The Spiritual Formation of the Apologist

Introduction and Dr. Groothuis’s Background

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and today I have another special guest. I've been reading his books for quite some time, but I just learned right now how to properly pronounce his name, and I hope I don't butcher it.

But today I have with me Dr. Douglas Grothuis. Okay, I think that's it. He's gonna correct me again. He just told me, I hope I don't forget. Dr. Grothuis, who is a Christian apologist. He is a philosopher.

He's written a number of books. If I can just give a quick little summary of who he is. Dr. Douglas Grothuis is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society. He's also a member of the Evangelical Philosophical Society and Society of Christian Philosophers, and he's authored a bunch of books, some of which include, I have kind of an old one here, but Unmasking the New Age.

And if folks are interested in kind of how to do apologetics and engage the perspective of new age philosophy and perspective, you might wanna pick this up. I think you could pick it up on Amazon. It's a pretty good book.

There's a nice little recommendation there by Dr. Walter Martin on the top. He says, this well-researched book convincingly articulates the spiritual and social dangers inherent in new age thinking. Dr. Walter Martin, of course, is the father of cult apologetics, and he has a lot of good things to say about this book.

So Dr. Grothuis has written this one, and of course his classic dictionary, encyclopedia-sized book here. He has authored the book Christian Apologetics. Now, this is my first time meeting Dr. Grothuis, so I don't know if he knows this, but we typically do presuppositional apologetics on this channel.

However, folks who follow my channel know that I greatly appreciate a wide range of apologetic traditions. And while Dr. Grothuis probably doesn't associate himself with a kind of a Vantillian approach, there's a lot of helpful information in this book, and I've gone to this book many times as a wonderful resource.

So folks, you might wanna pay attention to this book, and maybe I'll ask Dr. Grothuis a little bit about his new edition coming up. So I'm super excited. So without further ado, let me invite Dr. Douglas Grothuis, and I'm gonna call you Doug, is that okay?

Very, very good, it's easier too. All right, that's right. I'm like, how many times do I have to say his last name? You said it correctly on the intro, so good for you. Okay, well, thank you very much.

Is there anything you'd wanna say by way of introduction that I did not mention that you'd like to tell the audience? Yes, I'd like to say that I've been a professor of philosophy at Denver Seminary since 1993, and that has been my primary place of ministry, but I really thrive interacting with unbelievers, or especially on college campuses where I can engage students and help them think through their faith better.

Apologetic Method and the Cumulative Case Approach

Excellent, excellent. And as I mentioned just a few moments ago, because people who watch my channel are interested in issues of methodology and not for the purposes of dividing the camps, but what apologetic tradition do you associate yourself with?

Well, I've gained a lot from Van Til and Gordon Clark and Greg Bonson and Carl F .H. Henry, who are all in a presuppositional camp. Their methods vary somewhat. Sure. But my way of doing apologetics is what is called the cumulative case method.

This was used by E .G. Carnell and Gordon Lewis, although the way I use the method is very strong on natural theology. Sure. So basically Christianity is a hypothesis to be verified through various lines of evidence from science, history, human experience, the wisdom of scripture itself, and so on.

Would you say that a cumulative case approach is kind of like presuppositional-ish in the sense that it also asks the question which worldview kind of makes sense out of the wide range of human experience?

Exactly, yeah. Yeah, I view it as a hypothesis verification. Okay. So I use a lot of negative apologetics, which I think presuppositionalists are quite good at. If you're a naturalist, you can't explain the validity of human reasoning.

You can't explain the basis of morality. You basically can't explain anything on the basis of philosophical materialism. And Christianity explains all these things. God is the basis of morality. God gave us reason because he is the divine Logos.

So you present Christianity as this worldview, and then you have various ways of testing a worldview, and Christianity comes out on top as opposed to all the other worldviews that you test according to various criteria.

I give eight criteria in chapter three of my book, Christian Apologetics. So really, I think I have a lot in common with the presuppositionalists, and sometimes it depends how you state it. So the way you stated it, I would agree entirely.

