An Interview with my Apologetics Professor (Dr. Khaldoun Sweis)

Revealed Apologetics

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June 15, 2022

In this episode, Eli interviews his former apologetics professor on a wide range of apologetics topics.

00:02: Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today
00:07: I have a very special guest, which I will be introducing in just a few moments. But if you're wondering, like, wow, another live stream, what's going on?
00:16: Remember, I am blessed with a wonderful job. I am a teacher.
00:21: I teach, well, I taught high school this last, this past school year, and now I'll be moving into the dangerous realm of middle school.
00:29: If you guys are familiar with working with students, middle school students are, let's just say, that's a horse of another color, as they say in the
00:39: Wizard of Oz. So I'm definitely looking forward to doing that. But I am blessed with a wonderful schedule.
00:45: So I have off during the summer. So if you're wondering why I'm just, you know, shooting out the content there, it's because I have the time.
00:53: So I'm really grateful to be able to do this. Well, I am super excited to introduce my guest today, who, if you noticed on the thumbnail, my guest was my former apologetics professor.
01:07: I completed two master's degrees at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. My first master's was a master of arts and theological studies.
01:15: My second was a master of divinity with a theological focus. And one of my favorite classes, believe it or not, my top two favorite classes, surprise, surprise, apologetics.
01:25: And interestingly enough, and maybe this is something we can leave for another episode, but my other favorite class was the history of the
01:35: Baptists, which I did not think I would even care about. I thought it was just mandatory because it was a
01:41: Baptist seminary. So, and ironically, the professor, not the professor of the class, but the lectures
01:47: I had to watch was given by none other than the controversial Ergin Kanner.
01:53: So we won't step into that, but hey, regardless, it was excellent.
01:59: I learned a lot. And so, but apologetics, you guys know this is where my heart is. So without further ado,
02:04: I'd like to just kind of share a little bit about my guest, Dr. Khaldun Swice. Dr. Swice specializes in life coaching and we'll kind of talk to him about that.
02:13: That's super interesting. And we'll kind of unpack that for you guys, but he specializes in life coaching, apologetics,
02:20: Christian thought, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of mind. Khaldun is a committed Christian, obviously, right?
02:26: Theology, philosophy, ethics, logic, cutting edge research in psychology, science, and even literature, movies and pop culture are all tools he uses to help people find the meaning and purpose and joy in their life.
02:39: And I'm looking forward to kind of unpacking some of that with him too, because there's some interesting things to explore there. He's well -known for his book,
02:46: Debating Christian Theism, which is published by Oxford University Press and co -edited with philosophers,
02:51: J .P. Moreland and Chad Meister. Swice earned his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy at Eastern Illinois University and a
02:58: Master in Philosophy from Trinity National University. And he's received his PhD from the
03:03: University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His dissertation was Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science.
03:10: So a lot of interesting background there. Maybe we can talk a little bit about that and grab some really cool apologetic nuggets and some wisdom from his experience.
03:20: So without further ado, I'd like to invite on the screen with me, Dr. Khaldoon Swice. How are you doing brother?
03:27: It's an honor to be with you, Eli. Well, it is truly an honor to have you on the show.
03:33: I mean, this is so cool. I never thought I'd have the opportunity to actually have my old professor on my show.
03:41: So it is an honor. Thank you so much. Did I miss anything? I mean, you have a lot of experience there and a lot of background.
03:48: Would you like to share anything else that I might've missed in that introduction? I think you've covered the basics. That's good to go.
03:53: Yeah. Okay. That's wonderful, yeah. All right, well, let's kick this off right away. So what are you currently working on now?
04:00: I mean, you look like you're a pretty busy guy. So I would imagine you're working on some pretty important stuff that I know you are passionate about and maybe you can kind of share with folks what that is.
04:12: It's sad when people are not doing what they're passionate about. So I always push in and focusing my life on that, which inspires me and equips me to help others do the same.
04:23: Amen. Yeah. So in the last few years, especially after the pandemic, I've been focusing a lot on life coaching,
04:28: Christian life coaching specifically, to help equip men to become more passionate, powerful, productive, and most of all, peaceful in their lives.
04:38: I found that actually grew a lot from my conversations in apologetics and theology as I began to dive into questions of ontology and cosmology and others, but actually have behind them a troubled soul, a man who doesn't have any purpose, a man who's doing that, which does not inspire him.
04:58: And as a result, he's shriveling inside and affecting his family, his community, his wife, his kids. Everyone's feeling it.
05:04: As men, we are powerful agents of change. And we also, sadly, can do the negative and the reverse part of that.
05:14: So that inspired me to help with men and to deal with men and help men get back on the track and do what
05:19: God has inspired you to do in a strategic format. So I've been doing that for the last couple of years and it's been invigorating.
05:26: So do you work with people one -on -one? Do you give workshops to teach people how to be well -balanced and fulfilled
05:33: Christians in this world? I mean, what does that look like for you? Yes, I do give seminars, workshops, and things of that nature, but I found that the most powerful work is done when an individual is able to see their own darkness or their own shadow or their own sin and be able to grow from that by unpacking that in themselves on a one -on -one conversations.
05:52: Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, well, that's interesting. And I think it's interesting how you kind of extract, you've extracted that idea, the importance of that, from your apologetic interactions and working with people.
06:03: That's interesting. So what comes to mind right away is the issue, really the controversial issue that went with Ravi Zacharias, where we saw someone who,
06:15: I mean, I never followed his work, but when I did see videos or I read something, he had this persona of like a well -balanced, confident, morally high standing individual, yet he kind of had these inner demons that were, and we all know the story, we don't have to get into the details, but why do you think it's important for people who are in apologetics to deal with not just that external, how people perceive me,
06:43: I'm an educator, I know the scriptures, I defend the faith. Why is it so important to kind of take care of the outside and the inside as well?
06:52: And how does that fit into your life coaching and the advice that you give people? Right.
06:58: A lot of times the persona we give on the outside is a shadow of the person we are on the inside.
07:05: And we need to come to terms with that. And I don't know specifically with Ravi's story, I know a lot of the allegations were done by anonymous women, although it was done by investigative reporting by people who actually worked at the organization themselves and it's been devastating to his family.
07:21: I think the process of being true to yourself, if you're not able to be true to who you are in the inside and be real with that and have a group of people you can share that with authentically, unbelievable the kind of darkness and demons that can grow and fester in the background.
07:40: There's one of the most famous TV shows in the world is the Game of Thrones. And in there they have these little dragons in the beginning of the show.
07:49: They're little creatures that fit in the palm of your hand. But these little beasts, if they're not taken care of and addressed when they're little, dealt with, grow into these massive creatures that can wipe out cities.
08:02: I think the same thing applies to our moral life. If we're not dealing with the vices that are troubling us on an individual level, that little dragon, eh, no big deal, that can become a massive deal of a dragon that you will not be able to deal with on a long -term basis.
08:16: So I think that's one of the reasons we do need to address these issues with people that we love and trust around us.
08:23: Unfortunately, a lot of men don't have that. Yeah, so when you're coaching maybe not just men in general, do you coach people who are in specifically in the field of apologetics?
08:32: Or are those people the kind of people that, well, I really don't need that. I'm the one that gives the advice to people.
08:39: If you speak into the lives of people who are engaged in those sorts of things, what are the sorts of things you say to them?
08:46: What are the things you speak into their lives to encourage them to have that balance? I love that question, man.
08:51: I love it. Okay, so I have Dell. I have some clients who had apologetics in their background who have been doing jobs that have nothing to do with apologetics.
09:00: Sure. And they're wondering, what do I do? What's my purpose? How do I use this as a UPS driver?
