Christian Apologetics: A Conversation with Douglas Groothuis

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today

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I have Dr. Douglas Grothuis with me, who is the author of this apologetic monstrosity, this dictionary -size apologetics textbook.

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Now you guys know, those who follow my channel, I'm a presuppositional apologist, but I cannot tell you how much

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I have benefited from reading folks in different apologetic traditions, and so there's so much great information in this book.

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So if you don't have it, or you're just getting into apologetics, I'm very much looking forward to inviting

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Dr. Grothuis on with me in just a moment to kind of unpack a new edition of this book that is going to be coming out.

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And so I'm very excited to be talking about that with Dr. Grothuis tonight. Well, just real quick,

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I do have a quick announcement. Those who have been following various posts that I've been putting out on social media, on Thursday I'll be having

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Dr. Scott Oliphant of Westminster Theological Seminary on to talk about his new book,

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Apologetics and Persuasion. It was originally scheduled for Thursday at 7 p .m.

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Eastern Time, but it has been rescheduled still on Thursday, but at 3 .30

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p .m. Eastern, so much, much earlier. You guys know I usually do my shows at 9 p .m.

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because my kids are in bed, but we're gonna make an exception for Thursday. So looking forward to having

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Dr. Oliphant on with me then. And so that's the only announcement

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I have. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce Dr. Douglas Grothuis. How are you doing,

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Doctor? Doing well, thanks for having me. It is a pleasure to have you back on. For folks who don't remember,

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I had Dr. Grothuis on a while back to talk about the spiritual formation of the apologist, and so I put a link to that video in the comments there if you want to check that video out.

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Why don't you tell folks a little bit more about yourself, who you are, where you teach, and yeah.

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Well, you did pronounce my name correctly, which is very significant and important.

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Douglas is easy, but it's Grothuis. It's a Dutch name. I teach at Denver Seminary. I've been here for, gosh, since 1993, and I'm a professor of philosophy, and I think

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I'm up to about 14 books now, and my real passion is to make the truth of God known to the world, to build up the church and reach the unbelieving world with the truth.

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Excellent. Now, you have written many books on a wide range of topics.

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I believe you wrote a book a while back on The New Age. I'm not sure how popular The New Age is today.

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I haven't been following that movement, but I remember reading portions of that book, and it was it was excellent. So folks, really, if you've never heard of Dr.

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Grothuis, look look him up on Amazon. He's written a bunch of books, but my first question with respect to books, there are already some comments being made about your bookshelf.

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People love seeing the bookshelves in the background in these videos. Well, you know, it's cool, though.

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You know, it's kind of like stacks of papers and journals and magazines and things.

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Hey, you have the nerdy vibe. People like that.

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Well, my first question for you, talking about books, what are your top three favorite books that you've read and top three favorite books that you've written?

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Hmm, well, you know, it kind of depends on how you define favorite.

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If I would say influential on my ministry, then I would put

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Francis Schaeffer's book, The God Who Was There, as the first, because I read that as a young Christian in 1976, and it really set the tone for my ministry in terms of understanding the world according to a

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Christian worldview, and not being afraid to tackle the great philosophical and cultural issues.

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And then another book that was extremely informative for me is a book called The Universe Next Door by James Sire, which

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Jim passed away about three years ago, but the book is out in a sixth edition, came out after he died, edited by a guy named

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Jim Hoover. But that's a comparison of the Christian worldview to deism, naturalism, existentialism, nihilism, etc.,

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according to basic categories, like what is the ultimate reality, who are human beings, what is the nature of morality, what's the meaning of history, if any, and so on.

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And then I think maybe the third one would be a book I may have read more than any others, and that's

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C .S. Lewis's book, The Abolition of Man. It's, excuse me, it's less well known than Mere Christianity or Screwtape Letters, but it's an argument for the existence of objective moral value.

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And I've taught it at the graduate level, undergraduate level, read it probably, gosh, probably about 11 or 12 times now over the years.

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So those are the top three. The ones I've written, I'll just put it this way,

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I think the most significant book I've written is my Krishna Apologetics textbook, which is out actually now in a second edition in Kindle.

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It should come out hard copy in about six weeks, supply chain willing, we'll see.

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But I think the best written of my books is my memoir called

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Walking Through Twilight, A Wife's Illness, A Philosopher's Lament. And I think my most,

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I dare say this, entertaining or lively book is

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Philosophy in Seven Sentences. I reread that and I get a lot of inspiration.

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I actually asked the Lord to kind of give me the spirit of G .K. Chesterton for that book, to be able to make it witty and interesting and get people laughing.

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Yeah. Now you're an author. I mean, that takes a lot of time to write and research.

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I mean, when you take a look at this textbook, I mean, this takes a long time to research and write.

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What's your process for writing? How do you gather your material? What does that look like from here to the page?

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I may be the wrong person to ask about that. By the way, I'm going to stop you right there. Every single person that I've asked about their writing process has told me that.

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They've had excellent books to be like. I remember I had Dr. Kirk McGregor on. He's a well -known

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Molinist philosopher and he wrote a biography on Louis de Molina. I asked Dr.

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McGregor, what's your studying process? He's like, oh, I'm the worst person to ask. I don't wish my methods of study on anyone.

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So no worries. I'm sure people will still be interested in knowing your process. Well, I kind of bring it down to the level of passion and consistency.

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Okay. All of my books have come out of a concern to address an issue.

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Sure. I've never written a book because someone paid me to write a book here, write a book on this. Every book

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I've wanted to write has been related to a topic or an issue I think is very important. And then persistence, keep writing.

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I don't have really a set schedule, but I can hit things very hard.

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I just finished a book that will come out in July called Fire in the Streets, which is about the racial upheaval in our culture.

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And I wrote that book in about three and a half months. And the last weekend finishing up,

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I think I spent 20 hours on a Friday and a Saturday writing. And I just sat there and banged it out.

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It didn't even seem to be a long time. I was kind of in a flow state, you know, everything was on the screen and I wasn't tired or grumpy or anything, this is what

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I needed to do. But if you want to ask somebody about method, you should interview Dr.

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Craig Blomberg, if you haven't. He's a New Testament scholar, good on the reliability,

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I think the best on the reliability of the New Testament. And he's very methodical and very disciplined.

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He's German, Blomberg. I'm actually half Italian and we Italians just get excited about things and then it happens.

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I got the Dutch last name, but I'm actually half Italian. Okay. All right. Excellent. Very good.

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Okay. So let's kind of zero in on your major work. Now you said that the hard back of the hardcover of your new edition is coming out when?

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Sometime in April. It was supposed to be out, I think February 8th. And then

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I was told that the printers couldn't get it out because of supply chain problems, but the

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Kindle came out February 8th and it'll be about another hundred pages long.

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It'll be seven chapters and all the chapters are updated, including the chapters by Craig Blomberg and Richard Hess.

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Craig Blomberg wrote a chapter defending the New Testament and Richard Hess wrote one on apologetic issues in the

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Old Testament. Excellent. So my next question is kind of layered. This being kind of your longest and master's book, what inspired you to write a book like this and then come out with a second edition to even add more material?

