Apologetics and Debate Introduction

Introduction to the Apologetics and Debate Course

Welcome back to Passing the Torch. We had a slight hiatus between Andrews, I mean teachers. I'm your host Randy Adkins and today your teacher is Andrew Rappaport for Striving for Eternity and he will be teaching us apologetics and debate.

How are you brother?

Better than I deserve. Glad to be here.

Amen. Well brother, the floor is yours.

Course Overview, Books, and Assignments

All right, well, thanks everyone for joining this class on apologetics and debate. Today what we're going to do is just an intro. We've got an eight-week class ahead of us. I want to give an overview of what we're going to be covering.

I do admit that I planned to have a nice syllabus for everybody, but having just literally got back yesterday from the Philippines after three weeks of ministry, I didn't have it done in time. Sorry. But we'll try to get that together and maybe have that for future students.

So let's go over quickly an overview of what we're going to do in the course, what we're going to cover, what is going to be your assignments as far as students, what outside reading we're going to provide, or you're going to have to do, I should say.

And you're not going to have to be forced to do the outside reading, but I will say that if you do the outside reading, you will get the most benefit from it. So let me just show you real quickly some, if you could put up the presentation there that I just threw, just a slide there.

So the first book, I have three books I want you guys to get. They're all available on Amazon. So first is going to be, and although this one happens to be the audio version that I read, but you can get the actual book.

The first book I want you all to get a copy of is called Tactics by Greg Koko. Okay. He, he subtitles it a game plan for discussing Christian convictions. This is going to be very essential when we talk about apologetics and just how to navigate conversations.

And so I find this to be a very, very good book, very easy to read. All the books I'm going to give you are easy to read. So this book is just going to help in how to conduct yourself, how to behave, how to have conversations.

This is essential when we're going to talk about apologetics. A second book that I want you guys to get for this class is called the Ultimate Proof of Creation. I should have said, the first book is by Tactics is by Greg Koko.

So Tactics by Greg Koko. The next book is, let's see if I can share that tab. There we go. Is the Ultimate Proof of Creation by Jason Lyle. Now, some of you may say, well, I don't really, I'm not here to talk creation.

Is creation really part of apologetics? Actually, that's not so much what this book is going to cover. It's going to really cover a very basic understanding of logic. Okay. To give you a basic of how to, how to recognize logical statements.

But he provides in here, which is really, really good. A just at the back of it, he provides some examples of when he worked at Answers in Genesis, actual emails that he got and how he responded to them.

So that's going to be the second book you'll be required to read. Hopefully get them all done within the eight weeks. They're actually pretty easy reading. The third one is called How to Think Clearly, a Guide to Critical Thinking.

This is a very easy to read as well. Some, this is going to deal with the topic of logic. So where the previous book, Jason Lyon's book on ultimate proof of creation is going to deal with really what we would call presuppositional apologetics, but it's also going to cover logic, how to think critically by Doug Erlandson is going to go into more detail on that, providing more detail on logic itself and how it works.

So if you read those in the order I provided tactics, ultimate proof of creation, how to think logically, that would be the order in which I suggest that you get, get these books, read these books. You say, well, you want me to finish three books within eight weeks?

Yes, of course. No. I realize eight weeks is pretty short, but I'm not assigning lots of papers. So you, so you could do reading instead of writing papers. And the other assignments are going to take a little bit of prep and we're going to do them outside of the eight weeks.

So the first that we will have during class is you, you will be graded and you're going to be graded on three things. Well, class participation may not, may be harder since this is online, but you can feel free to email me if you want.

So, and to email just email info at striving for eternity .com info at striving for eternity .com that will get to me. Well, it'll get rooted to me, I should say. But but then I'll respond from there.

So we have the book work, the reading that you have to do. There will be a quiz. We're, we're going to have this, basically there's three main sections that we're going to cover in class. We're going to have the introduction.

After that, we're going to talk about the character that we should display in doing apologetics and debate. We are going to focus a lot of time on hermeneutics and then the next major section will be on logic.

Why Hermeneutics and Logic Matter in Apologetics

And the reason those two sections is because as I do my apologetics live show, if you're not familiar with that, it's a live stream every Thursday nights, eight to 10 Eastern time. You just go to apologeticslive .com.

Anybody can come in and we often have people who come into that live stream and when they come in, they are prepared to debate me and I do not know I'm having a debate that day because I don't know anyone's coming in.