09:06: So one of the main pieces or hypotheses within the very center of apologetics is the very nature of truth.
09:15: And truth by itself is an explanatory, propositional understanding of something.
09:22: But it's not just that. It's also being true to yourself epistemologically and existentially.
09:28: So if I have the truth, as Søren Kierkegaard brilliantly said, if that truth is not true for me individually, if me as a person does not bow my knee and have that truth transform me within, then it's nothing more than a proposition outside of me that may as well not be true.
09:48: Ah, okay. I like how you said that there, actually, because I was just having a conversation with someone where they were getting frustrated with this idea that many people often, within the realm of apologetics, they often speak of God as kind of like this abstract hypothesis, which kind of detaches the real existential experience of being in relationship with God.
10:09: We kind of intellectually detach ourselves from that so we can kind of theorize, right, about this abstract concept.
10:15: I think that's really important that there's a difference between talking about truths and experiencing some of those truths.
10:23: What are some of the topics that you often see pop up in your conversations with apologists who might be struggling with that area in their lives, kind of the experience, as opposed to just talking about abstract ideas, if my question makes sense.
10:37: Sure. So I had one gentleman I was working with who was doing something completely outside of his field in apologetics and theology.
10:44: He was in a state of intellectual despair because he wasn't able to use his gifts and talents and experiences in ways that he wanted to grow or provide for his family financially.
10:56: And that really was a strain on his soul. And so we begin to unpack that. And the fascinating thing is, and this goes back to what
11:04: I mentioned with Storen Kierkegaard in his brilliant book, The Sickness Unto Death. And Kierkegaard says in The Sickness Unto Death that it's not death that's the sickness unto death.
11:14: It's actually not even sin, but it's the despair of sin and despair of self. So when we come to a point where we are in so much despair, actually, that is one of the best places we could be, theologically speaking, because only then can we see the depth and the darkness clearly to finally look up and see the light of the glory of the majesty of Christ.
11:36: And then we can look up and from our despair, find that hope. So I think when people are in a place of unpredictability, a place of despair, that's actually a good place for you to really, really reach deep into your soul, into the roots of God, because God finds you in the darkness sometimes.
11:57: And ironically, that's the places where we find God the most. Sure. Yeah, so I find that with guys a lot.
12:04: It usually takes that to get their attention. Sure, sure. Now, are you familiar with those pictures, those inkblot pictures that psychiatrists use sometimes?
12:13: Like, what do you see? And it's clearly, and then we'll say something. It's not what the picture is, but it's what's on the person's mind.
12:20: Yeah, yeah, the Rorschachs. That's right. So when you were talking about a person who was in an existential crisis and wanted to,
12:30: I'm like, you're talking about me, aren't you? That's definitely something that I resonate with.
12:36: And I know we've had conversations in the past about that. And you made mention of kind of encouraging people to be productive in the midst of that and using their despair as kind of a platform for looking at the glory of God.
12:51: It looked like you wanted to share something, but here's my question, and then maybe you can address it after you kind of share your thoughts.
12:57: You said despair and the glory of God, and you have these kind of two things side by side. Can you kind of unpack for us briefly?
13:05: Because this theme definitely shows up in scripture. What example did the Apostle Paul use to kind of draw that distinction from the darkness of where we're from and where Christ has taken us?
13:18: Our faith in Christ, really behind the backdrop of our sinfulness. When you unpack that, I think in Romans 8 or something along those lines, where he talks about how terrible our situation is with sin, but thanks be to God.
13:30: Maybe you can kind of explore with us the grace of God as Paul has taught it, and then unpack that for us.
13:37: Sure, I think you're referring to in Romans 8, Paul says, for all things work together for the good of those who love
13:44: God, who are called according to his purpose, to be conformed to the image of his son.
13:50: So that actually throws away or explodes when the common mindset's out there that says all things, everything happens for a reason and they leave it.
14:01: Well, Paul doesn't say that. He says, no, everything happens for the good of those who love God. Otherwise, there is this sense of chaos in our lives because we're not rooted theologically in our love of God.
14:14: And how do we know that we love God? Well, Christ said, if you love me, you will obey my commands. And that's one of the tests of love, but there's a lot more, a lot deeper aspects to that, of course.
14:27: And the other part that we began to talk about was when we are in despair, how does that look like?
14:33: It looks like a place where it's almost like anger turned inward, and that's actually what depression is.
14:40: Okay. When we're so angry at ourselves for not being productive, for not being the provider and protector that we wanna be as men, we end up wearing that heavy skull or scowl upon our soul and that weighs heavy upon us.
14:57: And one of the ways we can release ourselves from that is to recognize that one, we are made of the image of God.
15:04: We are his masterpiece. We are not to be measured by what we do, but rather who we are in him.
15:12: But from who we are in him, then we can do great things. Okay. And I think when we start with a place of saying that I want to now create something wonderful for my family, for my work, for my community, for my world, for the gospel, and then
15:25: I'll find a sense of fulfillment, then I'll find a sense of manhood. No, it's the other way around.
15:32: Okay. You flip the whole paradigm upside down. We don't go toward, and this is one of my coaches told me this, and I found it to be profoundly helpful.
15:39: Instead of going toward a place of fulfillment to build our lives and the lives of those we love, rather start the other way around.
15:47: Start from a place of fulfillment. We are in ourselves, is a person who has everything he needs rather than this.
15:57: Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. When we start from that place, then we can build something majestic, magnificent, and really see
16:06: God's glory in magnificent ways in our lives. Yeah, yeah. That's excellent. Now, you made me think of something.
16:11: So when you say that we are God's masterpiece, especially when people are in the apologetic realm, they're very theologically sensitive and they're very turned off with kind of the
16:22: Joel Osteen feel -good method. And so when you say, man, you're God's masterpiece, there's always that one person that'll throw in the text, yeah, but we're depraved sinners.
16:31: You know, like, yeah, yeah, we get it. So here's my question. You know what I'm talking about, right? I mean, you know, live your best life.
16:38: You know, that's not in and of itself a bad thing, even though we might disagree with how people use that phraseology, but how do we find the balance as Christians, right?
16:51: Between understanding our value as masterpieces, but walking in humility, knowing that we are nothing without Christ.
17:00: How can I build my confidence in knowing my value as to who I am in Christ without allowing self -centeredness and pride to kind of seep in?
17:10: I hope that question makes sense because that is so important. A lot of people think because, you know, we're saved by God's grace, we're low down dirty sinners,
17:19: I'm just a, you know, I'm a useless wretch, you know? How do we navigate that?
17:25: I like that question. Can you unpack for me the reason for why you asked that question?
17:30: And I'll tell you why I asked you, but do that for me and then I'll go ahead and jump in. The reason why
17:36: I asked the question is because I don't think a lot of Christians who especially are theologically minded and have this reality and the reality of sin, right?
17:48: And the fact that there's nothing good in us, that Christ only by his grace saved us, that we almost feel like we're doing something wrong when we confirm our own value.
17:59: So in other words, like, I'm not worth anything, it's only because of him. And so we kind of have this weird, like, yes,
18:06: God's worthy to be praised, but we kind of walk around like, well, I'm nothing, you know? The reason why
18:11: I'm asking the question is that we could have that balance of, yes, it is Christ that gives us meaning, but how can that truth energize me and allow me to see the value that I have?
18:23: That's really, and people fail to capture that, I think, and that's why I asked the question. Okay, that's a good one.
18:28: By the way, I was modeling that because one of the centerpieces of apologetics or even philosophy in general is to ask more questions than you do giving answers, okay?
18:38: And what we do, and when we do that, we actually unpack the reason for the question. Now we're better able to address it and the person is better able to communicate it.
