good relationship. You shouldn't have that. But, you know, particularly for kids that are in public school, they need to be confronted with some of these worldview kind of questions that they're not going to get otherwise.

Part of the, part of the problem in Evangelifish has been that in order to make sure that churches don't lose people's attention or support, is that they try to come out and say, well, you know, it's okay for you to believe what you believe.

Just make room for God. Just, just make a little bit of room for God. Let God be in your life. And there's no challenge of the fundamental anti-biblical, anti-Christ worldview, because that would be pushing people away.

It's seen that you're pushing people away by saying, you know, the Bible is likely to make you uncomfortable. And it's likely because it challenges some of your, your beliefs, some of your ideas that don't accord with God.

And so, in terms of getting involved in a church, it's not something where, you know, we go to church because we want to make room in our life for God. Well, folks that take that approach have adopted the perspective being taught in the schools, that God belongs over here in this box, and he, and you need to make room for him in that context, but he doesn't belong in these other contexts.

And so, that's where, if you don't have a, you know, an education opportunity for learning to think fluently and thoroughly, you know, across the board from your schooling, and so on and so forth, a church that will support that and promote that is going to be important.

David had mentioned, you've got CHA, private Christian school, you've got public school, and they're probably exposed to a lot of different ideas, different type of worldview, and parents have to look out for that.

Then you have homeschool, and I think there could be a tendency to maybe shelter or to have them not encounter other ideas, you know? Usually, homeschoolers, it's intentional. They don't want them in a certain environment or something like that.

You can't afford private school, but often it's to shelter from the world. What would be some things you would encourage homeschooling parents, as far as apologetics go, and engaging with.

These different types of ideas? Well, I'm not entirely well-versed in this, but from what I know, and talking with families to a certain degree who are involved, like, in classical Christian education, when you're reading good books, they raise worldview issues, if you stop and look and evaluate and ask questions.

So, you know, in the course of what you are reading in your literature, okay, stop and think, okay, what worldview is being presented here? How does this represent a biblical worldview or a pagan worldview?

So, I think literature has a big part to do with that and just learning to analyze and evaluate, and I don't know of any homeschool person who doesn't believe in the value of good literature, you know?

So, learning to use that part of your curriculum and analyze it well, think through it, and there's all kinds of stuff out there, I'm sure, that helps you do that and think through that. So, it's yeah, it's not just, do you understand the storyline, but what's the...

Asking, again, asking questions, talking to your kid about what they're reading,.

The big ideas in the book. Yeah, what are you getting from this? Are you seeing this element in it, you know? So, I think that's important. Yeah, don't be afraid to ask people who have expertise, you know, for help and ask them questions along the way.

Most homeschool families I know are very self-sufficient and do great research, but nobody knows everything, and so don't be afraid to ask for help or instruction or, you know, how do we, how can we augment this in some way?

Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and the Rise of Anxiety

Yep. We talked a little bit off-mic about how the kids today that are in junior high, these are Gen Alphas, and then the kids that have gone off to college, these are some, or the the Gen Zers, are a little different than us.

Yeah. They're just, they're just different. Not necessarily bad, but there are some challenges there. What are some, some of the things that you have seen teaching Gen Z and now going into Gen Alpha that parents and other teachers are teaching the same, same demographics?

What should they be aware of? Who are these, these weird Gen Zer and Gen Alphas? Yeah, well, we talked about that, so I, yeah, I thought it would be good for me to kind of just, I brought this along, you know, Gen Z born between 97 and 2009, they're roughly between the ages of 16 and 29 now.

Gen Alpha between 2010 and 2024, they're 2 to 16 years old, so that's kind of the age grouping. But yeah, this, this article from Summit Ministries is really helpful. For me, you know, apologetics used to kind of focus on, you know, philosophy and theology.

That's where apologetics really kind of began. And then, you know, along comes C .S. Lewis and Van Till and Schaefer, and they take kind of this presuppositional, evidential approach to apologetics. And now with these younger generations, there's, they seem to be more on the relational element.

However, you can't overemphasize relationship and forget truth. And that's part of my concern is, you know, this feeling that we've got to adapt everything to their felt needs. Well, yes and no. I mean, that's in every generation, we always, we always have felt needs.

