Podchaser Logo
Home
Reimagining Apologetics with Justin Ariel Bailey

Reimagining Apologetics with Justin Ariel Bailey

Released Monday, 1st November 2021
Good episode? Give it some love!
Reimagining Apologetics with Justin Ariel Bailey

Reimagining Apologetics with Justin Ariel Bailey

Reimagining Apologetics with Justin Ariel Bailey

Reimagining Apologetics with Justin Ariel Bailey

Monday, 1st November 2021
Good episode? Give it some love!
Rate Episode

Episode Transcript

Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.

Use Ctrl + F to search

0:00

[MUSIC PLAYS]

0:27

Hello and welcome to another episode of the (A)Millennial

0:30

podcast. My name is Amy Mantravadi

0:32

and I'll be your host until such time as I

0:34

pack everything up and moved to Bora Bora. Today,

0:37

I'm going to be speaking with Dr. Justin Ariel

0:39

Bailey about his book Re-imagining Apologetics.

0:42

The imagination doesn't get mentioned often in

0:44

the Bible. Psalm 73:7

0:47

warns us about the wicked, saying, "The

0:49

imaginations of their heart run riot,"

0:51

while Jeremiah 23:16

0:52

says of false

0:54

prophets that "they speak a vision

0:56

of their own imagination, not from the mouth

0:58

of the Lord." In both cases,

1:01

imagination seems to be a negative thing

1:03

that draws us away from God's truth, causing

1:05

us to chase after and believe in things he has not

1:07

revealed. However, this isn't the kind

1:09

of imagination Justin is generally talking

1:12

about in his book. The closer biblical

1:14

term for this concept of imagination is

1:16

heart . In scripture, it is the heart

1:18

that is the seat of emotions and desires, whether

1:21

righteous or unrighteous. While the mind

1:23

provides our rational faculty, our decisions

1:25

are always impacted by our hearts. This

1:28

is why God commands us to love him with all our mind

1:30

and heart. The apostle Paul

1:32

writes in Romans 10:9-10 that

1:35

"if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord

1:37

and believe in your heart that God raised him from

1:39

the dead, you will be saved, for with

1:41

the heart a person believes, resulting

1:44

in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses,

1:46

resulting in salvation." St.

1:49

Augustine of Hippo, one of the great Fathers

1:51

of the Church, is remembered for his writings

1:53

about human love and desire. The goal

1:55

for a Christian, he argued, was to have

1:57

rightly ordered loves, which is to say

2:00

desires that are in line with God's will. When

2:02

God draws us to himself, our hearts

2:05

are turned to him and captured by his love,

2:07

which causes us to love and desire him

2:09

in turn. While Augustine was not

2:11

opposed to the use of reason and its importance

2:14

to the development of faith, he also knew

2:16

that human beings are forever animated

2:18

by their desires. The goal of apologetics

2:21

then is not only to convince someone

2:22

of the truth of Christian propositions,

2:25

thus capturing their mind, but to

2:27

draw them to the very experience of being

2:29

a Christian: to make them desire the things

2:31

of God. Our desires drive

2:33

our beliefs and are therefore intimately

2:35

connected with faith. The challenge

2:37

is that those who do not know Christ are still

2:39

driven by sinful desires. As Augustine

2:42

wrote in The City of God, "In order to

2:44

discover the character of any people, we

2:46

have only to observe what they love." Justin

2:49

will offer some suggestions for how we can capture

2:51

the imaginations of our friends and neighbors

2:54

and place them in the path of God's love. Before

2:56

ado is furthered any further, let's

2:58

head to the interview.

2:59

[MUSIC PLAYS]

3:10

And I am here with Justin

3:12

Ariel Bailey, who is the associate

3:14

professor of theology at Dordt University.

3:17

He received his bachelor's degree at Moody

3:19

Bible Institute, his

3:21

MDiv and ThM

3:23

from Trinity Evangelical Divinity

3:25

School and his PhD from

3:27

Fuller Theological Seminary. He

3:29

is ordained in the Christian Reformed Church and

3:32

has served in multiple and diverse

3:34

ministry capacities, most recently

3:36

as assistant pastor for teaching and discipleship

3:39

at Grace Pasadena from 2013

3:41

to 2017. He has published

3:44

peer reviewed articles in the International Journal

3:46

of Public Theology and the Christian Scholars

3:48

Review in addition to several other

3:50

articles, book chapters, and book reviews, and

3:53

he hosts the In All Things podcast

3:55

sponsored by the Andreas Center at Dordt

3:57

University. His published

4:00

works include the book we're going to talk about today,

4:02

Re-imagining Apologetics: The Beauty

4:04

of Faith in a Secular Age, and

4:06

also a forthcoming book, which I understand

4:08

will be called Your Interpretation Is Your

4:10

Life. And you can find him on

4:12

Facebook @drjustinbailey and

4:15

on Twitter @jarielbailey. So

4:20

Dr. Bailey, thank you so much for taking the time

4:22

to speak with me today. I really appreciate

4:24

it. Yeah, it's my pleasure, Amy. Thanks. Yeah

4:26

. And I'm excited to discuss this book.