18:48: And the more they communicate it, the better they're able to see why they're even asking the question. Right, right, right.
18:54: That's one of the reasons I'm asking that, generally, but I think it's profound that you address that.
18:59: So let me unpack it. Okay. There is a concept within theology called worm theology.
19:06: Okay. That says you are a piece of whining dirt. Don't even lift your eyes when you walk into church, let alone your house.
19:14: If God knew who you were, as Jonathan Edwards says, he would drop you as a web holding a spider over the flaming pit of hell.
19:24: That's how disgusting you are to him. Now, at one level, that's how our sin is to him.
19:30: Yeah. Yes. But on another level, God says that we are made in the very image of God, which is the
19:36: Imago Dei, Genesis chapter one expands upon that, right? And Jesus says that we will sit with him on his own throne until the end.
19:45: I mean, that's almost sounds heretical, but that's actually scriptural. How are you gonna offer everyone on the throne?
19:51: You know, that's more metaphorical than anything, but nevertheless, what it does is it talks about, there's a wonder within us that does not make us worthy of the love of God, but it makes us worth it.
20:03: Okay. Okay. I think that distinction is extremely important. Okay.
20:09: That is helpful. Can you repeat that phrase again so people can catch that? We are not worthy of the love and the sacrifices of God, but we are worth it.
20:19: Okay. So now, okay. So why are we worth it? Because he died for us. It's obvious.
20:24: It's right there. He gave himself for us. And there's nothing else in all creation that can do the things we're doing, that can be the things we're being.
20:33: The only way we could do that is because the only thing that makes the 30 human rights charter of the
20:40: United Nations even epistemically, even meaningful is if the beings you're talking about are worth more than the animals around them.
20:47: Yeah. Okay. That's excellent. All right. That's really good. I think it's a helpful balance. Now I know what you're not saying is that, and I'm thinking in terms of kind of people who would overanalyze what you're saying.
20:59: You're not saying that in and of ourselves, independent of God, we have this intrinsic value because, no, no, no.
21:06: You are what you are because God made you. But the fact that God made you means you have value to him because he wouldn't have made you if you had no value.
21:15: So there is a healthy balance to have there. I was just thinking because my, you know, I have, see,
21:20: I'm a Calvinist, but I have my super duper Calvinists who are, they emphasize total depravity so much that they won't even accept the compliment when someone says, hey, but that was a great job.
21:31: It's all glory to God. You're the one. Yeah, yeah. You're the one to do it, you know? I had a friend - No, no, no.
21:36: There's a humility that we can build that. Of course, I need to get Joel Olsteen's hair to really live my best life.
21:42: I don't have that yet. But there is a sense of, because being transparent here with you,
21:49: Eli, as a child, I grew up with a serious issue of self -esteem. Okay, okay.
21:55: I really didn't think myself even worthy of let alone any grade I received, let alone any compliments.
22:00: So when I go into a theology enterprise and I begin to study the depravity of man, I mean, that just overemphasized my complete worthlessness as a human being.
22:08: I mean, where's the man? And then when I began to read that the Lord actually values me enough to give his son for me, like, wow, my eyes lit up.
22:17: So there is that value. And it's exemplified in a dictum that I heard.
22:23: You may have heard this before. It's Jewish in its origin. Rabbis used to carry this in their pockets.
22:29: They carry one little parchment that says, to dust you are, to dust you will return.
22:36: And whenever I feel prideful or feel too much of aggrandizement on myself, I read that. However, when
22:44: I'm feeling down and broken and empty and betrayed, I pull up the other parchment. It says, for your very eyes, the stars were made.
22:56: That's good stuff, man. I like it. I like it. Yeah, there's that balance. I think there's that, yeah, that balance is so important because we can kind of, the feel good stuff is sometimes, it's like, yes, people wanna latch onto that.
23:08: But on the other side, people wanna latch onto the self -deprecation, right? The I'm nothing, you know,
23:13: I'm this, I'm that, and I think there's a healthy balance there to be had, so. Absolutely, when we tell people that God loves you, has a wonderful plan for your life, well, it may mean being executed in a missionary endeavor.
23:25: Yeah, yeah. But that's still a wonderful plan if it's the will of God, so it's not wrong. Yeah, right, it doesn't mean having all the wealth and prosperity around me, not necessarily, because many believers who did not have that.
23:38: However, some believers did have that. Yeah. So we can't discount both of those. That's right. I think the key word is balance there.
23:45: Now, you said something that you speak to men, you speak into the lives of men, and you encourage them to be productive and goal -oriented.
23:54: In your estimation, what is, I know there's a famous documentary entitled,
24:00: What is a Woman? But I'm about to ask you, what is a man, biblically? Define man biblically, and I don't just mean just like the creature man, but like the ideals that we were created to walk in, and how your message caters to that when you're speaking into the lives of these people that you're working with.
24:21: I love your questions, man. They're so controversial. Non -politically incorrect. Right.
24:28: Yeah, I haven't seen that documentary. I think they have - Neither have I. Ben Shapiro has it produced it somewhere? Yeah. I'm not sure.
24:34: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Okay, so let's go into it. Unlike our current, most recent
24:40: Supreme Court Justice who can't define a man, or let alone a woman, unfortunately. And I know that's done for political purposes more than anything else.
24:48: Right. Sure. Well, I'm not constrained by those. Okay. No, no, no. Okay, so when
24:53: God made man and woman in his image, it's assumed by default that the very image of God is not male and female, but has the masculine and the feminine in the very image, in the very nature, in the very being of God himself.
25:07: Okay. Now, why do we refer to God as a man, or he, or father? Right? And that goes into the question of the patriarchy, which is a very disparaging term nowadays.
25:16: Yeah. It basically means the patros, or the father, of the one who is in charge, the one who actually creates, and sustains, and provides for the community, and sacrifices himself to do so.
25:27: And it's a beautiful thing when done properly. Right? Okay. So, God being the ultimate figure of the massive patriarchy that he is, is the one who gives, the one who provides, the one who protects, right?
25:40: The one who creates. And that comes from the male, or the masculine, where the feminine receives, the feminine nurtures, the feminine equips, the feminine comes alongside and helps.
25:50: So, to see a man as one who actually steps up into the fray, takes on the enemy first, steps into the battle first, gets out of bed first to see who broke the window.
26:01: Doesn't say, honey, it's your turn, you know, equality here. No, that's not how that works. Because God has made me not only physiologically stronger than the woman, right?
26:12: He's made me psychologically more resilient. And generally speaking, there's always exceptions.
26:17: There's always a woman out there who's more, and a man who's lighter. And for those, there's some work involved. But basically what
26:23: I do is I summarize masculinity in a number of different P's. This is how I put it.
26:28: Okay. The man is to be the provider, the protector, the priest, the prophet, and the patriot of his family and his community.
26:41: And that, in a sense, summarizes what it means to be a man, functionally speaking, in the world. What do you mean, patriot?
26:49: I mean, one who looks out for the best interests of his community. Okay. Or his world or his nation.
26:55: I don't mean in a political, public, democratic sense, no. I was about to say, I don't have my American flag anywhere.
27:00: No, no, no, no. Sometimes it takes, yeah. You have to stand up with your community. As many of the churches actually gathered their own men during the
27:09: Revolutionary War of 1776, the churches actually gathered the men to stand up and defend their communities when the
27:15: British began to invade. Okay. All right. Yeah, I don't know if I meet that requirement. I remember one time we heard some ruffling on the side of our house, the garbage.
27:25: And my wife's like, go check it out. And I'm like, I'm not about to go outside and get bit by an old possum or nothing.
27:30: I'll do it when it's daytime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I failed the test, but God has to work on me some more.