Okay, all right, wonderful. Now, your book here, which has been out for a while. 10 years. I don't even remember when I bought this one. I've had this in my library for quite some time. And I understand, I was looking on Amazon, and I saw the name of the book, your name under as the author, and the cover looked completely different.

And when the cover's different, I'm like, oh, new edition's coming out. And I love updating books, and I know that new editions include some new content. You wanna take a few moments just to share what's going on with you?

Sure, I'd be happy to. Well, the book came out in 2011, and I've been teaching through it at Denver Seminary and other places now for years. And as I taught through it, I kept thinking, I left that out, or maybe I could revise this a little bit.

It's only 752 pages as it is, so I figured I better beef it up a little bit for a second edition. Yeah, right? I mean, listen, apologetics can help you engage atheists, but this one, you could assault an atheist with this pretty violently, it's a good weapon.

Yeah, you definitely can. Sometimes I call it the doorstop, but I've added, I think, six new chapters to it. Wow, okay. I have two chapters on the atonement, which I realized I did not say enough about at all.

And the atonement is attacked sometimes today as being something like divine child abuse and all this ridiculous stuff. So I spent two real meaty chapters, worked very hard on that, explaining the atonement, defending the atonement against some of the classic attacks like Sosinus and others, and have a chapter defending original monotheism, when Cordowin's done a lot of good work on that, have a chapter on doubt and skepticism and the hiddenness of God, and a chapter on the argument from beauty.

Maybe even another chapter, I can't even remember all the things I added to it, but this time it'll probably be about 1 ,000 pages long, probably. Wow, that last part there, an argument from beauty, I think that's such an underdeveloped area.

I'm very much looking forward to checking that out. Well, it is. And I realized that over the years because usually when you think of a design argument, you think of something like the fine tuning of the universe or how our minds are designed to know the world by a rational God, but people are often very taken by beauty.

They feel a sense of reverence before something extremely beautiful, whether it's in nature, whether it's a painting or a piece of music. I think they get kind of a signal of transcendence through that to use a term from Peter Berger, but I've developed it out into an argument.

And the conclusion is that it's more reasonable to believe there is a divine author and artist behind the world than either the naturalistic account or the pantheistic account. Well, very good. Well, when is that coming out?

And I'll probably pre-order it, so. Well, it should be out in March. Wonderful. All right, excellent. So hopefully folks will go check that out. Again, I highly recommend Dr. Doug's book. I highly recommend his book.

And I know that when we talk about the different competing apologetic methods, things can get pretty rabid on the internet, but let me tell you something. Ultimately speaking, okay? I mean, we might differ on various points of theology and apologetic methodology.

Ultimately, we are on the same team and we do take different approaches. And I think all of us can learn from engaging the material, some good work that's coming out from folks like you and others. And so I do highly recommend folks check that out.

Yeah, if I could just add to that a little bit. Sure. It's important to figure out what your apologetic method is, but it's more important to do apologetics with unbelievers. I agree. So I have a whole chapter on apologetic method and then I apply it.

And I tell my students over and over again that you really wanna spend more time talking to unbelievers about the truth of Christianity and why they should become Christians than you do arguing with other believers over apologetic method.

I agree. We need to get the word out to the streets. That's right. Presuppositionalist can do it, evidentialist can do it, cumulative case people can do it. The only people who can't do it are fideists because they don't think there is any argument they can use.

So I do argue definitely against fideism. Absolutely. All right, well, thank you very much for that. Well, let's jump right into the topic. Now, when I have read your work in the past, I've actually listened to many of your lectures.

I don't know if you know this, but you have actually, there's a whole series of your apologetics course that's available on Apologetics 315, which is another excellent resource for people to check out.

There's just tons and tons of audio material and things to read there. And so when I think of you, I think of a Christian intellectual, someone who is, obviously you're educated, you have experienced teaching, using apologetics and things like that.