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And maybe we can kind of get into what that material is so folks can get an idea of whether it's worth getting the second edition, right?

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What new content do you have in there that someone who has the first edition might say, you know what?

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I think I need to get that second edition. Well, I taught the book for many years and as I would teach through it,

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I would think, well, this needs to be updated or I didn't touch on this issue at all.

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So I kept jotting down ideas for another edition and it sold well enough to warrant another edition, which means it's been picked up as a textbook at a lot of Christian colleges, seminaries, other places.

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So my publisher was interested in that and I've added chapters.

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Actually, the reason why you need to buy it, the second edition is that J .P. Moreland tells you to do so on the back cover.

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J .P. tells you to do it, you have to do it. But it does have a lot of new material. In fact, I even forget what's in there.

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There's so much I wrote it down. I have two chapters defending the atonement of Christ. In the first edition,

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I spent more time on the person of Christ and not as much on the work of Christ. So I really got into atonement theology and some of the attacks on propitiation, especially there's been a lot of attacks.

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Is that coming from the angle of its like moral appropriateness? Like how can a loving

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God sacrifice his son, kill an innocent person? Yes.

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Some people have called it divine child abuse. There are a number of criticisms and I probably worked harder on those two chapters than any chapters

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I've ever worked on in my whole life. So I got into it in a lot of detail. I went back and read heretics like Sosinus, who was a good heretic.

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I mean, that guy was smart. I read his work and read some critiques of him.

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Bill Craig's book was very helpful, Atonement and the Death of Christ. Very helpful.

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And then of course, there's John Stott's book, The Cross of Christ. So there's one chapter explaining the atonement, the elements of the atonement.

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There are about five elements of it. Propitiation is one. And then I have a chapter defending the atonement against Sosinus and other folks.

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I have a chapter I think is very important. And this was the first one I thought about writing in addition to what was already in the first edition.

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And that's called In Defense of the Church. Because most Protestant apologetic books just assume if you make a case for Christianity, then people, that's enough.

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And people will probably attend the church if they come to Christ. But we can't assume that.

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A lot of people think that spirituality is private, subjective, is something they can do on their own.

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So I have a whole chapter defending the institution of the church and basically what the church is.

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I give an apologetic for the church, and then the church as an apologetic to the world by how we live or how we ought to live.

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I have a chapter on what's called original monotheism, which is the argument that the first religion in history was monotheism.

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Now we know that from scripture, but there's a case to be made from history as well. And it's countering the view, the evolutionary view of religion that people started to think of spooks and spirits in various places.

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And then over time, it became more and more sophisticated. And you go from polytheism or animism to monotheism.

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And I argue against that. There's no good evidence for that. And Wynne Cordovan's book was very helpful in The Beginning God.

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He's revived this original monotheism argument really well. And then

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I've got a chapter called The Argument from Beauty, where I argue that there is such a thing as objective beauty in the world, in nature, and also some objects and events that human beings create.

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And the best example or the best explanation for these examples of beauty is there is a divine artist that you can't explain.

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The beauties in outer space, or even remarkably colored fish and birds and things like that, by just reducing it all to time, space, chance, plus nothing.

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This is a better explanation for that. Then I guess the last two, or however many left here, the chapter called

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Doubt, Skepticism, and the Hiddenness of God. So how do we deal with the claim first that there's great evidence for Christianity, everybody should believe, but so many people are unbelievers.

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It's called The Hiddenness of God Problem. So I tackle that.

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And then I have a chapter on, it's called Lament as Christian Apologetics.

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So this is like the flip side of the problem of evil. How can we believe in a

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God who's all good and all powerful when there's so much evil? Well, we try to deal with that. I've got a long chapter on that, but I flip it around and say,

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Christianity actually gives us the best resources for suffering well.

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And it really centers on Christ, that he suffered for us. And in his suffering, we find redemption.

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And in his suffering, we find a model for how to suffer. And we find someone who understands our suffering better than anyone else.

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So as Christians suffer well in faith, turning to God, even in their lament and in their pain, that is evidence that God is with us in our suffering.

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And that's something I've written about quite a bit before, Austin. So would you say that the additions to your book is a couple of hundred pages more than...

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About 100 extra pages. Okay. Wow. Okay. Very good. Now I'm interested in the section on beauty because there's not a lot of, at least on the popular level.

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I mean, when you take a look at popular level apologetics works, you have the arguments for the existence of God, the historicity of Jesus, the evidence for the resurrection.

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I like when books cover kind of arguments that aren't really explored. They kind of give you new and creative avenues to kind of discuss with unbelievers.

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I work at a Christian private school and I am a senior advisor. I'm an advisor for a senior thesis.

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And a student is writing a paper on the issue of beauty and whether it's innate, is the knowledge of beauty innate.

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So this idea of beauty is very fascinating. Do you think you could lay down kind of a thumbnail sketch, what an argument for beauty might look like as you present it in your book and kind of just a thumbnail sketch?

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Right. Well, it is an argument that's been used in apologetics. I don't find a lot of evangelicals using it as much.

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Okay. But it's a two -stage argument and it's structurally similar to the argument for God from morality.

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So in that argument, you have to argue against moral relativism for some kind of objective moral truths, objective moral reality.

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And then you say the best explanation for that objective moral reality is God. Well, in the beauty argument, it's actually like an argument from design.

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And you say, first of all, there is such a thing as objective beauty. It's not all in the eye of the beholder.

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And if you're talking about elements of beauty, for example, that humans had nothing to do with, like sunsets and star clusters and unbelievably beautiful fish coloring and bird coloring and so on, and the beauty and majesty of an eagle and so on, then the naturalist, the atheist has to say, all of that has no aesthetic intention whatsoever.

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It's just there. And we happen to enjoy it. You know, that's it. And I think that's a very impoverished, inadequate understanding of beauty.

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So the first is an argument for objective beauty. Okay. And secondly, that objective beauty is better explained by theism and Christian theism than any other worldview.

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Also, I think the Christian worldview itself is very beautiful because the parts fit together so well.

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Francis Schaeffer mentioned that. And then also the doctrine of the atonement is very beautiful.

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And Noah Derrickson explains the different aspects of the atonement theory. And I agree with him. And he says the theory,

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I mean, the reality, I mean, of the atonement, when you look at it conceptually, or you might say theoretically, is majestic.

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It's beautiful. Christ is our representative. He's our substitute. He defeated the powers of evil.

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He provides union with him through his atonement. All these elements fit together perfectly.

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And then the whole Christian worldview, creation, fall, redemption, consummation, fits wonderfully together.

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So you've got beauty from nature, the beauty from scripture, the beauty of Christ, all those things indicate the reality of a divine artist.

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Well, now, when we are arguing for objectivity of beauty, and God being kind of the best explanation for that, it's important that we also define our terms.

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Isn't the definition of beauty something that is under dispute as well? How would you define beauty?

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So if you make an argument for God based on beauty, don't you need a definition that the unbeliever would agree on, and then show that God is the best explanation for it?

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How would you define beauty? Yeah, I don't think defining beauty is as simple or straightforward as defining other things.

