Ep. 218: Why Apologetics?

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Hey everyone, this is Kourtney and I’m really happy you’re joining us for another episode of indoubt. And if you’re listening for the first time, welcome. It’s so good to have you. Typically, we talk to a guest and it’s a brand-new episode. But what I realized is that we have some pretty great episodes from a few years ago. And it’s worth it to take some time and go back. So, for the next few weeks, you’ll hear some of our episodes from 2016 and 2017, so kind of a throwback series, if you will. So, to kick off this series, we’re going back to episode 38 that aired in October 2016 where Isaac had the opportunity to talk with Justin Brierley. This conversation centres around apologetics and the question of why it’s important. So, here’s the episode with Isaac and Justin Brierley.

Isaac Dagneau:
Well, I’m honoured to get to chat with a man that I actually hear a lot through my headphones, usually when I’m cleaning the house or driving. His name is Justin Brierley. He’s host of Unbelievable, it’s a weekly podcast from the UK that holds different apologetic debates. So, thanks so much Justin for coming on the show.

Justin Brierley:
Oh it’s great to be with you. Thanks for having me on.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yes, definitely. I think it was June of last year, I first came across your podcast. And it was actually, I found out about you sort of through YouTube because I was doing some research on homosexuality and I came across this interview with Robert Gagnon and I listened to this podcast. I was like, “Holy … this is pretty extreme.” And then I started, I kind of became addicted to your show, so I tried to catch as many as I can.

Justin Brierley:
Yeah. Well I’m really glad you found it that way. If I’m honest, YouTube isn’t something we’ve really massively focused on. Most of the shows that end up on YouTube are actually just other individuals uploading the MP3 files and that’s the way it gets around on YouTube. We sometimes film the dialogues and debates and they end up, some of those end up on YouTube. But, yeah, that one you stumbled across was a particularly, let’s say, sparky edition of the program, wasn’t it?

Isaac Dagneau:
It definitely was. Yeah. And not just that one, but I think about a few months ago, you had one with Sean McDowell and I forget his name now, another guy.

Justin Brierley:
Yeah. It was a guy called Kenneth Humphrey’s. He’s a Jesus mythicist.

Isaac Dagneau:
That’s it.

Justin Brierley:
And yeah, they … well Ken on that show, he was quite boisterous and he kind of was a like a dog with a bone on certain issues and it got a little bit antagonistic at some points.

Isaac Dagneau:
It did. It did.

Justin Brierley:
So it’s always fun when that happens. You don’t want it all the time though.

Isaac Dagneau:
You don’t. And sometimes you have other ones that are just perfectly casual and that’s awesome as well. So anyways, you do a great job hosting the show, so thank you for your ministry there, Justin.

Justin Brierley:
Thank you.

Isaac Dagneau:
For myself and for our listeners though, Justin, why don’t you just briefly kind of tell us who you are and what you do, specifically when you became a Christian and also when apologetics became something that became of an interest to you.