It makes it fun. I enjoy that. And so that happens. And when that happens, people often ask me, how do I prepare for a show where someone's prepared to debate me? They've studied a topic and I didn't even know what debates happening.

And I've always said for years that there's only two areas that I focus on. Hermeneutics and logic. And that's what you need to do apologetics and debate, at least Christian debate. So what is hermeneutics?

It is the art and science of interpretation, a logic we're going to get into and what makes things logically valid or sound. So we're going to spend some time discussing that. So we're going to talk about the character that we should have.

And after that, I'm going to provide a quiz on that section. We're going to have a midterm that won't be exactly in the middle of the term, but it's going to cover mostly the hermeneutics section. And then you'll have a final exam that will cover logic.

Now those may, the hermeneutics midterm may include some of the information on the character and the one on the final exam may include hermeneutics and character as well as logic, but it'll focus on that.

So those are going to be the three things that we're going to be grading you on. And then there is going to be a final assignment for students. And I'm going to leave this up to HAPS to get everybody who's taking the class to make sure that we get at least two people paired up together.

And for a final assignment, each of you will be debating one another. That will be an actual class assignment. Now, if you're going, well, I don't want to, I'm going to drop class now because I don't want to do that.

Well, then HAPS is going to give me your address. I'm coming to your house and I'm going to force you to debate. I'm going to come with a camera and you're going to debate unexpectedly at your front door if need be.

But you will be debating one way or the other. No, it's really good to do. And we're going to provide those debates where those who are going to feel more comfortable will, we could provide those, stream those on Apologetics Live or on here.

But if not, we'll do that in a private stream where just those who may not be an actual stream, but we're at a private meeting where you guys will get a chance to actually put into practice some of the things you're going to learn.

It is very important to know how to actually debate, not just watch them and think you can handle it, but to actually be graded on how to do debate. How did you do? So that is going to be the class assignments.

So I hope that is, is crystal clear. And we're going to, we're going to start everyone off with an A except for Haps Addison. He starts off with an F. He's got to work up and earn an A where the other students just have to fail to get down to Haps' level.

Did I say that wrong? I'm sorry, Haps?

Okay. Started.

Well, you know, like I always say at the conferences, I never graduated high school.

Oh, I didn't know you speak at the conferences. I'm usually sleeping. I'm sorry.

Oh my goodness.

Cruel, cruel. I thought that was a big brother, you know?

See, I was there and I was awake for perhaps a sermon. So it was pretty good.

Yeah. I was, I was in the other room taking a nap. All right. So, so I want to start row.

That is true. Yeah.

I didn't think you noticed. All right. So I want to start with two things to trigger folks before we get into looking at some of the issues of, of the purpose of apologetics. I want to use two things as an example.

Responding to Emotional Reactions and False Premises

And I think that they'll sufficiently trigger people into wanting to respond. I want to make sure we get feedback. Remember all your hate emails go to Haps. Just email him and he'll forward them to me, but no.

But I do want, I do want to be having the interaction. So those who know how to get in touch with me either on Twitter, Twitter, I'm just handle Andrew underscore SFE. That stands for striving for eternity, but Andrew underscore SFE, Facebook, Andrew Rappaport.

If you want to email info at striving for eternity .com, those are the ways to get ahold of me. So, and as we go through the course, especially we get into logic, we're going to look at some of these examples that I'm going to give right now that are going to trigger some folks and then we can get into it.

Now, the first one I wasn't actually planning to, and unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to download the clip of this, but I do have it on my Twitter. If you go to Twitter, uh, Andrew underscore SFE, you'll see there that I have a clip somewhere down of John McArthur at a Q &A.

And John McArthur in that Q &A had made the statement that PSTD, PTSD and ADD don't exist. And then he went on to explain the, the experiences of PSTD and ADD, specifically PSTD. Now I posted that clip and there was a ton.

I, you know, I've never really had too many things that I tweet out or I don't know what it is now. It's called X. I X out. Would that make sense? I don't know. Uh, if someone asked Elon Musk, perhaps I know you got his, his contact information, ask him what we're supposed to call it.

Um, okay. But I put it out on X that thing. And granted, I will admit I put it out before going to bed while in the Philippines. So when I went to bed, it was morning time here in the States. And I woke up to a thousand comments.

That doesn't happen often on my, on my X or tweets or whatever we call them. So here's one, huh? What'd you say, Randy?