27:37: You don't strike me as a squeamish type, man. I don't want to mess with your wife when you're around, so.
27:42: Listen, anything furry and below my ankles, I don't mess around with, bro. I don't mess around with. So if it's,
27:48: I can protect my family from like a thief or whatever, but with small furry things,
27:54: I don't fly with those things. So anyway, nevertheless, let's move on here.
28:00: So that's some great stuff. I think it's so important that, especially men, but I mean, believers in general, but men should really step into that role.
28:07: And we all have areas to kind of grow. And I suppose we can talk days and days about what that looks like.
28:14: But let's kind of make a shift here. When I was reading your description, you have a lot of focus in philosophy of religion, apologetics, and maybe we'll have time to go into some of the specific area of cognitive science and philosophy of mind, those sorts of things.
28:31: But why don't you define for folks, what is philosophy of religion? And why were you so interested in that topic that it became kind of a center of some of your study?
28:41: Sure. Well, philosophy is the love of wisdom and studying the questions behind the questions and unpacking that, what those actually mean behind the scenes in the history of ideas.
28:52: And of course, religion is a study of the groups of people and their belief systems and their ideologies and why they believe it.
28:58: So when you take philosophy of religion, you combine the two. Now we're studying why people believe these things and what is it that makes these things true or rational to continue to hold on in our modern day understanding.
29:11: So I thought that'd be fascinating. I think it's just a very close segue between philosophy of religion and apologetics. They're just so close together, they interlap.
29:17: Hmm. So what is the apologetical value of studying something like the philosophy of religion?
29:24: So if there's someone listening here and it's like, hey, I wanna take the philosophy of religion, what bearing does that have in apologetics?
29:32: Oh, the bearing is incredibly powerful. How could you really understand what you're defending if you don't know what you're defending?
29:39: Sure. And one of the ways of becoming a robust apologist is to study the major religions of the world from their own understanding, from their own theologies, from the primary texts themselves.
29:51: And that's actually a study of religion or theology of Hinduism or Buddhism and things of that nature. But philosophy of religion unpacks why the
29:58: Buddhists philosophically, epistemically believes it. What is the reasons they have?
30:04: And then you can understand now what they believe even more. That gives you a reason to believe why you believe what you believe.
30:10: So you can do what Peter tells us to give a hope for the reason within us. Sure. So when we talk about the philosophy of religion, is there a secular way of doing that or, and then a distinctly
30:20: Christian way? So like if I went to a seminary and took philosophy of religion, will it be in important ways different than if I were to go to a secular university and study the philosophy of religion?
30:30: Because when I think of philosophy of religion, I typically think of people familiarizing themselves with like the traditional arguments for God's existence, cosmological, teleological, ontological, those sorts of things.
30:41: Is there a unique difference between how Christian schools and secular schools play that out?
30:49: Yeah, there definitely is. And each one has their own, of course, take on it. I would recommend an article written by Alvin Plantinga, one of the greatest philosophers of religion in the last maybe five decades.
31:01: He wrote an article called Advice to Christian Philosophers. He unpacks that very question.
31:07: So basically the philosophy of religion is a study of what is it that makes this religion viable and as a rationally sustainable ideology.
31:17: And the philosophy of religion unpacks that, unpacks the concept of hell in different religions, the concept of Hades in different religions, the concepts of sin or hermitology and theology.
31:28: And how do I unpack that theologically in Hinduism and Buddhism and Islam? What do they mean by that?
31:34: So that's an understanding of it. So as an apologist, now I take that and apply it to the scriptures.
31:41: How does the scripture or the theological understanding of the concept of hell contrast to and enlighten the concept of hell within all these other religions?
31:51: And why is this one more rationally defensible than these others? Okay, so you can do philosophy of religion in the abstract.
31:59: Hey, look at all these different perspectives and how much they can give us an understanding as to a particular worldview, but the
32:05: Christian apologist is going to take that data and use it to kind of evaluate the merits or lack thereof of these different philosophical aspects of different worldviews.
32:16: So like, what is more plausible, the Buddhist conception of hell or the Christian conception of hell or the
32:23: Muslim conception of hell? Have I got it right? Yeah, you got it right. I would caution something though, Eli.
32:29: The pride that comes in. Since I have the truth, everyone else is wrong.
32:34: Now let me see what's wrong. No, I think that's an approach of pride. And I don't think that we can really grow and understand another faith or another religion or another ideology from a place of superiority.
32:48: We have been humbled by the death of Christ. Nothing else can humble us more by that. To come across it as just beggars trying to show others the path that was revealed to us, rather than trying to expose the falseness of your faith and slam people on the hammer.
33:05: With my apologetic mullet on their heads as I find all the things wrong with your faith and religion.
33:12: I mean, that's not a good way to approach people, let alone studies. Yeah. So, okay, so we've been humbled by the cross, but have we also been humbled by the truth of the cross?
33:26: Don't we come into it believing that we do have the truth? Can't we approach it as we do have the truth, but that in light of that truth and the fact that that truth has been given to us by the grace of God and not our own intellectual capacities, that we could kind of lovingly with gentleness and respect come at the issues of, you know, because we do believe these other perspectives are false as Christians, right?
33:47: I mean, we're not going to say that, you know, they have equal footing in terms of their truth, but we do want to make sure that when we're engaging people, we're engaging them, listening to them and, you know, showing respect and things like that.
34:01: You see where I'm trying to come from? Yes. There's a tendency within culture, specifically secular culture, to minimize truth claims so that we do not offend the other side.
34:13: So as a result of that, we have moved from post -modern thinking to a more relativized notion of truth itself.
34:20: And that has now trivialized truth claims in religion and in ethics. Okay. Yes, that is a reality that we have to deal with.
34:27: And we should be careful not to give into that, right? Yeah, that would be dangerous. On the other end of the spectrum, when we say we have the truth, and the truth in what?
34:36: Like, for example, if you were to tell me I have the truth about the atonement, well, if I were to understand and unpack Christian theology, specifically modern understandings of the atonement,
34:45: I'll see multiple views on the atonement itself within my own tradition. Even Christians have multiple views ourselves on understanding inerrancy.
34:53: I mean, we have debates at the ETS about that, didn't we, about inerrancy? Yeah. So I think even if I have the truth,
35:00: I don't have a full, robust understanding of it. Because I was having a conversation with Oz Guinness once, we were walking a beautiful path.
35:08: And I told him, you know, there's some wonderful absolutes that we believe as Christians. He just stopped and turned around and looked at me.
35:13: He said, no. I said, what do you mean? He said, there's only one absolute, and that's Christ himself. And I wonder -
35:23: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I wonder, when we were talking and discussing that, there are things that are objectively true, right?
35:30: There are things that are relatively understandable. But to claim that I have a full, robust understanding of it is a height of arrogance.
35:38: I think that only comes with the omniscience of God. Well, yeah, and I understand what you're saying, and I very much resonate with that.
35:47: But I said that we only absolute truth when you say, when Oz Guinness says
35:52: Christ, well, what does that mean? Christ, the idea of Christ is predicated upon a broader context that makes sense out of the very concept of Christ.
36:02: And so when I talk about we have the truth, while we don't have a fully robust answer to every single disagreement, it seems to me that there would have to be, at least within our system, certain truths that are a given.
36:19: Otherwise, other things that we hold to be true wouldn't even make sense. So when we say we know Christ as absolute, well,
36:25: Christ, the Christ of what? The Christ of Mormonism, the Christ of Islam. We have to assume that hopefully there are other absolute truths that we hold together with the absolute truth of Christ that gives the concept of Christ meaning.