And when folks like myself or you or anyone else who does this sort of stuff regularly, we got our books in the background, people get the impression, man, we're always reading and studying. Well, my topic that I wanted to cover today was the importance of the spiritual formation of the apologist.

Spiritual Formation, Love of God, and the Life of the Mind

How do you balance a life that has a great emphasis upon the intellectual side? And I don't wanna create a false dichotomy. I know that there's an intellectual foundation to our spiritual experience, but how do you balance the issue of study, thinking critically, and also being able to step back and say, read the Bible for edification, as opposed to always reading it for coming up with a defense or some argument or something like that?

Right. There's a lot to be said about that. I think of something C .S. Lewis said. He said, you can't just defend the faith all the time. You also have to enjoy being a Christian. So we want to remember who our Lord is and who we are in Him, that there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, that there's this very strong language of the wonder of Christ in us, like in Ephesians 1 and 2.

So we need to really sink, we need to let skin the truth of a gospel into our being. Now, all Christians are called to defend the gospel. We know that, 1 Peter 3 .15. Some of us spend more time at it than others.

And I'm a professional philosopher. My degrees are in philosophy from secular schools. But I think the person that really helped me put things together well early on in my Christian life was one of the biggest influences on me, which was Francis Schaeffer.

I read his book, The God Who Was There, in the fall of 1976. I was a new Christian at the time. And of course, Schaeffer was taking on the world of ideas, philosophers, liberal theologians, painters, musicians, poets, everybody, fearlessly.

But he had compassion. You could tell that he would say that when we are commending the Christian faith, that we're not in a game. And we're not out to score points with people. In fact, he said, if you're really winning an argument with a non-Christian and you're intimidating them or overwhelming them, just pull back because you're dealing with another human being.

You're not here to bludgeon them into accepting what you believe. So I think early on, Schaeffer's emphasis on the intellect, but also on loving the person you're trying to convince has been extremely significant for me.

And what we need to do is develop a good spirituality of the intellect. That, of course, Christ called us to love God with our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. So there is such a thing as the intellectual love of God, the one true God.

And I have found in my Christian life that intellectual satisfaction is a part of my sanctification. If I really see the truth and the power of the Christian perspective, and I can make that known to other people, and I can write about that, then I feel a sense of God's pleasure when I do that.

So I think we need to realize that biblically, we should be loving God with all of our being, not merely our emotions or our willpower or volition, but in terms of knowing who God is and knowing enough about our culture and enough about history to bring that to bear to the world.

So I guess early on, I had this idea that study was an intellectual discipline. And Richard Foster says that in Celebration of Discipline. I don't agree with everything Richard Foster has said over the years, but I think that chapter on discipline is fairly good in Celebration of Discipline.

And there's a lot in scripture about teachers needing to be studious, to really take seriously the life of the mind. And I have a couple of scriptures here that have really helped me on this. Here's one from 2 Timothy 2, 24 through 26.

Paul says to Timothy, and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed in the hope that God will grant them repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.

Now, this is really interesting because in our social media driven society, there's so much combat, so much conflict. And Paul is assuming that this is serious. He says, opponents. So we do have intellectual opponents.

Opponents, though, must be gently instructed in the hope that God will grant them repentance. So he says, you're dealing with opponents and you're dealing with people who are entrapped by the devil, but you have to realize that it's God who grants them repentance, and you're to gently instruct them and hope that they will be freed from their captivity to the devil and to lies.

So it's fascinating that you have this highly combustible, dramatic situation, truth and error, life and death, Christ and Satan. Paul says, don't be quarrelsome, be gentle. But you're gentle with a real focus like a laser to get to the truth of the matter.

Truth in Love and Creative Apologetic Engagement

Now, how do you differentiate? Okay, here's the thing, because when we do apologetics, I mean, we live, as you said, in kind of this social media context, a lot of apologetics is happening on the internet.

