From Evangelism to Apologetics: Andrew Rappaport's Guide to Defending the Faith

Evangelism as the Goal of Apologetics

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the executive director of Striving Fraternity and the Christian podcast community of which this podcast is a proud member.

We are here to provide you with biblical interpretations and applications for the Christian life, and I was privileged to be on to the podcast of Thoroughly Equipped with Melissa Lex, one of the podcasts at the Christian podcast community.

We discussed evangelism, apologetics, and a whole host of different topics. I hope that this episode will encourage you and equip you to go out and share your faith. Coming your way on The Wrap Report by way of Thoroughly Equipped with Melissa Lex, I hope you check both of us out.

Studying the Bible to Answer Questions

Follow us online. Check this out. This is so simple to get started, but when you have a challenge you don't know, a friend of mine, Mark Spence, he works at Living Waters, and he always tells people, if you get challenged with a whole bunch of questions, just study up on the last one that you got challenged with and don't have an answer to.

Whatever that last one was, study it. Look at what the Bible says about that. You may have to dive into some science or philosophy to understand it a bit, but that's.

Fine.

Just compare what the Bible says about that topic, because the best answer is Scripture. Guess what? If we're studying Scripture all the time to get better at sharing the gospel, we're also getting better at living the Christian life, because the Bible should be coming through.

Us.

We're not studying just to argue with people. We're studying the Scripture to know our Lord and Savior better, because if we're Christians, we love Him, we want to know Him, we want to learn more about Him, and that helps us in answering or giving a defense for Him.

Welcome to Thoroughly Equipped, restoring women's ministry to the authority and sufficiency of Scripture while glorifying Christ through discernment and biblical womanhood. Andrew, thank you for coming on Thoroughly Equipped again.

I think, what is this? Is this the fourth time? Third. Third time.

I'm not sure.

I've had you on more than anybody else I've had on.

I can say that.

I've had you on here more than anybody else.

Yeah.

I mean, since, you know, your audience is like, do you have guest pay to be on here? She is that well-known.

No, no, no. You come on out of the kindness of your heart. And I ask you because I feel like you're very good to speak on the topics that I like having you on about. So today's topic is apologetics. And I just recently had Angela Mitchell from Raising Apologists, that's her ministry, had her on to talk about how homeschoolers should raise their children up in apologetics.

But I really thought, you know, what's missing is the foundation for like diving deeper into why apologetics is so important, why every Christian should do it. And so I was picking my brain on who to invite on to discuss this topic.

And of course, I thought of you because you have a show, but you do this weekly. You do apologetics weekly. Can you talk about your show a little bit?

Sure.

The show that you're referring to, because I do a couple of podcasts, as you know, but the podcast you're referring to is called Apologetics Live. And Apologetics Live is a podcast where anyone can come in and challenge me on anything.

We will have a topic. And I try to go through the topic for the first hour if I have a guest on. But if someone comes in and I'm just going through a topic, I might cut that short. But it's something where I've had Orthodox rabbis come in, I've had Church of Christ folks come in, I've had I've had a charismatic that came in, I've had Catholics that come in all wanting to debate me.

I even had a guy who came in wanting to debate progressive Christianity or affirming Christianity. He believes that, you know, that we should be that Christianity and homosexuality are not an issue. That guy's really interesting because he did so poorly in his prepared comments and all that he actually challenged me to a debate.

And you are going to love this, Mel, but he challenged me to a debate, but only a formal debate, but only if his boyfriend is the moderator, which he admitted was unreasonable to ask. But his boyfriend told him that he can't debate me unless he's the moderator.

And so he's got to go with that. So he's actually now told me he invited me to a debate. He's going to debate someone else on my view of homosexuality because he said, you know, me talking about the idea of lust.

What do we do when we do apologetics? How do you how do you handle when you're going to do apologetics and you don't know you have a debate, right? Best thing to do. Definition of terms. And so as he was trying to argue, he thought he could he could demolish James White in a debate because he knows James's arguments and he could he could demolish him.

And all I did was I asked him, you know, is lusting a sin?

And he said yes.