Okay. That's, that's a genuine thing, but just meeting a felt need, but never addressing the real issue or getting to what the truth actually is. All I've done is make you feel better, but not really give you anything of substance.

You know, so again, I kind of went around the barn there for a minute, but, you know, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they are different. You know, I'm, I was born in the middle of the baby boom generation. So, you know, I'm 67 and a half.

I'm, I'm old and I admit that. And so my perspective on technology is way different than my students. They don't know a life without the internet. Most of them were given a iPhone, you know, when they, you know, were in junior high or before.

So yeah, they're very much tied to technology and that has a huge influence on them for good or for bad. They have a lot of information at their fingertips and they know a lot of stuff about a lot of things.

But I think all of that serves to, they don't always know how to process that or what to do with all that information, which is why anxiety is commonplace. We've talked about that at CHA for the last four or five years about the, and this is not just a post COVID phenomenon.

I mean, the indications of increasing anxiety among young people goes back several years before COVID ever hit and the isolation of that, that certainly exacerbated it, I think. But there were trends before that.

And then the dependence on social media has only served to make that greater, I think. So yeah, their, their relationship with technology and their smartphone, that's a big thing, which is, affects their, their mental health and their focus on wanting good mental health is a big deal for them.

Authority, Identity, and Inclusion in a Relativistic Culture

So the exposure to social media, as you've seen, this is increasing their anxiety and you can see it among even some of the kids in, in your school as well. Yeah, I mean, there's a You guys have taken some steps to help combat that.

Yeah. I mean, we, we make them turn in their phones every day at the beginning of school in their first hour of class and they're locked up and put away. They have no access to them until school is out.

That, that was a, that was a big step by our administration to do that. And there was always this, you know, what are the parents going to say? How are they going to feel about it? Some of them were a little concerned at first, but it's proved to be a good thing.

And it's interesting how the state legislature took that up not too long ago to mandate that in all schools in Oklahoma. So, so we were a little bit on the cutting edge on that. So that, that's kind of cool.

So anyway, that all the media stuff, social media, digital stuff, that, that affects how they see themselves, their own identity, spiritually, that it is a common thing for them to see themselves as you know, having spiritual notions, but not necessarily feeling like they need to be tied to any particular religious institution, which is why it's easy for them to, you know, like I talked about on that, on this particular test that they, they can score high on religion and score very low in terms of, well, being in favor of big government and socialist ideas, and even socially very liberal.

So they know what the Bible says, but there's a disconnect there between that and how you live your life. So I've got this religious knowledge, but I can compartmentalize that and live like the culture over here, which leads then to, and I wanted to get this statement in, you know, that they, their views on authority, identity, and inclusion, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, this is from this article, tend to view authority as optional, identity as flexible, and inclusion as a core value.

So authority is optional, particularly, I think, not for everyone, but in the generation as a whole, they're very skeptical of authority, and that comes down even to biblical authority. So how, how do I respond to, you know, authority at school, to the role of government?

You know, you look at the protests that have gone on in this country for the last couple of years on all kinds of different things that I think reflect that, and they see that, and there are really no consequences that seem to come out of that in terms of negative consequences.

And so they're emboldened to push back against authority. Identity is flexible. I mean, obviously that comes down in a lot of the sexuality stuff. And then inclusion is a core value. This, that's the, that's the big thing is to be a part of the group.

If talking about apologetics, that last point struck me that inclusion is a core value and tying that with anxiety, humanity in its fallen nature is guilty and separated from God. What a hopeful message to say, the reason you're anxious is because you are separated from God, and God sent his son to reconcile, right?

That inclusion into Christ, there's hope, but then that goes along with the authority. You know, God sent his son, there is an authority, and this is what he says about the world. So then being relational, that might be a tie-in to the anxiety is there for a reason, but it can be a hook and a way to speak to them.

Yeah, that's, that's a good point.

There's a double-edged sword there. I just immediately started to think of, you know, what was the most inclusive, you know, society where everybody was together working on a common goal, and I would think in the Tower of Babel, and our sinful natural tendency is to soothe that anxiety by gathering in a big group and saying, well, everybody else is doing it.

Are you going to throw us all out? And God says, yeah.