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Defining a triangle, pretty easy. But with beauty, I think it's more a matter of being impressed by something, that it's praiseworthy, it's wonderful.

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It attracts our attention. And then there are elements of beauty, such as harmony and symmetry, fittingness, and things like that.

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But I think one really good way to show that there is such a thing as beauty is to simply point.

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It's called ostensive definition. So you look at some animals or some aspects of outer space, you say, look at how majestic, how remarkable, how awe -inspiring that is.

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You feel a kind of a sense of humility before it. And you may not be able to state it very technically, but you are able to point to it and speak of some qualities that it has.

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Now, one of the issues here in our culture is that a lot of people don't believe there is objective beauty.

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They believe only beauty in the eye of the beholder. In fact, I gave a talk on the objectivity of beauty just a few days ago, about a week ago, and someone just didn't get my first point at all.

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And she said, well, wait a minute, people like all kinds of different things. One person will like this type of art, another person will like another type of art.

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And I said, well, that's irrelevant to what I'm saying, because I'm not talking about what people tend to like.

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I'm talking about the objective qualities that something has. And often, you have to learn how to appreciate the goodness of something.

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You don't immediately gravitate towards it. This is true with food and drink.

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It's true of appreciating elements of sports.

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Somebody just watching a game may not be able to tell who the superlative athletes are. They might miss the nuances.

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I was watching a soccer game with some friends of mine, and I know very little about soccer. And they're telling you, look at this, look at that.

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You see how good this player is. And I may not have even noticed it, had they not pointed it out.

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Now, okay, so suppose I listen to a Beethoven symphony, right?

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And then someone shows me like, hey, man, you got to check out this song. And it's like an 80s rock song.

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I like the 80s, the overexertion of the snare. It's very inspirational. Put the rocky soundtrack on or something like that.

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You have people who listen to classical music, which many would say is beautiful. And then other people listen to it and be like, well, that's not beautiful.

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I don't like that type of music. How do you differentiate then? If beauty is so difficult to define, you spoke about symmetry.

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You almost speak about like an order and harmony. What happens when someone disagrees? How do you differentiate a beautiful song from a not beautiful song?

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It seems very subjective. And the reason why I'm asking this question is because if we're going to make an argument for God based upon beauty, that's a really contentious statement that beauty is this, and therefore

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God's the best explanation of it for these reasons. If you can't agree on a definition or whether one can differentiate what is beautiful rather than what is ugly, it seems like the argument wouldn't have as much force, if that makes sense.

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Well, that's true. And there are several things in response to that. First of all, this argument is not necessary for a full fledged apologetic.

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I didn't use it in my first edition, and I think I gave a pretty comprehensive apologetic, but it will appeal to some people a lot more than others.

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Okay. So just let me follow up on that. You're dealing with the problem of disagreement about art, like painting and music and sculpture.

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You say, okay, let's just forget about that. Let's just be concerned with nature. Let's look at animals and stars and trees and flowers.

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Just leave humans out of it. We could say for the sake of argument that, yeah, what people like in culture varies a lot, and it's hard to know what's objectively beautiful and what isn't.

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But let's look at a field of fireweed in Alaska in early

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August. Let's look at the Milky Way. Let's take a look at an eagle descending to the ground.

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There's something I many people would say is remarkable. So I give an example in the book.

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I was a graduate student at early 1990s, University of Oregon, and I was talking to another grad student, and I believe it was a really beautiful sunset.

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And he said to me, when I see things like this, I feel very grateful. And I said, who are you grateful to?

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And it stopped him. I mean, he didn't say anything for a while. And that led to some very good conversations about the

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Lord. And I found out that he had not been really following God or pursuing God, but he had had a spiritual experience as a younger man that helped get him off of drugs.

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He was addicted, I think, to cocaine or something. And so that discussion of the beauty of something out there in the natural world that no human being created got him to think about his place in the world.

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You know, I feel grateful. You can't feel grateful to a rock. You know, you can't feel grateful to a cloud or to the sun.

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You have to feel grateful to a person. So, you know, it led to some pretty good apologetic interactions with him.

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So for the sake of argument, don't worry about cultural beauty. Let's just go to nature. Sure, sure. So you would say perhaps maybe an argument from beauty is not it's not attempting to be like a knockdown argument, but it is a it is something to have in your tool belt that might resonate with with someone and that it'd be useful to bring it up.

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Exactly. OK, I see what you mean. All right. Interesting. I think that's fascinating. I wanted to kind of pick that apart because I think that that's interesting.

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So folks who are interested in that type of conversation, you might know someone who might resonate with that.

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Definitely an interesting thing to read up on. I'll point about that. Yeah, sure.

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Sure. The tradition that I broadly represent in philosophy is called analytic philosophy.

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Sure. Although I'm not as fine tuned and fine grained as Keith Yandell or Alvin Planting or anybody like that.

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But typically, analytic philosophers don't deal with this kind of thing because it's a little harder to pin down.

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Right. However, I do give premise conclusion format in my chapter about how the argument works.

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OK, and so you don't have to unpack that if they want to if folks want to know how that look, what that looks like, they can they can get the book.

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But that's that's excellent. It definitely is an angle that a lot of people don't don't think about. OK, so when

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I take a look at, say, a really good book, a really good apologetics book that I've enjoyed over the years is

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J .P. Moreland's Scaling the Secular City. OK, now your book is not exactly like his book.

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All right. His book, the chapters in that book are isolated and can be read just independently.

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What is the structure of your book? How did you lay it out? Is there a logical order to what you're trying to do?

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Is it the sort of book that someone has to kind of read in couplets like this chapter is connected to that chapter?

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Or did you follow the similar lines like Dr. Moreland, where the chapters are isolated? People can just approach the book depending on the topic that kind of serves their purpose.

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Well, the book is one long argument. So the best way to read it is start at the beginning and read it all the way through.

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In fact, Charles Darwin said that origin of species was one long argument. And my book is one.

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However, you could just read the chapter on the argument from beauty or the chapter on the resurrection of Jesus and some helpful arguments there.

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But they fit together. So I start with the need to find meaning and truth in life.

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And then I go on to a biblical apologetic for apologetics because their people think apologetics is against faith.

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You know, there are no good arguments for faith. We just have to experience God. And then I deal with the category of concept of truth.

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What is truth? Because we need the objectivity of truth to give arguments for anything.

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So Christianity is merely private and subjective. There's really no apologetic for it. So it all is laid out in terms of preliminaries, why we need a worldview that makes sense of the world, gives meaning, the biblical basis for apologetics, the biblical worldview, defending objective truth, the importance of truth.

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And then I get into natural theology, into arguments from design, cosmological arguments, moral arguments, the ontological argument, the beauty argument.

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And then we get into specifics of Christianity, the biblical account of human nature makes more sense than other worldviews.

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I trade heavily there in Blaise Pascal. And then we look at the reliability of the

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New Testament. Dr. Blomberg wrote that, the claims and credentials of Jesus, his deity, his atonement, his resurrection.

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And then I look at some objections to Christianity, particularly how can

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Christianity say it's the one true religion when there are so many other religions that are believed by millions of people? It's called the religious diversity question.

