Of the Way

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In general, reformed Christians are better at the “always be ready to give a defense” part of 1 Peter 3:15 than the “yet do it with gentleness and respect” part.

When I first learned about apologetics (and particularly the presuppositional apologetics of Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bahnsen), I went out looking for opportunities to apply the concepts. It went about as well as one can expect a young, enthusiastic Calvinist aspiring apologist to work out. Strangers on the internet whom I had no relationship with outside of arguing for the truth of Christianity from the impossibility of the contrary were not very receptive. Maybe some of those interactions produced fruit unbeknownst to me, but I was not the paragon of gentleness and respect. I had the Bahnsen Hammer and everything looked like a nail.

As I’ve matured, I’ve realized that I had overemphasized the priority of apologetics in the Christian walk. It’s far more important to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, and overcome evil with good. Apologetics is like responsible gun ownership. You train hoping you’ll never need to use the weapon in a live situation rather than strolling around like Yosemite Sam and being the rootingest tootingest apologist north, south, east, and west of the Pecos.

This is a recording from a Sunday school session at Holy Trinity Reformed Church in Concord, NC where I filled in as a substitute teacher. The visuals are a combination of great Christian artwork throughout the ages and silly memes.

Video chapters:

• 00:00:09 Opening prayer
• 00:01:07 Introduction
• 00:02:05 Reading of 1 Peter 3:14b-17 (art: Saint Peter Preaching the Gospel in the Catacombs by Jan Styka)
• 00:03:01 When you have the Bahnsen Hammer, everything looks like a nail (art: DALL-E prompt: A black-haired, middle-aged Danish man in a suit hitting an elderly white-haired British man in a suit with mjolnir, renaissance painting)
• 00:03:43 The analogy of responsible defensive use of a gun (art: High Diving Hare, 1949)
• 00:04:55 Don’t be the the apologetics urinal guy (art: Urinal Guy Meme, adapted, “Can your worldview account for the philosophical preconditions of intelligibility?”)
• 00:06:25 Living out the gospel as our primary method of evangelism (art: Sermon on the Mount, altarpiece by Henrik Olrik)
• 00:07:33 How Jesus dealt with prostitutes and tax collectors (art: Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, by Guercino)
• 00:08:11 When to use apologetics (art: Great Value Bertrand Russell meme, self edited, in body of post)
• 00:09:12 It is better to suffer for doing good (art: Rembrandt, The Return of the Prodigal Son)
• 00:10:34 Bertrand Russell was a lazy atheist (art: Greg Bahnsen I’m just going to sit here and stare at you until you become epistemologically self-conscious meme)
• 00:11:37 We can have confidence to defend the faith with gentleness and respect (art: St Paul Preaching in Athens by Raphael)
• 00:12:45 Closing Prayer