Today on the Evangelist Podcast we're looking at apologetics and evangelism.
SPEAKER_01The Evangelists podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you. With Andy Brinkley and Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. We're looking this time at apologetics and evangelism.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yes. Hello everybody. I'm Glenn. How are you? Nobody responded. Is that right? Nice to hear. What's that, Sooty? What's that? We should do it with puppets, actually. I should a I should answer with various finger puppets. That's what we could do. We could do a whole series of like people asking like ridiculous questions. And I'll do them as sock puppets, and then I'll answer them like you fool. You've just got fingers for brains. Let me tell you the real answer. No, I don't think that would work. Scrap.
SPEAKER_02You've got great ideas, Glenn.
SPEAKER_00Don't encourage them. Don't encourage them. That's the big mistake.
SPEAKER_02Anyway. So have we done the rehearsal? Should we uh let's cut to the chase. Cut to the chase. So we're thinking about apologetics and evangelism. That's right. And uh you got into a Twitter discussion just before Easter, didn't you?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Discussion. Yes. Was it a discussion?
SPEAKER_02Can we discuss things on Twitter, do you think?
SPEAKER_00I think you can. Okay, let's let's talk about this. I think I think you ought to be able to have discussions, debates on Twitter. Because I think if you can't kind of defend what you say, um, then I don't know, is it is it worth saying anything of importance on Twitter? If you if you can't stand behind your words on Twitter, then it kind of devalues the whole thing of actually posting in the first place. So I think if you I know it's only 140 characters, I know it's not ideal, but I think if you if you want to say there can be no discussion on Twitter and every kind of you know, Twitter discussion is always worth worthless, then you're kind of devaluing anything that's said on Twitter because you're basically you're basically outlawing the kind of discussion that should, I think, go on behind those sorts of discussions.
SPEAKER_02So Yeah. And I suppose, you know, it's it's like a conversation anyway. You've only got a short sentence that you can't do a long spiel and then just leave it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It'd be interesting, wouldn't it? I wonder if sociologists have monitored how often people allow one another to talk before the next person butts in. Yeah. And whether it's a greater or less than than 140 characters. Yeah, yeah. I mean, with Twitter you get like two sentences. Yeah. In conversation you might get three. Yeah. Interesting. Well, in a conversation with me, you'll get half. So so I I think it can be worthwhile having discussions on Twitter. And I've I've had a few, and actually we we might link to a couple. I mean, um a while back I had a conversation with an atheist on abortion, um, and you think, hang on, that there's no context in which such a discussion could ever be edifying or helpful. And actually it really was. And and um and I I think our discussion about apologetics a couple of weeks ago on Twitter was helpful and and people um in fact people linked to it and s and said usually Twitter discussions are you know worthless, but why don't you check this one out? And people did and people found it worthwhile enough for Premier Christianity blog to say, well, okay, why don't you in a longer form go at it? Uh which is what we did uh this last week. Yeah, so uh who was the chap that you uh So Tom Price from the uh Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. Okay. Basically it all started with a tweet just before Easter. David Meredith, a great gospel preacher, Scottish um Presbyterian minister. He tweeted in the week running up to Easter um something very close to uh preachers at Easter, apologetic sermons rarely work, warm the hearts. Um and that that was his that was his you know word of advice to twe to preachers. And I thought that's that's a very good word because I've often gone to sort of Easter services where I want to celebrate the victory of the Lord Jesus and so much of the sermon is taken up with, you know, it might it might even have actually happened. In fact, I think it's probably quite likely that it happened, and and this actually happens in evangelical churches. This is not the liberal churches, this happens in evangelical churches because preachers want to establish the historicity of the resurrection via an apologetic means. And you know, so and that's what we want to talk about, you know, that's what we want to talk about on Twitter and on the blog and on this podcast. But but that was the origin of it, that that David Meredith, in that context, was was urging preachers to proclaim the gospel in warm hearts rather than use a lot of apologetic arguments to say that, oh, it actually it actually probably really happened. Yeah. So, Tom so I I retweeted David Meredith very favorably. Um Tom replied and said, Let's have both, let's preach the gospel and do apologetics, and we got into this uh lengthy discussion. And then on the blog, we were invited to sort of write 400 words on the topic. I think the the motion was kind of adapted from the the tweets that and it said uh