The "And" Movement, Abortion & Social Justice, then Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, & WL Craig

Greetings, welcome to the Dividing Line. On the program today, I want to briefly touch on a video that just dropped, I think, yesterday. I attempted to download it, couldn't log in for some reason, I don't know why, so I'll have to play it off the live feed.

Social Justice Language, Critical Theory, and the Problem of “Woke” Categories

But this is from what's called the And Campaign, and it will help us, I think, to think through some things. There's just so much of this in our experience. Yesterday, for example, I attempted to have a conversation with a brother on Twitter, and he had been posting a number of tweets that were filled with social justice language, with a lot of what I would consider to be historical revisionism, emphasizing certain aspects of history, ignoring other aspects of history, reading history through a lens that is meant to promote a particular response today.

And so I asked a simple question. I asked the individual who's Black, at least according to what was on the screen, sometimes you can't tell, but does he believe there's such a thing as Black racism, that there are Blacks who experience the sin of racism?

And could he give me some examples? I only asked the question for one simple reason. As a Christian, and the man claims to be a Christian, it is obvious and plain that if it is a sin, then it is the common malady of all of mankind.

If we look at the sin of pride, we can see men and women of every ethnicity and every possible background engaging in pride. If it's anger, same thing. Sexual lust, same thing. Murderous intent and heart, same thing.

And so if racism is a sin, then every individual can partake of that sin. For example, you might say, well, how could someone who is super rich, how could they, for example, experience envy? Well, some of the most envious people I've ever met were the super rich.

Well, but you need to have power. No, not at all. You can have hatred in your heart for somebody else based solely upon their race, no matter what color your skin is. So the whole reason I asked the question is that if someone responds to that question by saying there is no such thing, then I know I'm talking to someone who's functioning completely on a worldly basis.

They're not functioning on a biblical basis at all, so I have to make a decision. Do I even want to invest the time? I'm talking with a religious person, but a person who does not have a sound biblical foundation.

If they come back and say, of course, well, now we can discuss the biblical concept of racism and differentiate it from the redefined weaponized version that is thrown about with such abandon today that it has no meaning.

It just simply means you're not progressive enough. That's all it means. It has no meaningful connection to any biblical categories at all. It's just you're not as progressive as I am, therefore you're racist.

And of course, it has lost any meaningful opprobrium that should be attached to the term. This is one of the many instances where our language is being turned against us by those who are seeking, through the use of critical theory, to chip out from the wall that forms the very substance of our culture, that which binds the bricks together so they can all fall into a heap and be rebuilt into something else.

And I can assure you when it's something else, it'll be rebuilt by people who don't care about liberty or freedom or justice in any meaningful categories whatsoever. And so unfortunately, the brother would not answer my question.

He would only respond with lengthy tweets about the interaction of historical forces and terms of oppression and stuff like that. And I wanted to, I so wanted to respond going, so you really think if you asked an apostle of something, if someone could commit a sin that they'd respond as you responded?

No, they wouldn't have. But I didn't. I just said, okay, have a nice day. So no matter what we say today, and as I recall, I had responded to, oh, I forget the tweet that I had responded to. But it just seems like everywhere we turn today, even when we're just simply trying to do what we've always done, trying to be a light in a dark world, we now run into those who would necessitate a particular pinch of incense on the altar to Caesar.

And you must prove your woke bona fides. For example, I saw yesterday a video that has been put together from clips from the Campus Crusade, now called Crew, the Campus Crusade leadership meeting that took place over the summer.

And it was a woke fest. It was wokeness to the nth degree. And at one point, this poor lady, she's in a breakout session or something, and she asks the question, we even did the DNA genealogy stuff, and nobody in our family has ever been involved with slavery.

But I'm still being told that, you know, I have to repent of this. And the speaker, of course, is, well, but, you know, you've had privilege. You have privilege. And I thought about playing that section and then putting the picture of my great-great-great grandparents on the screen, sitting outside their mud hut in Broken Bow, Nebraska, scratching a poverty existence out of the soil.