Right. Well, in the tidal wave of information that, you know, they're, they're experiencing more as natives to the technology than others are, who perhaps come with a different skill set of combing through information in a different way and seeing it in a different perspective.

If you are living in this tidal wave of information, more information than you can possibly comprehend and handle, anxiety is going to be very much the case with so much information coming at you, especially if there's no overarching authority who can be trusted with all that information.

The inclusiveness becomes the default answer. With all this information coming in, everybody must be involved. Everybody must be brought in because all of us together have to be handling all this information together.

And if we're leaving somebody out, we're leaving information out, you know, and it's sort of, it, it, it, there's a coherency to it, even in terms of its, even though some applications of it on the surface, it just doesn't make any sense at all.

But the, but the inclusivity is ultimately the, the great hope of how we're going to handle all this information coming in is we're not going to leave anybody out because we have to handle all of it. You know what they call a drink where you.

Put all of the drinks in the soda machine together all at once, right? Yes. Another, another part of that, as you were talking about that made me think of, you know, if, if inclusion and identity are so important, that, that, that really makes sense as to why identity politics has ascended.

So there's no particular right or wrong, but I can find a group that fits my, my bent, what I want, what I like, what's gonna, you know, make me what I want to be. So I'm going to identify with them and then I get included in that group.

And so now I've found a sense of meaning, a sense of purpose because it, it fits my, my desire. And so truth, truth becomes irrelevant. It's just what, what do I identify with and how can I be included within that range?

And they tend to call that their truth. They're now speaking their truth or living their truth. This is how I feel. Therefore it is real. And since there is no objective truth, what you feel and you say is just as valid as what I feel I say, unless of course you say that my feelings are not valid, then you're invalid and canceled.

Did I get that right? That's, that's right. Yeah. So all truth is relative except for my truth. Have you found that your students or the generation after them has lost some ability to reason with their using their smartphone all the time and asking chat GPT and, and just looking, looking to the internet and Google for their answers.

Have they lost the ability to reason for themselves or do some of them still have it? It's just looks different because it looks kind of weird to me, but I'm, I'm, I'm willing to say there's some generational differences.

Well, I don't know for sure on that. My tendency is to say, I don't know, we have, we have really good kids at CHA and I'm, I'm always amazed by their ability to think and to, you know, connect dots and put things together when, when they have to.

But I also know like all of us, we're all like water. We're all like electricity. We all want to follow the path of least resistance. And so it's easy to do that. It's even more easy to do that today when you've got resources like AI, like chat GPT and all of that, that you can, you can go to that and I don't have to read, I don't have to process, I can get an AI summary of it and get the bullet points and I'm, I'm good.

Well, yeah, you are, you've got the information, but you haven't had to go through the process of sifting and thinking and putting things together and knowing what, what is good and what is not. You've just accepted whatever, whatever chat GPT says.

It may be perfectly fine. But it may not. And we, we know there are plenty of examples of, of AI doing horrendous things to people and convincing people of things that are patently untrue and sometimes with deadly results.

So yeah, I, that's another, another area of concern I think is in this digital revolution, what AI is doing and what do we do with that? I don't, I don't know that we know enough about it to think clearly, you know, on the one hand, you've got people saying, you know, we don't have anything to fear.

And on the other hand, you got someone saying that you shouldn't touch that with a 10 foot pole. And I don't know, I have my own opinions and I've done some reading and research on all of that, but there's still a lot that we don't know.

And so in, in, from my perspective, if I don't know, I probably don't want to mess with it until we do know. AI summaries remind me of, of a listening technique that I've been reminded of recently. When you're having a very difficult conversation, a hard conversation, you're having some kind of civil, civil discourse, even civil debate.

A listening technique is to summarize what your, not necessarily opponent, but the person across the table from you has said. You summarize it, it says, is that correct? Do I hear you correctly? Yes, you do.

It says, actually, no, here's this. Okay. So my summary, I needed some tweaking on it. Do I understand it now? Yes, you've got it. If you're using an AI summary, you haven't gone through that process.

You were just trusting. Is it so you don't have the ability to listen to someone's whole point. You're just waiting for that chat GBT to spit you out the bullet points. You've lost patience. And so I think you've losing the ability to discourse civilly.