Justin Brierley:
Okay, well just generally, I’m Justin Brierley and I run this radio show and podcast called Unbelievable. It’s been going for over 10 years now on Premier Christian Radio in the UK. And it’s very much a show that brings Christians and non-Christians together for dialogue and debate. It’s about testing the claims of Christianity in that kind of open discussion format. Very often we also touch on theological issues between Christians as well.
But going back to my story, really, I was raised in a Christian family and so I had the privilege of, if you like, being immersed in that growing up. I’d say my faith really became my own in my sort of mid-teens. That was partly through church, my youth group, a route that will be familiar I’m sure to many people. But I think I can think of a particular day really when I was out away on a kind of a youth weekend when it all came together for me. And I really had an experience I would say of God that made me really accept it, made it real for me, made it something that I wanted to give my life to. And that’s always stayed with me.
And obviously over the years my faith has changed and evolved as faith does, as it’s been through different experiences. Probably from the point of view of the apologetics stuff that I’m now involved in, I guess when I was still in my late teens, I got really turned on to authors like CS Lewis and devoured quite a bit of his stuff, his apologetics sort of stuff when I was in my gap year before university. And then at university, I went to Oxford University. There’s a really thriving Christian union there. That was great for being able to look into some of these issues and obviously having non-Christians around and friends who weren’t Christians. It made me start to look at some of these issues from a sort of, what are the reasons I could give for why I believe? Are there objective reasons for faith?
I went through a sort of, at one point, a mini faith crisis where I kind of, because of a certain friend sort of, and the challenges they brought to me. I kind of did go through that whole thing of, “Oh, is any of this true,” sort of thing. I kind of came through that. I wouldn’t say necessarily particularly apologetics saved me at that point. It was just kind of a passing thing really. And in many ways, I’ve heard far stronger apologetic arguments against Christianity since I’ve been doing Unbelievable as a radio show than I ever heard at university. But in a way I feel more prepared to find ways of encountering those at the same time.
So when the show began, I really wanted it to be a way for a radio station to start to interact with non-Christians more. We are very good at speaking to Christians about Christian things, but it can be a bit of a bubble sometimes. And so, I wanted to find a way of breaking outside that bubble a little bit and finding a way to talk to non-Christians and hopefully model good conversations on that front. And so Unbelievable was born. And we do live in a more skeptical age that people aren’t willing to … hear. And I’m sure you’ve had the same in Canada. We live essentially in a post-Christian age in the UK now, where nothing is assumed as being true. There’s no guarantee that people even know the basic narrative of Christianity. And the dominant sort of worldview that at least, as far as I can see, has crept in, has been a kind of an assumption of atheism and assumption that all there is matter in motion, that science sort of explains everything.
And whether that’s really thought through is another matter. I think a lot of people haven’t really considered the consequences of adopting that kind of worldview. But this is the point at which I think we do need apologetics, because it … go back to the 1950s and Billy Graham could come to the UK, put on a crusade and lots of people would come and you’d see lots of people convert.
I don’t think you can do that today because people are at a different place now than they were 60 years ago. And actually, you need to give people a reason to believe anything. So, you can’t assume that there’s a sort of a basic Christian understanding which you can go off. And that’s why apologetics to some extent is pre evangelism. In many ways, you’re not expecting necessarily through apologetics to see people come to faith. But it may be laying some of the groundwork to let them, to allow them to consider eventually the claims of Christ and whether they can trust Him.

Isaac Dagneau:
Right. And that’s a great way to put it, kind of the pre evangelism, because obviously you and I both know there’s a Spirit that opens the eyes and opens the heart. But it’s that apologetic kind of conversation you can have with someone to really bring them to a place where that can happen.

Justin Brierley:
Yeah. And then there’s this whole thing, different people have different views on this of can you argue someone into the Kingdom? Could you just on the basis of logic and evidence and a rational argument, make someone a Christian? Well, my view is that you can’t, because it is a work of the heart as much as it is a work of the mind.
I think you can give people good reasons. I think most often in my view, apologetics is about removing barriers to belief, which kind of clear the path for someone to then walk down towards Christ. But they still have to have the will to make that journey. It’s not as though taking the barriers away will force them to make the journey. There still has to be a will, a motivation, a desire of the heart for God, for Christ. And I don’t think you can instill that in someone through an argument, if that makes sense.

Isaac Dagneau:
No, it does. It does make sense. And I think what you’re saying is going to probably kind of feed into the next kind of answer to the question, but I was going to say that kind of the main point of this is to really help bring people to a balanced view of apologetics. Whether they have never heard about it before or they’re hyper experienced apologetics. Because when we look at the Bible, we see faith and fact are important.
Even with Luke, at the beginning of, I think it was chapter two or chapter three, when he goes into careful explanation of the places where he’s at and the rulers that are ruling at the time. There’s this importance on fact but also obviously on faith. So, I guess the question to you is what would you say to the Christian that’s very hyper apologetics and that’s all they kind of think about, or maybe hyper experienced and not even thinking, to gain a more balanced view. Because I definitely met some other people that were hyper apologetics in Bible College, and they were quite … they just always had a frown.