And I said, so it really doesn't matter that you lust after men and I lust after women. We're both committing the same sin, aren't we? And he was like, but because he never thought of lusting, which is the core issue at the heart of the issue of homosexuality, it is lusting for someone outside of marriage.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so he's now going to debate someone else on the issue of lust and whether that leads to whether that's a sin of in the Bible or whether, you know, just lusting is a desire. So what's he going to do?

He's going to ignore the context of the passages we looked at, and he's going to get someone to debate him who doesn't know it. OK, so that's the fun of the show, because I I'm weird. I admit it. I enjoy when someone comes in with a challenge for me that I'm not ready for familiar with because it just I learned something new.

This is some of my upbringing, you know, you know, my upbringing, but I'm raised Jewish. One of the things Jewish people do a lot around the dinner table is to debate. You're trained to debate that helps sharpen your thinking.

That's why if any of you in the audience are wondering, why are so many Jewish people lawyers? It's the only career you get paid to debate, OK?

So there you go.

And so you learning how to argue even a position you don't hold to help strengthen your own.

Arguments.

And so when I get people come on the show for Apologetics Live, I enjoy that because it's like, OK, I'm going to be challenged sometimes with something that I'm not ready.

For.

And I and and what we can get into later in the show of how do I prepare for a debate I'm not ready for, because that is part of what Apologetics is. There's some things or there's some things you can't.

But yes, that's Apologetics Live. People can join Thursday nights, 8 to 10 Eastern Time, and they just go to Apologetics Live dot com and you scroll down to where the duck icon is and you can join there.

People want to watch. If people watch on YouTube, they can join in on the comments Facebook. I forget which like Facebook page or or my personal page, which one they allow comments. They only allow them from those.

But if you follow me on X, you can comment there. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun.

I've actually been on your show right a couple of times just calling in because you'll you'll not just have it's not just you debating somebody else or applying Apologetics to anybody who calls in. It's sometimes you'll have guests on the show.

And so, yeah, you have really good discussions. I like watching it, too. Yeah, it can get long, but I like watching it because you're right. There's some people that come on there. You're just like, well, it's fun.

You know, you us little computer typing behind the scenes in the comments below, always trying to like boost you up. I don't know if you've seen those.

Not always. But I mean, one of the things is that I will admit when when I when I look at it and I like, OK, I try to look at the chat as best I can. I will admit that.

But it's hard.

Yeah, I don't know. I would get so distracted.

If I don't have one of my co-hosts on, it's really hard. And the reason it's so hard is because I can't like talk to the person challenging me or my guest and like my guest is speaking, then I can. It's a little bit easier to to do because my guest can, you know, can talk while I'm looking at comments, but then I'm not really I have to listen to him.

So it does make it hard. But when my co-hosts are there, they usually will star comments and I just got to look.

At those.

And it's like, OK, this is one to respond to.

Yeah, I just. I like the community because we will chat while you're debating. But then it's fun anyway.

Because, you know, when that show the chat can look, we've had people come in and they're challenging me in chat. Yeah. And the chat is the one where they're they're going all, you know, dealing with things and engaging with the person.

I'm like, OK, you know, they're doing it. And sometimes we pull them in. I've you know, because of that, we've actually had we had someone who had. Come in and they were they were just going off on the chat and everyone was trying to correct this guy, lead him to Christ and ended up that I, you know, I just saw it going, I said, why don't you just come on in?

You know, why don't you join us? This guy was Catholic and he wanted to argue that Mary was the Ark of the Covenant. And so he came in.

That's interesting.

Yeah. And we're like, OK, you know, it was a good discussion. Best part of the discussion, I think at one point I'm like listening to this guy and going like, I literally I'm like, I said, what do you do with the current pope?

I mean, you know, believe in what you believe, probably wouldn't even argue the pope is Catholic. And he goes, he's not. Yeah. I went, oh, you're one of those. Or the and I can't pronounce it well, Cervanticantists that believe that the current pope, like since Pope, I think it was John Paul II, they believe Catholic Church is not.

Catholic. Oh, OK.

And so then we had a very interesting, different conversation.