4:29

I know it's been out for a little while, but

4:31

I was glad to finally get the chance to

4:33

read it and just really appreciated what you

4:35

had to say there. Now I warned

4:38

you, we're going to start out with a couple

4:40

fun questions. So now

4:42

I will reveal that the

4:45

questions have to do with

4:48

a topic I understand you're somewhat interested in,

4:50

which is J.R.R. Tolkien. In

4:53

the past year or so, you've been doing a

4:55

series of YouTube videos called "Tolkien

4:58

Tuesdays." And so,

5:01

as you likely know, there are

5:03

a few ongoing controversies

5:06

or issues of debate within the

5:08

world of Tolkien fandom. So I

5:11

thought I would just ask you your opinion

5:13

and whatever answers you give me we'll consider

5:16

to be the definitive answers on

5:18

these...

5:18

The canonical answer. Ok, sounds good.

5:18

...until such

5:20

time as I have another guest

5:22

who I ask the same questions .

5:26

Ok, sounds great.

5:26

So my first question for you

5:28

is, do balrogs have

5:31

wings?

5:34

No, they

5:37

do not have wings.

5:39

Despite the fact that

5:42

they have wings in the Peter

5:44

Jackson films, you're going to go with they don't?

5:47

Well, I mean, Peter Jackson is sort

5:49

of like a Message translation of

5:50

- well, not

5:53

even the Message translation, because I actually

5:55

quite liked the Message translation. Let's just

5:58

say there are liberties that are taken,

6:00

and I think it works in

6:02

that version, but I don't think that they are meant

6:05

to have wings. Similarly,

6:07

dragons don't have wings other than

6:09

Smaug. Smaug certainly has wings, but most

6:11

of the early dragons in Tolkien's work didn't

6:14

have wings either.

6:17

Glaurung did not

6:19

have wings. However, in the

6:23

last battle when the host of the

6:25

Valar came, I believe then Morgoth

6:28

unleashed the winged dragons at

6:31

that time. So yes, you were correct that most of

6:33

them did not have wings.

6:35

Yeah. So I guess it's possible

6:38

in the way that Morgoth could have

6:41

perverted or taken

6:43

natural things and made them even worse. Maybe balrogs could

6:47

have wings, but I prefer to say no,

6:49

they don't have wings. That's a deep cut. Wow.

6:52

Yeah. Well, I think you're probably correct

6:55

about that. I think that there's

6:57

some compelling evidence that they did not have wings,

6:59

so very good there. We've

7:02

settled that question forever. Now the

7:05

other question I have is do

7:07

you have any opinion on

7:09

what type of being Tom Bombadil

7:11

is and what his origin

7:14

is?

7:16

I mean, it makes the most sense to say that he is

7:18

one of the Maiar, similar to

7:21

Gandalf or other

7:23

lesser - lesser than

7:25

the Valar, but greater than the

7:28

Children. I think that part

7:30

of Tom Bombadil - I mean, Tom Bombadil's like

7:32

Melchizedek in some sense in the Bible:

7:34

the mystery of his character wrapped

7:37

up as it is in Middle-earth itself is

7:39

part of what makes him who he is. And so

7:41

in some sense to name, to answer that

7:43

question is almost to kind of betray it,

7:46

but I guess he doesn't come

7:49

from nothing or come from nowhere. He's part

7:53

of the created world, and so it makes

7:55

the most sense, I think, to classify him as one

7:57

of the Maiar. I'm not convinced

7:59

by people who say that he is

8:02

Aule or someone in

8:05

disguise. I

8:08

guess I understand that in some sense, but I think

8:10

that he's just one of

8:12

the Maiar whose life is wrapped up in Middle-earth

8:14

itself.

8:16

Yeah. I think that makes sense as

8:18

well. Well, I think we've probably by this

8:20

point lost any listeners who weren't Tolkien fans, but I'm

8:26

glad we could get those controversies settled.

8:28

Okay. Moving on to discuss your

8:30

book, which is at this time a more important topic,

8:34

you note that we live in what the philosopher

8:36

Charles Taylor has called an "Age

8:38

of Authenticity," in which one of

8:40

the greatest societal values is following

8:43

one's heart or being true to oneself.