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Then I deal specifically with Islam, which claims to be the abrogation of Christianity.

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It has replaced Christianity. And then I deal with the problem of evil, which

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I mentioned earlier. And I have an appendix where I look at the issue of hell.

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How can we go to the doctrine of hell? So it proceeds very methodically and very carefully, but it's not a dictionary.

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I mean, I had somebody, sometimes people say it's so big, it must be like an encyclopedia or a dictionary.

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It isn't. It's a really enjoyable read. It's not even as a textbook.

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You don't write in a very dry manner. I mean, you're not trying to do what

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C .S. Lewis is doing, but it's definitely, I'm tracking with you when I'm reading. I'm interested.

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So it doesn't read like kind of an informational textbook. I think you do a good job in putting it in that mid shelf for the average person to kind of dive deep into this and get enough that's going to be really useful to them.

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Good. Yeah. Did you want to follow up on that? It looked like you might have. That was the goal of the book.

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And I don't assume you know anything about apologetics when you start reading the book.

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So I try to initiate people into it through the quest for meaning.

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And then we get into everything else we need to address, such as biblical basis for apologetics and meaning of truth and so on.

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And I like to quote authors, I think that say things extremely well.

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So you find a lot of quotes from C .S. Lewis and Blaise Pascal, a number of other people.

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See, I've taught this subject now for almost 30 years. So actually, after I taught it for 10 years, one of my colleagues said, after you teach a subject for 10 years, you should be able to write a textbook on it.

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And I spent another eight years writing. So I've, you know,

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I've tested these arguments and ways of presenting them in the classroom for decades, which

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I think helps my writing and my overall structure of presentation. Have you ever participated in any public debates?

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Some. Yeah, not a lot. There are some debates online that people could look at.

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I did a debate, it was a panel discussion debate on intelligent design. It's called,

32:41

I think it's called Battle of the World Views or War of the World Views. Okay. Came out, I think, 2014.

32:48

And Michael Tooley, who's an atheist philosopher, was on the anti -intelligent design side, along with another gentleman whose name

32:56

I forgot. And then I was paired with a high school science teacher.

33:02

But most of the action was between Tooley and myself, because we were the two academic professors. Sure, sure, sure.

33:08

Yeah, that's out there. And I also did a debate. I think it might have been 2014 also with the president of the

33:17

Boulder Atheist Group. Okay. And that's online. So people could see that if they're interested.

33:22

But I don't do a lot of debates. You know, like William Lane Craig would do or some other folks, partially because I have a full time teaching gig.

33:31

And well, yes, it takes I mean, I'm not saying Bill Craig is a slacker by no means. But he has structured his life.

33:39

He definitely dedicates a lot of time to the debates and he doesn't, you know, teach three or four classes a semester.

33:47

Right, right. I lost track. I just had Dr. James White on my show the last time and he

33:54

I think he's at 170 something. Oh, my goodness. Moderated debates. I mean, and I don't know,

34:01

I lost count how many Dr. Craig has. I mean, the amount of work that goes into preparing it, preparing for a debate.

34:09

And I mean, both of them are really good debaters in their own right. I know they deal with different topics, but it is fun to watch.

34:16

And I've had a couple of debates myself. They're great. But it takes a lot of time, especially when you're trying to balance like everyday life.

34:24

So I'm glad that God has given us people who are doing it more often. But, you know, I really would like to take

34:30

I've never I didn't know you had had debates out there. I'd really would enjoy watching those. So thank you for giving me a heads up there.

34:37

Yeah. And I've done I've done a few others over the years that have not been recorded. My favorite kind of gig, really,

34:43

I'm very open to doing more debates if I have the time. And sure. So I part of the issue with me is for many years

34:51

I had to take care of my first wife, Becky, who is very ill. So that limited some of the work that I could do.

34:59

I wrote a lot during that time. But I want to do a debate. Well, you have to thoroughly research what the other person's position is.

35:06

You also have to be mentally and spiritually up for it because they are they're pretty intense.

35:14

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you're in the future in the future, if you're interested, I'd love to moderate a debate on my channel.

35:21

I do that sometimes on this channel. So if you're interested in the future, I can find someone and run them by you.

35:27

If you're interested, we can do it. My favorite thing to do is to do lectures in a secular setting.

35:35

OK, or a setting that's both Christian and non -Christian. So a couple of weeks ago, I spoke to a

35:40

Ratio Christi group in Boulder, Colorado, at the School of Minds. And it was just a completely open ended question answer time.

35:48

And they had about 30 people there and a number of non -Christians. So we had questions about religion and science, about one question was very general.

36:01

How can you know whether or not something's true? So it had to do with truth, epistemology. And I don't remember the other questions, but that I really enjoy that is a number of settings where you say,

36:14

I'm a Christian. Here's reasons why, not much, maybe five, ten minutes. And then what are the questions you have about God, Christianity, spirituality?

36:24

And I'll do the best I can to answer. Sure. Really enjoy doing that. Excellent. That's awesome. So now getting back to your book, you have a whole host of arguments and evidences for the

36:33

Christian faith in your opinion. I'm a presuppositionalist. I love the transcendental argument. But what's your favorite argument that you include in this book and you think has worked well for you?

36:43

And you've heard of other people using those specific arguments and having great success in conversation.

36:50

What's your opinion on what you think is the most powerful, most persuasive argument that you have there in your book?

37:00

Well, I'm not sure, really. I think all the arguments that I give are pretty strong.

37:08

Okay. The hardest one to understand is the ontological argument. Okay. I think once you understand that, it's profound.

37:17

I think it works. Now, an argument that I've developed over the years, I think more than other folks, is what

37:24

I call the anthropological argument, which I get from Blaise Pascal. And the argument is that the greatness and wretchedness of humanity is best explained by the

37:35

Christian worldview, that we are great by virtue of being made in God's image, but we are wretched because of the fall.

37:43

So you see this Latin phrase, it's called corruptio optima pessimo, there's nothing worse than the corruption of the best.

37:52

So human beings can do remarkable things in medicine, in heroism, intellectually.

38:04

And people can use those same gifts to create torture chambers and nerve gas.

38:10

And they can use their intelligence to bless people, let's say, as a counselor, they can use their intelligence to curse people, ridicule people.

38:20

So I think that's a powerful argument, because it actually argues to Christianity in one step.

38:26

It says, here's the human condition, here's elements of greatness, elements of wretchedness or misery.

38:32

And other worldviews really can't explain the greatness in relation to the fallenness the way

38:38

Christianity can. Christianity is the best account of that. And also it has the only real solution to that, which is the work of Christ on our behalf.

38:47

So that's an argument that I've given and defined, redefined over the years, refined,

38:55

I should say. And I like that argument very much. In fact, when I do a public lecture on apologetics, we'll give that argument.

39:04

Okay. Now, I have one more question, and then

39:09

I want to kind of transition into the nature of our discussion. And I'll explain in just a moment. But in your second edition, what is your favorite chapter that you've added?

39:20

So I know, obviously, you're going to say all of them are important, right? Which one do you think is out of the new? That's a good question, don't you?

39:27

Well, I'm always interested. I just recently listened to an interview with you on Apologetics 315.