apologetic sermons rarely work. Okay. And I I had to be in favour of this statement, even though I didn't make the statement, even though I wish we'd discussed a different kind of topic, because apologetics, as we're going to discuss uh in the podcast, apologetics has all sorts of different meanings. Um and and if someone, you know, if by apologetics someone just means, you know, uh engaging, persuasive evangelism that's thoughtful and wants to answer the non-Christians' questions. If that's what you mean by apologetics, sign me up, I'm an apologist. Fantastic. A thousand percent I believe in apologetics, if that's what apologetics is. Um but because I was being asked to um take a position against apologetics, I kind of came out and and said, Okay, alright, I'll take the anti-apologetics position. And so I did. And and I I still stand behind that because I think there's still there still is a form of apologetics that we ought to be against. And off it went. And there are a lot of people who love apologetics, a lot of people who have apologetics uh apologists on their business cards, there's a lot of people who are very into it, and so obviously they had a few things to say, and I had a few things to say back, and yeah, you can read it on the show notes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We've uh done a podcast before on apologetics. I think we've done a few. Yeah. So if you're interested in listening to those, yeah, um, we'll we'll put a link to those on today's web address. So you wrote your discussion on the Premier Christianity blog, um interacted with a few people on the topic. Has it been worthwhile?
SPEAKER_00Um overall, I think it it it has. You know, it's got me into a lot of different conversations with um people on Twitter, people on Facebook. There's a there's a Facebook apologetics group which I'm happily a member of and learn from and and um enjoy, but obviously none of the apologists thought that I w would have been a member of such a group because they were discussing this. There's Glenn Scrivener on this blog. And I said, hello, here I am, and and uh interacted with a few people there and on my own blog and on the Premier Christianity blog. So I've I've interacted with loads of different people, and it certainly helped me to clarify what people believe and why they believe it. And I think I think f for a lot of people who just have never thought, I mean, why why should you question apologetics? Or why why why on earth would there be any cautions in your approach to apologetics? I think a lot of people, the only pushback on apologetics that people have heard has usually been from a a quiet, sort of pietistic type person who says, you know, let's not get into arguments, let's just let's just pray that the spirit will move somebody and let's not be rational and let's, you know, believe what we believe, let other people believe what they believe, and let's not get into apologetics in that way. For a lot of people, that's the only argument against apologetics they've ever heard. And so a lot of this last week has just been clarifying, that's not what I'm saying, it's not even close to what I'm saying. Um, but I think people hear you uh as saying that, or people hear you as uh as though you're an irrational kind of person and you think the gospel is irrational and all this sort of stuff, which I don't, I think the gospel is a thousand percent rational. I just think we we are irrational, I just think fallen humanity is massively irrational. Um so I think I think it's been helpful in clarifying the positions and just allowing people to read um a couple of cautions that I think are there from Scripture and just to hear somebody articulate them again today. For people to see that look, 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 have something to say about apologetics, and let's think about it in those in those terms. But interestingly, I th I think you know, I I'm not sure I actually, well, there's there's quite a few people who have gotten in touch and and said I've always thought that there must be some limits to what we do in apologetics, and I would I've never really put any thought into what they might be, but you know, your thinking has helped me to clarify that. So, you know, so so some people have have found that beneficial, but I I think what's interesting for me is at the end of a whole lot of back and forth, I haven't been one over to the other position, the other position hasn't been one over to me. But what's interesting to me is that that's a whole lot of rational argument going back and forth between and and we've we've all got the spirit, and we're all we're all even Jesus lovers, and we're all like on the same page in terms of the world needs to be one for Christ, and so like we're all spirit-filled, Jesus loving, scripture-honouring Christians, and we can't agree after a whole heap of reasoning together. Does this say anything about the power of reason with an unregenerate mind? If we've all got regenerate minds and we're arguing together and we can't reason each other into our each other's positions, then maybe it has a cautionary tale for the power of reason to to get other people to be you know to become Christians. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02So how are you defining apologetics then and how are they defining it?