Yeah. And you know, at CHA, we've had a lot of conversations about what do we do with AI? How do we manage that? We know that students are going to use it. So trying to detect it, how do we hold them accountable?

How can you use it as a valid tool, which I think there are things you can do, but I think it has to be very narrowly defined and limited. Otherwise, yeah, you're just giving over your ability to think to some large language model that's going to spit out who knows what.

So that's, I think, one of the challenges we have in education as a whole, but Christian.

Education in particular. I think, like you said, Christian education. And I think the other part of that is the character that's formed in us through Christ. And so patience. You need patience in order to have dialogue of differing opinions.

You can't be lazy. You have to do the work. You have to study and research. You know, so being diligent. Those characters that are shaped in us through Christ is what you need in order to do that type of thing.

And so like you're saying, as a society that's being lost, that's something that you have to teach. You have to teach those things. Yes, how to think. These are like, you know, the logical steps and things like that.

But then what if the child doesn't want to do it? Well, this is why we do it, because two plus two equals four. It's a truth statement. To say two plus two equals five is a lie, and God is not a liar.

We're creating the image of God, so we have to speak the truth. It's hard work. Well, we need to do hard work. Our God is a creative God who worked for six days and then rested. So teaching those principles that were created in an image and have a purpose.

Lets us reason correctly. So we've used a lot of big words and terms. We talked about AI, and there's a lot of information out there. There's actually a lot of resources for parents. It can be a lot to sift through, but, you know, there are, we talked about using your local church to sift through some of these resources that's available for homeschool, public school, and private Christian school parents.

Then you have the parents that are new. They're new Christians, and they want to send their kids to a place like CHA, which is great, or they want to homeschool, or it says, look, where our kids are in public school, and I just want to help them defend themselves and think through these things.

For parents like that who are new, where can they start? You had said that you definitely don't want to just drop your kids, even if they've been in this wonderful Christian family. They, you know, they grew up in the church and say, yeah, that's no determiner of their success.

The parents have to stay involved. So even the people that got this great legacy have to stay involved. So that doesn't, you know, that part is irrelevant. Whether you're brand new or you're third, fourth, fifth, and tenth generation Christian, you have to have to be involved as parents, you have to be involved in your student's life.

Starting with Bible Intake and Lifelong Learning

Yeah, I think, I don't know, what comes to mind off the top of my head is, for those people, I think it's important, what do you believe? And why do you ask yourself those questions? Why do I believe what I believe?

Can I articulate that? You know, how is it that I have come to believe that the Bible is a trustworthy source of not just information, but for my eternity? You know, that I base my whole eternity on what God has said about who Jesus is.

Why do I believe that? You know, how did I come to that conclusion? So asking yourself some of the, how do I know that God exists? Why should I believe that there are only two genders? When the world is telling me that, you know, there's a whole plethora of options out there.

Why should I say there's only male and female? You know, just some of those questions that come up and just, first of all, can you answer them for yourself, I think is a place to begin. So educate yourself and dig and read, be a diligent student of God's Word.

So, you know, I just went through a thing with my seniors about the discipline of Bible intake. We're talking about spiritual disciplines, and so the discipline of Bible intake. So hear it, read it, study it, memorize it, meditate on it.

All five of those things, and there are various things you can do even under those five main categories. So am I doing that regularly? Not just on Sundays, but throughout the week, daily. Am I doing that for myself?

And then, you know, Paul writes to Timothy and says, you know, when you come, bring the parchments, but bring the other books as well. You know, so educate yourself with other good helps that support your understanding of a biblical worldview and these issues of the authority and inspiration of scripture and all of that.

So educate yourself first and be a lifelong learner. Just understand you're not going to get to the end of that path. You know, like I said, I'm 67 and a half, and I don't even know. Well, I know that I don't know.

That's what I know. And I'm trying to always learn. I have a list of books on a note thing in my smartphone. Yes, I have a smartphone. Books that I want to get and buy and read. And my wife and I read books together and read our Bibles together.

And, you know, those kind of things help solidify your faith and build you up in that and equip you to serve the church and serve your family. And so those are, I think, places to begin. So that's a really good segue into the kind of the next section that I was hoping to get to is that kind of keeping it at the introductory level.