Yeah, that's it can go all sorts of ways. That's crazy. But OK, so knowing now that you have you have a very good background, how long have you been doing apologetics for? I mean, and debating, right?

Well, how long have I been doing it for since I started sharing the gospel? Right. Which was like two years after I was saved. So I would have started doing apologetics in 19. I'm going to I'm going to date myself.

Nineteen eighty six. Were you even born?

I was six years old. That gives away my age.

All right.

But you're only twenty five. And so, you know, that's fine. Yeah. But yeah, that's a thing where, you know, when you look at it, it's really it's really something that as we examine. The apologetics, I tie it to evangelism because that is when it starts.

Right, that's part of evangelism.

That's what I that's why I think I wanted to have you on more than like anybody I could else think of, because I think some people think that apologetics is just simply about making arguments like having, you know, arguments for creation versus evolution, having to know scientific ideas and philosophies and then counteract that with biblical.

And so here's where my first question is, like, what is apologetics? I think a lot of people do know, but you could explain to maybe somebody who's kind of new, hasn't really thought about this. And then what are the types of apologetics, like the certain philosophies of apologetics that we see in Christianity, especially?

Apologetics as the Defense of the Faith

Yes. So there's several different views we can have when it comes to apologetics. And so when we speak of apologetics, it's simply defending the faith, OK? It is not making an apology for it. This is a problem we don't understand between, you know, it's it's sourced from Latin apologia is Greek, but it is to make a defense for something.

It's not an apology the way we often think of it. So let's let's address that. But when we do look at this, there are several different ways of doing apologetics. And you're right. There are there's a lot of people who get intimidated by it.

Do I have to understand, you know, how how carbon 14 works and how long can carbon 14 work on something that's organic would work on something that's not organic? I can't remember all that now. You got Argonne on in there.

And what and how do we test for that? And someone's going to throw this out to me. I just don't know what to do. What you need to do to do good apologetics is know your Bible. Right, that's it, the more you study the Bible, the more you can handle anything in apologetics, because no matter what they throw at you.

They're going to be challenging your worldview, and what they want you to do is throw out your Bible and then let's talk. And when they do that, I've had people ask me that, well, stop, throw out your Bible and then then we can have a conversation.

And my response is, you know, like I had this with a guy that wants to talk evolution. And I said, OK, as long as you promise to throw out anything that's related to biology and then we can discuss. Evolution, because if you want me to throw out truth when talking about truth, then you have to throw out biology when talking about biology.

And then they get into, well, the Bible is not true. Now I'm in my house right now, I've just left that whole argument and I'm going to we're going to end up talking textual criticism. And now if you don't know textual criticism, it's not hard.

I get it, but I'll just say if you get my book and I'm not doing it for self-promotion, but if you get my book, What Do We Believe?, you can get it at strivingforeturning .org. But if you get the book, What Do We Believe?, that book has a whole chapter that's very easy to understand on the topic of textual criticism.

Can you trust the Bible? Because that's what they're really challenging. If you know that, then you're golden because they sit there and I've done this with people where I go through all the issues of textual criticism, how we can trust the Bible, whether we look at the way that we look at manuscripts.

And and then I just go, OK, so you've done that same research, right? And they go, I've never read the Bible. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you wanted to talk science. So you want to make scientific conclusions about a book you've never read.

That's not very scientific of you. Right. You do look at the material and you haven't looked at the material, but yet you claim that it's got errors. Now, if you run into someone that says, well, I was a Christian.

I'll give you a way out of that one, and I will give you a way out that you can always bring any conversation back to the Bible.

Yeah, you should, I think you should ask questions we don't know.

But here's the thing. If you're you're being challenged, right, you're you're you're we use the the apologetics is an a means to an end. The end is the gospel. We use apologetics to get to the gospel.

So when when they're challenging and they're they're they're asking things, we want to get it to the gospel. That's the goal. That should always be the goal. Right. It's not to show how smart we are with knowledge of science and things like that and how we can show that this guy that's claiming for science, oh, he's wrong.