36:37: It's kind of when someone says, I believe the resurrection of Jesus, and that if we demonstrate to the unbeliever the resurrection of Jesus happened, then it proves the truth of his claims.
36:47: Well, not necessarily, it depends. When we talk about events, when a man was raised from the dead, what do those events mean?
36:56: If we're going to apply the proper interpretation of the resurrection, we're gonna have to have a context, a true context, that gives the accurate interpretation of the event we call the resurrection.
37:08: So you kind of get what I'm saying when you talk about absolute Christ. Can you kind of unpack what you mean by that, then, since I'm trying to follow up on exactly what you're saying?
37:16: Socrates says that the beginning of wisdom is unpacking definitions, okay?
37:22: Yeah, of course. Solomon would say the beginning of the wisdom is the fear of the Lord. But even that, we have to understand, okay, what do you mean by fear?
37:30: What do you mean by the Lord, right? Sure. Okay. And then when we say Christ, of course, when I say
37:35: Christ, I need to unpack what that actually means. Right. And that actually doesn't mean something, the same thing as just a prophet, like Islam says, or an angel, like Mormonism may say.
37:44: No, I mean the actual son and the incarnation of the living God himself, the triunity of the third person of the
37:51: Trinity. There you go. I just unpacked that. Now, what do I mean by that? And I could go on and just do a whole course on the incarnation there, right?
37:59: Right, but if I were, okay, so you said the Trinity. So if I were to ask you, is the Trinity an absolute truth?
38:09: You would have to say, what do you mean by an absolute truth, right? I would say that God is a Trinity as revealed to us by Holy Scripture and the traditions of the
38:16: Christian church for the last 2 ,000 years. Yes, but is it an absolute truth in a philosophical sense?
38:22: I don't know if I wanna call that an absolute truth. I wanna call it a truth. It's higher up there. It's an objective truth based on Scripture.
38:28: Okay. I think the only absolute, I think what resonated with me with Guinness's claim is truth is not just a proposition,
38:35: Eli, it's a person. I am the way, the truth in the life.
38:41: Jesus himself embodies the truth. It doesn't make sense without him. Nothing else matters without him.
38:47: Right. He's the very one who even makes logic even possible. Yeah. So I guess I would say that I would agree with that.
38:55: But when he says, I am the truth, what does he mean by I, if not the whole Trinity? I mean, he's not just talking about himself, the second person.
39:03: So we would say that his statements there as an absolute truth would reflect on the very reality and necessity of the triune
39:09: God who has revealed himself. So I would say not only is the person of God necessary and absolutely true,
39:17: I would even argue, even despite the different interpretations and understandings,
39:22: I would argue the necessity and absolute truth of his revelation as well. Otherwise we'd kind of get stuck in kind of a skepticism and relativity with respect to -
39:31: I'm not saying that. That would be - Yeah, yeah. But we do have to recognize the humility involved in dealing with truth claims. Emmanuel Cahn unpacked that in multiple works on his work on religion, that we have only a limited concept of the reality that we think we have available to us.
39:45: And the apostle Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians 13, the most beautiful chapter on love ever written by human hands.
39:52: It's read at every wedding. That's right. He says in there, now I see through a glass darkly.
39:58: I think that that claim is exemplified in almost everything in life. We see through things darkly.
40:04: The more we look at them, the more we can unpack them, whether it's science or cosmology or archeology or even theology, unless it's revealed to us by God and unpacked for us clearly, we don't have a complete knowledge of it.
40:18: All we have is what's given to us through the prophets and through the church history and our understanding of our own particular theology.
40:25: I've been to many churches. One particular church says that, you ask them where their doctrinal statement is.
40:30: The pastor says, it's right here in the Bible, son. Well, that's great. That's not an accent, okay.
40:37: Do you have anything? Yes, right here. King James, you know. But churches, well -meaning believers have different interpretations of different concepts within that.
40:49: Although we have some core essential doctrines that all of us agree with, but there are a lot of things that we need to be more gracious about.
40:56: I got you. That's my point. Well, excellent, thank you. So when we talk about philosophy of religion, then like I said before, when
41:03: I think of philosophy of religion, I tend to think of kind of the traditional arguments and there's also discussion on the coherency of theism.
41:09: They talk about what it means for God to be omnipresent, omniscient, all these sorts of things.
41:15: But when we get to kind of some of the arguments, some of the traditional arguments, as an apologist yourself, what is your favorite argument you think is, and I know people who watch my channel,
41:26: I'm a presuppositionalist. I love the transcendental argument, but that's okay if other people don't, if they're not using the same things that I'm using.
41:34: So don't feel like you need to be answering this question in any particular way. So what is your favorite argument for God's existence that you've taken from your study of philosophy of religion and have used in actual conversation and actually seen some fruit out of?
41:50: And don't be compelled to cater to my audience. I love to just hear a perspective. I know that everyone doesn't jive with the same thing, the same ways that I do stuff and that's fine.
41:59: Okay. I think the greatest apologetic of course is our lives. That may seem cliche, but it's so powerful.
42:08: I've just seen people live their life in such a way that I can't deny the God that they follow. Yeah. Yeah.
42:15: I've seen that happen with people who would give their kidney up for somebody who they needed. And I say, wow.
42:21: And then they begin to talk. They got my attention first. Sure, sure. Now I'm listening more closely to what this man has just said because of what he just sacrificed.
42:29: Yeah. So that's a big thing for me, but regarding the particular arguments themselves, I think the axiological argument or the argument for morality is my favorite.
42:40: Yeah. And I actually liked the way you answered even because cliches can sometimes be really true.
42:48: Okay. I don't remember if it was in the encyclopedia, the popular encyclopedia of Christian apologetics, which was actually recommended when
42:55: I took your class. That's right, it was. I don't know if it was in this book, but there was a reference to incarnational apologetics.
43:03: Incarnate, if anyone's not familiar, incarnation in fleshness, the incarnation of Christ, where the second person of the
43:09: Trinity takes on flesh, right? The incarnational apologetics is the sort of apologetics in which we defend our faith with our lives.
43:17: So we ask the question, and especially those of us who are very stimulated by kind of a lot of these intellectual discussions, which apologetic have we seen the most fruit from in real everyday life, okay?
43:31: I'm not saying this is the most powerful like logical argument, right? But has it been through arguments with premises or debating someone on some intellectual proposition, which
43:43: I highly recommend and think is vitally important, or has it just been being faithful in your life to Christ and allowing the light of Christ to actually shine through so that people around you see that transformation?
43:58: I mean, I think if we're honest with ourselves, we'd have to say that primarily we see the most fruit in that more existentially lived out faith than a lot of the stuff we see on the internet where people are debating back and forth, which again, super important.
44:11: I mean, I do it myself. I mean, I'm not throwing that down, but do you resonate with that? Do you think that's an accurate picture, at least in your experience?
44:19: Absolutely. Okay. John 13, 35. Jesus said, they shall know you by your apologetic.
44:25: They shall know you by your arguments. They shall know you by your wonderful new shoes that you can preach with, or your wonderful ability to articulate the gospel.
44:33: No, no, no. They shall know you by your love. And love means sacrificially giving and showing people that they're worthy of the image of God that's within them, even though they may not see it themselves.
44:46: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's incredibly powerful. People are worthy of God's love.
44:52: Not worthy. They're worth God's love, but not worthy of it. And to unpack that to people and show people that is incredible.
44:59: In my book, actually I have it in both of the books on the Christian apologetics and anthology of primary sources, as well as debating
45:06: Christian theism. We have a whole section there on one of the most popular arguments for the existence of God through Christian history.
45:13: Oh, that's cool. It's called the argument from religious experience. Hmm. Okay. I hope, let's see if I have it here.