SPEAKER_00Good question. Um yeah, the danger is I only had 400 words that I just launched into. I was asked to be against apologetics in some way, so I, you know, launched in and was against apologetics. Um in what sense and what kind of apologetics am I against? Um Like I say, if if by apologetics you simply mean thoughtful, engaging, persuasive evangelism that seeks to answer other people's questions with the gospel of Jesus. If that's what you mean by apologetics, then fine, I'm an apologist. But to be honest, that's what I mean by evangelism. So apologetics that I think is not only okay, but positively wonderful, apologetics that is wonderful is that kind of persuasive interacting with people, but always on the basis that the gospel is true, that Jesus rose from the dead, that the scriptures are the word of God. From that basis, if you want to engage with people and answer their questions, if that's apologetics, then I'm 100% for it. 1 Peter 3.15 says always be prepared with answering words, and that's where we get the word apologetics from. I'm 100% into what Peter's into. How could I not be? Um so if that's apologetics, I'm for it. But often when I give that definition of apologetics, people then say, no, no, Glenn, you've just you've just defined evangelism. Apologetics is something extra. Apologetics is this other thing that we want to do in addition to evangelism. And at that point, I've got a problem. At that point, it sounds like we're saying we've got we need something in addition to the gospel in order to reach the world. We need this philosoph philosophizing kind of uh approach. And in in the article, I talk I talk about the difference between a top-down declarative kind of message to the world and bottom-up philosophizing. And what I always want to see, especially in church on Sunday, and especially in sermons, is I want to see a top-down declaration from on high, thus saith the Lord, not uh a kind of a bottom-up reasoning, well, you kind of you believe this is true, and if you believe that's true, then what about this, and then this, and then this, and then there's a hop skip it a jump to saying, maybe Jesus is the Lord, what do you think? And you know that's not I don't think that's the way we should be on mission to the world. So those those are some of my definitions of apologetics. I think uh if apologetics is persuasive evangelism that answers people's questions with the gospel, great. Um in other words, if apologetics is pretty much the same thing as evangelism, if apologetics is just evangelism in the mode of answering questions, then I'm all for it. If it's this different thing, that on a different basis, on a different authority, and travelling in a different direction, you want to argue people up into the kingdom. Um I got a problem, and and so that's what I'm against.
SPEAKER_02I mean, what what do you think are the bigger issues behind this discussion? I mean, yeah, what is what is preaching?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I yeah.
SPEAKER_02What is I think um preaching perhaps more I mean I get the impression that apologetics is trying to reason and and preaching is declaring and telling the truth as you see it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. As God sees it, in God's name. What would you say? Yeah, I I think I think the the what is preaching question was silently sitting behind a lot of stuff in the in the discussion. Uh and for me, I love that the second Helvetic Confession, which was um, you know, came out during the Reformation and Heinrich Bullinger, one of the great reformers, you know, says that the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. And when, you know, lawfully called preachers are declaring Christ from Scripture, they are to be heard as as though you know Christ himself was you know holding forth from the pulpit. A hugely high view of preaching. And so if that's our view of preaching, that's that's certainly my view of preaching, um, it's odd, isn't it, if you sweep up into a pulpit or wherever you're speaking from, a lecten or whatever, and you say, in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, but then you're heard later in the in the sermon to be saying, and actually, it probably very much happened. And and and actually this might actually be true, and and this has a high likelihood that the tomb was empty. If you're saying, Thus saith the Lord, and you're also saying, and very probably it happened You know, there's a problem. There's a problem. And I I just don't see how there's a space for the kind of it very probably happened from a pulpit, if you also think that from the pulpit what you're doing is declaring the word of God with his authority and power. So I think there's there's issues about what preaching is.