Had nothing. Maybe telling the stories of my grandmother. We'd go out each summer to help fix up her house and take care of stuff. And she lived out in Kinsley, Kansas. She was a widow. My grandfather had passed away, thanks to a drunk doctor, when he was about, what, my dad was about 14, 15, something like that.

Maybe 16, I forget. Anyway, and, you know, we could, you want to talk privilege? Baloney. Sorry, it's just baloney. There are so many holes, and those holes have been documented by people that no one wants to read anymore, such as Thomas Sowell.

But that's what they were told. This is, you know, okay, so your family didn't, your family may not have been involved, but we now believe in critical theory, and so you're a part of the people who are the oppressors.

And therefore, there is no redemption for this. So it's a constant treadmill of penances for you for the rest of your life. That's all that the woke gospel can bring. It was sad. It was sad to see. Well, the video I want to show you is very, very interesting.

And that is, I just saw it for the first time this morning, and I caught a few things, and I've watched it a couple times since then. I can't do a full response to it since I only saw it this morning, only had time to get it queued up.

There's going to be more, and I did talk to the powers that be, and there will be a full response, for example, by the folks at End Abortion Now to stuff like this, and I'm sure they're not the only ones.

This is going, the one thing about this video is it's going to start a lot of conversation, and that's a good thing if the conversation can be, can include criticism. Unfortunately, in our day, I can pretty much guarantee you that if you do not immediately embrace the perspective of the AND campaign, that you will be identified as the radicals, and the troublemakers, and the non-woke people that you are, etc., etc.

So, it's called The Heart of the Matter, and it is an attempt to say, yes, there are, basically what it's saying is both sides in the abortion debate have valid concerns, and so we need to address abortion in such a fashion as to utilize social justice categories in our solution, and of course, this raises the whole issue of what again, social justice is, and the fact that there is a widening chasm in the reality of categories of biblical justice versus the category of social justice, which is simply becoming another way of saying not equality, but equity.

There is all the difference in the world between saying that because men and women are created in the image of God, that there needs to be equality of opportunity. When you go to promoting equity, which is where everyone pretty much functions at the same level, and everybody pretty much has the same opportunities in life, not opportunities for advancement, but you penalize those who are gifted, you penalize those whose parents, for example, may be thrifty and save money so that they can do things their children over against those who just simply run up the credit card bills, you penalize those who have a higher IQ than the rest of us, you penalize those who have a greater physical ability.

You've heard about ableism now, where, you know, if you've got two arms, two legs, and they work real well, well, that's privilege, et cetera, et cetera. That kind of equity never leads to equity, obviously, but it is the driving force amongst many today, and it leads to the degradation of society.

It's not biblical. God makes men to differ. God gives gifts to men, and I wasn't going to get into this, but you know, when I look at those pictures of my ancestors, and I think upon my own upbringing, I was, the farthest thing from my mind would ever be to be jealous of, or to harbor hatred toward, someone who had more than I did.

I remember this one, I think his name was Mark. Before we moved here to Arizona, we lived in Pennsylvania. Mark was a friend of mine, and as we were packing up to move out here, his family was kind enough to have me over, and we had corn on the cob and stuff like that, though corn on the cob anywhere outside of Kinsley, Kansas was never as good as in Kinsley, Kansas, which is in the middle of a cornfield.

When it's fresh off the cob, man, I'm going to tell you something, there's just, there is nothing like it. Oh, drenched in butter and salt and pepper. Anyways, okay, we're going to finish the show now so I can go get something to eat.

No, but they were much better off than we were. I mean, they had a big house, and it was up on, you know, had all this land, you know, around it, and multi-stories, and we rented a single-story little box.

We didn't have much, but it never crossed my mind to complain about the privilege that somebody else had, and there were Asians, and Blacks, and Hispanics, there weren't many Hispanics in that area, but Asians and Blacks who had more than we did, and again, it just wasn't, we were not soaked in victimhood mentality that it's all oppression and all the rest of that stuff, and I'll be honest with you, it leads to a significantly happier life when you are not running around constantly thinking about your problems are due to everybody else's privilege.