Yeah. Right. There are some who seem to do that, seem to do that. And we're going to talk about as your question with different apologetic methods, because one of the methods leans more toward doing that.

Two of the methods, maybe. And so the the thing that we see is when we're being challenged with something like, well, the Bible has has been edited and it's been changed and you start to challenge that and someone because when someone says, oh, the Bible's been changed, I say, can you show me an example?

Right now, usually go, well, I've never read the Bible, but sometimes you're going to run into someone that claims, well, I'm a Christian. Oh, so you believed when you were a Christian and I'm going to dispute that, but let's go with it.

You claim you were a Christian and that gives you the authority on Christianity. So when you were a Christian, you believed the Bible was your ultimate authority for faith and practice. And they always say, yes, always.

And I just open up to First John, chapter two, verse 19. That is my go to verse with with anyone that claims I used to be a Christian because that verse says they went out from among us because they were never of us.

They went out of us to expose. They were not of us. So you believed what this verse says, that you were never one of us. Right. I think, oh, no, I was. Then the Bible wasn't your ultimate authority, which you said it was.

So either and they'll say, oh, well, you're you're using a no true Scotsman fallacy saying that I wasn't truly a Christian because, no, the Bible saying that the Bible says the thing you said was your ultimate authority as a Christian.

If you went out from among us, you were never of us and you went out to expose that. The Bible, your ultimate authority says you were never of us. You were a hypocrite that stopped pretending.

Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, I think this is where people get mixed up. I know it was kind of my issue for a long while just because I think I did fall more. I was a Christian who thought, oh, I need to know all this scientific stuff, but I didn't realize.

Now, I did realize I had this excuse, the excuse was, well, the Bible is not authoritative for everybody, it's only authoritative for those people who believe it. And so I can't use that as a tool to bring people into understanding truth and logic and God and then talking theology and philosophy and all that stuff.

So it wasn't a tool until I started to just really study the Bible. And I had to be confronted myself with, do I actually believe everything that is said here? If it is enough to equip me, then it's going to be enough to equip me to argue for or have an apology for the reason, for the hope that I have.

And that's where I think you were getting to, that it's all about bringing the people to the gospel, which is the reason for the hope that we have. That's the gospel. And I realize I can't bring somebody to the gospel with scientific facts.

It's just and the Bible is plainly clear on why you can't do that, because it's God and it's the Holy Spirit that has to change lives. So, yeah, but that kind of distracted me from what I was going to ask you.

Yeah. OK, so so talking about the different types of philosophies or ways you go about presenting apologetics or whatever. So you can talk about that a little bit. Like what we're getting to, I think, is more your presuppositional is what I'm.

Yes. Well, and there's actually I'm leaning more towards a new they'll get to. And it was new to me until I did a roundtable discussion. And then on Apologetics Live, I had each of those people on to have a longer discussion on the on the four different views.

Yes. I watched some of those. They were very good. So people need to go back. I'll put a link for those episodes in the description because they were good.

It was good because I asked I asked each one, OK, give me a strength in the weaknesses of your arguments as well. And so let me let me just capitalize on what you said with scripture, which is how we do apologetics with scripture.

Right. So you mentioned that you thought the Bible was only for the believers. Romans chapter one for context, as we're discussing the gospel, let's give the context. Romans one 16. I'm going to start there, even though what I want to focus on is further down.

It's first 20. But Romans one 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For it is for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written.

But the righteous will live by faith for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all not some all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them.

God made it evident to them for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, both his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse.

So this is the thing to someone who says, well, I don't know if I could do apologetics. That verse tells you that every person you speak to knows God exists. What do they do? They suppress that in unrighteousness.

So when they challenge me, I read that verse and I say, God, who knows everything. I'll ask them. So you're sometimes up front. I said, do you know everything? I mean, have you ever been wrong? Yeah. OK, well, and then I read this and I say, well, the God who cannot be wrong because he knows everything says that you are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.

So when you disagree, that's what you're doing. And we know why. If we keep reading because you love your sin and you don't want to be accountable to God, but he's made it so that you know that you're guilty before holy God.