Justin Brierley:
Yeah. I think that’s it. And definitely you’ve put your finger on something that that can be an issue. And the problem is I think that apologetics tends to appeal to a certain kind of individual, let’s say a more rationally minded type of person. Someone who really thrives on logic and evidence. The kind of person whose favourite TV shows are going to be Star Trek or something who … I don’t know. But you know what I mean. It’s sort of, it tends to fit a certain type of character.
And then you might equally find that Christians you meet who are on the more emotional end of the spectrum tend to be those who kind of say, “Oh, all that apologetic stuff, leave it. You’ve just got to reach people with passion and everything.” So, to some extent it’s about different characters.
I think though, if we can try and get beyond that and help each type of person see the value in what the other may be doing, it can be helpful. Certainly the big danger for me of apologetics is that it becomes another form of idolatry, where we think that if I know the answers to all these questions and if I have all these clever arguments up my sleeve, I will be able to essentially show someone how to be a Christian. And it can lead to a kind of a bit of arrogance on the part of some people in apologetics, especially if it’s the kind of apologetics where you are doing a lot of interaction, debating non-Christians and atheists where it can easily breed that kind of very combative kind of feel to the endeavor.
So I think Christians just need to be really careful of that and realize that like any good thing, apologetics can end up being abused by sort of treating it as more than it is. In the end, no one is won to Christ by our arguments really. If God in His grace uses us to show that to people, then great. But at the same time, God could use a four year old to lead someone to Christ in a way that your apologetics arguments never could, because … and so you’ve just got to be really humble about that and realize apologetics, even though you might really enjoy it and it really appeals to that side of your personality, it’s not the only way God uses to take people on a journey.

Isaac Dagneau:
Yeah, that’s true. And you know what Justin? A lot of people, and I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen this in many people too, but a lot of people, the idea of apologetics and being able to make arguments based on science or philosophy or what have you, history, they love that. And they feel like if they just knew all those things, they’d be so much better at evangelism. But obviously not every Christian can be an expert in history, philosophy, science, biology, all that kind of stuff. So, I mean you, do you have to be an expert in everything?

Justin Brierley:
Well absolutely not. Of course. The thing is that, and I don’t think of myself as an expert in any of these areas. The character of the evangelist is always paramount. And you can pick up facts and arguments along the way, but character and the way you interact with someone is something that goes a lot deeper.
And that’s the first thing I think we should be concerned with because however good your arguments are, I think if you come across as condescending and argumentative and not very nice, people won’t even listen to start with. Do you know what I mean? And the comments I’m often most thrilled by when people email in who are non-Christians who listened to Unbelievable because they listen to it as a podcast, it’s not necessarily when they say, “Yeah, I thought that was a great argument from the Christian.”
It’s when they say, “Justin, I really appreciate the way you moderate those discussions because I felt that you gave a fair hearing to both sides.” And if they’re willing to come back, not even because they’re being convinced by arguments, but because they’re seeing something good being modeled, then for me that’s a great thing. And I’m really glad of that.
Having said all that, of course it’s good to be able to give sensible answers when certain types of questions come up. And so absolutely it’s in the interest of any Christian to be aware of issues to try and, if they are getting into conversations regularly around, I don’t know, suffering or something like that, to have a think through and get hold of some resources that will help them to think about how they would approach that subject because there can be answers which aren’t helpful. And I think very often we want to be ready to, as first Peter 3:15 says, give an answer, give something that will give someone an indication of why we hold this to be so dear.
So that doesn’t mean you have to know all the answers and you couldn’t possibly. And frankly, sometimes the people who are the most clever apologists don’t always make the best evangelists because they can be great for resourcing people. But just knowing a lot of stuff and being very good at delivering it doesn’t actually necessarily turn you into a great evangelist. I think the people who do a brilliant job on both levels are people like John Lennox, who I’ve had on the show, who marries a great intellect and a super knowledge of the arguments, but also with a very winsome, very kind of willing to hear and engage in dialogue kind of attitude, both in front of the microphone and off stage, when he’s having those conversations. Those are the people I think who combine the best of both worlds in that sense.