And so you have this kind of depersonalization of human interaction where folks will say things to people that they would never say face-to-face to someone. And then you have the other issue of the appropriateness of being a little more firm.

How do you differentiate between the gentleness of scripture and a biblical firmness when you're engaging with an unbeliever? Let's say perhaps within the context of a debate or something like that, where people tend to be much more back and forth.

When is it appropriate to kind of take that more stern approach? I think if you're in a formal debate, then everyone knows it's head-to-head. Okay. You know, it's A and non-A. So you're there to defend your views.

And in that case, you can be very direct. And in any kind of debate, you wanna stick to the point, you wanna be logical, be factual, not get angry about anything. But if you see some master debater like William Lane Craig debate, he never gets angry, but he holds people to their statements.

And when they dodge a point, he'll say, you never answered my argument as to, and then he says it again. Well, he's really good at reminding the opponent. Yes. Of the points he didn't answer. Well, he's the great master.

So if you're in a formal debate situation, everyone expects you to go head-to-head. Now, a lot of apologetic interactions are more conversational, even online. So I think you wanna be gentle, but firm.

And a good way to think about this would be Ephesians 4 .15 about speaking the truth in love. So if you speak the truth out of hostility or anger, it's still the truth and God may still use it to convince someone, but it comes off often.

It comes off many times as harsh. Yeah. But if you have love without truth, then you're just kind of emoting on people. And that attitude is good, but really what I like to say is you need to have truth in your mind, love in your heart, and fire in your bones.

The fire in your bones is Christianity counts. The gospel matters. We have to bring this message to the world the best we possibly can. We need to be as smart and as knowledgeable and as winsome and courageous and creative and compassionate as we possibly can be.

I like that, creative. You don't really hear that in terms of apologetics. We tend to think strict logic, you need to argue and refute. There's actually very creative ways we can go about doing that because we so strongly desire to get the truth across.

So we might have to take different approaches with different people. Yeah. I'm teaching two classes right now on C .S. Lewis, one at Colorado Christian University and one at my school, Denver Seminary.

Okay. And of course he's the great master of being creative in apologetics. He did the straightforward, more didactic apologetics like in mere Christianity, miracles, the problem of pain. But of course he also wrote the screw tape letters and Narnia and the space trilogy and so on.

That's right. And he was a great master of using literature to illustrate Christian viewpoints. I can't touch him in those areas at all, but I think of different ways that I could get the point across in one way or another.

I sometimes write dialogues. Okay. Wrote a dialogue between Jean-Paul Sartre and Soren Kierkegaard, a fantasy dialogue. Nice. To make some apologetic points. And I got it published in a secular magazine called Philosophy Now, which is

Great, that's awesome. Yeah, so I'm always thinking about how can I get the Christian message into a venue where it's typically not heard? Like with Philosophy Now or some other secular magazine or journal or a radio program or lecture.

Paul said, I don't wanna bring the gospel where it's already been preached. I wanna break new ground. Sure. And I challenge people all the time is where could you bring Christianity where it typically is never heard?

Because you may have an entry point that no one else has. Now, I teach global history and I often bring up Alexander the Great when I'm talking about how his conquests and exploits kind of created a context for the New Testament era.

And so you think in terms of Alexander the Great's passion to just conquer the world and go beyond the boundaries. I see the Apostle Paul as kind of the Alexander the Great of the gospel. I mean, just having this vision.

I mean, he wanted to go as far as Spain. Some people believe he might've gotten there to have this kind of all-encompassing vision of conquest for the kingdom of God. And I think that's something that we really, really much have to recapture in the church today, I think.

Yeah, I think so. And a passage that encourages me quite a bit is in Ecclesiastes 11, one through six, I believe it is where the writer speaks of in the old King James, it talks about, "'Cast your bread on the waters "'and see what comes back to you.'".

