Beeson Podcast, Episode #727 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, I'm your host Doug Sweeney, and I'm joined today by our Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism and Cultural Engagement, Dr. Josh Chatraw, who's here today to talk with us about our new apologetics concentrations at Beeson. Thank you, Josh, for being on the program again. >>Chatraw: Thanks for having me. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright, so we have a concentration that goes along with the MDiv, concentration that goes with the Master of Arts in Theological Studies, but like what are they? What do people need to know about these concentrations? >>Chatraw: Yeah, so I mean if you come here to do the concentration, you're going to get, on one hand, the standard MDiv or MA courses, which is robust theology, history and doctrine, languages with the MDiv. So, you're going to get, on one hand, you're going to get a good, well-rounded MA and MDiv, but the concentration allows you to particularly hone in on apologetics. And so, there's several courses that you take with that in addition to evangelism, which all of our students take. And you will take Introduction to Apologetics. You'd also take either Augustinian Apologetics or Cultural Apologetics. And then you would also take Philosophy in the Christian Life. And so, it's just an opportunity for those who are keen on apologetics, who are keen on evangelism and see that as an important part of their ministries going forward to both get the kind of, I think, robust theological development that all of our students get, but then also with that to get a focus on apologetics and evangelism and things related to that. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright, so people who are listening now who already know about you and your work probably know what Augustinian apologetics would be, what cultural apologetics would be, you mentioned those as options that students can take in the concentration, but for people who don't already read your books, tell them a little bit. What is Augustinian apologetics and what's cultural apologetics? >>Chatraw: Yeah, well Augustinian apologetics is of course kind of taking our inspiration from Augustine, which so that's pretty broad. He's the fountainhead of the Western tradition. But there's some particular parts of what Augustine was emphasizing that we will be emphasizing within the program. One is that Augustine was a pastor-theologian-apologist. So, he was doing, his vocational context was the church, and because he was at a time where we don't have all the kind of separation like we do in academic studies, kind of dividing up, he was, yes, a pastor and a theologian, and for him, that also meant defending the faith, commending the faith in his context. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. >>Chatraw: And so, we see a lot of similarities with we're training people to serve the church, to go care for the world and proclaim the gospel, and that's exactly what Augustine was doing, but he had to integrate, what we would call today, integrating all these disciplines together, but particularly for the church. And so, sometimes today when we think about apologetics, sometimes people will think about it as, well, that's more of a philosophical discipline, or that's something here that, you know, a few experts will do. But that really wasn't how the early church, how the fathers saw apologetics. They saw it as part of their pastoral duty, and it connected to their theology. And obviously, that ties in really well with all of kind of what we're doing at Beeson, both wanting to both understand the great tradition, to see ourselves rooted in serving the church. And so, those are a couple of things we need by Augustinian apologetics. The other part of Augustinian apologetics is that Augustine was, he had what I would call holistic anthropology. So yes, he understood that we were thinking beings, but he also understood that people would make decisions on based on what they loved, and their thinking was tied to how they worshiped. And so, as we make our appeals and learn how to craft arguments, we do so not thinking just of people's brains, but their hearts and how their hearts are tied to their brain. And so, we want to make holistic appeals to people. And I think the last thing I'll just say about this is this kind of style of apologetics really preaches well. There was a lot of times where in certain ways apologetics can be taught, you thought, man, I'm really into that, I like those arguments, but that will never preach. And one of the things, even I was this semester teaching it, we read some of Augustine's sermons and saw how he, because he was a retour and how he thought about persuasion and taking people to the gospel, he's very concerned about how to craft arguments within his sermons that are going to appeal to his context. So, we really see this as, this kind of approach to apologetics, as serving the everyday pastor who needs to speak in a more complex and confusing world and needs to do more persuading and not just assuming that everyone's on board. And so, with that, not only pulling from Augustine, but pulling from this discipline of cultural apologetics, which is trying to understand the moment we're in today, and Colin Hanson, who's on the board or on the advisory board at BSIN and who teaches teaching a course on cultural apologetics. And so, really trying to pay close attention to learn how to exegete culture while at the same time retrieve from the resources of the past, but also, not ignoring philosophy and philosophy is an important part of this as well. >>Doug Sweeney: So, you probably don't want to overdo the difference between cultural apologetics and sort of regular old apologetics of the sort that most people are more familiar with, but insofar as you want to distinguish it, what's the difference? >>Chatraw: Yeah, great question, and it depends who you ask that question to. So, we, sometimes people will disagree. And I think the best way to describe what people mean when they say cultural apologetics is it's a cluster of different approaches actually. It's a cluster of ways rather than a set kind of school, I think. I think it represents what a lot of people are trying to do today to respond to the kind of pluralistic culture we're in and trying to understand the context rather than just focusing on arguments, or universal arguments, but understanding the particular context and then what arguments are going to be most persuasive given the particular context we're in. And so, some might say everything is cultural apologetics because in some sense there is no arguments abstracted from culture. You're already always speaking to a particular person with particular objections or particular ways they imagine the world. But I think that that word, when it's useful, or that label when it's useful, is really just describing a kind of cluster of approaches which is really wanting to take seriously the