I cannot see how someone can possibly live a happy, fulfilled life of contentment when that is what you're constantly thinking. I don't see how it's possible. I think it will diminish a person's lifespan.

I really do. I think contentment is one of the greatest things that can expand a person's lifespan. Now, if you're unhappy, you may not want to have a long lifespan anyways, I suppose, but if, you know, I think contentment is a wonderful thing, and critical theory has no place for contentment.

There can be no contentment in that worldview. There's just no place for it at all. So anyway, this video seeks to strike a middle via media and say it needs to be both and. That's the and campaign. Now, okay, I'm not going to prejudice your mind at this point, but at one point, one of the ladies says both sides are leaving out crucial aspects.

And I want you to think as you listen to this video, I think it's six minutes long. But as you listen to this video, what asked, I agree with her. But this video leaves out some key aspects of this topic.

And that's why it's valuable for us to think about it. So let's take a look at this video,.

The AND Campaign Video on Abortion and Social Justice

And hopefully it will work for us here. Abortion is not some crazy weird last resort for me in particular, because I did have two abortions as a young woman. I feel that my ability to access that kind of medical care made it possible for me to live out my dreams and do what I really wanted.

To do with my life. Clinton recently joined forces with a shout your abortion campaign.

All human life is precious. Where's the money coming from to support people who aren't ready to be mothers or aren't financially stable to take care of a child? You simply cannot.

Deferred protecting lives of unborn children because of cost. It's a law that's designed.

To end rovers. What if we're being provided with two wrong answers? As Christians, we have to frame this issue for ourselves. And we have to make sure that we're being faithful to God and loving to our communities.

There are polarizing voices shouting on both sides of this issue. On one side,.

There are progressives who argue for a woman's choice. On the other, conservatives who argue for the life of the unborn child. But both sides are leaving out crucial aspects of the reality of abortion.

One speaks to the heart of women's struggles. Women who often feel oppressed, controlled, and victimized by men desire sexual autonomy in a society that has a history of shaming women. They want the freedom to choose the outcome of their own lives.

The other side speaks on behalf of a child who's voiceless, who's not yet born, yet still very much alive, valuable, and deserves the right to develop and grow in their mother's womb.

Amongst all the shouts, neither side is listening to the other. And neither side answers with a.

Holistic approach to the problem. While progressives advocate for the rights and protection of women, they do this at the expense of her child and family. Helping a woman to abort her child does not solve her problems, but it can often cause more.

A significant amount of women who undergo abortions report mental distress and anguish after having the procedure. While some conservative.

Voters and policy makers fight for women to go through with unplanned pregnancies, they often fight against social policies that make it possible for these women to care for.

Their children and themselves. Neither the progressive nor the conservative answer lives up to the gospel call. The Bible demands a framework that includes both compassion and conviction. The gospel calls us to a sincere compassion for human life and advocates for human flourishing from the womb to the tomb.

The gospel calls us to recognize the vulnerability.

Of unborn babies and their mothers. Mothers who often find themselves making hard decisions that.

Impact the rest of their lives. This is what the AND campaign is here to do. To help the church approach and think through this issue with a biblical framework and to be able to do so confidently by answering questions concerning abortion.

We, the AND campaign, we do this by providing a new narrative, a gospel-centered perspective that is both pro-woman and pro-child.

Women, if you have ever considered or had an abortion, God still loves you. The church should be here to support you and not shame you. God will take your hurts, your mistakes, and even something that seems unwanted and make it beautiful.

He redeems. We also refuse to disregard.

The struggles of women with crisis pregnancies. Without thoughtful social policies, women are often left without resources and opportunities to care for their children and themselves, which causes them to falsely believe that abortion is their best option.

Overlooked by medical professionals, the health disparities amongst black women leave us three to four times more likely to die from childbirth-related causes. This is a fact that continues to be ignored by the.