And the idea of that is invest in many ventures because you're not sure which ones will pay off. It's probably more of a financial reference, but I think it applies to life in general and especially to apologetics because if you wanna bring the gospel where it's not typically heard or defend it in places where it's not usually taken seriously, then you have to risk a lot.

You have to take a lot of chances, meaning you might present yourself as a possible writer of an article or a speaker, or you wanna do a debate and no one gets back to you, or they say no, or whatever it may be.

I mean, right now I'm trying to get a trial log going with an atheist, I won't say who it is, an atheist writer who just came out with a book about wokeism and a friend of his who is a Christian and me.

And so I don't know if this will gel or not, but I contacted the Christian who has a podcast with this fellow. And I said, could you ask him if we could do some kind of a trial log because we're all critical of wokeism, so to speak, or critical race theory.

The one guy's an atheist, the other guy's a Christian, and of course I'm a Christian apologist. Maybe nothing will come of it. But basically I was reading this book and it's excellent about critical race theory, but it's terrible about Christianity.

So I got fired up. I was kind of like Paul in 1816. He saw the idols of Athens and he was greatly distressed in spirit. So I'm listening to this book in the car thinking, oh, come on, you can't make that comparison.

And so who knows, but that's bread thrown out on the water. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But let's break new ground, be creative, take some prudent risks and not just sit on our hands.

I mean, we are accountable for what we know. More you know about scripture, apologetics, ways of communicating, the more accountable you are to use your knowledge to extend knowledge of God to a rebellious world.

Heart and Head, Scripture, and the Church

Very good. Well, let's get back to this issue of spiritual formation. When we talk about the intellect and spirituality or the heart and the head, do you think that's an appropriate dichotomy to set or you think that's kind of a misuse of terminology?

As I do understand that some people would associate the heart with the head, that the heart refers to the mind. So there's not really a true dichotomy there. They're really one and the same. What's your understanding on that?

And then I have a follow-up question, but maybe you could address the heart and the head issue. Yes, I think biblically the heart is the center of the person that encompasses everything, the will, the feeling, the reasoning.

There may be a few biblical passages in the New Testament where there's a bit of a distinction between heart and head, but I don't really wanna make much of a distinction. I always am concerned when people talk about, well, that speaks to the heart, but not to the head.

I think truth is what should matter, especially truth about the nature of God, the plan of salvation, what is a good society? What does it mean to be a godly citizen? Truth is what matters and truth should light your fire.

Truth should give you fire in your bones to proclaim the gospel. So I don't like to make a big dichotomy between heart and mind. We're to love God with heart, soul, strength, and mind. So that's the total package right there.

And I think the truth of Christianity should ignite a passion within us. Now, some people have this problem. I mean, I'm thankful to the Lord. I've never had this problem. If you think that you're studying something very difficult and you have to invest hours and hours into it, that somehow this is not a spiritual discipline.

Now, I think if you're studying in a way that fits in with your calling, then you could be studying anything. You could be studying a manual Kant as I did in graduate school. And I'll tell you what, critique of pure reason doesn't get any harder than that.

Yeah, that's right. Critique of pure reason, you have a chance of figuring it out. With Heidegger and being in time, I don't know that you ever figure that out. Anyway, I'm more of a Kant scholar, not a Heidegger scholar.

But even then it was hard. And I was fearful sometimes about what grade I would get, but I never viewed it as something unspiritual because I was there to become a Christian philosopher to serve God. So years ago, one of my students said, I spent hours studying Hebrew, just hours and hours on this Hebrew text.

And I don't know what kind of spirituality that is. I don't feel close to God. It was hard. And I asked him one question. I said, did you learn more about the truth of the Bible by studying that Hebrew text?

And he said, yes. I said, well, there it is. That was spiritual. You learn more truth from God. So it doesn't matter if you had, Holy Spirit goosebumps or not. Right. That's right. You hit it on the nail.

A lot of people associate spiritual activity with a feeling as opposed to just acquiring, knowing Him better. Right. Yeah. Excellent. Okay. So my follow-up question is kind of getting back to the spiritual formation.

