Interview with Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason

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We want to just encourage you next week, as I'll mention at the end of the show as well, that next week we will be starting class in the

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School of Systematic Theology, which is the natural progression from what we've just finished up in the

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School of Biblical Harmoneutics. Because now we're going to take all of that knowledge of how to interpret each individual text of Scripture, and we're going to now start categorizing all of the

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Scriptures together, and look at different categories. And if we're rightly interpreting the

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Scriptures, we should come to a proper systematic theology. In other words, if your systematic theology is right, you agree with me, right?

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Alright, but that's a joke for any of you new watchers. But what we are going to do today is we're going to have a guest with us, and we're going to be talking specifically about apologetics.

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And we're going to talk about one part of apologetics that I'm very interested in, is the attitude or the character of the apologist.

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And that's one of the things we really want to focus on, and make sure that we are right to check our attitudes as well when we're out there.

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I want to make sure we have a lot of time for our interview, so I'm going to bring right in early our speaker, who is

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Greg Cockel from Stand to Reason. And you can see the website there on your screen, str .org.

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So welcome Greg. I'm glad to spend some time with you and your audience today.

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And by the way, I did get your joke there of the systematic theology. I was chuckling.

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I don't know if anybody else was, but I was. Now Greg and I have known each other.

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You did a conference. You spoke out of my church that I was pastoring at some years ago.

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And we've been able to come in the studio and watch you when you've done your program, when

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I've been out in California, which was a treat. I've done that. You've also spent a night at my home with my daughters. We enjoyed having you over.

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You've got two of the cutest daughters. They were great.

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I just wish that I had some of my magic tricks to do with them because they were having – People say they're angels, and I said, yeah, they're angels, but remember, they're fallen angels.

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Yeah. Well, now one of the things I wanted to have you come on for is because of the fact that, as I said, one of the things

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I think I learned most probably about you is the attitude we have when we are using the apologetics.

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And that's one thing, stand to reason. I want to give you some time. Explain stand to reason because I know that's a cornerstone of stand to reason.

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Well, you know, when people hear the word apologetics, some people cringe because apologetics is defending the faith.

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I mean, put simply. But for some people, it's fighting words, you know. It's like put your dukes up, circle the wagons, pull up the drawbridge, ready -aimed fire kind of thing.

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And unfortunately, this has reflected, I think, the attitude of many Christians who have engaged in communicating the gospel and trying to make sense of their convictions when talking with people that don't agree with them.

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And they've made it into a conflict. And though I understand that there is a conflict of ideas, worldviews are in play here.

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We're trying to present our worldview. We're commending our worldview to other people. We want them to consider it.

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There's a lot at stake, obviously, in all of this. And it's not unusual, given all of those details, for things to get a little bit spirited, shall we say.

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And sometimes it gets spirited. That is, our conversations end up looking more like a

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D -Day than like diplomacy. The reason it's represented, these almost 20 years now since we've been working hard at this enterprise, is a different approach.

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We have the same ideas. We have the same substance. We have the same gospel. All of the content is the same.

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But what we've tried to do is we've tried to adopt a kind of a posture of a genial diplomat, that is a friendly ambassador who is going to provide or present an opposite point of view, a challenge to what other people are thinking.

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But we're going to try to do it in a way that gets people to think about what we're talking about instead of getting them defensive.

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And so our approach, then, does not entail drawing lines in the sand. Not that we don't take our stand, but we're not trying to make it a we -them kind of thing if we can avoid it.

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We're not trying to get into fights. My basic rule here, Andrew, is if I get mad in a conversation with other people, well,

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I'm going to lose, okay? And if they get mad and I don't, I'm still going to lose.

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So my goal is, ideally at least, to engage in such a way that allows me to communicate with clarity, allows me to communicate persuasively, but doesn't get the other person on the defensive if I can avoid it.

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I'm going to try to put a stone in their shoe. I'm going to try to get them thinking.

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I sometimes say to non -Christian audiences when I'm doing public speaking,

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I'm not here to convert you tonight or today, whenever it is I'm talking to them. But I just want to annoy them in a good way.

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That almost always gets a smile from the audience. Because I'm communicating, even at that moment, a kind of a friendliness that I want them to pick up on.

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That is, all right, we may differ. Let's talk about it. As you know from the radio show that I've been doing now,

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I'm in the 23rd year. The principal goal there is to get a piece of my mind and then to have people give me a piece of theirs.

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And hopefully in the process we can have a conversation. We can knock some things back and forth that shows that we are taking the ideas seriously, but we're also treating each other with respect as well.

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And that kind of captures, I think, in a nutshell what we're trying to do in sharing our convictions and defending them, evangelism and apologetics, but using the stand to reason approach.