There's one on the screen. I fully disagree with MacArthur on that.

Yeah, there we go. And so everyone was disagreeing with MacArthur because they experienced PSTD.

So just for clarification, you're, you're meaning PTSD, right? PTSD.

What did I, what do I keep saying? PSTD. I, you know, at least I'm consistent if I get it right. PTSD. So the, the thing though is that, okay, is it logical to say that MacArthur didn't MacArthur say he dis, he doesn't think PTSD exists?

Yes. He said that. Did he say that the experience doesn't exist? No. And so people are reacting and I had to point out they're reacting in an illogical way because MacArthur is not disagreeing with what they've experienced he's a disagreeing with the psychological definition, the psychological nomenclature, the titling of it.

And what he was providing was more biblical ways of explaining the experience that people have. So was he denying that people have that experience? No, but that's how people were saying it. They were saying MacArthur doesn't know what he's talking about.

He's never been in war. Well, that is true. He's never been in war, but was he denying the experience? Actually he wasn't, he was denying the label. And so this is something when we get into debate, when we get into how to handle debates, how to do apologetics.

One of the things we have to be able to do is separate our emotions from our thinking. We live in a culture and this is going to be very important. And this is something that if I was teaching this class, say 20 years ago would be very different because 20 years ago I would have taught and focused very much on our thinking, but we are not dealing with a thinking generation anymore.

We're dealing with a feeling generation. And that is a major difference when we do apologetics because they, the younger generation no longer thinks they feel. And their feelings is what is right, not their thinking.

Now that doesn't actually make it right. We get that, but we have to work with them where they're at to get them from a feeling based truth to a thinking based truth to get to the actual truth. That's going to be the goal in apologetics or debate.

And so as we look at this, when we look at MacArthur's comments, we have to say, okay, let's take our emotion aside. Anyone who has suffered damages, you know, emotional damages in warfare, they understand what PSTD is.

Did I say it right that time?

PTSD. You said PTSD again.

PTSD. That's what actually what I got in my notes, but all right, I will look at my note every time I say it. You know, I actually did this in a sermon. When I get something stuck in my head, I get it wrong and I stay consistent.

I actually replaced Zachariah or Ezekiel. Now I can't even think of his name. The guy, the small, sweet little guy in the tree. I hate when I do this. Zacchaeus. I replaced the Zacchaeus with Zachariah seven times in a sermon.

Every single time I did it, I was consistent. So it's frustrating. So when we look at this argument, we have to look at what's actually being said. When people are saying MacArthur denies that people can suffer from PTSD.

Well, he's not talking about the experience. He's, he admits because he goes right on afterwards to say it. So first off, we have to separate our emotions from our thinking. When it comes to apologetics and debate, it is a thinking based skill.

Not a feeling based skill. So when you have a, and this, this is, would be another example, not one that I planned, but you know, I, I saw recently this week, they were having a hunger strike. I think this one was, I forget which university they're doing this.

I think it was like an up in New York and Randy, you'll, you'll appreciate this one. This will crack you up if you haven't heard it, but they have a bunch of people having hunger strikes in protests for, uh, Palestine, the Palestinians and the folks in Gaza.

And then they're complaining because it's not fair because they're hungry. There's a very simple solution. If you're hungry, eat, that's what you do. Right. But they're somehow claiming it's unfair because they're hungry and, and they, they shouldn't have to be on a hunger strike.

No one's forcing them to be on a hunger strike. Um, and what they, what they call a hunger strike, most of us just call fasting. So it was just called skipping a meal. Like they had one hunger strike where they went without lunch.

Ooh, big struggle. Um, but this is the generation we're dealing with. We're dealing with people who, who, who just are in, have an entitlement mentality in America. They have a feeling based system. They don't think through things.

And so the first thing that people reacted to with MacArthur's clip is emotion. Now I'm not denying the experience that people suffer. I'm not denying that people have ADD. The question is what's the cause of it.

Now, I would say most people with ADD have a perfectly fine attention span when they're sitting and watching binge watching some movie or playing a video game, they can do that for hours. Right. It's the other things that they don't want to actually do that.

They seem to that lack the attention. Uh, I actually noticed when I was younger, the attention span was 12 and a half minutes, by the way, if anyone knows what 12 and a half minutes is, it is the time periods between commercials.

So what was, what is it? You're being trained to have a slow attention and now it's like eight seconds. Why is that? Because we have phones and we just skim through really quickly. The reality is, is that MacArthur wasn't denying the experiences.