Isaac Dagneau:
Exactly. No, that’s really cool. And as you say that, I’m thinking about many Christian young adults who are in college and university, specifically secular colleges and universities. And they are being bombarded with new worldviews, especially if they kind of grew up in the church. And they’ve just been taught the Bible. They haven’t really been taught apologetically things. They’ve just been taught what the Bible says. At the same time, they’re extremely busy, not with college and university, but they’re getting married, they have jobs, babies, all kinds of things. So I guess the next question is what practical things can a Christian young adult do to really help themselves become more apologetically trained in the midst of their crazy lives?

Justin Brierley:
Well this is a terrible plug for my own program, but they could download and listen to Unbelievable.

Isaac Dagneau:
And I would recommend that.

Justin Brierley:
No, I mean it’s one way. I think what, again, blowing my own trumpet here, but I think what Unbelievable does is it does allow people to have a weekly kind of dose of where the arguments are. But not just to get information but to, because you hear a dialogue, you sort of hear both sides and you kind of understand okay, where people would go in that kind of a conversation and if you listen to it for a long time, you’ll kind of get a sense of what kinds of conversations are helpful and what are not. Because not every person who comes on Unbelievable is a perfect model of Christian apologetics or how to have that discussion. But at least along the way, you’ll be able to make up your own mind about how I would’ve handled that, how I would do that. And so that’s one way.
So those who don’t have time to sit down and pick up a book and read it from cover to cover, I listen to a lot more podcasts than I read books frankly, because I don’t have the time to sit down and read the books. But when I’m on the move, I’ll often put a podcast on my iPod. So that’s one way of doing it. There are of course some great mini resources out there. And again, if reading a whole book on the subject isn’t your thing but you’d like some bite size stuff, there are some excellent websites which gives sort of a shorter form articles or video resources.
There’s a new one actually I’ve been very impressed by, did an interview with the creators of it over the summer on my show called The Road. In fact, it’s theroad-uk.com, I think. It’s really aimed, they say, at young adults. And it covers a lot of bases, science and faith, Jesus the Bible, ethical issues, but done in kind of short video format. And it’s really good shareable stuff as well. And so, I’ve been recommending them actually because I think, well I think actually it works across the age spectrum. And it’s very accessible and if you want to go into more depth then they’ve got links from there where you can find more.
But I’m seeing a lot more apologetics organizations generally producing that bite-sized material. Sean McDowell, who I had on the show recently as you know, has been doing a lot of that stuff. You’ve got the One Minute Apologist and others. So, there’s plenty of stuff for those who can’t afford to sit down and read a whole book.

Isaac Dagneau:
Okay. Well for our listeners, I’ll definitely be posting some of the links that Justin’s been talking about on the bottom of our episode here. So, kind of one of our last questions here, I was wondering if you would enlighten us with some, maybe the current apologetic issues sort of being discussed today. If there are any new arguments, maybe there’s new advances, maybe people we need to be aware of in this world right now.