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So now, I know when we had Jersey Fire, which you spoke at this past summer, which was an evangelism conference, and I know there were a lot of people that when you said put a stone in their shoe, there's a lot of evangelists, they want to close the deals in your words.

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And that's not your goal when you go out. It's not my goal. And I know when you're doing street evangelism, that particular environment is a little bit more aggressive in the way you're approaching that.

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But most people don't do street evangelism. They're just looking for a way of getting involved in a conversation that is friendly and easy and doesn't put them in a tough spot.

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It looks, like I mentioned, more like diplomacy than D -Day. And so this is what we try to provide.

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I'm not looking, and I say this to every audience that I speak to, when I'm in a training situation, when

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I'm trying to speak to followers of Christ and trying to help them be more effective at this whole enterprise, I tell them that my goal in conversations is not to close the deal.

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I'm not looking to lead people to Christ. That's my ultimate goal for them, for that person.

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But it's not my ultimate goal for that particular conversation. Because I realize most people, when confronted with these weighty issues, it takes them time to, one, understand our points.

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You know, there's a lot of misunderstanding about Christianity. Some people equate the word Christian with bigot.

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I mean, that's the way the language has gone nowadays. So there are barriers that are there.

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People have lots of questions. They think Christianity is for fools or for dumb people or for people who can't get social acceptance anywhere else.

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And they don't want any part of that. And I want them to see that Christianity is a picture and understanding of reality that actually fits the way the world really is.

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And it's not just a matter of discovering reality. But part of reality is that we have a problem, and we know that, at least in some measure, something's wrong.

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And in order to find the solution, we have to get the problem correct. And then we can talk about the right solution.

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And what the Christian says is the problem is, is that though God has made us to be in friendship with Him, we have all rebelled against Him.

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We're in a hostile relationship right now, and that's not a good picture. Because we're the subjects.

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He's the sovereign. Yet God has done something. He has taken the initiative to repair that breach.

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And that's the message we want to bring them. So there's a lot at stake here. There's no sitting on the fence for people.

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They're in the game whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not. There's still a lot at stake.

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And so we want them to see that we're at these concerns. We want them to consider them.

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And so when I go in a conversation, I'm just looking to put a stone in their shoe, get them thinking about something.

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I don't think I'm going to be able to take them the full distance in just my one conversation.

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And, in fact, I think, Andrew, and we've talked about this before, most Christians are under the impression that they have to try to close the deal, harvest the fruit and everything, and that encounter, a lot of Christians aren't even going to start.

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They won't get going. That scares them. They're not going to do that. And so consequently, they'll nod and smile and say amen when some path doesn't allow them to do that.

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But in real life, it's just not going to happen. So what I do is kind of to lower the goal a little bit, lower the threshold, just try to make a difference, try to give people something to think about.

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And if they can do that small bit, if instead of hitting a homer, to use baseball terminology, instead of swinging it for the fences, they just try to get up to bat.

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They don't have to even get on base as far as I'm concerned. That's the Holy Spirit's job. If we just think about ways that we can get into play, then the

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Holy Spirit can take our motion in the right direction. That is, we're moving in the right direction.

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He can do whatever he wants with it. The Spirit can move how he wants once we get moving. So my encouragement is let's take the first step.

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Do we have any techniques? And, of course, you know this is something A Stand of Reason really focuses in on.

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I think we do a good job with giving people tools to just get going.

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And then we let the Lord take it from there. Look, if the conversation dies a natural death, you know,

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I don't sweat it. That's okay if I don't get to the Gospel. It's okay if the person doesn't receive Christ.

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I'm not going to try to push the river. I'm going to try to be available for Christ to work through me and then just take a couple of steps in the right direction and see what happens.

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No pressure in that regard. And that's relying. I mean, I think a big part of that is you're relying on the

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Holy Spirit to do the work the Holy Spirit does. Some people,

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I think, sometimes think like if they go out and evangelize, they have to have just the right words. And they've got to say it just the right way or somehow someone's going to be lost and go to hell because they didn't say it right.

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And yet that's God's job. Well, I've never heard of just the right words. Just for people to know this, you know, even though I'm out there doing the radio and telling people how to do things or whatever,

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I get out and employ it in my life, but it doesn't always look tidy. It doesn't always picture perfect, but that's okay.

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It doesn't have to look tidy. It doesn't have to be perfect. Sometimes you stumble into circumstances. You do the best you can, but we know we have a

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God behind us, Andrew, who can take our efforts and really multiply it and magnify it.