8:45

This means that traditional apologetic methods

8:48

that seek to prove the objective truth of

8:50

Christian claims can fall flat

8:51

if they do not appeal to the

8:53

hearer individually. In

8:56

light of this, you argue that, "What is

8:58

needed is a provocation of possibilities,

9:00

a vicarious vision

9:02

of what it feels like to live with Christian faith,

9:04

a sense of the beauty of faith that is felt

9:07

before fully embraced. For this, the imagination

9:09

is essential." What

9:12

do you mean by imagination here, and how

9:14

does it differ from standard logical

9:16

reasoning?

9:18

Sure. Yeah. I always start answering this

9:20

question by saying what I don't mean, and what I

9:22

don't mean is the

9:24

imagination as escapist: merely escapist,

9:27

something that you go to the movie theater

9:29

just to have the special effects wash over you, lose

9:32

yourself, get away from the real world.

9:35

I think there's a place for that as well, but

9:37

that's not what I mean. I also don't mean

9:39

imaginary, so that you only use the

9:41

imagination to engage things that aren't real,

9:44

in which case - Obviously I think

9:46

the resurrection happened and these things are real

9:48

things, and so to talk about the

9:50

need for imagination and faith wouldn't

9:52

make sense if I use the imagination

9:55

that way. What I mean by imagination

9:57

really is simply the faculty that

9:59

God has given to us to interrogate

10:01

possibilities, and it's

10:03

part of being made in God's image that

10:06

as we seek to cultivate and unleash

10:08

the potentiality of God's good

10:10

creation that we have

10:12

to ask questions like, "What would it be like

10:15

if we did this? What if we

10:18

sort of move in a subjunctive

10:20

mood and ask what's possible?

10:23

Within the limits that I have , what

10:25

can I do? What can I hope for?"

10:27

Imagination is the faculty with which we hope.

10:30

And so I really believe, and I say this in

10:32

my book, is that though we use the imagination

10:34

perhaps to detach from what

10:36

is actual, we ultimately

10:38

are doing that so we can

10:40

grip reality more firmly. So

10:43

I read Tolkien not because I'm

10:45

trying to escape, but because

10:47

I actually think that it makes me live better

10:49

in this world: that it actually allows me to

10:52

live more capaciously. And we're

10:55

always using our imagination. Our imagination

10:57

though can be captive to cynicism

11:00

and fear and despair,

11:02

or it can be captive to faith

11:05

and love and hope, which is

11:07

what comes out of the story that

11:09

we get in scripture and that's supremely

11:12

told to us through Jesus Christ. That's

11:14

basically what I mean. Now for the second part of your question,

11:16

I think you asked what's the relationship with

11:19

the intellect or with reasoning.

11:21

Well, how does our capacity

11:24

for imagining things differ from

11:26

our capacity for just

11:29

reasoning through them analytically, because

11:31

in your book, you contrasted that a little in the

11:33

styles of apologetics and what they're

11:36

appealing to .

11:37

Yeah, and I'll just also say that I'm not

11:39

trying to do away with classical

11:42

or traditional ways that apologetics has been practiced.

11:45

I'm hoping to supplement it with a more holistic

11:47

approach. So C.S. Lewis says

11:49

that the intellect

11:52

takes things apart and the imagination puts

11:54

things together, and so we're always doing

11:56

both all the time. We're taking ideas

11:58

apart, we're taking worldviews apart,

12:00

pictures that we have of the way that things are and

12:03

seeing, "Is this true? Does this actually

12:05

correspond to reality?" And then

12:07

we take all of those things and put them back

12:09

together, and that happens all simultaneously

12:12

and reciprocally. So another

12:14

person that I rely on is George

12:16

MacDonald, and MacDonald says

12:18

that the intellect is like the laborer

12:21

and the imagination is like the architect or

12:24

the imagination is like the visionary

12:26

guy who sweeps across the borders in search

12:28

of new land, but then she

12:30

has to guide her plotting brother intellect

12:32

behind. So you hear

12:35

a noise at night in your house and

12:37

your imagination, whether you want it or not,

12:39

is going to supply you with possibilities

12:42

of what is happening, right? "What is

12:45

that noise?" And then the intellect has

12:47

to now go and test all of those things

12:49

to see what is actually actual - what is

12:52

real. And so we're always using them

12:54

together, the imagination and the

12:56

intellect, but I'm trying to say the imagination almost

12:58

always comes first. We very

13:00

rarely start with ideas. Ideas

13:03

and the exploration of ideas always comes

13:04

after we've had some sort of imaginative

13:07

engagement or glimpse of something

13:09

or felt sense of the way

13:11

that the world is. And so in

13:13

the same way that scripture is not presented to us

13:15

as bullet points just for our intellect to

13:17

absorb but is presented to us

13:19

in all of these different genres - ultimately

13:23

story, right? True story, but

13:25

also poetry and parable and apocalyptic,

13:27

which is trying to engage our imagination and

13:29

actually reshape the way we see the world.