We talk about how there needs to be a balance, but it's kind of like when someone says, hey, if you wanna be a stronger Christian, you need to pray more and read your Bible. And that's kind of true, but it's very ambiguous.

What does that look like? So when we speak of having balance in the Christian life, especially within the life of the apologist, someone who's engaged in this activity very heavily, what does it look like to strike that balance?

What should a Christian apologist spiritual, I know our spiritual life isn't personal only, but there is a personal element. What should that look like? Or what does it look like for you in the midst of your field, all of the thinking and the writing you're doing?

What does it look like personally for you as to how you stay closely connected with God, whether it's through scripture or prayer? Yeah, well, one thing that's absolutely vital is that you're involved with a local community of believers, a church that is a Bible believing church that teaches and preaches the scripture that takes worship seriously, that takes outreach seriously.

And sadly, a lot of Christians think that they can be Christians without deep involvement with the church. Sure. And that's not a biblical view. We're part of the body of Christ. We're part of the temple of God, the family of God.

In fact, the chapter I forgot to mention in my revised apologetics book is a chapter called In Defense of the Church. Because I realized teaching my own book for years that I said almost nothing about the church.

And that is a fault of a lot of Protestant apologetics books. Catholic apologetics books usually don't make that mistake. But I added this chapter where I go from Christology to ecclesiology. And it's pretty simple.

Jesus said, the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. So if Jesus is God incarnate, he died for our sins, he rose from the dead, and he said, the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, then you better take the church awfully seriously.

That's right. And I think sometimes evangelicals are not as serious about involvement with the church and having regular fellowship and communion and so on. And then certainly the knowledge of scripture is vital.

And I came up as a Christian before the internet was available to most people. And so I'd learned the Bible by reading the Bible, you know, reading a book and studying it and then teaching it and preaching it.

And so I think it's significant to study the Bible as a book that it's not just a collection of data points that you can find on your phone or find on your computer, but it's an unfolding story and different types of literature and so on.

And I've been a Christian now for over 45 years. And I continue to study scripture, ponder it, teach it, read books about scripture, consider how the Bible relates to contemporary issues. I've been thinking a lot about questions of race and justice because I'm writing a book on that right now.

So there's fellowship and personal Bible study, a life of prayer, learning how to pray the Psalms is very significant. You know, the Psalms is our prayer book and it expresses every human emotion, joy, gratitude, fear, anger, sadness, but all those emotions are lifted up to God.

So that's very important as well. All right, well, thank you for that. Just a real quick reminder for those who are listening in. I am speaking with Dr. Douglas Grothuis. Grothuis, I got it now, right?

There we go, Douglas Grothuis. And we're talking about the issue of the spiritual formation of the apologist. If you have a question, we'll take some time toward the back end of this episode. Just as I always say, preface your question with the word question so that I can differentiate between the question and the generic comments in the comment section.

Daily Rhythms, Scripture Reading, and Prayer

All right, well, I have a question now being a little bit more specific. If you don't mind sharing. So you need to be a part of a congregation, a healthy church, right? You wanna engage in Bible reading, prayer, these sorts of things.

Do you mind kind of unpacking what a day for you looks like in terms of what you do to upkeep your spiritual health? Like when you wake up in the morning, are you spending a significant amount in scriptures?

What do you read? What does that whole process look like for you in a day? Yeah, well, it varies for me. One thing I do when I get up is I typically say out loud or to myself, this is the day the Lord has made.

Let us rejoice and be glad in it to try to set my mind in the right place. Now, I'm not a morning person. I'm kind of a grouchy person. So I'd say, this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice. It's kind of an act of the will.

Okay. Some mornings I will start out by reading scripture and so on. Some days I just get right to work, working really hard on a book right now. But my wife and I try to read a chapter of scripture after dinner and talk about it.