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That's the key. Yeah, because, I mean, Paul said it, right? You know, some are going to water and some are going to plant, but it's

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God who's going to do the harvesting. It's going to increase, right? It's going to increase. And I think that one of the things that we, you know, when we get out, we can feel like, well,

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I don't know how to answer someone's questions. And a lot of times, just, as you say, just getting started, people, maybe you've had this because you've been doing radio for a very long time, since just after D .I

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.R .T. was created, right? Just when you started, just after God created D .I .R .T. and then it was

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Stan Therese and radio, right? Right, then I was on D .I .R .T., that's right. But, no,

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I think that what, you know, people will look at someone like yourself and you seem to have all the answers, but I'm sure that you had the experience that you learned these things one by one slowly over time.

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Well, I did learn things one by one slowly over time, and it's a willingness to get engaged and talk things through with people that I think equips us to be more effective next time around.

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You don't start where I'm at now after I'm almost 40 years a

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Christian. But if somebody has that expectation, obviously they'll never get started, and this is why

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I want to emphasize, even after all these years of doing it, I still kind of muddle through things, and that's okay.

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I just want to give people permission to do that. That's the way it works a lot of times.

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And the more you engage, the more you find out what the questions actually are, the more times you stumble through the process, the more you can reflect back on it afterwards and say, gee, maybe

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I could have said something differently. Maybe I could have taken a different approach, and then you learn from the process.

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So it's always a learning process, Andrew. It starts with just simply taking that first step.

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I'm just thinking the last time that you and I went out on the boardwalk after I took July at Jersey Fire, and then we went on the boardwalk there in Jersey.

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I've got to tell you, and you knew this, I felt a little like a fish out of water because I'm not the guy like you are who walks down the boardwalk and engages people in the way that you do.

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So it was new to me. And so I had to just stumble into it, as it were.

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I had to just do something and engage. And as it turned out, as you recall, we had the conversation with those three guys, young college kids that were smarty pants and wild and crazy and making jokes.

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But we were able to have some conversation with them. And as it turned out, you met with them the next night, and some of the things that you said and some of the things that I said, even though I was stumbling around at that point, really sunk in, and God used it to set up another encounter that you had the next night.

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So you never know. You never know. Yeah, you don't. But I think that one of the things

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I'm going to—this is, I think, the key of it. I'm going to put up—this was what happened before you handed out the— before we went out and started evangelizing.

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And that's the key. We don't do this on our own. Does the picture show the beads of sweat on my forehead?

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Well, they don't show the ones on mine because I was behind the camera. So other than the—there are folks who are coveting your library behind you.

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So this time they're not coveting my library. We did have one question. Someone wants to know if the wristband on your wrist is a

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Jersey Fire wristband. Wait, say it again. On your wrist, they want to know if on your wrist there's a wristband they're seeing.

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Actually not. This is—let me show. This says WWBD, and it stands for What Would Buddy Do?

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And my dear friend who has been, for the last almost six weeks, lying semi -conscious in a hospital bed with all kinds of tubes stuck to him, and he's struggling with multiple myeloma, which is a very deadly form of cancer.

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And so it's a reminder for me to pray for him on a regular basis. And I pray for him just about every time

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I see that band. So everybody—the reason is wearing these and praying for Buddy, but it's a good reminder.

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That is a good reminder. I like that. Thank you. So let's get into—first off, what is apologetics?

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Well, apologetics is defending the faith. I guess it's the simplest way to defend it. Peter talks in 1

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Peter 3, verse, I think, 15. He says that we should always be ready to make a defense for everyone who asks us to give an answer that's within us.

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That word defense in English is translated from a Greek word, apologia, which means to make a defense.

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So we don't use that so much apology in lingo nowadays the way it was used in the past.

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But to give an apology in the way it used to be used was simply to make an offense.

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And so if you are—you could be at a certain discipline, and if you're—for your discipline or your points of view, some people might say, well, he's an apologist for this or for that or for a particular party or whatever.

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But we don't use the term very much. It is usually used mostly for Christians to identify the particular task of responding to challenges.

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That would be one way an apologist is involved. He's defending his own convictions, the hope that's within him, by fielding challenges to his view.

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So there are questions people raise, and they'll say, well, what about the problem of evil, or why is

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Jesus the only way, or can you trust the Bible or evolution?

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So there's these standard things people bring up because they're stumbling blocks to them. And so the job of the

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Christian when he's doing apologetics is to try to give a response that will be satisfying to the other person and hopefully bring it back to the gospel so it can give consideration to the main claims of Christ on his life.

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Sometimes that might be called defensive apologetics. Sometimes you have—you take more the offensive, and that is where you're going out and you're making the case for some detail of your belief.

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It's hard, for example, for people to take the claims of Jesus as God seriously if they don't believe in God in the first place.

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So part of what we might do as apologists is we might make the existence of God, given the fact that there are lots of skeptics that are out there in our culture.

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So sometimes we take the initiative to make a positive case, or possibly we're challenging some other view.

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We're saying to the atheists, well, you atheists, you believe in morality, but how can you make sense of morality on your worldview?