He's denying the labeling of it. And so people were arguing against the experience, but that wasn't the actual point. So when we are going to go through this course, one of the things we're going to learn to do is identify what the premise of an argument is.

And it is faulty in doing apologetics and debate to attack a false premise. Anytime you're attacking something that is not the actual argument someone is making, that's what we call a straw man argument.

You're attacking something that isn't the real argument, a straw man that's easily to knock over. So if we were to, if I was to sit and try to argue that, you know, against haps being this, you know, that haps claims he's this highly intellectual individual.

Anyone who knows haps knows he doesn't make that claim and would call foul on me.

Right away.

And so they should because that wouldn't be the actual argument he would make. So this is going to be some of the stuff we're going to do. Let me give you another example. It's going to trigger folks even more.

Infant Baptism, Covenant Theology, and Hermeneutics

I would ask if there's anyone that is a Presbyterian, but I know most of the students are watching this after the stream. So, but I'm going to use this as an example because well, I want to trigger someone.

So, cause I want to make sure we get some good debate. And this may be a really great topic of debate for folks who want to do this debate. So I'm going to suggest this if we have any Baptists and Presbyterians that someone would take this on infant baptism.

Let's, let's look at that. Let me give an, I'm not going to go into this in detail. Well, maybe throughout the class, I may use this as an example, but so I'm going to put this out now and ask some questions that if, if I was to debate someone on infant baptism, what would I expect to hear from someone?

Well, those who are going to argue for infant baptism are going to use a couple of things. One, they're going to say that, well, children are always part of the covenant. Uh, every time that they would argue that every time we see a covenant in the old Testament, it was the children were involved.

And therefore the new covenant should be the same. Uh, now we're children involved in the old covenant of Abraham, which was the sign was circumcision. Yeah, but not all children, just the men, by the way.

So that was a sign, but what other covenants are covenants where children are involved? I would ask that question in cross-examination. Uh, the other thing is that the sign of a covenant is always external.

And so these are two essentials to an argument for infant baptism. Now when we get to hermeneutics, I'm going to argue that infant baptism is consistent within a covenant, covenant theology, way of doing hermeneutics.

So am I saying it's wrong? Well, of course I'm a Baptist. No, I'm, I would be saying it this way. It's consistent within the hermeneutical system. I would have a different hermeneutical system, but then a Presbyterian would.

However, I would look when it comes to hermeneutics for consistency, that's going to be very important. Now, as a Baptist, I would look at these two arguments and let me ask this question and throw it out to you.

We're not going to answer it here. Well, I'll give you my answer shortly. But, uh, when we look at the fact that the claims are all children, part of the covenant relationships. Well, even if that was true in the old Testament, it's an assumption for the new Testament, unless the new Testament clearly says it.

So I would press upon people to say, is there any new Testament evidence for a covenant? The new covenant being with a children, with the children. Second is the sign of the covenant is external. I would challenge that and say that too is an assumption.

Now, what am I doing? I'm looking at this logically and just saying it is an assumption. Now, where do they get that assumption? Is the assumption based upon good evidence? Well, it would be a consistent way of interpreting based on the covenantal way of interpreting.

And so a reformed hermeneutic is going to come or could come to a position of infant baptism and be consistent with that. The point that we get to is I'm going to take it and say, these are assumptions.

I can look at Jeremiah, um, 31, uh, Ezekiel, sorry, Jeremiah 29 and Ezekiel 36, and say, look at these, this is the new covenant. What, what's the sign of the new covenant, the Holy spirit indwelling you.

That's what the old Testament says will be the sign of the new covenant. Is that something external? No. Is that something that is for children? No. And so if I'm debating that I'm giving help for any of those on Baptist side who want to debate the Presbyterian on this, that would be the issue I would address.

But in the debate, what I would be doing is looking at that and saying, these are assumptions based on a hermeneutical system. And it would, the burden of proof would be on the Presbyterian to defend infant baptism from the new Testament, not from the assumption of a system.

Okay. Hopefully I have sufficiently triggered some folks that they want to respond, uh, info at strivingforeternity .com or just reach out to Haps because well, he gets all the hate mail. And if you do send me hate mail, I'll just send it to Haps and have him know.