45:19: I think I have a copy so I can show people what it looks like. Okay. You can unpack that and I'll just. Sure, sure.
45:24: So the argument from religious experience basically says that there is an experience of the divine in every culture, in every history, in all stories, in all places, in all demographics.
45:34: Everyone has an experience somehow. Actually only modern culture has actually claimed with it's a rise of the nonce that people do not believe that there's a supernatural source or a
45:43: God. That's it. Yeah. Check it out. I got it. It's good. It's thick, but it's good.
45:50: Okay. Thank you, brother. Yeah, we had a hard time working on that one, but hey, anything is possible. Small miracles happen when you continue working on them.
45:59: That's right. That's right. That was something to do with the life coaching issue, which I found to be helpful. I know a lot of people who have in their heart a book, but they don't recognize, they just see this massive tome and say, that's not happening.
46:10: Well, no, it's not happening with anybody. Nothing happens that big. You start small. Be faithful with God in the little things and he will bless you in the big things.
46:19: Small incremental steps daily can add up to massive steps in the future. Okay. Anyway, that's a side point.
46:27: No, that's true. You encouraged me with that when I was talking about how I wanted to write a book, which
46:32: I haven't had the opportunity to do, but I have been encouraged by that piece of advice and other areas of my life where it's just little by little and you get to accomplish, you know, it's kind of,
46:43: I think it was you, I don't know if it was you or someone else, you know, how do you eat an elephant? I don't know if you use that one bite at a time.
46:49: And I was like, well, I don't eat elephant, but if I were, that's the route I'd go. That's how you do it. That's exactly. Yeah. And there is nobody successful in the history of the world who hasn't gone through a process where they have to fail multiple times to succeed unless they were just given it.
47:04: And if they were given it, it didn't last long in their hands, by the way. Yeah. Whether it's a business or a church or a community, or even an exercise program, it won't last long unless you build up to it.
47:17: Yeah. Wow. Very good. All right. So let's kind of shift from philosophy of religion and talk a little bit about, which
47:25: I found interesting, which I did not know was an area of yours. And that is the philosophy of mind.
47:33: Why don't you unpack for us? What is the philosophy of mind and what is the most powerful apologetic application of that in some of the conversations that we might have with, let's just say intellectually astute unbelievers who know these sorts of things?
47:48: How can we present an argument from mind to give someone something to chew on when we're sharing our faith with others?
47:56: I love that one. The philosophy of mind, or in some circles it's called cognitive science, where one focuses more on the empirical parts of it and one focuses more on the ideological parts.
48:07: But both of them are integrable when studying the brain and when studying the concepts of the mind through intellectual history. But basically philosophy of the mind is studying the distinct difference between what we consider to be the dichotomy between the mind and the body, or the soul and the flesh.
48:22: Are these two separate things or are they one? How do we look at that? Now, historically throughout the history of intellectual thought, most people, most cultures have believed we are a dichotomous being, where both flesh and spirit, or soul and body, and some say we're trichotomous of three, but I won't go there for now.
48:41: And these two concepts together make what's called the psychosomatic unity of a body.
48:46: Psycho meaning soul, or the root word of psyche in Greek, meaning soul. That's where we get the word psychology, okay?
48:54: And then soma, which is the word for body in Greek as well. So body, soul make up a human being. We're both together.
49:00: So when God made Adam a body, he became a living being after God gave him a soul.
49:07: He breathed into him the flesh of life. So the question in historical philosophy of religion, excuse me, philosophy of mind, is are these two separate things or are they one?
49:18: If they're one, which modern philosophy of religion thinkers and cognitive scientists have argued that they are one.
49:26: They're the same, there is no soul, because they have, yeah, the enlightenment has enlightened us that we don't have anything inside us.
49:33: Well, that's absurd. And to unpack that philosophically and apologetically,
49:38: I'll tell you in a story, okay? So one of my students came to my office one day after a philosophy class, and he began to ask and to question the whole concept of philosophy enterprise itself, because we're dealing with the abstract.
49:53: It's not like his courses in chemistry or physics or criminology, where you're actually dealing with real cases, real blood on the floor.
50:00: And he said, I can't believe what you're telling me is real or true, other more than this poetry, because I can't test it, taste it, feel it and see it.
50:10: And because I can't do that, I can't believe it. And I looked at him and I said, you don't believe that.
50:17: What do you mean? Yes, I do. I said, you don't. He said, I do. I said, no, no, you don't. What do you mean?
50:22: I said, ah, the beginning of wisdom is to ask questions. So why? Because the very concept that says,
50:29: I don't believe anything that's not physical, is itself a non -physical thought.
50:35: You believe it. You believe what you just said, don't you? Yeah, well, that self, that very thought itself is not physical.
50:41: Sure. That's a cognition or an emergent quality of the mind that even modern scientists have to question their very propositions on materialism because of it.
50:52: Because the human concept of conscious or consciousness is itself not a physical quantifiable thing.
50:58: So what if someone has kind of a reductionist view of the mind? So the mind is the brain and my beliefs are kind of this like neurological activity in my mind and my brain, so to speak.
51:10: It's like, yeah, I believe it's a physical thing. How might you kind of... Now, I don't believe that. And I think that there's some number of criticisms, but how would you try to demonstrate someone who's trying to stick to their guns and say, beliefs, the beliefs that I have are me verbalizing physical content that's kind of going through my brain through these kind of electrical synapses and electrical chemical reactions going on in the brain?
51:35: I say, why can't it be both end? Okay. Right. So I have an electrical synapses firing off and whenever I think of my mother.
51:43: Okay. Okay. They fire in a specific region of my brain. Yes. But those synapses are not my mother.
51:50: And they're definitely not the image of my mother. They're different things. Sure. And you're reducing the two together when you do that.
51:57: And secondarily, the very concept itself, the very thoughts that we're thinking, we have to unpack what those actually mean.
52:04: So when I say something is actually physical, what do I mean by physical? Okay. Now, Rene Descartes brilliantly defined the physical as that which is extended into space.
52:14: Okay. Or has weight or has volume. Thoughts have none of these. Thoughts are not physical by that very definition.
52:22: We have to actually change the very definition of physical to incorporate that. Like gravity. How do we even quantify what gravity is?
52:28: Let alone your electricity or electromagnetism or light. Is it a wave? Right? Or is it something else?
52:35: Within the very sphere of the physical realm, we have to actually unpack what that physics means. And even change the definitions to incorporate things like consciousness.
52:44: Okay. So would you say then, because we make a distinction, you and I as Christians, right, and as dualists to a certain degree, that a man is a body, soul composite.
52:54: So that thinking does not occur in the brain. Thinking occurs in the mind to which there is corresponding physical activity in the brain.
53:06: So that when the materialist is observing the physical activity, he just thinks that's all there is.
53:11: We're saying, no, it's part of it, but it's not the entire picture because really what does it mean to say my thought or belief weighs a certain amount of pounds, right?
53:21: If there's a one -to -one correspondence between my brain and my thought, then they should have the same qualities.
53:30: If they differ just in one element, then by definition, they're not the same. They don't have a one -to -one correspondence. Have I summarized the distinction correctly there?
53:37: Yeah, you have, yes. And this is what Cartesian dualists will argue. Okay. Yeah, that there's a distinct difference between the body and the soul or the mind and the flesh.
53:47: And these two do not have the same qualities as each other. But if they do have the exact same qualities and they are the same thing.
53:54: So what did you unpack that for us? Give me an argument for the soul. If someone's like, man, I don't know, you know,
53:59: Dr. Swice, I know you taught at a seminary, you got all this philosophy stuff, but I just don't see any reason to believe that we have immaterial souls.