39:36

And there with Brian Auten, he has interviewed folks just like I have. And as I'm listening to the interview,

39:43

I'm like, man, this is really good stuff. I wonder what Brian's favorite interview is. That always interests me.

39:49

You get to talk to all these interesting people. Is there someone that stands out or some topic that stands out?

39:55

And I think people find that interesting. So I do ask a lot of those sorts of questions. So I do apologize.

40:00

No apology. It's just interesting you ask that. I can't limit it to one, though. I think it's the two chapters on the atonement.

40:07

Okay. Because I had studied that over the years, and I always believed and defended propitiation that Christ took the wrath that we deserve.

40:18

But as I looked at my apologetics book, the first edition, I realized I only had four or five pages at most on the atonement.

40:25

I had a lot on the deity of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the miracles of Christ, the coherence of the doctrine of the resurrection, or rather the incarnation.

40:37

And I didn't have a whole lot on atonement. And then I realized that people were attacking it for one aspect of it.

40:44

So I went back and looked at some of the criticisms. And at first I thought, I'll just add another five pages to one of the chapters.

40:52

And then, no, I have to write a new chapter. And then it was, yeah, I have to write two more chapters. But I worked extremely hard on that.

40:59

And it was not an easy thing to study or work through. So I think I have a solid explanation and defense of propitiation and the other elements too, expiation and reconciliation, defeat of Satan, and so on.

41:17

And it's a beautiful combination of truths in the work of Jesus on our behalf.

41:24

It's breathtaking, all the things that he did for us through his life, death and resurrection.

41:31

So I think those are the two most important chapters. Yeah. All right. Excellent. And what's your favorite flavor of ice cream?

41:37

No, I'm just kidding. No more favorite. All right. So what

41:43

I want to do next is, okay, so you have this massive book, you got a second edition, you got some extra added chapters.

41:49

I want to give people an opportunity to kind of see what this looks like. So perhaps we can kind of do some light role -playing.

41:55

Okay. I'm going to be the unbeliever. I'm going to ask some questions and you could take the conversation however you'd like.

42:00

But before we do that, I'd like to take a few questions from the audience here as a couple.

42:06

So maybe you can kind of take a stab at some of these and then we'll kind of do a little bit of role -playing to see how some of these arguments look in like regular conversation, if that's okay.

42:16

All right. Alex asked the question, he says, in case the Q and A is being done, sorry,

42:22

I came late. Question. Do you, Eli or Dr. Groteis know of any scholars working on innovative apologetic approaches to engage an apathetic generation?

42:37

Well, innovative. One way I think to deal with apathy is to use another emphasis of Blaise Pascal and that's his wager argument.

42:49

And there's a lot to be said about that. I deal with it in my book in a chapter on the truth and prudence, the importance of truth.

42:58

But the claims of Christianity are very consequential. So if Christianity is true and someone fails to be a

43:07

Christian, they lose out on eternal life and they have to deal with God on their own for their own sin, the

43:14

Holy God. So I think that prudential element is worth considering and you can make medical analogies to this.

43:24

If you have a serious medical condition, you really want to find out what's wrong so it can be treated.

43:30

Right? So Christianity says that there's something very wrong with us. It's called the sin nature and sin against God.

43:39

And that needs to be treated. That needs to be dealt with through the work of Christ. So if there's a world religion out there, this 2000 years old, that is the largest religion, which has commanded the intellectual ascent of people like St.

43:53

Augustine and Blaise Pascal and C .S. Lewis. And it says that we need to be reconciled to God through Christ.

43:59

And if the stakes are very high, then that's at least worth looking into. That's worth considering.

44:07

So I think that's a way to maybe rouse someone from their intellectual laziness or the whateverism kind of approach.

44:20

That's my go -to on that kind of issue. But there are so many ways of engaging people.

44:31

Then, of course, we can't twist their arm if they still don't care after that. You've got to know when to move on.

44:37

And, you know, so I think that's important, too. That's a difficult thing to know when you should move on or, you know, when should the argument stop?

44:45

When should I wipe, you know, kind of shake the dust off my feet and move on? That's another difficult question to answer.

44:54

The spirituality of the apologist comes in. You want to pray, be sensitive to the

45:00

Holy Spirit, how he might be leading the situation. I like what Francis Schaeffer used to say that we need to give honest answers to honest questions.

45:11

But sometimes we don't even know when someone's being dishonest. So a question that's flippant, you may want to try to answer it if there's any meat to it at all.

45:22

You know, there is a point where maybe it's just about my ego versus your ego.

45:29

Or you can tell that the person is not interested whatsoever in the issue.

45:36

They just want to debate. Sure. So at that point, you might say, well, what would really convince you that Christianity is true?

45:43

Is there anything you can think of that would convince you it's true? If nothing could ever convince me, then

45:49

I guess the discussion's over, at least for now. Sure, sure. All right. Thank you for that. Felix asks, can you ask your guest if atheists have evidence for the truth of their claim that God may not exist?

46:02

Would that be a good question to ask them in his opinion? Thanks. And thank you, Felix, again for that question. Well, the thoughtful atheists think that a naturalistic worldview makes more sense than a theistic worldview, which means they have to deny the world was created by God, designed by God.

46:22

They have to deny there's any intrinsic moral meaning to the world. And so they're giving an account of reality without God.

46:32

And they need to explain morality, the origin of the universe, the apparent design of the universe, human aspirations for meaning, all without God as an explanation.

46:45

Whereas Christian theism views the universe very differently.

46:50

The universe was created and designed. It depends upon God. We are made in God's image, so we have a thirst for meaning.

46:58

We also feel guilt at our own moral wrongdoing. So how do we address that?

47:07

So they would say that we can account for reality better than the

47:12

Christian. And they'd say, well, it's scientific. We're relying on science, and science is the way that we know truth, and science disproves

47:20

God. Oh, boy. I mean, hold on. There's so many things wrong with that. But first of all, we know a lot of things that don't come through science.

47:32

We have basic moral intuitions, like it's wrong to torture the innocent for pleasure. That's not based on any scientific theory or scientific evidence.

47:39

We just know that by moral intuition. And our knowledge of logic is not based on scientific theories or scientific observation.

47:50

That's just two things. But the other side of it is that there's lots of good scientific evidence for the existence of God.

47:56

And the place I would point people would be Stephen C. Meyer's excellent book,

48:02

Return of the God Hypothesis. Evidence for the Big Bang, the beginning of the universe a finite time ago, the fine -tuning of the universe with a cosmological constant and the various proportions and laws that are fine -tuned on a razor's edge to make life possible.

48:22

So it's really a battle of two worldviews. Is it atheism, which means a naturalistic world has to explain everything?

48:30

Or is it theism, a theistic worldview, and specifically a

48:36

Christian worldview is the better explanation. Now, the way it's often set up is, well, atheism should just be the default because we have a universe and it's up to you to prove there's a

48:46

God. Say, wait a minute. Yeah, you have a universe without God. So you have to explain everything in the universe without an intelligent designer, lawgiver, et cetera.

48:57

Let's see how well you do with that. So you don't want people to set it up unfairly.