Traditional pro-life community. When black women who have chosen to carry their child to full term are still at risk of death, we must lead with a more compassionate posture and provide a community of support to these mothers who are faced with such bleak realities.

Despite some extreme policies of the prominent voices in the pro-life movement, as Christians, we cannot pretend the child doesn't exist. Even before his or her birth, the heartbeat is real, the movements are real, and the baby is a human being made in God's image.

The child is alive.

Being pro-life, based on the gospel, requires us to be more than anti-abortion. It requires us to be true to our convictions of being a voice for the voiceless babies, while also being a community of support for the women, the mothers, engaging with sincere love and understanding and compassion.

Of Christ. Because at the heart of the matter is life. Okay, so obviously very well produced, very well done, along those lines. But hopefully you were listening carefully to everything that was being said, and how it was being said, and what was being joined to what.

And my biggest concern, there was, there's obviously, in those who are seeking to end the plague and scourge of abortion, there has been exhibited a great willingness to support women, and to adopt babies, etc., etc.

But notice all of these conversations, where do they start? They don't start at the beginning. They start given a certain reality, and then all of our options are limited by where the conversation begins.

There was not only nothing positively stated concerning God's law and his revelation concerning human sexuality, but there was positive statement that in essence dismisses abortion as a mistake, not as the murder of a child, but as simply a mistake.

Now, what, obviously, there are many motivations represented as you look at the women going into an abortion clinic on any one given day. But over the past number of, well, years, but especially I can think of just over the past couple months, there have been numerous examples provided of the fact that not only are the large majority of abortions not due to any type of physical danger or anything along those lines, they are abortions of convenience.

But the picture of the woman who designed a tattoo that she then put on a woman's body, where her uterus would be, of a baby being stabbed in the head, and then saying that this was the most beautiful tattoo she had ever done.

They know. They know what they're doing. They know that they are extinguishing a life. When you have pro-abortion advocates on a bus singing songs about throw the fetus in the trash can and things like this, they know what they're doing.

The majority of the people promoting this movement love death. And the positive words that they use, so for example, Martha Plimpton at the beginning, access that kind of medical care. I just wonder if the Nazi doctors at Nuremberg, when asked about Zyklon B, which was the gas used to kill people en masse in the destruction of Jews and others in the concentration camps toward the end of World War II in Nazi Germany, I just wonder what the Nazi doctors referred to that as.

We were simply accessing that kind of medical care so that we could live out our dreams. That's what she said. Those are quotes from what she said. If I hadn't been able to access that kind of medical care, I could not have lived out my dreams.

This kind of pandering to absolute human autonomy combined with a complete ignoring of God's law, could anyone even seriously make an appeal in our society today that would utilize the biblical term fornication?

I'm not even sure how many people left in our society know what it is or could define it. But the idea of sexual sin is now a heresy in our society. The great new dogma of the United States of America and Great Britain and France and Germany, all the European Union, except maybe Hungary and Poland, is specifically sexual autonomy.

And the term appeared was used in this video. At one point, one of the women talking about how women have been oppressed and victimized and how they want their own sexual autonomy. Nothing was said about the father.

Nothing was said about marriage. Nothing was said about fornication. Nothing was said about God's law. You did have social justice categories, oppression, victimization. You had that type of stuff. But that old-fashioned stuff, which is absolutely necessary if we're going to have any grounding whatsoever in biblical revelation, was completely gone.

It just wasn't there. It's not a part of what was being said. And so I would suggest that it is impossible to have a, to on the one hand, talk about the compassion of Christ, and on the other hand, utilize categories of social justice thinking that are based upon a worldview that transfigures the compassion of Christ into mere sentimentality.

Because again, when you talk about Christian compassion, the compassion of Jesus, it is toward repentant sinners. It is focused upon his own redemptive act, which brings about a peculiar people who are formed unto holiness, not unto sexual autonomy.

