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For many, apologetics is associated with arguments over rational, philosophical proofs. It’s a matter of the head instead of the heart, a debate over facts instead of feelings. But no matter what kind of apologetics you practice, you’re arguing according to a certain set of rules, in a particular language, attuned to what you expect to resonate in your time and place. In other words, it’s always cultural, never purely timeless. And it’s never purely rational.
We need to recover apologetics as a matter of the heart and hands as well as the head. We need to recover apologetics as a project for the whole church and not just for those who enjoy arguing. What we call cultural apologetics isn’t a new academic discipline. It’s a means to reconnect the church to the best biblical and historical resources for presenting and defending the faith “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).
That’s the vision behind a new book, The Gospel After Christendom: An Introduction to Cultural Apologetics, which I edited for Zondervan Reflective and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. I was joined on Gospelbound by two of the contributors, both fellows for The Keller Center. Josh Chatraw is the Billy Graham chair for evangelism and cultural engagement at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. Christopher Watkin, associate professor of French and Francophone studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
Thank you to Beeson Divinity School for hosting and recording this podcast in front of a lively and engaged audience.
In This Episode
02:00 – Cultural apologetics: head, heart, and hands
03:00 – Biblical models for cultural apologetics
05:10 – Retrieval: learning from church history
09:16 – Augustine, Rome, and Biblical Critical Theory
13:00 – Diagonal thinking, third-way debates, and politics
16:00 – Confrontational vs. winsome apologetics
20:00 – How Jesus engaged different people
26:00 – Apologetics for the whole church and for pastors
34:00 – Retrieval models: Pascal, Montaigne, and modern idols
41:00 – Audience Q&A: outnarrating, doubt, Catholicism, facts vs. heart issues
51:46 – Closing reflections
Resources Mentioned
- The Gospel After Christendom edited by Collin Hansen, Ivan Mesa, and Skyler Flowers
- Telling a Better Story by Josh Chatraw
- Biblical Critical Theory by Christopher Watkin
- City of God by Augustine
- The Confronting Christianity Podcast with Rebecca McLaughlin
- The Speak Life Podcast with Glen Scrivener
- Truth Unites podcast with Gavin Ortlund
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News Source : https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/gospelbound/recover-cultural-apologetics/