49:05

I mean, just one more thing, probably the biggest argument that atheists have against God is what's called the problem of evil.

49:15

Say, if there is real moral evil in the world and so much of it, it just is illogical to think that God is all good and all powerful because he wouldn't allow that much evil or maybe any evil.

49:27

Answering that takes some time, but there are good answers to that, that God can employ evil to bring about a greater good, that God has shown his love to us primarily through Jesus Christ, despite all the evils that we may see in the world and so on.

49:48

And then let's say to the atheists, okay, well, you explain good and evil to me. The universe has no purpose or meaning.

49:56

Human beings are not here for a reason. We're just a chance collocation of atoms, as Bertrand Russell put it.

50:04

Now, explain morality to me on that basis and try to give me any hope for a moral improvement or moral meaning in that kind of a world.

50:13

So the way I do apologetics is always comparative. We have an issue.

50:18

How does a Christian worldview deal with it? How does an atheist deal with it? How does a pantheist deal with it?

50:24

Whoever the disputants are in that group. You do worldview analysis and internal critique.

50:31

That's very presuppositional -ish, right? I've read my

50:37

Van Til and Gordon Clark and Carl Henry, sure. Yeah, but do you have a

50:42

Greg Bonson mug? I have an art mug. Check it out.

50:48

Check it out. There's more. The preconditions for insolubility. I need a

50:54

Douglas Grotheis mug. What's up with that? I got to get one. That was a cumulative case on the backside.

50:59

That's right. That's right. MJ, thank you so much for your $10 super chat. Awesome. I appreciate that.

51:06

Thank you so much. He says, Douglas, doctor, sorry. Can I just call you Doug? Is that okay?

51:12

All right. Thank you. So, Doug, when I read your apologetics book, I sense a lot of influence from scholars like Ronald Nash and E .J.

51:19

Carnell. How much did they influence or inspire you over the years? That's a good question. Well, quite a bit.

51:25

I've read a lot of Ron Nash and Carnell. My approach is a cumulative case approach.

51:31

They both took that kind of approach. Also, a mentor to me was a man named

51:37

Gordon Lewis who used that approach. Although the way I deal with cumulative cases,

51:42

I put a lot of weight on natural theology as part of the case, whereas Carnell especially did not.

51:48

He had a different way of using the cumulative case. Big influences on me would be really

51:54

Francis Schaefer, who I think used a kind of verificationist or cumulative case method, and Blaise Pascal, but certainly

52:04

Carnell, Nash, so many over the years. Okay. One more question by MJ, and then we'll do some of our little role play, and then we'll wrap this discussion up.

52:15

I just want to thank you so much. You do an excellent job, and this is a very interesting and I think a very useful discussion for people to listen to later on as well, for those who are listening currently.

52:26

MJ asks, Dr. Grothuis, how would you respond to predictivism, the view that says the evidence should dictate what counts as a hypothesis before one can be put forth?

52:38

This is a position championed by T -Jump, who is a YouTube atheist debater.

52:46

Predictivism, the view that says evidence should dictate what counts as a hypothesis before one could put forth.

52:54

The way I read that, it doesn't make any sense, because you have various hypotheses regarding areas of life, and then you look at each hypothesis to see which one explains that feature of life the best, and then it has to do with things like simplicity, comprehensiveness, agreement with good background knowledge, and things like that.

53:18

So, I've never even heard of that before. Looking at it here, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

53:25

I do have a chapter in Christian apologetics on apologetic method, and that would be the place to go in my writing if you want to see how

53:34

I deal with things like hypothesis verification. Okay. Okay.

53:40

Thank you for that. All right. Thank you for those questions, guys. We're going to kind of go into our role play portion here.

53:48

I have to put my atheist... Come on. No, no, no.

53:54

You're the guy that's on the hot seat today. So, I got to put my atheist glasses on. Get ready, man.

53:59

I'm going to trip you up. Okay. So, suppose I'm a friend of yours.

54:05

You asked to meet up with me. You wanted to kind of talk about deep life issues, right?

54:11

And so, Doug, thanks for having me over, man. I think you wanted to talk a little bit about your faith, and so I'm all ears, man.

54:20

Why should I believe in God? Because to be perfectly honest, I don't see any reason why I need God. I get along very well without going to church.

54:29

I'm, generally speaking, a moral person. So, I don't really see the usefulness of Christianity, and I have some problems with the

54:38

Bible. Perhaps we can get into that in a little bit, but I'm all ears, man. Where would you begin with someone like me?

54:45

I think the first issue is the question of truth. Your life may seem to be going very well, but there may be things that are true that you need to know that would put your life into a deeper, richer perspective.

55:01

So, I think a good way to start with this is, why don't you believe in God?

55:10

Are there objections you have to the idea of God? Well, I don't think that it's impossible for God to exist, but I just don't see any reason to believe in him.

55:21

I don't see any evidence that's really conclusive enough. I think it's kind of weird that people believe in kind of this invisible entity that leaves no evidence, or the evidence that people claim that he leaves can be interpreted in a whole host of ways.

55:36

So, I'm not convinced by some of the things that I've heard, and again, I don't see any use for it.

55:43

Yeah. Well, if you want to talk about use, you need to talk about really whether there's good reason to believe it's true, because if Christianity is true, then it's the most important truth, because it has to do with rightly orienting yourself to the universe and to eternity.

56:02

So, if it is true, it is profoundly meaningful, useful, pertinent to life, certainly.

56:10

Right. Well, that's a big if, right? So, truth, one of the hallmarks of truth is consistency, and you as Christians, you guys believe the

56:18

Bible, and I see a lot of inconsistencies within the Bible. I see inconsistencies with certain statements in the

56:25

Bible and what we know through modern science, and so I kind of see some problems there.

56:32

I don't know how you kind of figure all that stuff out, but... One thing we could talk about is the evidence for God apart from consulting the

56:43

Bible. Obviously, the Bible says there is a God, and God has acted in history, and God will be the judge of all people.

56:50

God sent His Son to die for our sins, but we can in a sense bracket that for a minute and realize that the

56:57

Bible says that nature speaks of God, even apart from the Bible. So, we look at the universe, and we find that the best scientific evidence, and this has been building up for 60, 70 years now, is that the universe had a beginning.

57:13

It is not eternal. So, at a beginning, which is called in the colloquial language, the

57:19

Big Bang, then either it popped into existence without a cause, which is pretty illogical, things don't just pop into existence, or it had a cause, and if it had a cause, then that cause is far superior to the universe.

57:35

It would have to be immensely powerful, timeless, spaceless, and so on, and this is starting to look a lot actually like what the

57:40

Bible says in terms of, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So, we've got some very strong evidence that the universe began to exist a finite time ago, and if it began to exist, it has not always existed, so its existence needs to be explained, and actually, the pop goes the universe theory, which some people hold actually, it's not an explanation at all.

58:05

It's just saying, well, here's the universe, and at one time, there was no universe. Well, that just breaks our common sense intuition that things don't happen without causes, or put it more carefully, there's no such thing as an a -causal event.