SPEAKER_02And it and it also has uh I th this discussion sort of brings up um you know what exactly is the mission of the church.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Again, I I'm fairly sort of conservative in one sense on this, in in that I I think the mission of the church is proclaiming Christ to the nations, and that's what we do. And again, it's a very top-down kind of a thing. So it goes together with you know, what do I think preaching is? I don't think it's a dialogue. I think there's I think it's space for dialoguing with people all the time. And I'm an evangelist who seeks to go and engage non-Christians. But certainly the debate that we've been having has been about Easter sermons, about Sunday preaching.
SPEAKER_02Apologetics in the pulpit, I suppose.
SPEAKER_00Doing apologetics in the pulpit. So often you can want to be seen to be engaging where people are at from the pulpit by raising all sorts of issues that 98% of your hearers have never considered before. You know, one one person sort of said to me in in the in the in the debate about apologetics, you know, what do you think about in an Easter sermon saying women's testimony was never even valued in the first century, and yet look, it's the women who are the first witnesses of the resurrection. Doesn't this lead credibility to the fact that the resurrection actually happened? And, you know, I I think for one thing it falls foul with what we've just said. You know, if you're saying, thus saith the Lord, and it really probably actually happened, there's a there's a problem. But also another thing is I don't think anyone well, very few people in your congregation will be thinking about historical cro you know criteria for reliability. In and you're raising the issue, and suddenly they are thinking, and then you're you're suddenly dropping in this stuff about in the first century women were completely second-class citizens, and in the first century nobody listened to a woman, and her testimony was never listened to. And you know what people are gonna hear in the pulpits? From the pulpit, they're just they're just gonna hear you saying that first century people were really backward, and they really treated women, you know, poorly. But this preacher wants me to listen to a first century account. Like, this this preacher wants me to listen to first century people tell me about the resurrection. And he spends a lot of time telling me, like, how misogynist they are and how backward they are, and isn't it great that we've moved on from this? I just think you're shooting yourself in the foot, you know, in all those sorts of ways. So that's that's a digression really, but but but I but it is part of that that bigger issue of the top-down declaration of the truth rather than imagining what the what the objections might be, yeah. It's it's good to engage in dialogue with lots of people so that you can speak into people's issues and people's lives, but I question on issues like you know whether women's testimony was taken in the first century, whether that's on anyone's agenda.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so uh w what other issues are going on in this discussion? Apologetic.
SPEAKER_00I think Tom Price very astutely saw that in our d disagreement that that the nature of the fall and the extent of the fall is is a kind of a a point of disagreement between us. You know, in my in my initial article I I I talk about how the fall means not only our moral badness, but also our intellectual madness. Um and I kind of used madness because it rhymed with badness, but I also I I also see in especially the writings of Paul such a strong doctrine of our fallen minds that you know according to Romans 1, we suppress the truth in our own unrighteousness, that God has handed us over to futile thinking, that in Romans eight, um Romans eight we have hostile minds, again in Colossians one, we're enemies in our minds because of our evil behavior. Uh Ephesians four, there's the futility of natural thinking. Uh 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 speaks uh about the the fallen mind you know really being at total odds with the wisdom of the cross. You know, since through its wisdom the world does not know God, God was pleased to save some through the foolishness of preaching, that's what he says. You know, he even goes so far as to say in in 2 Corinthians 4 that the God of this age has has blinded the minds, blinded the minds of unbelievers. So it's a really terrifying level of fallenness to our rationality. Now that that doesn't mean that, you know, non-Christians are stupid. There are a lot, you know, there's a million, you know, there's a billion non-Christians who are much cleverer than me. But and it's not about, you know, they they therefore will always go wrong when they try to reason their way through a an argument. It's it's not that at all. But in the same way as we're fallen