His compassion forms a people who reject the whole concept of sexual autonomy. God gets to say how that's supposed to work and how that's supposed to be exercised. That's why there can be no such thing as Christian transgenderism.

And likewise, there is no such thing as Christian homosexuality either. Because those issues have to be defined within the concept of Scripture and Scripture's revelation on these things. Clear. And in the same way, in this context, once you begin at the point of dealing with the results of sin, then you are limited in where you can go from there.

There has to be, if our message is going to be full and clear, there has to be the reality of the wrath of God against sexual sin, which includes against sex outside of marriage. And many of us, upon hearing that, automatically go, that will never work today.

It's too late. Maybe it is for this society. Maybe this society has been given over to its own destruction. But that doesn't change the reality that the only way to give a real Christian perspective and solution is to start at the beginning.

The image of God was mentioned primarily within the context of the child, but what was missing is the adults are made in the image of God, which means that they can control their sexual desires, that they're not just animals, that they don't have sexual autonomy.

God's law defines the proper utilization in that field. And if you don't start there, there is even a statement that our society shames women. For what? I mean, a meaningful society doesn't shame women.

It exalts women and protects women, but it also protects them through the institution of marriage and holding men accountable to the marriage contract, the marriage covenant. We have completely abandoned that.

So, it's one thing to say the child is made in the image of God. The child is. That's why it's murder to kill that baby. But you can't wed that to a worldview that basically then denies that the adults are made in the image of God and therefore have responsibilities and capacities and abilities.

And that means that they are subject to God's law. It seems to me that there is such an inherent antinomianism in evangelicalism in the West that we just have a, we get a fever when we try to bring any element of the moral law to bear.

And hence, major portions just won't do it. And so, you had unplanned pregnancies. You had God can redeem mistakes rather than categories of repentance, brokenness, any kind of sound Christian worldview there.

And here's the problem. These folks may have the greatest motivations in the world. Here's what church history tells you. Every time Christians try to wed a Christian worldview that they may be committed to with the perspectives of the world that are popular at that point in time, what is the inevitable result?

Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but always inevitable. Which predominates over the other? Union Theological Seminary. That's all I've got to say. That didn't happen overnight. But now look at it. It's the zombie seminary, the Walker Seminary, still got the decaying body, still got the buildings, but there's nobody home anymore as far as a Christian's concerned.

That is what takes place when you try, when you make the effort. And when there is a fundamental embarrassment about what the Word demands of us, because what the Word demands of us here is that we have to talk about sexual purity and we have to talk about man made in the image of God, which means that there are responsibilities that come with that created status.

And there are sexual responsibilities and the nature of marriage and all the other things that go with it. So, like I said, there's all sorts of other stuff that needs to be gotten into there. All sorts of other issues.

There is one line, by the way, that I think anyone else who's planning on doing a full review, someone needs to write to the movement sponsors, writers, something. I've listened to it three times and I don't get it.

It was something along the lines of, um, despite the extreme policies of prominent voices in the pro-life movement, we have to view the child as a living child or something along those lines. I expected something different as the, you know, protestant hypothesis of a conditional statement.

And I didn't get it. I'd like to know when the larger lady looking to her left, I don't know who the individuals are. Sorry, the names were not names at the end, but it wasn't put on the person speaking.

She's looking to her left and she says something about the extreme policies of the prominent voices in the pro-life movement. I would like to know who that is. What is being referenced there? Because I don't get it.

It went right past me. I think I understood everything else. That part I did not get. So I have a feeling you're going to see a lot more discussion of that particular video. I think it deserves to be discussed.

I think that's an appropriate thing. Okay. Put the clutch in. Put it way in. While you're shifting gears, just a reminder, some of the group is already headed up to Salt Lake City. In fact, some have been there for a couple of days now already, which means there are people already going out to the temple and talking with people on the streets and things like that, doing evangelism before everything gets really crazy.

Apologetics, Evangelism, and the Meaning of Success

Next weekend is conference weekend. First full weekend in October, first full weekend in April. That's the way it's been for a long, long time. Starting Thursday evening, we've got an incredible schedule lined out.