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Because there doesn't seem to be a place for that, given a materialistic worldview. That would be maybe a question that an—a person who's taking on the role of an apologist at that point might ask.

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Sometimes we're defending against other theological views.

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So you have Christian lookalikes, like Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons, LDS, or Christian Science, or other groups like that, who to the—look like they're

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Christians, but it turns out they deny some central doctrine, or many central doctrines, of classical

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Christianity. And so part of our job is to defend the truth against those who would distort it.

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So apologetics deals with all of those aspects of engaging. Now let me ask you this, because you said that it could be—they ask these questions because it's a stumbling block to them.

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Do you think more often that they're using these arguments that they're challenging

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Christians with because it's a stumbling block to them, or because they think it's going to be a stumbling block to the Christian?

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Well, I think it depends on the individual. Sometimes when you're dealing with someone who is, you might say, genuinely seeking, they are willing to consider our view, but they just simply can't consider it seriously because of this other objection that's bothering them.

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And if we can give a good answer, then that will remove the objection, and they can take the next step forward to taking seriously what we say about Jesus and the

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Gospel and the wider Christian worldview. Sometimes, though, the people you talk to, at least initially, aren't being that generous.

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They have their own view, and they think they're right. And, of course, that's why people hold views that they hold.

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They think they're right. But they're not engaging. They're interested in tripping the Christian up. So they might be offering challenges to show that the

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Christian actually is the one who's wrong in this situation, and the other person is right. And sometimes those challenges can be very powerful in undermining the confidence that Christians have in their own view.

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And so part of the role of apologetics, and I would say, Andrew, in my, I guess

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I'd have to say my professional life, what I do as a, for lack of a better word, professional apologist, is more building up the

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Christian and giving the follower of Christ confidence in his own convictions for the times he may doubt, than it is persuading non -believers.

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Both are in play here, but I found out that I think apologetics has a greater impact to encourage and stabilize the

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Christian in his views than it has in persuading the non -Christian. It does have a role as well.

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Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up, because I'm going to bring that up in a minute on something different. But it's good because this does, there are two types of people that sometimes we get,

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I mean you have people on the radio who will ask you questions. I just had, the weekend before last, out on the boardwalk, open air preaching, and had a guy who was asking me about Q.

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Now you're familiar with Q, but for those who aren't in the audience, Q is a document that some of the liberal theologians believed is a single source that was first written at all the

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Gospels, then wrote from that. Now I had a gentleman on the boardwalk who was asking me about Q and the single source theory.

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He has read Bart Ehrman's book, Misquoting Jesus, and so that's where he was getting his information.

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Now the difference was in his manner of question. He was asking it because he's been studying this in his college for two years, and this was what his understanding was, and he wanted to get my understanding and how what

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I believed related to that because he realized I had a very differing view because I said that Jesus was

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God. That's different than a guy that just shouts it out out of anger and is more looking to see if he can catch the open air preacher.

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I'm going to answer those differently. Yeah, right. In Q, just for people's information, it's a theoretical document.

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But Mark seems to be the first Gospel, and so there are some things that you find in Mark that you also find in Luke and in Matthew.

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But then there are also sayings that are common in Luke and Matthew that you don't find in Mark. And there's a sense that since they agree on these particular points, that maybe there's another document they were drawing from, and this is where you come up with the concept of Q from the

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German Quell, which means source. And I don't have any difficulty ultimately with Q.

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Maybe there was a tradition or something written down where the disciples collected this information.

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Luke says that he researched everything carefully, so that's not necessarily a problem for us. But sometimes

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Christians might not have heard of this thing, and then if there's an aggressive questioner, it might trip them up.

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Yeah, and that's what we had. We had a lady who had never heard of it, and I had to then explain what it is.

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Now his argument from what he thought was that this discredits that the Bible was written by God, which we ended up discussing.

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But the thing that was funny about it, because this was the day after President Obama had spoken at the

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Democrat National Committee, so what I asked him was, I said, because part of his argument was there had to be a single source because of the similarity.

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So I asked him if the President spoke last night, and he said yes. And I said, well, did the

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Washington Times report what happened and what he said? And the gentleman said yes.

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And I said, what about the USA Today and the New York Times and the Boston Globe? They all reported similarities, and yet they didn't get it from a single source.

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They were all eyewitnesses to the same event. And so it's possible that if that happens today, there's no reason that that can't happen with the gospel writers.

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That's right. There is nothing about the Q hypothesis that in itself undermines anything about the credibility or authenticity or the truthfulness of the gospels.

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This is somewhat of a tempest in the teapot. It's an interesting issue to academics, but some who want to make it out as some kind of charge against the reliability of the

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New Testament, they're just barking up the wrong tree on this one. Say that again,

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Greg. I didn't hear that. Your illustration with the President's speech at the

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DNC is a very good illustration to demonstrate that. Thank you. It was funny because he was trying to argue that he believes things on scientific grounds, and I said, but wait a minute.