That's why you feel guilt when you break God's law. Right. This is a thing we have to realize. Every person we speak to knows God exists. OK, now this is going to be a very different way of handling apologetics than as we're going to talk about now, the differences.

So let's start with what's called evidential apologetics. And this is the one that many people think of when they talk about apologetics. It's knowing all the science and the facts and being able to argue carbon dating and things like this.

And. OK, what do you do with all the different missing links? Well, the reality is they're still missing. And so most of the missing links are just drawings that people have in textbooks. OK. And so the thought that many of us have is we got to learn all these facts and know them.

And someone's going to challenge me with something I don't know. That's what people think of when they when they think apologetics. And it's the evidential apologetics. Evidential apologetics is me presenting evidence outside of Scripture.

Sometimes, sometimes it's using Scripture, but it is it can be looking at evidence. If you think of a William Lane Craig who will argue that he can he can convince you that God exists without using the Bible.

But what God are you convincing them of? Because what we just read out of Romans one, it's the gospel that's the power of salvation. And Peter says that, well, we know the gospel from the Scripture. Right.

You can't know the gospel outside of Scripture. So if you're going to try to convince someone that God exists without using Scripture, all you did is take a professing atheist to a theist. But that hasn't gotten them to being Christian.

Right. That's the difference. And you can you can use the evidence in an evidential apologetic. The idea of it is that the evidence is convincing enough. To be able to show someone that God exists. And you may not even need to use a Bible, not all evidentialists will argue like William Lane Craig, but William Lane Craig will say that he's more of a different he actually argues a different type of apologetic, which is we'll look at next.

It's called classical, but the the evidential apologetic is to use the evidence of science, of history, of archaeology, whatever it takes to break down the stronghold that someone holds to that's keeping them from believing the Bible.

OK, now, I think this is my some some that holds this may critique it. My view of that, what ends up happening is I look at that and say, well. The thinking is that everyone wants to believe in Jesus, they're waiting to have enough information and it's an informational issue.

Now, you and I are both more holding to the sovereignty of God in salvation. And therefore, we don't believe men save themselves just with head knowledge. And but a lot of people who who believe that people need to just make a belief and then regeneration comes after their belief.

Those people are going to lean more toward something like this where they're trying to convince them. You're convincing people into the kingdom. That's evidential. What William Lane Craig actually really argues for his background, his philosophy is more of a classical apologetics and classical apologetics is what R .C. Sproul used to believe.

Yeah. He now believes in in what I hold to.

So. I knew you'd go there.

Those who don't know who R .C. Sproul is. OK, maybe you should if you've been listening to this podcast. But but yeah, he's he was he was he's passed away. And so now his theology is perfected.

He's a Baptist today.

He used to be a Presbyterian on Earth. It's a joke for you, Presbyterians. And that's not else with apologetics is the use of humor, by the way. It really does help. The idea of classical is instead of looking and arguing from the evidences, the science, things like that, you're arguing from a philosophical case.

So you're using maybe things like a cosmological argument and these different things to look at philosophy. And you're getting into an argument of. Philosophically, well, there's there's got to be someone who created everything philosophically, there had to be something that's eternal.

And that's true. Right. These arguments are not bad and they can encourage the Christian to know that we have a good standing when we stand on on scripture. But again, it's it leans toward this idea that I can convince someone into the kingdom.

And my issue is I don't think they have an evidence problem. I think they have a spiritual problem. So on those first two, one, you have to memorize lots of evidences. On the second one, you have to know a lot of philosophy or at least understand logic to recognize logical fallacies, like when the person says, well, I used to be a Christian and so I know the Bible.

That is a logical fallacy, it's a fallacy of authority. They're claiming that because they were a child growing up in a Christian home, learning the Bible as a child, that they know everything about the Bible, that they walked away in their teenage years.

Now, just think about that, folks, how many things do you really know solidly that you learned in your pre-teenage years that you you would know so well of people who've studied it for decades? Right.

I grew up Jewish, I was in Hebrew school for, you know, a decade and or more, but for for like a decade, I was in Hebrew school, learning Hebrew, learning things about the Bible, learning things about, you know, the Talmud through through, you know, to prepare for bar mitzvah.

