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 is not 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 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’m joined now by two of the contributors, both fellows for The Keller Center. Josh Chatraw is the Billy Graham chair for evangelism and cultural engagement here at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. Visiting us here at Beeson this week is Christopher Watkin, associate professor of French and Francophone studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

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In This Episode

02:00 — Apologetics as Cultural: 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: Out-Narrating, Doubt, Catholicism, Facts vs. Heart Issues
51:46 — Closing Reflections

Resources Mentioned

• The Gospel After Christendom by Collin Hansen, Ivan Mesa, & Skyler Flowers
• Telling a Better Story by Josh Chatraw
• Biblical Critical Theory by Christopher Watkin
• City of God by Augustine
• Confronting Christianity Podcast with Rebecca McLaughlin
• The Speak Life Podcast with Glen Scrivener
• Truth Unites Podcast with Gavin Ortlund

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Imagine you could save your life through one simple, regular act. You wouldn’t always want to do it. Every week you’d come up with multiple excuses. The night before would often be a struggle. Same with the morning before. Every time you finish you feel refreshed, energized, eager to undertake that day’s agenda. But then when it came time to do it again, somehow you’d still struggle to do it.

Ok. I don’t know what comes to mind for you. Maybe the gym. Maybe a quiet time of Bible reading and prayer. Maybe a call or meeting with a family member or friend. But I’m talking about church and a new book by Rebecca McLaughlin, How Church Could (Literally) Save Your Life, published by Crossway and TGC.

Rebecca is widely known to Gospelbound viewers and listeners as author of several of the most encouraging and successful books in TGC history, including Confronting Christianity, The Secular Creed, and Jesus through the Eyes of Women. She’s also a fellow with The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. She returns to Gospelbound to discuss the life-changing research on what makes church good for your health.

In This Episode

04:30 – What Makes Church Unique

08:00 – How many modern moral values come directly from Christianity

16:00 – Real Benefits, Real Belief

23:00 – The Church as Family

30:00 – Sharing Faith in a Skeptical World

45:00 – Healing from Church Hurt

48:00 – A Practical Vision for Believers

Guest Resources

• How Church Could Literally Save Your Life by Rebecca McLaughlin
• Rebbeca’s Website
• Confronting Christianity Podcast
• Follow Rebecca

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If gender is constructed, it can be deconstructed. Think about it: if we built it, we can tear it down. Now you know why some activists have been so determined to convince us that gender is something we assign, rather than something we receive. If we assign it, then we can reassign it as we wish. We don’t receive our bodies. We can remake our bodies.

No doubt you’ve observed the rise of transgender theory in Western culture. It’s the denial that the sexed body reveals and determines the gendered self. That’s the helpful summary we find in the excellent new book The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory, written by Robert Smith.

Smith is an ordained Anglican minister and lecturer in theology, ethics, and music ministry at Sydney Missionary and Bible College in Australia. He’s written two previous books on gender and identity. This new book by Lexham (now Baker) gives you a little bit of everything. He breaks down the arguments of gender theorists. He guides readers on a who’s who of philosophers who built the intellectual foundations of the secular West: Descartes, Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Wittgenstein, Freud, Sartre, Derrida, Foucault.

And he concludes with biblical argumentation to show us nobody is born in the wrong body. He writes, “God’s desire for my gender is revealed by the design of my body.” I appreciate the way he harmonizes the biblical story from Genesis to Revelation: “Our present task is to work with the grain of creation toward the goal of new creation.”

Rob joins me on Gospelbound to talk transgender theory, how it spread, why it’s peaked, and where evangelicals need to go next.

In This Episode

02:00 – Introducing Rob Smith & The Body God Gives

04:30 – The Transgender Tipping Point

06:21 – Butler, Foucault, and Gender Theory

11:21 – Queer Theory vs. Trans Theory

16:50 – Signs of Peak Transgender Influence

21:47 – Sex, Gender, and Stereotypes

29:00 – Church Culture and Gender Expectations

30:24 – Children, Puberty, and Medical Debate

33:30 – Technology, Identity, and Disembodiment

39:38 – Genesis 1–2 and Embodied Identity

46:37 – Marriage, Singleness, and Biblical Continuity

51:16 – Pastoring Those with Gender Dysphoria

56:00 – Violence, Fear, and Identity Conflicts

01:00:00 – Expressive Individualism and the Modern Self

Resources Mentioned

• The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory by Rob Smith
• Why Are Black Women Increasingly Identifying as Bisexual? by Joe Carter

––––

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Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate Today

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