Justin Brierley:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, there’s so many areas and I get the joy of being able to pick and choose what sort of topics we’re going to be doing. I mean, the most recent one I did actually the latest podcast is on the multi-verse, which has been gaining credence in many scientific circles, the idea that there’s more than one universe. And this presents, if it’s true, a significant challenge to the traditional fine-tuning argument. I say traditional, it’s not been around that long. But it’s an argument that the universe is essentially designed to allow life to exist because of the extremely fine-tuned nature of the various constants and fundamental forces that it was birthed with. That seems to point to design to a creator. Now the major way that the force of that argument could be escaped is if we do live in multiverse, many universes, and we just happened to be the one that came out with just the right set of set of numbers, if you like.
So, that’s a whole interesting area. And I’ve been looking into that because I’ve been aware that actually, as much as I and other Christians have said, “Well there’s no evidence for a multiverse.” In fact, there are people out there saying, “No, actually there’s quite good scientific evidence.” So the last show we did was on that. Now what’s interesting is both the Christian and the atheist, I had them on for that were essentially in agreement actually that they do think there’s evidence for the multiverse. So, I’m actually just working on a show now that we’re going to do where we actually do more of a debate on that, where we’ll have someone who kind of is actually skeptical of the multiverse theory.
So that’s a kind of an interesting area. It’s an area where it’s still developing, and it’ll be interesting to see where that goes and what’s the long-term prognosis for the fine-tuning argument. Equally there are others who say, “Well, even if there’s a multiverse, there’ll be kind of a whole area of fine-tuning issues there because that whole system itself would need to be fine-tuned. And why would we find this particular universe? It’s far more likely other kinds of universes would be in existence.” So that’s all a fascinating area if you want to get into it.
And then on a very different level, we had a fascinating article come out here in the UK in one of our magazines called the New Statesman just in the last couple of weeks by a historian called Tom Holland. And he’s been on an interesting journey. In fact, I’m hoping to get him on the show in a not too distant future. And the article was about what he describes as his return to Christianity, not necessarily in terms of an Orthodox doctrinal Christianity. Though it’d be interesting to know how far along that journey he is. But having sort of, as a historian, he sort of started out believing the general narrative that Christianity kind of held us back and was not good for us. The enlightenment rescued us from the Dark Ages that Christianity brought along.
And then he went and actually in his studies, looking at it, realized it was absolutely the other way around. Christianity is the foundation on which Western civilization is based. And if you look at the other competing philosophies and structures and civilizations of the ancient world, Christianity was utterly revolutionary.
And so he wrote this very, it could almost describe it as apologetics, but this article in the mainstream about why he got Christianity wrong. And I think that’s really interesting stuff that where we’ve got historians who you would describe as secular historians who are posting that kind of, writing those kinds of articles for national magazines. We should celebrate that. And we should be encouraging our friends who maybe have bought into some sort of a secularist version of history to look at that and to read that stuff. Yeah. So, there’s just a couple of areas that I’ve found interesting recently.

Isaac Dagneau:
No, thank you for sharing that. That’s awesome. As we wrap up now, Justin, how can people listen to your show? I’m sure they’re interested and learn more about who you are and the work that you do.

Justin Brierley:
Well the easiest way, if you’re listening anywhere other than in the UK, is simply to go to the podcast. And indeed, that’s the way a lot of people in the UK listen as well. The show itself broadcasts on Saturdays on Premier Christian Radio. So anyone who can tune in that way can do that at 2:30 on Saturday afternoons. But yeah, basically the podcast is the place to go. So, you can find all the links at our website, which is PremierChristianRadio.com/Unbelievable.
Start where you like on the podcast. There’s literally about eight or nine years’ worth now of shows that you can scroll through and hopefully you’ll find some that look interesting from the titles. But what I often get this, people who start listening and then say, “I’ve been downloading your podcasts incessantly for the last year and I’m nearly up to date.”
And I find that amazing when people do that. But yeah, it feels like sometimes people who really get into it really get into it. They really love bingeing the back catalog. But yeah.

Isaac Dagneau:
So people don’t just binge watch on Netflix anymore. They binge listen on podcasts.

Justin Brierley:
Exactly. I mean, I hope that in a sense, because we tend to tackle big subjects that are in a sense timeless, that you could go back five years and listen to our show and still find actually that’s a perfectly relevant argument around a big issue that that hasn’t really changed that much.

Isaac Dagneau:
Exactly. No, that’s great. And just for listeners, I’ll put down that link that Justin’s been talking about on the episode podcast page as well. Well anyways, Justin, that was great and I just count it a privilege again to be able to talk with you and yeah, thank you so much for all of your wisdom.

Justin Brierley:
Well thank you Isaac and thank you too, to everything you do as well and all the very best.

Kourtney Cromwell:
It was so good to be here to revisit this conversation with Justin. If you’d like to find out more about Justin Brierley and his podcast, Unbelievable, you can check it out PremierChristianRadio.com or on YouTube. And like I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, we’re doing a small throwback series, so we’d love for you to join us again next week as we’re jumping back to 2017 to hear from Tim Mackie from the Bible Project and pick up the conversation of why we should study the Bible.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.