For me, literally right to about a week and a half before Christmas. Christmas is going to be here real fast, really, really fast. Thursday night, Jeff Durbin and I will be debating two atheists, including Dr. Clark, who, if you look up Utah atheists, look up Dr. Clark, you can understand the challenge we're going to have there.

Both of us are praying that Dr. Clark will be considerably less volatile than he has been in certain contexts in the past, but we will be debating the triune God of Christian scripture lives, two-on-two debate up there at the University of Utah.

Then on Friday evening, dialogue with Alma Allred on, basically, on what is truth. In fact, that reminds me, well, I hope I remember that. I need to take that LDS translation with me, New Testament, get some more time to look at.

That will also be at the University of Utah. Then Saturday morning, outreach at the general conference. Saturday evening, a debate between myself and Lee Baker, whose 15 examples of alleged changes or errors in the Bible we dealt with a few weeks ago on the program, where it was someone deceptively did this and deceptively did that and so on and so forth.

We've limited that to six specific texts that we need to be looking at, and that's on Saturday evening, Sunday morning, preaching there at the OPC in Magna, Utah, coming back on Monday, and then leaving on Tuesday for Australia, and the debates down there, teaching, so on and so forth.

So we have a major period of time coming up, and I don't know if any of these are going to be live-streamed, Facebook Live, anything like that, especially high-capacity streaming sessions are extremely expensive.

Most people don't realize that. Most people go, I can just simply turn my phone on and go to Facebook, and we've all seen what happens. You can't hear things. If you've got a really good streaming, in other words, they're connected into the sound system, and it's high-quality video, and having 100 people isn't crashing it, that's costing some big bucks to be able to do that.

So that's not always an option in things like this, but there you go. So anyway, please pray for the upcoming outreach. I don't think, I could be wrong, but I just don't think the one day I'm home we're gonna be able to sneak a program in.

We'll see. And of course, it's hard to do programs from Australia. The time difference is just so extreme. It's 17 hours. So it's like 17 hours behind, but one day ahead. So it's a seven hour, we're seven hours behind.

So right now it would be, what, four, I think about 4 .43 in the morning tomorrow in Australia. So yeah, something like that. It's weird. It makes it sort of difficult. All right. With that, I was directed to a recent posting of a Reasonable Faith episode with William Lane Craig, and I thought it would be worthwhile to just listen to the beginning of this and make some comments in regards to what is apologetics?

What, why do we do apologetics? And this is a subject we've obviously discussed from every different angle at some point in the past. I mean, how many thousands of hours have we spent on this program doing apologetics?

What is the context that allows us to even define what it is? And how many times have I said that our theology has to determine our apologetics, not the other way around? Our apologetic cannot exist separately from our theology.

It is an extension of our theology. It has to be consistent with our theology. It has to, our theology has to provide us with the, why do we do this? We need to have a positive explanation other than, I just love arguing with people on Facebook.

Or when I was younger on a BBS system, I just can't wait for the new messages to come in in the Mormon echo so I can blast the Mormons. You know, they're unfortunately our people and have that motivation.

Why do we do apologetics? How does it relate to evangelism? These are issues that we all need to think through, and our theology impacts these things. So let's listen into some of the program and make some comments.

What I have noticed in what she talks about here is that... Okay, there is, they're reviewing an article that asks the question, has apologetics.

Failed? Basically. A lot of people say, well, look at this, a Christian apologetic seems to be failing because two non-Christians these days are being used to bring people back into the fold or bringing people to Christ, a young Jewish man, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, you know.

So this is what people are asking is, in light of the popularity of Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson, does that mean that Christian apologetics has failed? And I think you can immediately realize there's some major category issues here, and you really do have to ask the question, well, failed at what?

What's it supposed to be doing? If what Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro do is Christian apologetics and neither one are Christians, then to even contemplate this shows a complete separation between apologetics in theology and apologetics in the gospel.