work of understanding and exegeting culture and then mapping the gospel into that. >>Doug Sweeney: Okay. So, you're still articulating the gospel, you're still sharing the gospel, you're still commending the faith, but in ways that are informed better than would normally be the case by an understanding of sort of where people are, where people's instincts are, where people's hearts are these days so you can reach them better? >>Chatraw: That's right. So, if you take something like identity and the kind of identity crisis or the loneliness crisis that we're having, I think that's tied into young men and women, especially, who are trying to figure out who they are. Whereas it's not just they've been told all their life, you're great, be awesome, but haven't been told, and you can be whatever you want to be. And so, they have this way they imagine themselves or imagine the world, and as they get older and grow up in this, they kind of realize, well, I don't really know who I am, and they're searching for identity. Where the gospel speaks to this, the gospel speaks to our identity and who you are and who you're called to be as a child of God, as an image bearer. But I think if you would have asked somebody a few hundred years ago about identity, they would have just looked at you kind of weird. What are you even talking about? And so, we're connecting the gospel with kind of where people are, so they can understand the gospel, and we're calling them to repent from false identities, from false ways of seeing themselves in the world, and to live into their true identity in Christ, which we actually think is a better way to live. And not always easier, but it's true, and it's how God had created us to live. So, in some ways, I would say it's much more directly tied in a kind of conceptual space to the gospel. And so, you kind of have the wedding of arguments in the gospel together rather than them being further apart and kind of two-spaced. I'm going to make my argument, then I'll give the gospel. There's a way with a lot of people who are taking on this mantle of cultural apologetics of bringing those two things together and kind of interweaving, yes, some traditional arguments, but also these profoundly existential arguments that I think often will kind of get people in their gut and then they'll say something like, yeah, but I still can't believe the resurrection. I can't believe, you know, some of this crazy stuff. And then I think some of those traditional historical arguments can be really helpful to support this case that's being made. But again, this is a way we're trying to integrate both the kind of existential gut level, heart level arguments, but also what you might think more of when you think of apologetics, which is the historical evidences for the resurrection or these deep intuitions about design and order we have from creation. All of those are in play in the kind of approach we're taking here. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, that's a great segue to the next thing I was going to ask you about, and I'm not sure I'm going to pose the question just right. Help me out here. It seems to me like there's an approach to apologetics that's kind of emerging in and through your ministry at Beeson that's not like a world apart from what other people do when they do apologetics, but there's something kind of interesting and special about it. And these labels like Augustinian and cultural kind of help get at what's special about it. But for people who don't know a lot about the ways in which, say, apologetics would be taught at other kinds of schools, can you give us, we could do hours on this, I'm sure, but is there a short way to explain what would be more customary as an approach to apologetics at a few different institutions? Not that you have to name them, but how do other people do it, and how does that make the way we're starting to do it here a little bit special? >>Chatraw: Yeah. Yeah, there's a couple of things I would want to say. And one is, just to go back to something I've already mentioned, which is recognizing that our number one objective here is to serve the church, and that we're training pastors, and ministers, and preachers, and missionaries. And so, oftentimes, we will train people to be what we are. And that's just natural. And so, if you see yourself as primarily a kind of academic, analytical philosopher, even wonderful people, friends of ours in that space, needed space, but even if you love the church, you tend to kind of train people to be like you. And one of the things that we saw is in the apologetic courses, oftentimes they kind of became more of, this is more of an academic philosophical kind of enterprise. And so, one of the things that we tie together is the church, pastoral ministry, soul care with the kind of persuasive effort. When I'm talking to someone who's dealing with something in their life, part of almost always the problem is unbelief. We don't believe in the promises of God. How do we treat that? How do we treat that patient? I see apologetics as part of that. Not the only thing, if that's all you have. But it's, we need to believe the gospel more. We need to trust in God more. And I think apologetics seen in that way comes alongside that. But if you don't see yourself as a physician of the soul, a physician of the heart, and so there's an identity part of this, which is really important as we're equipping our students, which I don't think you always kind of get in those standard courses. Again, many helpful things, many things I've learned from people who teach it differently. One of the kind of two ways this can sometimes go is it becomes a battle. Courses can become a battle between different methodological camps. And so, a lot of the kind of fuel in there is kind of very abstract to a lot of students. And you get to the end, sometimes in these courses, and students are saying, well, I know eight different systems and I don't really know what to do with this now. And that to me seems to be like a problem. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, it's like you're disabling them. >>Chatraw: I mean, on one hand, there's a certain, in those types of approaches, there's a kind of charity given in that you're wanting to expose them to all these different approaches and then they've got to work this out. So, that's on one side of that. The other side is you don't, maybe you don’t really give any kind of attention to anyone else's approach and you have a system and it's very tight and you just work that system, and then the students come out knowing a certain maybe very contemporary modern approach, but haven't really learned more broadly from the tradition, and then able to apply it. So, I think one of the advantages, going back to Augustine, is he's before a lot of this kind of apologetic tribalism and he really adopts more of a cluster of different approaches. And so, we're happy for students to take a different and adopt a different contemporary school and work within that more recent tradition. That's fine. But what I would suggest and the way I teach this is even if you're in a particular tradition, apologetic tradition, and you embrace that, be open to learn from these other schools. And the way I teach is to try to integrate that into, you know, at the end of a practical way to approach. But really that practical way that we're giving people hangs on them being the right type of apologist, not simply having the right type of arguments. And so really, the kind of Beeson model of in-person, we're with students for, you know, two to four years, and they're in our offices, and we're having, we're worshiping together, and we're eating together, is to me vital for this vision of what we're doing, particularly for our apologetics concentration because it's not simply that we want to train people who have the right arguments, but people who embody that and can lead other people to being the kind of apologetic witnesses that we're called to be as the church, people who will stake out their truth claims while suffering and being willing to even die for the gospel. That's not going to happen by just me carting out a few proofs and helping them be better thinkers, although I do want them to be better thinkers. But I need to invest my life, and that's what we're going to do. That's really why I came to Beeson is because you have faculty who have that kind of mindset and vision. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. That sounds great. So, when we talk with prospective students or current students about why they should do these concentrations, what do you want us to say? It sounds like you're trying to make better evangelists and disciple makers and pastors out of people with this kind of teaching. But are there other forms of ministry you'd want to say this is really important for as well? >>Chatraw: Yeah. I mean, obviously high school college ministry, these formative times where you're both doing catechesis or discipleship, and young people are, even those who are committed, are still asking the big questions. >>Doug Sweeney: This would have been hugely important to me, I mean, at my own age now, but I'm thinking back to my adolescence. I was one of those kids who needed this kind of ministry. >>Chatraw: And what sometimes happens with people is we give them a kind of apologetic that they grow out of. And so, then they kind of, they get into their 20s or 30s, and they either go one or two different directions. They say, well, that apologetic stuff was kind of glib, kind of shallow, and some of them deconstruct and leave the church. And then others say, I'm going to go on to do theology because that's the more serious stuff. And our vision here is to give them a kind of approach that's rooted in the tradition, and it's something that they'll continue to grow into. I don't think we're going to disagree with different theological figures, but I think because we're wedding this to the tradition and to some of the key thinkers, key theologians in the tradition, it's not like you grow up and then say, you know, Augustine and Aquinas and now let me go to the serious theologians. Like, these are the serious theologians within the church. So, but also in the kind of not seeing Christianity as just a kind of game we're playing with arguments, but a way of life and about worship and integrating that. So, we really want to take, we think that's so crucial for high schoolers, for middle schoolers to see this bigger vision, but still doing apologetics because they need it, but also college. And so, for those who are doing college ministers and people who are in parachurch ministries who are doing a lot of evangelism, we want to encourage them to stay connected to the church, of course, but we see those as vital organizations who come alongside and come under the church and I think this would be an ideal, these would be ideal concentrations for people in those fields. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, that sounds wonderful. The last thing I want to ask you about is the connection to the Keller Center, for which cultural apologetics are also important, the relationship between the Keller Center and our Beeson concentrations in apologetics, what is that all about? What will that look like on the ground as we develop these concentrations? >>Chatraw: Well, Colin Hanson, who's the director for the Tim Keller Center for cultural apologetics, will teach the cultural apologetics course, and then the way that the Keller Center works is they have we have about 20 or 25 fellows. So, I'm a fellow with the center and then we'll, we're going to be coordinating different events with fellows through the year. So, we have Trevin Wax coming. We have, this summer in July, we have a conference on persuasive preaching on apologetics and the imagination, and Alistair McGrath is going to be headlining that, but we have Colin Hanson and Trevin who are going to be a part of that. And then in the fall we have Chris Watkin who is a fellow from out of Australia. Many of your our listeners will be familiar with Chris's work, biblical critical theory, and he's going to be speaking and engaging students. So, there's a lot of co-curricular things that we're going to have around the program, and we're going to particularly be pulling from those fellows and the resources available through the center. And Colin Hanson's just a personal friend of both of ours, a friend of Beeson, and it's fun to do things with friends- >>Doug Sweeney: Sure is. >>Chatraw: And people who love the gospel and who are committed to the same things we are. And so, we think we have a partner, not only with Colin, but with the Tim Keller Center who are after many of the same things we are. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. All right, so in conclusion, if there's some people listening now who are getting as excited about this as you and I already are and they want to learn more, what do they need to know? When's this going to start? How do you get into this? How do you get involved? >>Chatraw: Yeah, January 26, and so you need to be a student at Beeson. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, in the Master of Divinity or the Master of Theological Studies program. >>Chatraw: That's right, and you can email us, email our admissions department, if you want to talk to me, you can email me, and I'll do my best to respond and give you more information if you have questions. >>Doug Sweeney: Super. Dr. Chatraw, thank you very much for being with us. Listeners, this has been Josh Chatraw. He's our Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism and Cultural Engagement and he's going to take the lead in these new concentrations at Beeson Divinity School in the MDiv and the MATS programs in cultural apologetics. Please pray for us as we develop these and take care of students. We're praying for you. We love you, and we say goodbye for now. >>Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.