13:32

Not just, say, "Here are 501

13:34

facts about God for you to memorize." Because

13:37

what scripture is really trying to do is to engage our

13:39

full humanity, which includes our

13:41

imagination.

13:44

Well, thank you for that. And I have to tell

13:46

you, as I was reading your book,

13:48

something kept coming back to my mind.

13:52

It comes from sort of a past life of mine

13:54

when I was studying international security

13:56

and security studies. And

14:00

I'm remembering back when the

14:02

9/11 Commission released

14:05

its report - the 9/11 Commission that the

14:07

U.S. Government put together to examine

14:09

what had gone wrong with 9/11 - and the

14:12

quote I'll always remember was

14:14

they said that it came down to "a failure

14:16

of imagination," and what they meant

14:18

by that was that the intelligence services

14:20

- they had all kinds of data.

14:22

They were looking at all the facts, but

14:25

they were unable to imagine

14:28

how someone nefarious

14:31

could take what they were seeing and

14:33

put it to a bad use. So

14:35

that's a negative case of sort of getting

14:38

into someone else's brain through imagination, but

14:41

I think you also described in your book how

14:43

imagination is very key to empathy

14:45

and being able to imagine

14:47

how someone else might view the world

14:49

is definitely a key part of

14:52

apologetics. So maybe a

14:54

random reference there, but it was just something that

14:56

kept popping into my head as I was reading your

14:58

book.

14:59

That phrase - "failure of imagination" - I think

15:01

it's very important, because I think

15:03

that there are so many things that if

15:06

we understand it as a failure of imagination

15:08

rather than a failure of facts or

15:10

a failure of logical reasoning,

15:14

we also have lots of failures of that,

15:16

you know. But Thomas Kuhn

15:19

in his book Structure of Scientific Revolutions argued

15:21

for this idea of paradigm shifts that

15:24

happened in the world of science. And really when

15:26

you're asking somebody to move from a place

15:28

of unbelief to a place of faith, that really

15:30

requires a paradigm shift, doesn't it? And

15:33

so one of the great struggles

15:35

is that there are certain things about Christian

15:38

faith that can only be understood from the inside:

15:41

from a position of commitment. So how do you help

15:43

somebody who's on the outside from

15:45

a position of sort of critical appraisal feel

15:48

what it's like on the inside? It's those

15:51

inside things that actually make faith most compelling.

15:54

And so I think that what you just

15:56

said, the power of empathy and the

15:58

ability to - for example, when you hear

16:00

somebody's testimony, see the world

16:02

through their eyes, see the world through the eyes

16:04

of faith is actually one of the ways

16:06

that we can sort of bridge this gap

16:09

of seeing, "Okay, this is what it would be

16:11

like." And what that does is provides a new

16:13

paradigm that a person can

16:15

look at the world through and

16:17

maybe correct some of the failures of imagination.

16:20

Thank you for that. Obviously

16:23

an important part of apologetics - It gets

16:26

down to how we know what we know and how

16:28

do we discern what the truth is. Drawing

16:30

again upon the work of Charles

16:32

Taylor, you discussed in your book how Western culture

16:35

has changed over the past few hundred

16:37

years in ways that have produced the Age

16:39

of Authenticity. The contrast

16:41

between the Enlightenment

16:43

and Romantic movements - two very

16:46

important intellectual movements in the past few hundred

16:48

years - is particularly important

16:50

to this story. How do you see

16:52

our present cultural moment being impacted

16:55

by each of these movements, particularly

16:57

in our differing notions of truth?

16:59

This is something that you got at in the early chapters

17:01

of your book, and I think it's important.

17:04

Yeah, and I just commend people - anytime you

17:06

start to talk about history, there's always so many

17:08

complexities, so please

17:11

forgive this brief summary and

17:13

go to my book if you want to see a little bit more.

17:16

Yes, please summarize the last half millennium.

17:20

Exactly . So one

17:22

of the reasons I rely on Charles Taylor so much,

17:24

as lots of others have been doing recently,

17:27

is because he has done a really good job

17:29

at critiquing what he calls

17:31

the "subtraction story," which

17:33

is that we needed

17:35

faith and religion and belief

17:37

in God, but now we have science, and

17:39

so we've sort of subtracted all of the things

17:42

that we used to need. And what he does

17:44

is tell us the opposite stories. He tells

17:46

more of an addition story or a construction story.