58:22

Right there, we have good evidence that there is a creator. Now, that doesn't tell us a whole lot about what the creator is, you know, with respect to what he's done in history, but it tells us there's a creator.

58:33

Well, I don't think it's evidence for a creator necessarily. I think it's evidence that our universe had a cause.

58:39

To say that our universe had a cause, or requires a cause, is evidence for a creator, doesn't seem like it follows.

58:46

There can be a something that brought the universe into existence that's not a personal agent like you

58:52

Christians believe, so I think that's kind of a logical leap, and I think when we're talking about Big Bang cosmology, especially when we get at that quantum level, you know, those moments right at that singularity, things kind of break down and are very difficult to kind of, you know, really come down strong on any conclusion, so it seems like you presenting this, you're kind of capitalizing on some scientific ambiguity.

59:15

We don't have all the knowledge and the facts are not in with respect to that, and I think that's easy to kind of focus on that, because we don't have a full understanding of what's going on there, and science, of course, is provisional.

59:28

I mean, if you're going to use this argument and think that the Big Bang, you know, supports the existence of a transcendent creator, you know, what happens when, you know, more information comes in and we find out that the universe in some capacity, maybe there are multiverses out there, is eternal.

59:45

What then, right? Seems like you're kind of putting all of your, how can

59:52

I say this, you're putting a lot of weight on an argument that's based on an ever -changing field.

01:00:04

That's what I'm saying. Yeah, well, it's not the whole of the argument. I think

01:00:09

Big Bang cosmology is quite well established. It has not been overturned, and if it is, then we'll just have to deal with that, but that's something way off in the future, if it ever happens at all.

01:00:20

Actually, the evidence seems to continue to be a little bit more, you know, a little bit more, you know, to confirm it, and I did some new research on this from the time the first edition of Christian Apologetics came out.

01:00:30

It's still the best theory for understanding this. Now, sure, if something comes up 10 years from now, then we'll have to deal with it, but I think rationally, you've got to deal with the evidence at hand, and then how strong the evidence is, and the

01:00:45

Big Bang cosmology has been confirmed through about four or five different lines of argument, so there's actually a cumulative case argument.

01:00:53

Now, as I said, if there's a beginning, there has to be a cause, but I think the best explanation for the cause is, first of all, one cause, not several causes, because we use the principle of simplicity there.

01:01:08

If one cause or one being will explain it, we don't go to others, and then also,

01:01:13

I think the idea of volition makes more sense than some kind of automatic event, because J .P.

01:01:20

Moreland has this good argument that if the cause is something impersonal, then whenever the necessary and sufficient conditions obtained, the universe exists.

01:01:29

There's no decision being made. If that's the case, then it would just happen immediately, and the universe would be actually eternal, but the universe is not eternal, so the better way of looking at it is that it was volitional, that there was a cause who's transcendent to the universe, immensely powerful, spaceless, timeless, one cause who created everything, and if there's a being that created everything, then

01:01:57

I think we're within our rights to say that being is all -powerful, but let's say for the sake of argument that Big Bang cosmology is replaced by something else.

01:02:09

We've actually got a purely philosophical argument that leads to the same conclusion, and that is, this can get a little technical, but it's called the

01:02:18

Kalam cosmological argument, and the idea there is that anything that begins to exist has a cause.

01:02:27

Notice anything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause, and then with more reasoning, that cause is

01:02:36

God. We've already talked about some of that already, so there's one way of talking about the beginning of the universe without appealing to Big Bang cosmology, and that is the idea of the impossibility of traversing an actual infinite, and people like Bill Craig and J .P.

01:02:54

Moreland have done really good work on this, so the idea of what's called an actual infinite, an unlimited set with no termination, this is unlimited, is a concept that's used in some types of mathematics, but it actually doesn't map out onto the world.

01:03:20

You could not cross something that is actually infinite, so if the universe goes back forever, we would not get to where we are now, because there would never be any progress in terms of the events of the universe.

01:03:35

We would never reach the now, but if the universe does have a beginning in space and time, then we can reach the now, because we're not traversing an actual infinite, we're traversing a finite amount, a finite number of events, and a finite amount of time, so actually this is a type of cosmological argument called the

01:03:58

Kalam cosmological argument, and the idea that the universe began to exist could be supported by Big Bang cosmology, or you could bracket that and just say, look, whatever the cosmology is in modern science, you simply cannot traverse an actual infinite, that's a logical truth, so we can use that logical truth and say the universe had a beginning, it had a beginning, it had a cause, the best understanding of the cause is a personal, very powerful being.

01:04:30

All right, so okay, so suppose I grant hypothetically, sure, there's a creator of the universe, or there may be a creator of the universe,

01:04:38

I'm still not convinced, but I noticed what you did at the beginning of our conversation when I asked for evidence for the

01:04:45

Christian God, you said let's bracket the Bible, so even if you demonstrate the existence of some transcendent cause of the universe, that's not enough for what you want me to affirm, because you're a

01:04:56

Christian, so I have family that go to church, I know how this whole evangelism thing works, you want me to be converted, man, right?

01:05:04

So I want to talk a little bit about the Bible, let's grant, maybe there's a God out there, maybe the arguments you gave kind of point to a transcendent creator, but that doesn't demonstrate the biblical

01:05:15

God, and as I said, if that biblical God reveals himself in the Bible, there are a lot of problems with the

01:05:22

Bible, so what do you do, for example, with statements in scripture that show scientific ignorance, and you have in the

01:05:30

Old Testament where it speaks of the sun sitting still, right, you have that long day, almost gives the impression that the author believed the sun is what revolves around the earth, as opposed to kind of the other way around, so you have kind of the

01:05:46

Bible seeming to teach something that we know to be factually false, namely geocentrism, or sorry, yeah, geocentrism, so what do you do with things in the

01:05:58

Bible that seem to kind of flatly contradict what we know from the science? Well, first of all, you've got to look at the passage and see what it's really affirming and what it's not affirming, so general scripture uses what's called phenomenological language, and I'm going to start from the general and then get to your specific case, okay, still use language like what time is sunrise, what time is sunset, so we're looking at the phenomena, the sun appears to move, now

01:06:27

I think that's what scripture is saying when it talks about sunrise and sunset and so on, it's really not attempting to give a detailed cosmological description, now in terms of the sun standing still, we can say that that's the way it appeared, somehow they had more light to engage in that battle, now if there is a supernatural

01:06:52

God who created the universe, then he can generate more light on a particular day than would naturally occur, how exactly that happened,

01:07:01

I don't know, it appeared as if the sun stopped, but the sun is not moving already, so it would have to be something supernatural, and if you have good evidence that there is a supernatural

01:07:14

God, and if that story makes sense, then you can say they're speaking phenomenologically, God worked a miracle in that case to accomplish his purposes, but you don't have to say the

01:07:26

Bible is committed to a false view of the universe, I think it's committed to God created the world,

01:07:34

God governs the world, God can work miracles in the world, and it uses a lot of the language of appearance, and we still use the language of appearance.

01:07:46

Okay, so what about, okay, so what about, what about contradictions in the Bible then, okay?