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Q has never been found. So it's not even a historical ground that you're on. To quote a subtitle of a book that I heard, you have feet firmly planted in midair, which is the subtitle to your book on relativism.

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But that's really what he did. He's basing his whole argument on that we can't know the

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Bible based on something we don't have. That's it. It's really silly. And you're right to point out for these people that claim they want to get all their information from science, none of this has anything to do with science.

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That's a different discipline meant to measure a different kind of thing. Science is not used to measure history, period.

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You don't even know what you had for dinner yesterday based on science. You find that out in different ways, but not in anything scientific.

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I ask people when they say that they believe only in science, I ask them if they can prove scientifically that George Washington lived and was our first president, because we get that historically, not scientifically.

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But let me get to, we were talking about the apologetics. Now, you said that when you are sharing on the radio, mostly what you're doing is sharing and encouraging the faith of believers, which is often what

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I find with that. Now, there's some different views of apologetics. And I know that, so what are the different schools?

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I know that there's presuppositionalism, there's evidentialism.

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I believe there may be some others, but those are two main ones I know. Can you define them and explain the differences?

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This is going to be a little harder. Sometimes you hear about classical apologetics, you hear historical apologetics, you hear the one -step approach, the two -step approach, and there's lots of ways that you can slice and dice it.

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But when people ask me the question that you just asked me, Andrew, I basically tell them there are only two main schools of apologetics.

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There is what's known as presuppositional apologetics, and then everything else.

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And because all the other categories, evidential apologetics or historical apologetics or classic, all are very similar to each other in their basic approach, whereas presuppositional apologetics is very different.

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Now, it isn't necessarily different if you were a presuppositionalist. You didn't know what to look for.

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You wouldn't necessarily know what was going on. I think of this as a tempest in a teapot because I'm not a presuppositionalist in my approach.

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A presuppositionalist holds that ultimately, let me back up for a second, and say that only

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Calvinists or those who believe in Reformed theology are presuppositionalists.

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And so in their basic theology, they start with God because God is the supreme being.

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He's the one who secures our salvation. He's the main mover. He's the one who rescues us, so he's the center of our theology.

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You always start with God. And so what they are trying to do is then be consistent in their apologetic approach, and that is they want to start with God in their apologetics.

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If they don't start with God, if they start with just basic evidences, if they start with reasons, say, and they go to a person and say, let me give you reasons why you should believe in God, on their view,

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I'm just reflecting their view, I'm not agreeing necessarily on their view, is you are putting the nonbeliever who is the rebel against God, you're putting him in the seat of the judge, and you're putting

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God in the dock as if he's the person being judged by using the evidence and the reason of the nonbeliever, and they think that's topsy -turvy.

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No, the believers, the one who's in the docket, God is God, God is the judge, and the right approach to apologetics is to show the believer that he is in,

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I'm sorry, to show the non -Christian that his problem is that he's in rebellion against God, and even when he uses reason and logic to try to rebel against God, he's got the kinds of tools that wouldn't even be useful any way if God didn't exist in the first place.

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And now, this is called the transcendental approach, that is, in order for there to be reason or logic, in order for anybody to trust their five senses, to give them information about science, in order for there to be a world at all, there has to be a

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God to make it work. Another way of putting it is you have to presuppose

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God's existence for anything else in the universe to make sense. Now, by the way,

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I think that's a good argument, and I use it a lot, but notice on that approach, if you don't start with God, if you start with the non -Christian and where he's at, and with his rebellion, then you're somehow dishonoring

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God, because on their view, you're using reason to judge God instead of God as the main judge.

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To me, that's like saying you're putting grace above the Word of God if you have to understand grammar in order to read the

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Word of God. No, the Word of God is still the ultimate authority, but God has given us some tools that we need to understand properly before we can even figure out what the

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Word of God says. This is one reason that I'm not a presuppositionalist. I'm an evidentialist.

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I try to start where people are at with their views and their understanding, and then work from there.

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And I have a whole host of resources that I can use in order to do that. But I put it this way.

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If people don't know the refined differences between presuppositionalism and everything else, some evidential approach,

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I say, well, look it. Just look at the way the apostles and Jesus indicated their convictions.

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Now, it turns out that the apostles and Jesus didn't argue for the existence of God, but that's because that wasn't a question that was being asked.

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They did use evidences quite aggressively. Jesus said, look it, believe me, because of the words

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I speak. There's a self -evident quality to the power of Jesus' words. Or, believe me, because of what

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Moses said. They're prophetic words that were uttered that supported Jesus. Or, Jesus said, believe me, because of what

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John the Baptist said. Or, believe me, because of the miracles that I work. So there are lots of different appeals that Jesus made to people.