Who's responsible for that kind of thinking?

What gives? Why is it that they're having all the success and actually pointing people to Christianity? That's what's so strange about it, Bill. And I have kind of noticed that phenomenon. It's almost like it's an incidental thing that it's gotten young men in particular, the two of these guys interested in spiritual things, interested in God, actually coming to Christ, some of them, and both Jordan Peterson.

Coming to Christ in what way? How can they hear without a preacher? Well, reading Jordan Peterson's book and cleaning up your room is not going to lead you to repentance and faith in Jesus. And Ben Shapiro's not going to do that either because he doesn't believe Jesus is the Messiah, that he died and rose again and is coming to judge the living and the dead.

So, how does, is what's being said, they help prepare someone who then, upon hearing the gospel, gets saved? It's hard to say, yes. I have an inconvenient question. Wasn't it Ben Shapiro who, oh yeah, interviewed Bill Craig?

Right. Don't talk about that. And, oh, okay. All right. We'll see what that does then. Don't talk about it.

And Ben Shapiro used reason and logic, which is part and parcel of apologetics, so I don't know what the beef is here.

Right. It is interesting to see how effective these folks are in reaching out to nonbelievers. It seems like perhaps….

Effective reaching out to nonbelievers to what end? Are we talking about political change, um, modification maybe of a, of some elements of a world? What is, what is success here is really, really important for us to be thinking about, and certainly central for any of us that deal with apologetics.

You have to have a meaningful biblical basis for saying, this is successful apologetics.

Nonbelievers are put off by people like myself who are Christian apologists, um, and perhaps therefore biased, and they like the kind of open exploratory approach of a Jordan Peterson better perhaps. But I would distinguish, I think, Kevin, in this regard, between apologetics and evangelism.

As I've explained in my book, Reasonable Faith, I think that apologetics is primarily a theoretical discipline. It's like physics or chemistry or history. It's a theoretical discipline that seeks to answer the question, what is the rational justification for Christian truth claims?

By contrast, evangelism is the attempt to persuasively present the gospel so as.

To draw people into a relationship with Christ. Okay, so here again really is where theology matters. There is a distinction being made here that I think ends up being extremely important to understanding how Bill Craig understands even what success in apologetics is.

Now, he would agree with me that part of the function of apologetics is to strengthen the faith of Christians, um, as well as to clear landmines, barriers, objections for the presentation of the gospel.

I don't think we would have a debate over that. But obviously, I see a significantly more organic relationship between evangelism and apologetics than he does. For him, if the apologist produces philosophically sound arguments for the existence of God, um, the apologist has been successful.

Whether anybody believes it or not doesn't matter. If you've produced the arguments that are sound, then you've done what apologetics is. Now, obviously for me, you are successful as an apologist when you proclaim Christ's lordship over all of humanity in such a way as to bring that claim into direct conflict with all those systems, beliefs, doctrines, religions that would deny Christ's lordship.

And so, that necessitates the gospel aspect. It's not saying that you don't have to consider the clarity of your presentation or the issues of induction and issues like that that you have to deal with in analyzing certain of the philosophical systems predominant amongst Americans today and that kind of stuff.

No, you do do all of that. But you are a successful apologist when God is glorified in the proclamation of his truth. And that truth is derivative from the essence of biblical revelation. It's not, I don't think you're successful when you just simply publish a paper that no one's ever going to read and it makes no meaningful argument whatsoever that would cause someone to consider the claims of Christ.

And so, theology matters. What you believe matters. If you believe that we are called to give a defense of faith, to be instruments in God's hand for the establishment of his kingdom, his self-glorification, the drawing of a particular people unto himself, his elect people, and to their edification, and that we are used by God to make the gospel so clear that the unbeliever can be judged for their rejection thereof.

That's not normally a part of what most people think apologetics does. It's sort of hard to read Romans chapter 1 without coming to that conclusion. The clarity of God's revelation in nature renders man unapologetus, without an apology.