17:49

And so I sort of compare it to the difference

17:51

between emerging from the cave

17:54

of superstition into the light - That's the subtraction

17:57

story. "Now we're in the light. We've been enlightened.

17:59

We can see the world the way it really is." - To building

18:01

a castle over yourself and then thinking

18:03

that the castle is the entire world, just

18:06

sort of like what happens in The Silver Chair , if

18:08

you've read the Narnia Chronicles.

18:11

And so what you have as the Reformation

18:13

happens is this shift

18:15

in gravity from the Church to

18:17

the wider world, where the

18:19

Reformers really want to take the world

18:22

seriously as the theater

18:24

of God's glory. And so the attention really turns

18:26

outward so that they want

18:29

all places to be holy places

18:31

rather than just some places , all people to

18:33

be holy people rather than just some people.

18:35

It's sort of this discipling

18:37

of every sphere of life, which is really, really

18:39

wonderful and one of the reasons why I'm Reformed. But

18:42

what then happens with that shift

18:45

towards the wider world with the Enlightenment

18:47

is that there begins to be a shrinking of scope

18:50

in which Enlightenment thinkers are interested

18:52

in the world as a closed system. And this is what I mean: you

18:55

build this sort of cathedral

18:57

over yourself and then think that

18:59

the cathedral is the whole world, and you've just

19:01

kind of shut out the sun. You can't actually

19:04

see it, but it's still there. You just enclosed

19:06

yourself in imminence. And

19:08

so they say the world is a closed

19:10

system. It's designed for it. Maybe God

19:12

still did it. You know, you have deism: God

19:14

still is the one who put it all there, but it's this closed

19:17

system designed for human flourishing.

19:19

There's no possibility of miracles, because

19:21

then that would mean that God made a mistake in the

19:24

perfect system that he made, and

19:26

we need to figure everything out. That's, that's the goal

19:28

of the human vocation is to leave

19:30

no mystery , no places

19:32

uncharted, and really to kind

19:34

of figure out the castle. Now, the problem

19:36

with that, of course - one of many problems

19:38

- is that you have cut

19:41

yourself off from that deep sense

19:43

of meaning where meaning is not found

19:45

inside the castle, but outside the castle

19:48

in the wider world. And so what happens

19:50

with the Romanticism, Taylor argues,

19:52

is that what they're trying to do is

19:54

to compensate for all of

19:56

that meaning and depth that has been lost

19:58

through cutting off the transcendent. And

20:01

so rather than turning outward, they turn inward and

20:03

say that we have these unseen depths

20:06

in our souls, in the human person,

20:08

which need to be explored.

20:10

And this is where you kind of get in

20:12

popular forms this idea of following your heart and

20:15

maybe the analogy of now we

20:17

have created some artificial lights for

20:19

the castle that approximate the light

20:21

of the sun, and we're the ones

20:23

who turn on the lights. We're the ones who are sort of the source

20:25

of the lights. And this is where we're kind

20:27

of going now towards the shift of authenticity,

20:30

where all of the meaning is whatever

20:32

quest for meaning that we're on. It's going to always be

20:34

starting by going inward and

20:37

feeling our way in towards

20:39

the world. And so that means the triumph

20:41

of authenticity or really the triumph of

20:44

the Romantic perspective is

20:46

the sense in which the only way

20:48

that something is true is if

20:50

you find it resonant: you feel your

20:52

way in, and it's felt before

20:54

it's known. So that's the

20:56

situation that Taylor argues, and

20:58

I follow it and I agree with him on it. And so

21:01

if you're in that situation, then you have a couple of different

21:03

options of - what do you do? Do you try to

21:05

turn back the clock and say, "No,

21:07

we went wrong with Romanticism,

21:09

the revolutions of the Sixties that kind of took authenticity

21:12

culture wide. We've got to go back

21:14

and discover this enchanted world," or

21:17

do you start where people are and say, "Okay,

21:20

what happens when you follow your heart?" And then

21:22

they need to feel that thinness - the thinness of

21:24

that approach from the inside rather

21:26

than narrating from the outside and saying, "Everything's

21:29

wrong." And so what I've tried to do is to take that second

21:31

approach and to say, if authenticity

21:34

has become a non-negotiable of the way

21:36

that we know truth, how can we still

21:38

do apologetics within those parameters?

21:42

And ultimately it might lead us to

21:44

reject authenticity as the ultimate value,

21:47

but we don't need to start by rejecting it , but

21:49

we can start by actually saying, "Okay, let's follow

21:51

this path and see where it leads us."

