Christian Apologetics Course/Text suggestions

[GAPeachie]

DH mentioned that he would like to compare some Christian Apologetic course/texts and I'm not really sure where to start. 

 

We have some of the Answers in Genesis materials, but we are open to considering other views/companies/authors.  

 

I told him I knew just where to ask.  This board is SUCH a wealth of information! 

[Sweet Home Alabama]

This is what my son has used in our speech and debate club.  The book contains 105 questions each with an outline and recommended scriptures/commentaries to help the student answer each one. You would probably want to purchase the additional resources since they are referenced in the Fearless Apologetics book.   These are the questions that the debate students draw and answer in competition as a type of limited-prep speech.

 

http://www.theapollosproject.com/apologetics/competitive-apologetics/fearlessapologetics/

 

ETA: This book isn't limited only to a speech course or competition.  It would make an excellent source to use for a student's quiet time as well.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Sweet Home Alabama

[Dina in Oklahoma]

DD attended Worldview Academy and learned a great deal. They offer the opportunity to earn credit as well.http://www.worldview.org/ Best wishes!

[bethben]

My son is using this: http://www.cornerstonecurriculum.com/Curriculum/SP/sp.htm in a potter's school class.

 

[forty-two]

I've appreciated both How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor, by Jame K.A. Smith, and Postmodernism 101: A First Course for the Curious Christian, by Heath White, because they show how the underlying change in worldview in the West between, say, 1500 and now, has changed the nature of belief for *Christians*, too.  One thing I've noticed in many Christian worldview books is that, despite the reason for the existence of worldview books in the first place - that the culture no longer *reflects* the Christian worldview but rather *undermines* it - there's an assumption that, while this makes it harder *to* believe (more people lose faith), it doesn't change *what* Christians believe.  It may be *harder* to be a Christian now, but today's (true) Christians still believe the same fundamentals in the same basic way that orthodox Christians always have. 

 

But really, pre-modern Christianity rested on a very different view of reality than modern Christianity, and even today's heirs of that pre-modern Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, and Presbyterian, who've done their best to uphold their churches' historic confessions) end up interpreting their confessions in line with *today's* Christian worldviews (heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and the fall-out from the Enlightenment), not those held by the writers of their confessions.  And that changes so many doctrines (for example, the Lutheran two kingdoms doctrine and Law/Gospel distinction have been re-interpreted in ways that actually *deny* what was taught by the Lutheran Reformers, and many self-described "confessional Lutherans" don't even *realize* it).  Churches that have maintained a belief in Christ's Real Presence in the sacraments (against centuries of pressure) have largely lost the reason *why* it matters, because they've lost the view of reality that went with it.  And so instead of the Real Presence being a way of affirming the truth of a sacramental Christian worldview, it too often becomes "Christ's Real but Useless Presence" :(, a relic of a lost view of reality, and no matter how strongly affirmed, practically irrelevant to the modern *Christian* views of reality otherwise held - which brings strong *internal* as well as external pressure to abandon it. 

 

And the shifts in understanding didn't just affect how confessional Christians understand and live out their confessions - it affects how *all* Christians understand and live out *Biblical* truth.  There's a lot of traditional Christian doctrine that is formally held among evangelicals but has lost its practical significance for day-to-day life - for the same reason it has amongst confessional Christians - we simply don't understand reality in the same way as our forefathers did anymore.  The formal doctrines just don't mean what they used to.  21st century Christians do not read the Bible in the same way as 19th century Christians, neither of whom read the Bible in the same way as 17th century Christians, none of whom read the Bible in the same way as the earliest Reformers.  Today's Christians might hold to the same "Biblical beliefs", but their Biblical *reasons* are very, very different than the reasons of earlier Christians, because their view of both reality and the Bible is very, very different - and this makes for a very different lived faith. 

 

Worldview studies are supposed help Christians be aware of the non-Christian foundations to much of current Western culture, and to use that knowledge to better live out the faith.  But that same increasingly non-Christian Western culture had a major impact on our current Western Christian worldview(s) just as surely as it formed the rest of Western culture, and that's a blind spot for too many Christian worldview studies.  We can't defend against a hostile culture terribly well when too much of our *own* "Christian" understanding of reality rests on the very same assumptions.  So much of my own worldview studies involves looking back at the Bible and the old creeds and confessions of my faith with new eyes - learning to understand them as the people who wrote them did, letting them teach me their own view of reality - instead of unconsciously reinterpreting them to fit with the modern/Christian mish-mash view of reality I'd had :-/. 

 

 

(In case you are curious (because I certainly was - I've spent the past 18 months trying to recover it), pre-modern Catholic/Lutheran/Reformed theology (yes, Calvin taught it, too) - it all assumed that when we are saved by "receiving Christ", that meant receiving Christ *physically* as well as spiritually, receiving Christ's body and blood in addition to receiving His Spirit.  We are physical-and-spiritual people, and so we must receive Christ physically as well as spiritually in order to be saved.  That was why Luther was so adamant about insisting that "this is my body" (hoc est corpus meum) meant Christ's *physical* presence - because without receiving Christ *physically* there was *no* salvation *possible*.   Unlike today, there was no split between physical and spiritual reality in pre-modern Christianity.  However, the Reformed sacramental belief that we *do* receive Christ's physical body, but only *spiritually*, helped introduce a split.  And today that split has widened and hardened to the extent that the reality that underlay pre-modern theology of all stripes - of a genuinely unified physical-and-spiritual world, one where the physical-and-spiritual reception of Christ to achieve a physical-and-spiritual salvation was not only obviously *possible*, but was obviously *necessary* - is almost unimaginable for Christians, even sacramental Christians.  And it affects *everything* about life and faith.)