01:07:53

Do we accept Jesus as Savior right now? Not so fast, man, all right, what about contradictions in the

01:07:58

Bible, or things that just don't seem to fit, if it's the Word of God, it seems that it needs to be consistent in what it asserts, for example, there's reference made in the

01:08:08

New Testament of the 12 disciples, and they're called the 12 disciples even after Judas committed suicide, so there weren't 12 disciples, so you have the 12 disciples being called the 12 disciples when there's only 11, things like this, you know,

01:08:22

Judas hung himself, and then you have in the book of Acts, he kind of fell, you know, headlong, and burst his intestines, burst it out, there seems to be kind of conflicting accounts of certain events, how would you, how would you respond to those?

01:08:35

Well, you've got to deal with specifics, but even before you deal with specifics, you have to talk about ancient literature, okay, various perspectives on the same event, so let's say you have two accounts of the same event, they seem to be contradictory, it could be they're not contradictory, they're complementary, and it's a matter of perspective, now the case with Judas, there are ways of harmonizing those accounts, that he hung himself, and after he hung himself, he died in the way that you mentioned,

01:09:08

I actually haven't studied that in depth, I've only looked at it briefly, I'm sure my colleague Craig Bomberg would be good on that, so it is an ancient, we have ancient sources, let's say the four gospels, we have the book of Acts, and then you want to give the benefit of the doubt to these sources, that's how ancient historians, or historians of ancient history deal with things, if they see something that seems to be conflicting between two accounts, they don't immediately say contradiction, can't trust it, they try to figure out ways of harmonizing the accounts in one way or the other, now 12 disciples and 11 disciples,

01:09:43

I've actually never heard that one before, but there may have just been a reference to the 12, it means that's synonymous to the disciples, all the disciples, and now one of them's dead, but they still say the 12,

01:09:55

I'd have to look into that honestly, heard that objection. Okay, by the way I'm glad you answered that, because that's a very useful apologetic tool, namely admitting when you don't know something, and you have to look into it.

01:10:07

Take it, believe me. What was that? I'm not one to fake it. Well, I think that's a very useful apologetic tool, right, not faking it, being honest, and having integrity, and saying you know what, that's a great point,

01:10:19

I'll look into that. Yeah, and it's not, it's not, this is a hopeless problem, just take it on faith.

01:10:25

Sure. It's basically, I'm not quite sure what to do with this, so tell me the references, I'll look them up,

01:10:31

I'll do some research, I'll talk to my New Testament scholar friends, and then

01:10:36

I'll get back to you. So it's procedural, you know, it's programmatic, it's not, well yeah, there seem to be contradictions, but just grit your teeth, and have lots of faith, and get through it.

01:10:45

That's not the right approach. All right, very good. Well, you passed, okay, we'll continue this conversation next week.

01:10:54

All right, well, Dr. Douglas Grotice, he's come out with a second edition to his apologetics textbook.

01:11:03

It's available right now on Kindle, and it will be available hardcover on, what was that date again?

01:11:10

Probably about the middle of April. Middle of April, and so I highly recommend it. It's definitely a book that you need to have in your library.

01:11:19

Dr. Grotice, thank you so much for coming on, I appreciate you just having a conversation with me, and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have, and I hope

01:11:27

I was an okay atheist. It's hard to do an impression of an unbeliever. You were a good atheist, you weren't obnoxious, you didn't insult me or anything, so good job.

01:11:38

Okay, well, next time you come on, I'll be that atheist, and we'll see how you navigate the conversation. That's my sanctification, huh?

01:11:46

Okay, that's right. So is there anything you'd like to say to listeners before we sign off?

01:11:52

Where can people find your material? Do you have recorded lectures that people can give a listen to?

01:11:59

There are a lot of things out there. I did a five -hour kind of mini apologetics class at the

01:12:06

Denver Seminary web page, which is free, and there's something that Credo House put out about seven or eight years ago.

01:12:14

I think it's a 15 -hour apologetic class you can buy. There are lots of lectures and podcasts out there on the internet.

01:12:23

I have a web page just called DouglasGrotheis .com. A lot of everything there is free, so lectures, essays,

01:12:31

I have a blog there, and quite a bit of material.

01:12:37

Excellent, excellent. Well, I've been speaking with Dr. Douglas Grotheis. He's the author of Christian Apologetics, a comprehensive case for biblical faith.

01:12:46

He has just released his second edition, and that is available right now on Kindle, and the hardcover is coming out later on in April.

01:12:55

So if you also want to check out our previous conversation entitled The Spiritual Formation of the

01:13:00

Apologist, that's also available on my channel, and it should be linked in the comment section of this video.

01:13:07

Thank you so much, Dr. Grotheis, and I appreciate you coming on and giving me so much of your time.

01:13:12

You're welcome. Thank you very much. All right, and thank you guys for listening. Thank you, Scott Terry, for that super chat.

01:13:20

Maybe we can take this one last question as we go out. That was very generous of you, Scott. Thank you so much. Scott asks, does

01:13:26

Dr. G, Dr. G, that sounds cool. Does Dr. G have any advice for lay

01:13:32

Christians who get asked difficult theological questions like, if God is timeless, how could he create?

01:13:39

I ain't got time to be a professional theologian. Thank you so much for that. You can find some time to study and read some books.

01:13:51

You can try to get up to speed on that. There's so much available in terms of books and also

01:13:58

YouTube lectures and things like that. Actually, there's a big long -standing debate about the relationship of God and time.

01:14:06

I deal with it briefly in my book, Christian Apologetics, but you can go to certain websites.

01:14:15

William Lane Craig has a particular take on that. People deal with those issues.

01:14:22

All right, excellent. As much time as you can to read some things or listen to some good podcasts or YouTube videos.

01:14:31

By good, I mean people that have credentials. Sure, sure. PhDs in philosophy and have written books and things like that.

01:14:39

Not that we're infallible on these things, but there's so much out there. Anybody can put on a podcast or anybody can do a

01:14:47

YouTube video, really master a few basic things, but try to look for people that have some status and some credentials on these issues.

01:14:55

Yeah, you don't have to be a professional theologian, but you could be a YouTube theologian. Just listen to good lectures and debates and think about these things and find books related to the topic.

01:15:04

It can be done. A lot of people don't know this about me, but when I went to seminary, I earned two master's degrees, a

01:15:11

Master of Arts in Theological Studies and a Master of Divinity with a theological focus. And I learned 0 .1

01:15:17

% of apologetics in seminary. Most of the apologetics I learned was listening to lectures, reading books.

01:15:23

You don't need to be a professional theologian to do this. You just need to have a focus on what is within the context of your need.

01:15:31

Who are the sorts of people you're speaking with? What are the sorts of things you need to be familiar with to engage in the context that God has placed you in?

01:15:39

It can be done without spending the money to go to seminary, although if you can go to seminary, it's awesome as well.

01:15:45

So no excuse. Audio, there's books, you know, a lot of resources out there.

01:15:51

So thank you so much for that question, Scott. And thank you again, Dr. Grothuis. This will conclude our interview.

01:15:58

Until next time, Thursday, 3 .30 p .m., I have Dr. Scott Oliphant of Westminster Theological Seminary to talk about the topic of apologetics and persuasion.