21:54

Thank you. I think that was actually a pretty good

21:56

brief summary, so I appreciate it.

21:59

Because of the fallen nature of humanity,

22:02

many Christians will understandably

22:04

be a little skeptical about the power

22:06

or value of the imagination in

22:08

leading people to God, and

22:11

getting back again to what we talked about just

22:13

in our little fun intro, you appeal

22:15

in your book to an argument made by

22:17

Tolkien in his poem Mythopoeia, and I'll

22:20

just read a little bit of it

22:22

here, and apologies to all the listeners

22:25

if I'm not the best at reading poetry.

22:28

In Mythopoeia, which was a poem

22:30

he actually wrote for C.S. Lewis before

22:32

Lewis became a Christian arguing

22:34

about the value of myth, Tolkien

22:36

says that, "The heart of man is not

22:39

compound of lies , but draws some wisdom

22:41

from the only wise," - that's a capital

22:43

'W' on wise - "and still recalls

22:46

him. Though now long estranged, man

22:48

is not h oly lost nor h oly c

22:51

hanged. " And I'll just skip down a

22:53

little to where he says, " Though all the

22:55

crannies of the world we filled with elves

22:56

and goblins, though we dared to build

22:59

g ods in their houses out of dark and light and sow

23:01

the s eed of dragons, 'twas o ur right. Used

23:04

or misused, the right h as n ot decayed.

23:06

We make s till by the law in which w

23:08

e're made." This gets a little

23:10

t o his idea about us being sub-creators, which

23:13

actually he used that term in the part I skipped over.

23:15

So could you elaborate

23:18

on the meaning of this passage

23:20

and this argument from Tolkien and how it supports

23:22

the argument you make in favor

23:25

of a re-imagined apologetics? And

23:27

just a little f ollow u p to that, if you can

23:29

answer: as a Roman

23:31

Catholic, is Tolkien's

23:33

view here at all at odds

23:35

with Calvinist theology or a more

23:37

evangelical theology?

23:39

You know, that's a great question and it's not one I've been

23:41

asked yet. So thank you for that.

23:43

Well, as a fellow Tolkien nerd, you knew I was going to go to it.

23:45

Yes. As you

23:49

mentioned, Tolkien wrote that poem in response

23:52

to then atheist C.S. Lewis, who

23:54

told him that poems and myths, which Lewis

23:56

loved - you know, he says in Surprised by Joy

23:58

that it's like he had to tell two different stories,

24:01

where everything that he loved was false

24:03

and everything that he thought was true

24:06

was empty and meaningless. And

24:08

so he's talking to Tolkien and he says, "Yeah, myths

24:11

and poems are lies, but breathed

24:13

through silver." So they're beautiful lies:

24:16

beautiful, but untrue. And

24:18

Tolkien's response is basically to say, "But where

24:20

does the wish come from? Where does

24:22

the power to dream come from?" And what he

24:24

means by that is that certainly humans

24:26

do lie, as he says in the poem,

24:28

and we make terrible things and we

24:30

fill the nooks and crannies with dragons.

24:32

And you think of all of the things

24:34

that are in Middle-earth. But

24:36

when he says that we are not wholly lost

24:38

or wholly changed, what I take that to mean is that

24:40

we are not irredeemable and that

24:42

there is still something

24:45

remaining. So total depravity

24:46

- for those of us who believe in it, and I

24:48

do - it does not mean that we are as bad as

24:50

we could possibly be. What it means is that we

24:53

are pervasively depraved, which means that sin

24:55

has affected every single part of

24:57

us. And so while the idea of

24:59

being wholly lost might

25:02

make someone think that Tolkien is

25:04

arguing for some less than total corruption, and maybe

25:07

he is - maybe that's what he had in mind

25:09

when he wrote it. I think there are other ways to read

25:11

that and other ways to get the basic

25:14

thing that Tolkien wants, and

25:16

what he wanted Lewis to see. So as a Calvinist,

25:18

the way that I would say it is that though we

25:21

have pursued fallen directions,

25:24

the creational structure is good:

25:26

sort of a Kuyperian way of saying that the

25:29

created structure remains because it's made

25:31

by God. It belongs to God and

25:34

humans have taken it in all of these fallen directions

25:36

and filled the earth with dragons, and yet

25:38

we still cannot escape this

25:41

creational mandate. We cannot escape

25:43

the cultural mandate to imagine

25:45

and to make and to tell stories and

25:48

to dream and to hope, and that's going to be twisted,

25:50

but there's something that is primally

25:53

good underneath it because of its creativeness

25:56

and because of its reflection of the

25:58

image of God. So creation - and

26:01

in this case, the image of God in humanity

26:03

that imagines and makes things

26:05

- does not need to be replaced.