54:09: How would you unpack that for me if I was your unbelieving friend here? Well, I would have done earlier what
54:14: I've told you with my student to tell you that the very concept of the question that says, I don't believe in the soul is itself a non -physical question based on ideologies that are not physical.
54:25: Okay. Ideologies are not physical. Those come from your emergent qualities of your mind or your brain that you call your thoughts.
54:30: And those things themselves are clues that there's something else to you that is more than just physical. Okay. For example, when a plane goes down with 250 people that die, we spend millions of dollars trying to unpack what happened, why they died, who shot the arrow or the missile, whatever it is that took it down.
54:45: Why? Those are just 350 hairless apes. We can just replace it with more of them.
54:51: No, there's something more to human beings than just the physical flesh itself. When I submit a resume for a job, it doesn't tell you everything about me.
54:59: It just tells you what I have done. Does it tell you my dreams, my hopes, my fears, the things that break my heart, the things that enlighten my heart?
55:08: Sure. Those are the deep qualities of what it means to be human that gives us purpose, passion, and peace in our lives that cannot be quantified on a physical spectrum or any
55:17: MRI scanner or CT scanner. Sure. And to put people into a physical box like that is animalistic, materialistic, and reductionistic ethically.
55:28: It's very, very dangerous, I think, to do that. I think there's so much more to us than that.
55:34: And I love how William Blake put it. Okay. A great poet. He said, this life's dim windows of the soul distort the heavens from pole to pole and goad us to believe the lie that we see with and not through the eye.
55:53: When we see with the eye, all I see is that individual in front of me. Sure. But when I see with the eye,
55:59: I see a man with dreams and hopes and who wants to do something significant with his life, who wants to help others, and also can be wounded and can be inspired.
56:09: And I think when we see people as more than just their flesh, we could do a lot more for the world and for people around us.
56:16: That's more of an existential argument. The philosophical perspective on it is something that Plato talked about and unpacked in his books, in his works.
56:25: Okay. When he talked about physical things are things we could take apart. For example, let's take a look at my book here called, it's actually a book
56:33: I'm writing on called Taking Care of Your Emotions. Okay. On cognitive science. Now this book can be divided into different parts.
56:41: I can pull apart the pages, I can pull apart the words, I can take apart the spine, but a person cannot be divided into parts.
56:51: Right. A person is a holistic unity, a simple unity.
56:57: That unity as a person cannot be divided or sustained into different aspects where physical things can be.
57:04: Okay. We are persons. When we die, our body breaks down, but our soul stays intact and it moves on to a different place.
57:11: But that's a whole different discussion and argument there. But those are some thoughts initially addressed. Okay. Excellent.
57:17: Well, my last question, since we're at the top of the hour here, and I appreciate you coming on,
57:23: I'm really enjoying this discussion. It's encouraging. And I like talking to professors and philosophers and theologians.
57:30: It inspires me to like read up on something new. If we talk about something that I really haven't delved into,
57:36: I'm like, you know what? I wanna read up on that. So it's an inspiration as I'm speaking to the people.
57:41: It inspires me to kind of go on studying. Hopefully that does the same for others. But my last question here is when I read your information, your little biography here, it says here that Cal Dune is a committed
57:55: Christian, right? Theology, philosophy, ethics, logic, cutting edge research in psychology, science, and even literature.
58:01: The second part here, movies and pop culture are all tools that you use to help people find meaning.
58:09: Now, moving away from, I mean, that has a lot of application for that life coaching aspect that you do, but how can we use movies and pop culture references and things like that within an apologetic context?
58:24: Now, I know some people might balk at this. You mentioned at the beginning of the show, and I joke around with people. And I was like, hey, did you see that new episode of Game of Thrones?
58:32: I'm like, no, no, I didn't see it. I love Jesus. So I like to do the little turn of the tables, joking around.
58:40: But putting that aside, just in a general sense, what is the apologetic usefulness of actually being able to use pop culture references and movies and things like that?
58:52: How can we use that to our benefit when we're defending the faith? I think it was Dostoevsky who said that it is not just art that mimics life, it's life that mimics the arts.
59:04: And as an artist, people have a profound responsibility of the kind of effects and the role models that they're setting up for culture in the characters that they actually play.
59:13: So with that said, when we take things like modern day movies, which are pretty popular among people, or sports, they're capturing the attention of the masses.
59:22: And when you specialize on movies, for example, if you see behind me over here, there's a portrait of the Matrix, one of my all -time favorite movies.
59:29: Okay, so the Matrix theme goes back to the Aristotelian and platonic notion of the brain in Nevada, of us being caught in a cave, a cognitive cave around us, where we're living in an echo chamber of what the media tells us, of what people tell us, of what our community tells us.
59:47: And we're able to see, once we unplug from that Matrix, we're able to see beyond it and above it and through it.
59:54: And I think the themes in the films unpack some of that stuff for us, like the recent remake of the
01:00:00: Matrix, or I think it was part four, they talked about the concept of free will. And one of the themes in that recent film is that the decisions you make are already made for you before you make them.
01:00:11: You think that you're deciding something when the fact of the matter, your dispositions, your characteristics have already been created and set up for you by a domino effect years ago.
01:00:21: And when you come to a point to decide, you're just gonna decide based on that default. Automatically, there's hardly any free will at all.
01:00:28: And those films remind us that unless we recognize that, only then can we have free will.
01:00:35: That's just an example within culture and pop culture. Yeah, I suppose that a lot of movies, whether they're bad movies, good movies, violent movies, rom -coms, whatever, they all touch on human aspirations and themes that I think can be useful in unpacking and connecting with people.
01:00:55: Does that give us a right to expose ourselves to sexuality and lustful?
01:01:02: I'm not saying that. I have a roof. I watch all sorts of movies. I'm a movie junkie.
01:01:08: I love action. I love blood and guts. I love it. But there are certain things where I don't allow my freedom in Christ, if I can say that, because I like to look at these things and find touch points for connection.
01:01:23: I don't use my freedom to just expose myself to any old thing. There is a roof where I say, nope, sorry, not gonna fall into that one.
01:01:30: I don't wanna expose myself to that. And where that line is drawn is different for a lot of people. But I do think that a lot of these films, even violent films, touch on important aspects of the human experience that I think can be very powerfully geared to speaking into the secular world.
01:01:48: So I very much resonate with that. Now, here's an important question though, Dr. Swyce. Did you like the new
01:01:55: Matrix that came out? The newest one. Did you see the newest one? That's the question.
01:02:01: Yes, of course, yeah. I would have to have seen the newest one, right. Well, it doesn't hold a candle to the original. That's fair.
01:02:07: But it has some merits. It has some merits, yeah. Although I did miss Lloyd's Fishburne in there. Oh yes, that's right.
01:02:14: Yeah. They had a fake one. It was the guy, I don't remember, the guy who, it looked like he was kind of a replacement of that character.
01:02:22: Did he play Lloyd Fishburne? No, no, they kept referring to him because they couldn't replace him.
01:02:28: Okay, that's right. Okay. All right, very good. Yeah, it was well done. But going back to your theme that the movies actually touch on that.
01:02:34: In the old days, we used to have books and culture and stories that would do that. And I hearken back, and I would recommend this to a resource for your audience and apologetics as they begin to unpack and deal with culture and engage culture better.
01:02:47: Joseph Campbell came out with a book a number of years ago called The Hero of a Thousand Faces. Okay. And he deals with mythology, or he's a mythologist, where he analyzed hundreds, if not over a thousand stories in history, in legends, in religions, in fables of stories in general.
01:03:05: And he found there's a certain theme called the hero's journey. Have you heard of it? I'm familiar with it.
