What is Apologetics?

Thank you

(Thank Pastors Cody and Chris)

Prayer

God, you are the infinite, eternal, all-encompassing, all-satisfying, all-loving creator of the universe. Our words fall short when addressing you and yet you desire to hear from us. God, you were perfectly satisfied in the communion of the Trinity in eternity past yet you created us to share that love and communion with. May our time together draw each of us closer in communion to you.

Jesus, you say in your word that you are “The Way, the Truth, and the Life.” This weekend we are here to see your truth and through that truth we want to see you as the way and the life. May our preconceived notions about you be challenged. May our misconceptions about you be shaken. Would you let us gaze upon your beauty and bask in the wonder of the Gospel in our time together. If none of this is true then we’re all wasting our time, but if this is all true then it changes everything! All of our hope hinges on it. Anything I say in our time together that is untrue would you erase it from the minds of all of those here. But what I say that is true, particularly from your Word, would you let it encourage us and point us to You.

Thank you for never giving up on us. Even when we have sinned and fallen short of your glory you continue to pursue us, even to the point of sending your one and only son to die for us and take on the punishment we deserved for our sin. Thank you for raising Him from the dead and giving us the hope of new life in Him that we might enjoy fellowship with you in perfect joy and satisfaction forever. Let us gaze on those truth this weekend.

In Jesus name, the name above all names, and the only name by which we can be saved, it is in His name that we pray.

Amen

Introduce Yourself

Met Cody in the BSU

Preached on these topics then

Testimony

Talk about your wrestling in apologetics and time at Mizzou

What is Apologetics

During our time together, we’ll be talking about topics related to Christian apologetics.

Before we dive into our specific topics of apologetics, namely the authority and historicity of the Bible, the existence and resurrection of Jesus, and the problem of pain, Cody and I thought it would be a good idea to talk about what apologetics actually is.

Some of you here may have never heard of that word before. If that’s you, you might be wondering why we would all get together to talk about apologizing.

To be clear, apologetics has nothing to do with apologizing.

Instead, apologetics deals with a far different field of study. William Lane Craig, arguably the greatest living Christian apologist, define apologetics like this: “Apologetics (from the Greek apologia: a defense) is that branch of Christian theology which seeks to provide a rational justification for the truth claims of the Christian faith.”

1 Peter 3:15 gives us a great picture for the biblical justification of apologetics: “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”

Apologetics is a historic discipline of the Christian faith. From the beginning, the church and the early church fathers engaged in apologetics. Men like Augustine, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, and Athanasius all defended the claims of Christianity against various cults, heresies, and other religions in their day.

Throughout the last 2000 years of the history of the church, a number of notable apologists such as Anselm, Boethius, Aquinas, William Paley, Hugo Grotius, Blaise Pascal, Alvin Plantinga, G.K. Chesterton, and C.S. Lewis among others, have risen to up to show the truth of Christianity against antithetical claims of their day.

But you don’t have to be a notable theologian or philosopher to engage in apologetics.

In fact, all Christians are called to do apologetics in some form or another.

Essentially every single person that has ever existed has wrestled with the questions and topics of apologetics at some level. Everyone has wrestled through questions of whether or not there is a God, if He has revealed himself, is there right and wrong, where did we come from, what happens when we die, and so on.

When you engage in Christian apologetics you are engaging in how to make sense of those questions from a Christian worldview.

Even though all of here tonight have thought about these questions at varying levels of depth, we have different perspectives coming into our time together tonight.

Some of us have been Christians virtually our whole lives.

Others of us have come to faith in Christ in recent years. Some of us may reject Christianity and hold to a different worldview.

And finally, others may find themselves not sure of any answers and are still searching.

This conference is meant to be for all of us.

You do not have to be a Christian to get something out of our time together tonight or tomorrow morning.

In light of a potential range of different views that could be present amongst us tonight, I think it would be helpful to briefly address something before we go any further.

Addressing Different Audiences

I want to address two or three different audiences tonight on how to understand these talks.

Christian

If you’re here as a Christian, these talks are obviously less about convincing you of the truth of Christianity and more about bolstering your faith.

Use our time together as an opportunity to address doubts you might have about the Christian faith, even if you would never admit those doubts. Let this be a time of encouragement to you!

Apologetics has helped bolster my faith when I don’t “feel” it or God feels distant. When my affections cool for God with their many ups and downs, the intellectual side of my faith helps assure me of God’s existence and love. Apologetics is practical if for no other reason that it helps us stand firm in our faith in everyday life when we don’t feel close to God.

But I also want use our time to encourage you in two other ways. First let our time together encourage you in holiness.

If Christianity is really true, if God did really create the world, if the Bible is really true, if sin really does have legitimate consequences, if Jesus really did come and take on the punishment we deserve for our sins on the cross and rose three days later from the tomb to defeat death and all of the powers of Hell, if Jesus really is coming again to judge the living and the dead, then the things we’re talking about tonight and tomorrow are unfathomably important and should shape everything we do. It means we really should strive for holiness, to fight sin, and to live like Jesus did. It means that our secret sins are not secret but known by a holy God who will bring justice to those sins in the end. It means that all of human history is bent toward the glory of God and our every action should be as well. It means what we do really matters. Therefore we should strive for holiness and live life to the fullest for the fame of God’s name.