26:08

It needs to be healed. So grace

26:11

does not replace creation

26:13

or nature. Grace heals and

26:15

restores nature, because the creative

26:17

structure itself is good. At least, that's how

26:19

I interpret that passage as a Calvinist.

26:22

And you certainly don't need to be a Roman Catholic

26:24

to believe that. Now Tolkien

26:27

certainly was a very committed Roman

26:28

Catholic and didn't

26:30

like a lot of the things that Lewis would write

26:32

later. But I think

26:35

that the basic point that I'm trying to

26:37

make, the work I'm trying to do by using

26:39

that quote is to say that the created

26:41

structure of imagination is good even if

26:43

our imaginings have become vain: that

26:46

there's something there that God's spirit can

26:49

redeem, that God's spirit can work within

26:51

and redirect and bring

26:53

completion to sort of the hopes

26:55

that humans have.

26:58

And obviously there

27:00

are some important differences between

27:03

Roman Catholic theology and Reformed

27:06

or even broadly Protestant theology,

27:08

but the more you dig into

27:10

it, I think people might be a little bit surprised

27:13

over how much similarity there is

27:15

in some of these areas.

27:17

There can be an impression that

27:20

Roman Catholics have no concept of,

27:22

for instance, what in reformed theology, the

27:25

creator creature distinction,

27:27

or, you know, the need

27:29

for grace and salvation things

27:31

of that nature, the need for regeneration

27:34

by the spirit. I think sometimes there

27:36

can be a sense that, you know, that's

27:38

not part of Catholic theology and while

27:40

they do have different emphases and some

27:42

important differences on theological

27:44

points, I think in this area, there

27:46

actually is a lot of overlap . So that's

27:48

something useful we can draw

27:51

on , um, sort of

27:53

building on that last question. Every

27:56

apologetic method is ultimately

27:58

dependent on the work of the holy spirit.

28:00

You make a good case in this book that

28:02

our beliefs tend to be driven by our

28:04

desires. So for

28:06

Amanda find a Christian vision of the world appealing,

28:09

he needs to have his desires changed

28:11

by the holy spirit. This leads

28:13

to an important theological question

28:15

and really kind of gets at what we were just

28:17

talking about in the last one. To what extent

28:20

is the holy spirit active in this way,

28:22

among those who do not belong to Christ.

28:24

And you addressed this a bit from the

28:27

Calvinist perspective in the book. And

28:29

I was waiting to see if you had mentioned him

28:31

that Neo with this ideas of Abraham

28:33

Kuyper also seemed to be relevant in

28:36

this area. So if you could just talk about

28:38

that a little more.

28:39

Yeah. One of the things that I call the Calvinist

28:41

imagination in the book is the

28:43

conviction that any goodness or truth

28:45

or beauty that we find must have to God's

28:47

presence and action in the fallen

28:49

world. Now there's a

28:51

whole thing. And I talk about this in my book, you know,

28:54

the Protestants can't have good imaginations

28:56

and they can't make good art because they

28:58

don't have a sack , a good enough sacramental view

29:01

of there's too much distance between creator

29:03

and creation for, for there to be any

29:05

sort of meaningful, meaningful work.

29:07

But what Calvinists really do is fill

29:09

that space with a spirit so that

29:11

the holy spirit is the one who's at work drawing

29:13

creation towards consummation.

29:16

So the work of the holy spirit outside the walls

29:18

of the church, I mean, it is mysterious.

29:20

So I think we should be really hesitant and

29:22

careful to identify too quickly

29:25

what we take to be positive developments as,

29:28

oh , that's the work of the holy spirit. And we have

29:30

to be tentative and provisional because

29:32

we don't have any revelation

29:34

in the same way that we do for something

29:36

that happened within the church where we know that God has promised

29:39

to meet us, God has promised to show up. If

29:41

you think about Carl Bart, for example, this

29:44

is what he's reacting to because the Nazi

29:46

regime basically was unopposed

29:49

by the majority of German churches, because they basically

29:51

said all of the progress we've had in Germany.

29:54

That's the holy spirit, the flourishing

29:56

of our country right now, you know , prior to the war

29:58

that's because of God, God is

30:00

the one who has done that, the holy spirit, and they couldn't

30:03

distinguish between the human spirit

30:05

and the holy spirit. So I

30:07

take that as a very important caution. Nevertheless,

30:11

if we believe that God has not abandoned

30:13

creation to corruption, but is continuing

30:16

to work through the spirit to renew and heal,

30:19

then that means that we shouldn't be surprised

30:21

to find the holy spirit at work among

30:24

those outside the walls of the church and in

30:26

especially their longings and losses.