01:03:13: The hero's journey is absolutely fascinating. If you just Google it, you can type in a, they have these graphs that show you that.
01:03:19: And every major story in the history of the world throughout all of religions and legends and mythologies has this particular theme that stretches.
01:03:29: It's about a hero from an unknown place who finds a guru, who leads him on a path, who struggles with his own identity about himself, finally -
01:03:36: With every movie. It's just a pattern. You can see this pattern everywhere. And I think that pattern itself is in the very story of the
01:03:43: Messiah, who himself goes through this journey and meets his greatest enemy and fails.
01:03:51: And then comes back stronger, better, more powerful than anybody's ever dreamed. That's what happens with Jesus. He faced death.
01:03:57: He looks like he failed. He was dead. And then he comes back from the resurrection which changes everything.
01:04:03: Yeah, and that's that theme that's in majority of stories. The hero fights, the hero loses, the hero wins, the hero comes back.
01:04:10: I think if we can unpack that and show the messianic theme within that for others as a seed to something greater, it's definitely an apologetic work.
01:04:21: Well, excellent. Well, I'd like to thank you, Dr. Swyce. This has been excellent. I normally don't live stream, at least on my time, this early.
01:04:28: So we don't have as large of an audience. I'm sure folks will get to this discussion later on. But if it's okay,
01:04:33: I think there is a question or two in the live chat if you don't mind addressing.
01:04:40: There might just be one here. But if there are new questions that pop in as we're going, let's keep them coming.
01:04:48: So Truth Defenders, I don't know if this is in reference to something you said earlier on in our discussion, but Truth Defenders says, so I take it
01:04:56: Dr. Swyce is not a pacifist. What is his take on Christians and self -defense, military, et cetera?
01:05:03: What do you think? Is it wrong for me to aspire to be the next Puerto Rican Christian Bruce Lee?
01:05:09: Is that wrong? I mean, talking about that cultural connection, you see. Are you willing to go through what
01:05:17: Bruce Lee did to become who he was? I'm not too sure. I don't wanna go there. Yeah, yeah.
01:05:22: The old saying in the Marines is everyone wants to go to heaven, but not everyone wants to die. This is very true, yes.
01:05:29: Yeah, I don't think you can be a man unless you stand up and defend your family in the highest level of the term.
01:05:36: Okay. There's a picture to address the question that actually went viral.
01:05:42: It's about, I think it was a six or seven -year -old boy who was holding his little sister. And the picture made rounds all over the world.
01:05:49: He even was sent a shield by the gentleman who played Captain America in the Avengers because of this.
01:05:56: And his face has a huge gash cut up in his face. What happened was his sister was attacked by a mad dog and he jumped in the way and stopped the dog from doing it and the dog went off on him.
01:06:09: Okay. When he was pulled out of that fight and he went out and came out of his surgery, his father asked him, why did you do it?
01:06:17: The little boy said, if somebody had to die, I thought it should be me. That little boy summarizes in his experience, the sense of the protector that God made us to be for the woman.
01:06:30: And I don't think that's solely theological, but it's actually what attracts the deepest heart of a woman.
01:06:36: So a man who's willing to stand in the fire for her and defend her. Sure. Excellent.
01:06:41: Very good. And we have another question here from Simon Larson. Thank you so much, Simon. Simon asks,
01:06:48: Dr. Ted Turnow does apologetics by way of movies. Are you familiar with Ted Turnow?
01:06:53: I think I probably came across his work, but I'm not intimately connected with, no. Okay. Well, just to reference here,
01:06:58: Alyssa Scott says Frank Turek came out with Hollywood heroes, which is kind of predicated upon that idea.
01:07:04: And I looked on Amazon a while back, it's getting excellent reviews. So again, whether you are an evidentialist or a classicalist or a presuppositionalist, we all could benefit from connecting with the people that we are speaking with and finding those cultural touch points.
01:07:22: One of which superheroes is very popular right now. And there's some really good content there to use as entry points into discussions of the gospel and things like that.
01:07:32: So you guys definitely wanna check that out. Yeah, thank you, Alyssa for that. I have to check that out. Frank Turek is a friend and he's done incredible work.
01:07:39: Although I don't think Eli, he's a presuppositionalist. No, sir. No, he's not. I said, whether you are a presuppositionalist.
01:07:46: I've actually had him on the show before and we disagree. I kind of teased him,
01:07:51: I was like, cause he wrote that book, Stealing from God. And I was joking around.
01:07:57: You should have entitled it Stealing from Bonson, but I was just needling him there.
01:08:03: Stealing from God's an excellent book. I think Dr. Turek is an excellent communicator and even amongst the disagreements.
01:08:10: I mean, God is using his ministry and to that end, I'm very thankful for his work. So yeah.
01:08:15: If you could go to my YouTube channel also, I have a talk that I gave in Poland at the evangelical theological meeting over there on the theology and the mythology of superheroes.
01:08:26: Okay. Excellent. Now, why don't you share with folks that that's kind of the last question for now. And why don't you just take an opportunity to share with folks where they can find your content?
01:08:35: I know you have a podcast. I am a faithful listener. I'm a couple of episodes behind, but I listened to the podcast.
01:08:42: You do some interviews kind of like what I do here. And where can people find your content? Yeah. Okay. So go to logicallyfaithful .com
01:08:49: is the website where I have videos. I have blogs. I have a
01:08:54: Facebook community that people can join and discuss and grow theologically and socially, psychologically.
01:09:00: I've done things of that nature. I've also have a portion there with the, if you click on coaching, we're individual one -on -one.
01:09:05: If you need growth, if you need to find more passion, purpose and peace in your life, feel free to reach out.
01:09:11: I have to check to see, I may have some openings. I'm not sure what the schedule would look like in the next couple of weeks, but feel free to reach out.
01:09:18: We should take a look and chat about if and how we can work together to provide that sense of accomplishment.
01:09:24: And my last and final question is what advice can you give to Christian apologists to up their game in terms of whether it's areas of study or areas of spiritual formation?
01:09:35: Maybe you can kind of give us some last second nuggets before we close off our discussion. Absolutely. So in his book on trees,
01:09:43: The Hidden Life of Trees, the author there talks about a tree is only as strong as a forest it is in.
01:09:51: And you as being an apologist or a writer or a theologian, whatever it is that you want to go into, if you're not surrounding yourself with like -minded people who also love
01:09:59: God, who also want the best for their community as a grove of tree does, then you will shrivel. You can't do this alone.
01:10:05: God specifically said to Adam, it is not good for man to be alone. And I think that doesn't just apply romantically.
01:10:12: I think it applies sociologically, theologically, and psychologically as well. Find a group of people and ground yourself in them and with them and inspire them as you hope to be inspired.
01:10:23: So it's not good for man to be alone. So go get a friend. That's the ghetto, the ghetto translation.
01:10:29: Yeah, or find a wife too. That would help as well. That's right, that's right. Well, Dr. Swice, thank you so much for coming on.
01:10:35: I really enjoyed this conversation and I'm very much appreciative of your friendship and the fact that I was able to be in your class all those years ago.
01:10:43: It was online, but I remember it being a very engaging class and I still remember some of the assignments you gave and staying late at night, writing papers and stuff.
01:10:53: So I very much appreciate it. It's paid off in the long run. So thank you so much. Just seeing what you're doing is encouraging to all the rest of the students
01:11:00: I've ever had. So wonderfully, God bless you. Well, God bless, brother. You can stand with me for just two seconds. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening in and sending in some questions.
01:11:10: I know it's kind of a different time that I normally go live, but I do appreciate all my listeners. And until next time, take care.