morally, we're also fallen intellectually. So a non-Christian can do a good thing. A non-Christian can help a little old lady across the road. The big problem is though, if that non-Christian is still a non-Christian, um, the only thing they can do with their morality is to trust in it as a righteousness of their own. And in that way, they're taken further from God's. They're taken further from actually trusting in Jesus and just receiving salvation as a gift, if they end up trusting in their goodness. Of course they can do good things, but the minute they try to trust in their good things, they they they're not only brought it's not it's not as though they're brought some of the way towards God's through their goodness, it's actually if they start to trust in their goodness, they're taken further away from God. And I think it's exactly the same thing with our fallen intellect. Yes, we can have good thoughts and we can reason our way through arguments, but if we start to trust in our thinking as a way to think our way up to God's, we actually end up heading in the in the completely opposite direction. Because the God that we will think up will be nothing like the one on the cross. And that's Paul's whole point in in the 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, that the God of the cross shows up in our midst to look so weak and foolish in terms of the wisdom of this age. Um So for me, the fall has a radical impact on our minds, our minds are blinded, but and it also means that our rationality. Is even though we might be able to follow a syllogistic argument, our rationality is actually oriented away from the God of the Gospel, not towards the God of the Gospel. And so, not only that the extent of the fall being inclusive of our minds in a quite radical way, but also the the nature of the fall, that we're oriented against God in our thinking. I think that's a that's another point of disagreement.
SPEAKER_02So before we wrap up the episode, let's just get your view on apologetics in brief. We can tease it out next time. You begin your article this way Being anti-apologetics is like being anti-good works. Who could possibly be against good works? Well, every Protestant is, if those good works are placed on the wrong side of the line. Good works are great, but their proper place is on the far side of knowing Jesus. Revelation is exactly parallel to salvation. John seventeen three. To know God is to be saved by him, and vice versa. Therefore, just as we don't work our way towards God and get topped up by grace, so we don't think our way towards God and get topped up by revelation. The arrow must come all the way down. Gospel preaching is not bottom up philosophizing, it's top down proclamation. Are you really anti-apologetics?
SPEAKER_00Anti-apologetics. Yeah, I mean I used that phrase to sort of grab attention, and because I was asked to, you know, to take a certain side in this. I am anti-apologetics if apologetics is dis you know described as bottom-up philosophizing. If if if in the same in the same way as we would never dream of saying to a non-Christian, um do this good work, then that good work, then that good work, then that would work, and then then you'll be closer to trusting in Jesus alone for your salvation. Like, well, no, that doesn't work. Um in the same way that I well I don't think I don't think we should be uh as a missionary evangelistic approach. I don't think we should be trying to uh get people to build good thought upon good thought upon good thought uh as uh any kind of uh route towards getting to God. In fact, I think that that could cast entirely the wrong vision of what salvation actually is, which is a rescue from on high, not a ladder from from underneath. Now, having said that, I engage with all sorts of non-Christians on all sorts of levels, and I engage with Christians and try to train Christians in being able to answer questions with non-Christians. Um I'm always seeking to dialogue and discuss with non-Christians about all sorts of things. Don't mishear me as I just want to throw the gospel down from on high like a rock, and if people can't handle it, then off I go. Um so what we'll deal with in the next episode is well, okay, so what does it look like to engage with the non-Christian world on that basis? On the basis that it's top-down proclamation, on the basis that the scriptures are definitely true, that Jesus is definitely risen from the dead, that you know, the word of God is the word of God. What does it look like to actually engage with people in day-to-day conversation? Uh that's what we'll look at in the next episode.
SPEAKER_02Okay, excellent, great. If you want to make a comment on uh today's show, you can just go to the web address for this episode, which is revivalmedia.org slash tep92. Have all the links on the post there. Uh, but for now, I think we'll sign off and see you next time.
SPEAKER_00See you next time. Bye.