Um, cause he, he walked away from class. So I was saying that I would, but Randy, you were there. Did I actually walk away from Haps's talk? No, but look, he, he just ditched class. The Dean of the school here walked out on class, just saying so.

And Randy keeps freezing anyway. So he probably had to go back and listen to all the things we say about him. All right. So what is the purpose of hermeneutics? Well,.

Randy,.

I am really glad that you asked that question because I would like to answer it. And what I'd like to do is answer it with, well, the place we should go scripture. So what we want to first do is address is, is look at what the purpose is of apologetics.

Now,.

The,.

What you view the purpose is becomes extremely important in how you are going to conduct yourself with apologetics or, or debate, because how you view the purpose is going to basically reach out to the whole way you're going to handle yourself.

So the purpose I'm going to argue for apologetics or Christian apologetics is the gospel. It is not to win a debate. This is a very important distinction. When we look at the way a lot of people view, the way a lot of people end up viewing apologetics is, especially if they're on the street, you get some guys doing open air evangelism.

Many of them are, they do it because they like to debate. They want to argue. They want to have the microphone. The nice thing about being an open air evangelist is you have a microphone or you have a voice that's louder.

And therefore you get to win because you silence the other person by speaking over them. And so there's guys who do that and they like to talk down to people. They like to argue, they like to win debates.

And so what they're really out there for is their own ego to show how smart they are, to show their ability to, uh, to, to fight and argue. And so this is the thing that we, we end up seeing. Okay. Um, and I did, by the way, I just noticed, uh, the, uh, on YouTube, people are responding.

So I'm going back and looking at comments now. Uh, so I see the one that you put up earlier. I, I, for some reason in here, Randy, I was just looking at the private chat. So now I'm looking back at lots of comments that maybe we could get to.

Um, I will multitask and look at both. So when we're debating on the street, the goal is not to win a debate. In fact, I would argue that that is not the thing to be focused on. If you're on the street, um, you're, you're there hopefully to display Christ.

You should be a ambassador for Christ. And so when we do this, um, we have to have the right mindset. If your goal is to win a debate, then you're going to sit there and you're going to be fighting with people.

You, you're not going to be looking to give great arguments. You're going to give arguments that help you win. And you're going to hear opponents that are debating. You do the same thing, especially on the street.

There's a pride that can affect things. And we're going to talk about this in the character when we get to discussing.

Character,.

But we have to recognize that the purpose of Christian apologetics is to share the gospel. Let me ask you to turn to Titus chapter one, Titus in Titus chapter one, Paul is going to provide for us, uh, what he explains to Titus with this.

He's going to tell Titus in Titus one, 10 and 11. He says, for there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision who must be silenced because they are setting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of assorted gain.

So, so right off the bat, he refers to the, there are people there. He refers them as rebellious men. They're rebellious. I love the fact he refers them as empty talkers. When you especially are on the street and you're, you're doing apologetics, you're going to see many empty talkers.

Uh, haps you do open air. You're nodding your head. Yes. Often this is what we get, right? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I remember one specific guy. I was, I was down on the Jersey shore boardwalk. We're on the boardwalk and this guy is going off.

He, he's literally no joke for 20 minutes trying to explain the original religion was founded in, in the Celtic druidic, uh, paganism. And that was where we were all religion formed. And he's going off for 20 minutes.

And for 20 minutes, I'm listening to this guy going like, like, what am I even going to say? I knew nothing about what he's talking about. I hadn't studied the cultic druids. I didn't study, you know, cultic paganism, Celtic paganism and, and this stuff.

And I'm like, you know, in my mind I'm listening to him going, okay, I'm learning some things maybe, but what in the world am I going to say? Now I'm going to tell you two things. One thing I did learn one thing that is now always my go-to when people say the most crazy and the empty talkers say the most crazy things.

Here's what I ended up saying to him when he got done, I went, okay, that's all great, but how's that going to help you on judgment day? And that's always my go-to in, in apologetics. They can say whatever they want.

They get into a whole bunch of things. They start talking about science and they start talking about, you know, things that are just way over my head. That's okay because I can always turn and say that that's fine.

How does that help you on judgment day? And the answer is it doesn't. The only thing that helps them on judgment day is what did you do with Jesus Christ? Did you receive him or reject him? That's it.

Judgment day is based just on that decision, whether someone received Christ or rejected Christ, that's it. So whatever they want to do, argue, whatever you, you no longer have to worry about the fear of some guy that's going to have a whole bunch of information that's just over your head and you don't get it because you can just say, Hey, that's great and all, but how's that help you on judgment day?