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Indeed, when you look at the Gospel of John, you'll see at the end of the Gospel, chapter 20, John says, many other signs and wonders

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Jesus performed that I didn't include in this book. But these I included in order that you might believe that Jesus is the

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Messiah, the Son of God, and in believing you'll have life. So it's almost as if John is saying,

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I have laid out all of these compelling evidences. Luke calls it many proofs in the book of Acts in the first chapter.

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They laid out all of these evidences to give credibility to the message.

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Now, if Jesus did that, and the apostles did that, I don't know why I can't do that in the very same fashion.

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And that's what I tried to do. Well, now, one thing I know that I could disagree with on that is the fact that since I went to a seminary that would definitely say they're not

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Calvinistic, yet they taught presuppositional apologetics. So not all Calvinists are those that would claim to be

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Calvinists. Some still hold to it. That was not reformed, but they not only taught by way of giving the information about presuppositionalism, but they actually promoted it.

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Yeah, they taught presuppositional apologetics, but they definitely would not say that they're

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Calvinistic, or they're definitely not reformed. Presuppositionalism is the right, appropriate,

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God -honoring way to do it, and the other, evidentialism, is not correct. They wouldn't say that evidential's not correct.

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I never heard that. But the form of apologetics they would teach was presuppositional.

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Okay, well, I think presuppositionalism, too, in a lot of the techniques, the transcendental argument, the preconditions of intelligibility,

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I mean, these are different phrases that are used to describe it. I think that they're really good and useful. But I think you're really going to be a— real presuppositionalists are committed to presuppositionalism in principle as opposed to an evidential approach.

35:56

But anyway, that's interesting to hear. Well, yeah, I mean, I do— you know, there are times where I do like to be able to just go to Romans 1 and explain to people, you know, that you get some lost person.

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They know God exists, and, you know. And so a question that came into the chat room is, have you encountered atheists that believe that morality has evolved like anything else?

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And how do you deal with that perspective? Yeah, but this is where a very important clarification needs to be made.

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What do you mean by morality? Do you mean right and wrong as— and this, what

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I'm going to say, may sound a little bit complex, but I'll try to explain it for everybody. Do you mean that right and wrong are actually qualities of an act itself?

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Or are you saying right and wrong are merely the judgments that we make as subjects, make about an action?

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Now, here's why distinction is important, because the difference between objective morality and relativistic morality is the distinction

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I just made. If we say grass is green, do we mean that the grass actually is green?

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Whether I got my—if I got my eyes—or maybe I believe it's orange, it's still green, because that's the nature of the color of grass.

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Or, when I say grass is green, am I just saying what my impressions are, and everybody's answer to this is just as good as anybody else's?

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If grass—if the greenness of grass is in your mind, then people could have different ideas about the color, and they're just as right as anybody else.

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If the green is in the grass, well, then that's an objective quality of the grass, and people who disagree are wrong.

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That is, they're mistaken about that. Now, we're going to transfer that notion to morality. When I say rape is wrong, is rape actually wrong?

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Is rape itself wrong? So wherever the rape goes, whenever it happens, whatever time of history, it's always wrong, regardless of what any particular person thinks about it.

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Or is—when I say rape is wrong, I'm just describing something about my own belief system, and that's as far as it goes.

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You might believe rape's not so bad. I can't say you're wrong, because neither of us are talking about rape.

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We're talking about ourselves. Now, if morality turns out to be simply relativistic, up to the individual, like I just described, well,

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I think that morality can be, at least, explained by evolution.

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But you see, that's not the morality that needs explaining. When people complain about the problem of evil in the world, they're not talking about relativistic morality.

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They're talking about real evil in the world, people doing things that are actually wrong.

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And that kind of morality, evolution can't touch that. Because no recombination of molecules over time can make an act into something bad.

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The act is bad in itself, or it's not. Recombining molecules over time could make us feel like things are wrong, but they can't make the other thing wrong.

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And so, if a person wants to hide behind, or invoke evolution as a cause for morality, the best they can come up with is a relativistic morality.

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Well, that's just relativism. You can't come up with objective morality. That is, where the moral quality, the virtue or the vice, is an inherent part of the action itself, and not just in the mind of the believer, or the non -believer, for that matter.

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So, this is the difficulty. If a person wants to say that morals are relative, well, he's welcome to that.

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He can come up with all kinds of explanations, including an evolutionary one, to explain why people believe in morality.

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But if you want to say that there actually is a problem of evil in the world, that some acts are right and some acts are wrong, in themselves, no evolutionary characterization.

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You can't say that. None. Because evolution is a materialistic process. And if a thing is right or wrong, the right or wrongness of it is not material.

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It isn't a material quality. It is an immaterial fact, or an immaterial detail, that has nothing to do with molecules and the laws of physics.