Classical, Presuppositional, and Evidential Apologetics

Can you give us an overview of some of those major schools of worldview and apologetic thought, in particular apologetic thought? Kind of go through some of their strengths, weaknesses. If somebody was kind of starting out, what should they be kind of looking for if you were going to organize some of these schools of apologetics, defending your faith, explaining the Christian faith?

You know, you want these new Christians, these parents, to say, what do you believe? Okay. Do you actually believe that scriptures are true, Christ has come and will come again? I mean, do you believe this and can you articulate it?

Can you go through some of those approaches on how people in the past have defended their faith? Oh, gosh. Michael probably could do better at that than I. I am very blended, I guess, in my approach to apologetics.

So I wouldn't say that I'm... I'll talk to my students about philosophers and what they have believed. We'll talk about Hegel and Kant and Nietzsche and stuff like that and where they're coming from. So you're dealing with the philosophical aspect of things.

So talk about that sort of stuff and that's good and helpful. And there are many good Christian philosophers out there that can help unravel some of those things. You know, we're talking about evidences for the existence of God, the cosmological argument that the very nature of the universe itself is such that it leads one to believe that this could not be an accident.

That's a philosophical argument, also an evidentiary argument to a certain degree. You're with science, you're dealing with all these cosmological constants that are these massive numbers and stuff that couldn't just happen.

I mean, you look at the finely-tuned aspects of the universe, the gravitational constant. And so now I'm into the teleological argument for the existence of God. And so then you're looking at science and math and all that sort of stuff.

And then you go to the ontological argument, which is really philosophical about that God is the uncaused cause, that he is the necessary being, that everything has to come from. Nothing would exist without God.

And then the way that philosophers go through all of that. So I don't know, I'm not the best person to say this is what this is, because I really kind of take from everywhere, because I think there are things that are helpful from all of those different aspects of apologetic approaches, presuppositions.

One of my favorite definitions of worldview is from James Sire, his book, The Universe Next Door. And he said, a worldview is a set of presuppositions. And then he puts in parentheses, okay, what is a presupposition?

Assumption which we, assumptions may be true, partially true or entirely false. So a worldview is a set of presuppositions, which we hold. And then he says, and we hold these presuppositions consciously or unconsciously, consistently or inconsistently.

And that those presuppositions, those assumptions are about the basic makeup of the world. That's probably the first definition of a worldview that I ever memorized. So it's rooted in a presuppositional notion.

And I think we operate, either God is or God isn't. And the presuppositions that we hold, we hold them about all kinds of things, and we don't even think about it. And they may be true, partially true or entirely false, but that's where we're coming from.

That's where we start. So it would be very helpful for people to have just a list of key terms in front of them as they start to say, well, I want to learn more about some of these arguments that people have used in the past.

Hockham has used some and some, and some of these Aquinas and some of these guys, and you got to be careful jumping into that deep end. As Jonathan Edwards dug too deep and found a Balrog. It's just, you can really get yourself into trouble going into places that the Bible does not go.

One of the things that I have included in apologetics that I found to be really helpful is just a short section of looking at some of the foundational creeds of the church, like the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed.

I mean, all of those came out of an attempt to try to deal with some sort of false idea, some sort of heretical idea. And so, to a large degree, those early church creeds are apologetic arguments in and of themselves.

So, if you kind of walk through some of those and just deal with the terms and the concepts that are in those creeds, if you just take the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, you're going to deal with the nature of the Trinity and Christology and Soteriology and Pneumatology.

And all of those kinds of things come up in those creeds, and they were meant to be easily remembered, dealing with basic truth. And so, I think those are helpful ways of dealing with foundational biblical truth through that resource.

Keeping the main things the main things.

Now, apologetics, like sanctification, is occasional, meaning there's particular occasions attached to it. So, even as you read through the Scriptures, and for many of the books of the Bible, there's a very particular reason why that book was written.

There's some issue, some concern that is being addressed. We could take the Pauline Epistles, for example. There's an issue that's being dealt with here. There's a false teaching or there's a question being answered.

Something is being handled. And that's what the creeds of the church were also about. And this is generally how the saints, the believers, get into apologetics. You know, you get a knock at the door and there's a Jehovah's Witness.