We pray before meals, we pray before we go to bed. And then other times, especially if I'm gonna be teaching a passage of scripture, I preached on Psalm 11 recently. And so I really got back into that and meditated on it and thought quite a bit about the passage.

And if I'm writing something and I think of a scripture, then I'll go back to it and really try to ponder it and see if I'm understanding it correctly. Now, there've been other times in my life where I'd been much more regular in terms of Bible reading and so on.

And I think that's a good thing. I'm not saying it's optional, but when I was a younger Christian, I needed to learn a whole lot more because I didn't know much of anything. Now I continue to grow and learn certainly.

And there are books that I go back to over and over again, like Francis Schaeffer's book, True Spirituality. With that as a young Christian, I've reread that many times. I often take quotes from that book and put that into lecture outlines and into my own books.

What was the name of that book? Yes, it's called True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer. Yeah, that is extremely good. It's strong reform theology with respect to the Christian life. So what is justification?

What is sanctification? What is clarification? What has Christ done for us? What does it mean to deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Christ? He has a chapter in that called the centrality of death.

And he says that death is central in scripture. The sacrifices have to be dead. Christ had to die to atone for our sin. And we have to die to ourselves to follow Christ. He said this 50 years ago, but we live in a generation that doesn't say no to anything.

Anything that you want that you can have, you just get it, you deserve it. And Schaeffer points out that even things that are not sinful, we often need to say no to given what our calling is. So he doesn't pull any punches in that book.

And he was a man who knew how to say no to the flesh and had a sharp focus of ministry in reaching the lost. Schaeffer you're referring to? Francis Schaeffer, yes. What I appreciate about Schaeffer, he does come from a kind of a presuppositional perspective and some might debate the kind of the details as to whether he was Vantillian or whatever.

But what I really do appreciate is that Schaeffer doesn't just pick apart or focus on one little thing. He is very broad and all encompassing. So he kind of helps you to put things within a perspective and show how Christian truth applies to a wide range of things.

So if folks who like presuppositional apologetics and that sort of thing, they tend to be stuck in just Vantill and Bonson. Schaeffer is an excellent reader. I think he has a lot of great things to say despite various disagreements that folks might have with other aspects of his thoughts.

So thank you for that recommendation. Yeah, let me read a quote from Schaeffer that I love. This is from his short but very profound book called Art and the Bible. This is the last part of the book. It might be the last paragraph.

He says, no work of art is more important than the Christian's own life. And every Christian is called upon to be an artist in this sense. He may have no gift of writing, no gift of composing or singing, but each man has the gift of creativity in terms of the way he lives his life.

In this sense, the Christian's life is to be an artwork. The Christian's life is to be a thing of truth and also a thing of beauty in the midst of a lost and despairing world. That's good. Yeah, and Schaeffer ranged over so many topics, philosophy, theology, painting, culture, cinema.

And he died in 1984. So if we wanna continue to do that work of cultural apologetics, understand the culture we're in and the themes and the issues that are going on, and then try to find redemptive parts of culture and critique the sinful parts of culture, we have to update what he did.

If you read, The God Who Was There, that came out in 1968. And you get the basic skills of cultural analysis, worldview critique in that book. But now we've got to apply it to things that didn't even exist at that time.

Hip hop and whatever else is out there. The new films. But you see, you're able to flex the muscle of the intellectual side of Christianity in applying it to these areas that you would never have imagined.

That's the beauty of Christianity, I think, is that while it is rigid in that it has specific doctrines, there is this beautiful flexibility for which it can be applied to all of the messiness of life.

And I think that that's an excellent observation there. Now, how do you, when we talk about spiritual formation, and we highlight the importance of going to the scriptures, being part of a healthy congregation, reading your Bible, prayer, all these sorts of things, and folks, they'll come away watching this video, say, you know what, maybe I need to read my Bible more.

Maybe I need to put that apologetics book down and really be in the scriptures for a little bit to kind of clear my mind. There's something that folks really struggle with. I know I've struggled with this in the past, and maybe you've experienced this as well.