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It has to do with something completely separated from the physical realm. So, we're really talking about two entirely different kinds of things, if the thing under discussion is objective morality.

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And that's the hinge pin right there. Yeah, I mean, once they get there, they can't say rape is wrong.

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The question I always ask is, was Hitler wrong? And it's funny, because some people don't want to answer that, because if they say, yes, he's wrong, they can't say, well, because his society accepted what he did.

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And so, they get stuck then. Yeah. On an evolutionary perspective, what does it mean to say that rape is wrong?

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All it means is that evolution has influenced my feelings to a point where when

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I see a rape, I feel this certain thing that I label wrong. Notice that conversation

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I'm only talking about myself. I thought when people were talking about rape being wrong, they were talking about rape.

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Not about their feelings. This is the difference between objective morality and subjective or relativistic morality.

41:33

Which, yeah, and that change is why we're seeing discussions in our culture right now of homosexuality, which you just wrote a piece on how to discuss that issue with people.

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Yeah. But I think even in a couple of years, pedophilia won't be a big issue there.

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We're already seeing people try to make that acceptable. Yeah, well, you know, I had a conversation, a debate for three hours on national radio,

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Andrew, with the American atheist Michael Shermer, a skeptic magazine guy. And he argued that he was, or he asserted that he was, believed in objective morality.

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And then he said, you know, there was a time in history when we believed that homosexuality was objectively wrong.

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And now we think it's objectively okay. Now what he didn't realize what he was doing when he made that explanation is that not have been describing objective morality.

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He was only describing subjective morality at that time. That for a period of time, history as human beings, we believed it was wrong and we labeled it wrong, and now we label it right.

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But homosexuality is neither right or wrong, we just have different ideas about it. So in claiming to be an objectivist, he was actually describing himself as a relativist, and he didn't even know it.

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That's what was amazing to me. Now I want to ask you, I know time is a little bit short, we're going to go a little bit long, but, you know, people can listen to your radio program, listen to your

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CDs and DVDs, and think they won't have the ability to defend the faith.

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If you have a relatively new, maybe young believer, just came to the Lord, can they be somebody who can go out and defend the faith of Christianity?

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Sure they can, but they can only do it as a young believer with the minimum resources.

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They can still speak out. For example, every person who is a born again

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Christian has been regenerated. That is, God has come into their life and changed it.

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This change to life is an evidence of the reality of God. So if a person became a

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Christian ten minutes ago, they are now a person possessing the

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Holy Spirit and are beginning to walk in a newness of life. This is a story that can be told.

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Keep in mind, Paul, who was transformed, radically converted on the road to Damascus, used his testimony in the

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Book of Acts, that as he's confronting the Jews who are not believers, he told of his own experience.

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So he's starting out with his own experience, and he's using that genuine experience of transformable life before God as an evidence, as a defense of his conversion.

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There's no reason young believers can't use what they understand at that point. Now, if they get asked questions they can't answer, then they can bone up and learn some things, and then they can bring more to the table by way of giving an accounting of their convictions.

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But anybody can step up. And I know people that if they don't know what to do or what to say, look, they can just engage the other person and just ask questions to gain information about the other person's point of view.

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They can ask what that other person's point of view is and why they hold the view that they hold.

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So they can ask them for their view and their reasons for it. And even if they go no further, they're beginning to get an education about what things are issues with people as they talk about spiritual things.

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It's a great place to start. Yeah, well, you know that I love questions. I mean, that's a big part of how we teach people to evangelize.

45:24

Now, one person in the chat room is mentioning the card that you have. So I should mention it. You have a card that you just produced on homosexuality, on how to handle conversations on that.

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And that's at str .org. Yeah, it's on same -sex marriage. It doesn't address homosexuality per se.

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It addresses the question of same -sex marriage as a policy issue. And yes, my whole point of view and all my responses to objections regarding same -sex marriage is all on, it's not even quite three, eight and a half by eleven.

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It's a smaller, like eight by ten or something like that card, glossy on both sides.

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It's the kind of thing you might see in some stores where you could study math or Spanish vocabulary or something like that.

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It's all on one card. All the most important things on same -sex marriage available through Stand to Reason.

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Yeah, and it's important the differentiation you're making there. Homosexual marriage, and you've made this point, homosexuals get married all the time today.

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There's nothing that stops them. It's the same -sex marriage that's the difference. Yes, it's whether the government ought to say by an act of law that there is no difference in their eyes between heterosexual unions and same -sex unions.

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That's what's going on here. And I think there is a huge difference between those, personally for me as a

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Christian and as a citizen. And so I don't want the government stepping in and declaring things to be equal that aren't equal.

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There's a unique role that heterosexual unions play in our society, and I think if we don't continue to emphasize that unique role, then that's going to undermine the institution of marriage.