And I would not argue that I learned that I really knew the Jewish religion when I was bar mitzvahed at 13. I wouldn't even argue when I converted to Christianity that I know it as well as I do now, because afterwards I studied the Talmud and read through things and dialogue with.

So I would not argue I'm an expert on something from my elementary years.

Yeah. I would also say here that I think there's a difference between, you know, somebody taking on that logical position, saying that just because they grew up with it and they know it or, you know, have have been taught in their church doesn't mean that they believe or trusted in what they were taught.

Knowledge does not necessarily translate to automatically faith and belief. So there's a there's a difference that I see.

And that's what Romans one teaches. And first, John to 19 teaches that they're not. So so when you look at that, it's we can rest on the scripture, which which leads to the third position. The third position is presuppositionalism.

That's the one that you heard me referring to. And you were saying, OK, that's what I hold to. I'll get to the fourth one, which you already know because you listen to the to the episodes we did. But presuppositionalism is the understanding that from Romans one.

They know God exists. OK, when we talk about presuppositions, a presupposition or an axiom, if you think of an axiom, it's something you can't prove. It proves itself. It is the thing. So can you prove God?

And this is the issue. When I do apologize, am I trying to prove God exists or is he an axiom? Presuppositionalism is the fact that God is an axiom. OK, a presupposition, you can't make sense of the world without God first existing.

And so I could now you could look at that. And so what do I rely on? I rely on scripture. And so I will say, thus says the Lord, you can be wrong, but God can't be. And they'll say, well, where where does it say, you know, you only know that God can't be wrong because of the Bible.

And so that's circular reasoning. Well, yes and no. The Bible tells us God cannot lie. But the Bible is a self-revelation of God. See, you have to start with a God because otherwise you can't explain anything.

The whole universe is just ridiculous. Because how did the universe come about? You there's only three possibilities. The universe always existed. Well, Einstein proved that's not true. The universe, it created itself.

Well, that philosophically breaks the second law of logic, which is the law of non-contradiction. You can't have a and not a at the same time in the same way. The universe can't have, you know, existed and create itself.

It's illogical.

Now, what did I do?

I just went evidential. And I just went philosophical on both those. Right. But the starting point is you have to have an a universal, absolute. Source for logic, truth, knowledge, because if what is what is truth, it's not a material thing, I can't pour you a cup of truth.

It's something that's that is immaterial. And so it has to have an immaterial source, but it's also universal. It applies to everyone everywhere. It's also absolute. So he needs an immaterial, absolute universal source, and that is God.

And we know that so now when we come to to God, we can't know God unless he reveals himself to us. We can't understand him. Even even now, when I teach my class on theology, the very I start with the attributes God and the first attribute is that God is incomprehensible.

We cannot comprehend everything about God. We never will. And so it's only when he reveals himself to us, we can understand what does he reveal? Well, that he can't lie. So they're going to argue, well, that's you know, that's a circular argument.

Well, you could try to argue that, except what's your argument? Nothing. Right, because I can't explain anything, because for your worldview to be true, you need to stop using your ability to reason truth, knowledge, laws of logic, morality, cut all that out, have a conversation, because when you cut all that out, I can argue blue cows, moon cheese, and that should make sense.

Yeah, right.

Because logic doesn't matter. Words shouldn't matter. It's just it just is. Yeah. It's just chemical reactions. And so where I lean now is I'm leaning more toward what's called the cumulative apologetic, because it even though I always said I'm presuppositional and that's where my focus is, cumulative is basically using the best of all three of those.

You never give up scripture. Right. So I have I have two presuppositions. God exists.

He has spoken.

I don't close up, so I'm not going to give up that God exists to argue for God's existence, and I'm not going to give up his word as if it's not true.

I'm just going to quote scripture.

And when someone says, well, I don't believe that too bad, God said, God said, God said your arguments with God, not with me when when they want to make. Well, you don't understand science. God understands science.

And he says you're wrong. Right, because he said he created in seven days, so he who is there, by the way, that's the scientific method, you have to create a situation, observe the situation, document the situation, you know, in the test.