From Biola University and Stand to Reason in California to CARM in Idaho to Reasonable Faith in Texas – it seems that if you want good Christian Apologetics, you have to go west, young man. The Northeast is unfortunately sparse in resources for the intellectually eager Christian yearning for some depth to help them buoy up in a world which is certain that Christianity equals Nonsense.
Fortunately for residents of the tri-state area, Mt. Airy Bible Church holds a Defending the Faith conference every October, which features some of the best speakers in the field. This year’s lineup featured J. Warner Wallace, Dr. Paul Copan, and Dr. David Wood.
Dr. Copan is most famous for his book Is God a Moral Monster, which tackles the many criticisms leveled at the apparently despicable God of the Old Testament. Copan’s speaking style was frank, bemused, and sprinkled puns, drawing out good-natured groans from the audience.
Copan’s first talk was on Old Testament slavery. Copan pointed out that, if one examines the “slavery” laws, it’s easy to see that they were a form of social welfare: that those who were unable to support themselves could hire themselves as workers to the wealthier landowners. The laws ensured that they would receive proper reciprocation for their labor, protection from abuse, and that when their term of service was complete, they would leave with enough resources to live independently. The laws strictly forbade the selling or purchase of human beings.
Copan’s second talk looked at the historic difference which Christianity has made. He first examined the mess which Hinduism has made of India as a case study. India is the closest thing in the modern world of what the pre-Christian, pagan world would have looked like. Copan asked “what would it take to change such a mindset?” Somehow, that pagan, pre-Christian world has developed to the liberal world so invested in human interests seen today. Copan argued that this reform was not a result of Grecian Democracy, Roman rule, secular beliefs, or of science, but rather the advance of Christianity. He showed in his lecture how science, indeed, owed its roots to Christianity. Finally, he showed how modern, non-Christian, secular historians acknowledge this very thing.
The second speaker at the conference was Dr. David Wood, an atheist-turned-Christian-Apologist from New York who spoke with a dynamic energy befitting his youth. Wood’s presentations were less like lectures and more like what one might see at youth conferences: energetic talks for the audience to put into application.
Wood’s first presentation was on how a Christian should interact with a Muslim. His experience with Muslims, he said, was entirely un-intentional, and came from the gradual conversion of his Muslim best friend, and the aftershock of Muslim response to this conversion. It had since become one of his primary platforms. He spoke of the common objections which Muslims will bring to Christians, such as “Show me where your Jesus says ‘I am God, worship me,’” and “The Bible has been corrupted.” Dr. Wood then showed from the Quran how the Muslims’ criticisms of Christianity backfire against their own religion.
Dr. Wood’s second presentation was on the “problem of evil.” In this presentation, Dr. Wood did not so much dwell on the arguments and their responses, but rather on what he considered a larger problem: disproportionate skepticism. What Wood argued was that when a skeptic is confronted with a problem – say, the fine tuning of the universe, or the fact that a finite, material universe must have a timeless, immaterial cause – their level of skepticism regarding the sparse answers they have to offer remains fairly low. However, when they present a problem to Christians – such as the problem of evil – no matter what solution the Christian may offer, it does not meet the high bar of skepticism the critic has set. Dr. Wood argued that the skeptic was being disingenuous, and should retain the same level of skepticism for their own arguments that they have for the Christian’s.
Finally, it was time for J. Warner Wallace to present. While Wallace has been in the Apologetics game for several years, his star rapidly began to rise when he joined Stand to Reason and wrote his first book, Cold Case Christianity. Not only does Wallace have one heck-of-a hook for his ministry – that of a cold case homicide detective looking at the evidence for Christianity from the perspective of, well, a cold case homicide detective – but he is a charismatic speaker who brought with him a multimedia presentation to stake his claim as the star of the show.
Fittingly, Wallace put on three total presentations, peppering his talks with illustrations from homicides and court cases he had worked, guaranteed to keep the audience’s attention. The first of the presentations was from his first book, and looked at the evidence for the reliability of the gospels by examining the texts of the gospels as he would eye-witness accounts. He then looked at various textual, scholarly and historical proofs that these gospels were dated close to the events they recorded.
Wallace’s second talk was from his latest book, God’s Crime Scene, which examined the evidence for God. He did this by looking at the universe as he would a crime scene, and then asked the same questions he would of a crime scene: could all of the evidence be explained from within the room, or was there an intruder?
The kinds of things Wallace looked at were the fact that a finite, material universe must have an ultimate cause, that values such as good, logic and justice must be grounded in something superior to natural causes, and the fact that fine-tuning of the universe for life is best explained through intelligence.
Wallace’s final talk looked at the evidence for Christ’s resurrection, again, like a police detective. Having established the eye-witness nature of the Gospel accounts in his first talk, Wallace then looked at what they said and at the lives of the apostles, both as recorded by the Gospels, their successors and early historians – to examine whether they acted like co-conspirators in an elaborate plot, or like men whose lives had been changed by a miraculous event.
The event also featured a Q&A session with the presenters.
If you live in the Northeast, and have any interest in Christian Apologetics, be sure to check this event out next year at this time.
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