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It's a different discussion, of course, but I give some of the reasons in that key card on same -sex marriage that's available at str .org.

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Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that I think that people, when they're dealing with this,

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I always find it interesting that when it comes to the marriage issue, that's a religious issue. They want a separation of church and state, but they don't seem to care when it's the state getting involved in the church.

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But that's really what separation of church and state was about. Yeah, well, look, if marriage is a religious issue, then the state should be involved in any way, shape, or form.

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It's just a religious issue. I think it's a cultural issue. God has built culture in a certain way. He's made human beings in a certain way.

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He made them, Jesus pointed out. And this dictates what families look like, because males and females make kids.

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And families, started by marriages, are the cornerstone of society. And there is an interest that society has in protecting the corner, the building blocks of society, and that's why governments legislate on this, to both privilege and protect those unique relationships.

48:14

That's right. That's right. Well, you know, we've been finding with these interviews, Greg, the time goes so fast.

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I still have more questions, but maybe we'll end up having to do that another time.

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But your website, the ministry is standtoreasonstr .org.

48:31

There's a lot of materials out there that will help you to learn to be a better ambassador for Jesus Christ.

48:38

So, Greg, we thank you for being on with us. Well, it's great talking with you, Andrew, and it's great being available to your people as well.

48:44

Thank you. Thank you. And for those who are students of the Striving for Eternity Academy, you would be able to, those that have enrolled in the academy, you'd be able to join us in a few minutes on a conference call where Greg will be on.

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So we're going to be on that about five minutes after the show. That's one of the benefits of enrolling in the

49:07

Striving for Eternity Academy. To do that, you just go to the website that you see on the screen, strivingforeternity .org.

49:13

Go to the academy page. There's some information there. There will be two different classes you can sign up.

49:19

We will be starting next week the School of Systematic Theology. This is where we're going to take all the different categories.

49:28

Who is God and why do we say that Jesus Christ is God? Where do we get that? What is the Trinity? What role does the

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Holy Spirit have in our lives today? What's the Bible? When we were talking earlier about Q, we're going to discuss things like that.

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If you're wondering about the different things of what's the church, what defines the church, what's the role of the church, all those things are questions that we answer in a systematic theology.

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That's what we're going to do starting next week. We're going to start with a very, very important one. The first three lessons are probably the most important because I think that all of our theology is going to be grounded if we have a proper understanding of the attributes of God.

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That's what we're going to spend the first three lessons on, is understanding who God is. I encourage you to join us next week with that so that you'll be able to better strengthen your faith and better be able to have an answer for the faith that is within you.

50:26

For those who are regular students of the academy, as we always do at the end of our program, we want to be encouraging you to encourage others.

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As we do every week, we want to put another person, a brother or sister, that we put out there for you to encourage.

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As a reminder, we do this because often what happens is people say encouraging things about people after they are home with the

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Lord. So many people would love to get the encouragement before they go home with the

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Lord. We want to encourage you to do that. We should be doing that with everybody, but we want to always encourage you to be doing that with one individual that we bring up each week so this week's

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Brother of Encouragement is Michael Guilford. Now Michael, I met him at the

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Reason Rally. He and his wife, his cousin, and just a really great spirit that this guy has.

51:19

Some of you may know him. He does do some of the organization for online on Facebook and getting people to know about the

51:27

Academy show. But he started up a new website that you see there called ChristDied .com

51:33

and he's trying to start up a new website and he's trying to use it as an evangelistic tool.

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He's just always trying to find new ways to reach out to people to let them know more about Christ and answer their questions.

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And so he's constantly looking for new things he could be doing with all the resources he has.

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And it's one of the things that encourages me about him because he's always asking questions. He's like a sponge, always wanting to learn more, always wanting to know more.

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It's like he can't get enough of the Bible. And it's great to see a young man like that that just loves the

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Lord and loves the Word of God and just wants others to get that knowledge that he's learning.

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And so I encourage you to go on Facebook. It's probably up there already. But if you go onto the

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Striving Fraternity group on Facebook, I'm sure that it's already posted so you can tag.

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He's already tagged so you can quickly find him on Facebook. You can also go to his website, ChristDied .com,

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and you can check him out and see what he's putting out there. So we look forward to seeing you guys next week.

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We really look forward to starting the class. If you haven't enrolled yet in the academy, I encourage you to go online and enroll.

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You'll get the syllabus, which is one of the things you get. You'll get all of my notes for the class.

52:59

This one will be different than the School of Biblical Harmonetics because now you're going to get some fill -in -the -blanks and some homework.

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But the other advantage is you're going to get some personal e -mails that we'll be sending out with some extra training and extra resources for you.

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So I encourage you to do that and encourage you to go out and strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.