All right. So that's one thing just out of today's class, at least that gives you one thing you can take away with and know that you have an answer for any crazy talk you get on the street. But this guy was going off literally for 20 minutes.

And I ended up asking, I just said, I just got to ask you, like, are you just making this up as you go along? And the guy literally just laughed and went, yeah, I am. That's an empty talker. He literally was just making up stuff on the fly to make himself sound smart, make himself sound good.

And he admitted to it. And that's when I just said, okay, how's all that help you on judgment day then, right? So you have these guys who are rebellious. You're going to have people who are attacking you.

Well, not really. They're attacking Christ. They're attacking what you're saying because of the fact that they hate Christ. They're rebellious people. The other way that Paul explains them is empty talkers.

And I said, they're just going to make things up as they go along. But he doesn't stop there. He doesn't just say they're rebellious and empty talkers. It's not that just that they're what they say is useless.

I mean, they're going to talk about, you know, things like, oh, well let's talk about Peltdown man and Lucy and you know, all this. And really when you dig into all those and you'll dig into the fossil evidence, you realize, oops, they're making all that up as they go along.

It's all based on a perception of their evidence. And so what we end up seeing is that Paul says that they're not just empty talkers, but they're deceivers. This is the thing we have to recognize with many of the people as Christians that we're going to be doing apologetics with is there are people who are out there and they are deceiving.

OK, that is their goal. He even makes it clear who he's speaking of, especially those of the circumcision. Well, who might that be? Well, that's probably going to be what we would refer to as Judaizers.

Those who came from a Jewish background who would be circumcised, part of the Abrahamic covenant. And they're forcing those who are not under the Abrahamic covenant to get into like saying, well, you have to be circumcised.

You have to follow the law. OK, so Paul wants Timothy or Titus to use some apologetics. What does he say is the purpose of the apologetics? Verse 11, who must be silenced. The goal of apologetics is not to win a debate, but to silence ignorant men so that you can share the gospel.

That's the purpose. You are to silence them because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach. And he says these specific people do it for sordid gain. They want financial gain out of it.

Now, some people today do it for financial gain. Some do it for popularity with the advent of social media. There's people who build platforms on things that they know are false. But hey, it gets me a platform.

That's a sordid gain. You have you have people that create whole ministries, if you want to call it that, or YouTube channels, you know, like Soteriology 101. Now I'm calling him out, but this is a friend of mine, someone I know personally, but his arguments are not good.

They're not following good harmonic, harmonic principles. They're not logical, but it gains an audience. Am I saying he's doing it for sordid gain? Well, I'm not sure I'm getting closer. But that's nothing I haven't said to him personally, OK, even at the last open air theology conference, when he showed up, we talked about it and I've told him I think he should get out of that and stick to evangelism.

It's what he's, he's good at. But, you know, the there's a difference now between apologetics that we would do and share in defending the faith against an unbeliever and what we would call, maybe you could call it apologetics against a believer, just debating over views that we have of differences in theology.

So, um, and I'm just seeing that Melissa is giving a thumbs down Soteriology 101. So I wonder if I can, I can't put that up, but you can, if you want it ready. But so we see that the purpose that Paul gives Titus is the fact that when we do apologetics, it should be to silence these rebellious men, these empty talkers who are deceiving people, upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not for their own personal gain.

Christian Apologetics as Gospel Ministry, Not Ego Management

Okay.

That is what we're going to do and learn here in this course over the next, well, eight weeks, and so we're going to look to, to learn how to silence those that are false, providing false teaching. How, how do we silence them?

What is a good way of doing it? Oh, you can make arguments to shut someone down. You can insult them. Is that, is that good? I would say no. Remember I'm talking about Christian apologetics in this course.

Therefore, if we're doing Christian apologetics as Christians, we are ambassadors for Jesus Christ. Second Corinthians five. And therefore everything we do when we do apologetics is reflecting back on our King.

We are his ambassador. Therefore, everything that we do must be in a Christ like manner. And that is why the first topic we're going to cover of the three topics in this course will be the character in debate, because if you do not have the right character, you should not be debating.

It is the very reason that Paul goes into explain to Titus in great lengths, his, the character issues that should be there. The fact that as a pastor, he's going to provide in that first chapter of Titus, uh, all of these things that as a pastor, you should be qualified to do.