Finally, if you are a Christian, let our time together encourage you to proclaim the Gospel to the world. If Christianity is really true, then it means that the Gospel is the greatest news that we could ever hear. It means we should tell the whole world that they have a savior, that the God of the universe loves them so much that He sent His Son to die for them so that they might have eternal life in perfect satisfaction and joy in relationship with God. If this is true it means we have to tell everyone! It means we must take risks, address our fears, and share the Gospel with friends, family, and the world!

Non-Christian

If you’re a non-Christian here tonight, I want to encourage you to enter into our time together in a different light.

Use this time to seriously consider the claims of Christianity. There will be Q&A after every session but this one. Ask the questions you’ve always wanted to ask. Wrestle with truths.

Even if it means talking with me in between sessions, I would love it! I’m staking my whole life on this.

Ask God that He would reveal Himself to you in our time together. If you’ve never prayed to God before, I’d love to pray with you and show you how to do it! I know Pastor Cody would love to do the same.

Ask yourself why you really believe what you do. Ask yourself why you really reject the claims of Christianity.

Is it because of real evidential, philosophical, and logical reasons or is it because of emotional grief or pain because of something that happened in your past or in our world?

I don’t have all of the answers, but I want to be able to share the answers I do have. If I don’t know the answer to a question you ask, I’d love to get your information, do the research to find the answer, and get back to you!

Whatever your objections may be, let’s wrestle with the great questions of the world together.

If Christianity isn’t true it then all of us Christians need to get with the program and quite wasting our time. But if Christianity is true, then it means everything for you, for me, and for all of us.

Conclusion

I just have a couple final things before we close this introductory session.

The first is this: we won’t be spending dedicated time in a session talking about arguments for the existence of God.

This may seem surprising to some and disappointing to others, so before we dive into our main sessions let me explain why. By not talking about these arguments, I am not attempting to discount atheism.

I’ll be glad to talk about arguments for God’s existence in Q&A.

In our age, where value the immediate and novel, over the ancient and passed down, true atheism is extremely rare in the scope of human history.

The extreme majority of all humans that have ever walked the earth believed in some kind of supernatural realm, deity, god, or gods.

Even today, naturalistic atheism is the definite minority view.

Most people alive today believe in gods and the supernatural.

If you’re here tonight as a atheist that denies the supernatural, you should know that you are in the vast minority, and you should feel the weight of that. That doesn’t mean that you’re wrong, but it does mean that almost all of human experience is contrary to your claims.

Rather than cover broadly theistic arguments, I want us to spend time talking about truths and evidences unique to Christianity that arguably singularly for the truth of the Christian faith over and against other world views.

That’s why in our short time together I’ve elected to talk about the authority of Scripture, the existence and resurrection of Jesus, and the Christian answer to the problem of pain.

Again, feel free to ask about arguments for the existence of God. I’d be glad to talk about the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the teleological argument, the ontological argument, and so on.

If we had more time, I would have included talks on those topics. But as you will see, as we talk about the peculiarly Christian evidences and topics, you will see lots of points and arguments that implicitly argue for the existence of God, such that if some of the arguments I mention in later talks are ture, then God must necessarily exist.

One final note before we close. My intention in our time together is not to merely give out hard facts and cold information. Nor is it my desire to give mere talking points to help you win a debate. My approach to apologetics is very different from those things.

I’ve modelled my apologetic approach after Pascal who says this: ““we must begin by showing that religion is not contrary to reason; that it is venerable, to inspire respect for it; then we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true” (Thought 187).

My goal in our time together is not just to show you that Christianity is true; I want to show you that it’s beautiful!

Even if you are not a Christian, I want you to be so drawn to the story of Christianity that you wished with all your heart that it was true.

There is no more beautiful story than they Gospel.

The story the the all-satisfying God of the universe wanted to share the love He had enjoyed in Himself in the Trinity for all of eternity past so He created this world for us to enjoy so that we might share in His love. Even when we turned away from Him and rejected him for things that fall infinitely short of the love and joy He had for us, He made a way for us to be saved. He gave His only son to live the life we never could and accomplish for us what we could never accomplish for ourselves. Jesus died on the cross and took on the just punishment we deserved for our sins and then rose from the dead 3 days later to defeat death and sin once and for all so that we could enjoy the love we were always meant to cherish. If we place our faith in Jesus that He rose from the dead and is mighty to save, we can have salvation and be in relationship with God and enjoy eternal joy and satisfaction in His presence forever.

It doesn’t get better than that! If you’re a Christian here tonight, use our time together to help you prepare to share that incredible story with those in your life. And if you’re a non-Christian, consider seriously what it would mean to put your faith in Jesus. There is nothing more I’d rather do in our time together than welcome you to the greatest journey and joy you could ever imagine.

Pray

Blaise Pascal, The Harvard Classics 48: Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, Letters, and Minor Works, ed. Charles W. Eliot, trans. W. F. Trotter, M. L. Booth, and O. W. Wight (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1910), 68.