30:28

And, you know, Bobby has this wonderful quote

30:31

that I share in the book about

30:33

the holy spirit being at work and common

30:35

grace being at work in artists

30:38

and philosophers and politicians

30:40

outside, outside the walls of the church,

30:42

wherever we find these sort of signs

30:44

of the kingdom, we have to attribute that

30:46

to God's work. So that's the first part

30:49

of the question. The second part may be

30:51

with, I think you mentioned something about desire

30:54

is that if we start with desire,

30:56

so I start with desire because that's where people are.

30:59

And I think almost always we start with

31:01

either wanting something to be true or not

31:03

wanting something to be true now, wanting

31:06

something to be true. It doesn't have

31:08

any bearing on whether or not it is true,

31:11

but it does have bearing on the way I go

31:13

about the quest to find out if it is true.

31:15

And so that doesn't mean that we need to give our desires

31:18

the final word or the final authority,

31:21

because ultimately our desires have to be subjected

31:24

to scripture and to

31:26

the cross, which is something that none of us would have imagined.

31:29

If we only take desire on its own, then we end

31:31

up with a theology of glory and

31:33

we never have a theology of the cross because we would

31:36

never imagine the situation where we would actually

31:38

need to suffer. But I

31:40

am convinced that when we interrogate

31:42

human desire and we are

31:44

willing to stay with people and ask questions

31:47

and work with desire and allow people to dream.

31:49

And imagine that ultimately what we find

31:51

is that God is not less

31:54

than we imagine or desire, but that God is better

31:57

than we imagined or desire. And

31:59

so that's why I feel quite comfortable working

32:01

within the imagination, the imagined the realm,

32:04

because I know that whatever somebody thinks

32:06

God's better than that. Yeah. And

32:08

so that's where I maybe I've lost the train of the

32:10

question now, but that's where I sort of

32:12

, I'm quite hopeful. The

32:15

imagination has fallen, but it's not more

32:17

fallen than the intellect it's as fallen

32:19

is the intellect. And so that means

32:21

that if we find ourselves in a culture

32:24

where the imagination has been given some

32:26

sort of primacy, yes,

32:28

we will need to critique that. But

32:30

we also are able to start there, start

32:32

wherever people are, which

32:34

is just a basic principle of this theology

32:37

is that you start with the facts on the ground.

32:39

You don't immediately bring in a

32:41

whole different category, a whole different way of approaching

32:43

the world. If this is where people are,

32:46

what resources do we have for addressing

32:48

it ?

32:50

And I think about the, perhaps

32:52

the three images

32:54

that we really have with the holy spirit and the Bible are

32:57

wind fire and a dove.

32:59

And all of those things give me the idea

33:02

of movement of constant motion.

33:04

And when I

33:07

think about what Jesus said to Nicodemus

33:09

in John chapter three, where he described the

33:11

spirit, basically as this wind, that you could kind of

33:13

sense that as blowing, but you don't really know

33:16

ultimate direction. And

33:18

I think that does get, like he said to

33:20

the mystery of how the spirit is working. We

33:22

kind of feel sometimes

33:24

like we're seeing the spirit at work, but

33:27

we oftentimes

33:29

don't know what direction it's going to take,

33:31

or it comes at us in surprising ways.

33:33

So I think that that's a good

33:35

way of looking at it.

33:38

You spend the second half of the book

33:40

focusing chiefly on the works of George

33:43

McDonald and Marilyn Robinson. And you argue

33:45

that both serve an apologetic purpose

33:47

by allowing the reader to enter

33:50

a world where Christian principles

33:52

and the beauty of God are on display. Why

33:54

did you select these two particular

33:56

offers and have they had

33:59

an effect on your own life?

34:02

Yeah. So when I started working on this project, I was

34:04

reading a lot of philosophy and theology,

34:07

you know, thinking through theories of imagination,

34:09

how belief works, what makes belief believable.

34:12

That was a question I asked a lot and

34:14

it finally occurred to me that the best way

34:16

to explore the value of imagination

34:19

is actually to learn

34:21

from people who are experts at using

34:23

their imagination. I meaning poets

34:25

and writers and artists and culture makers.

34:28

Those are the ones who are kind

34:30

of skilled in that area. And so I started

34:32

with this fundamental conviction that we can learn a

34:34

lot from grounded artists, as

34:36

we seek to kind of do

34:39

apologetics artistically or to live

34:41

in a way that is beautiful. Um , so

34:43

I can't even MacDonald who's a 19th century

34:45

writer through CS Lewis and Lewis

34:48

famously said that George

34:50

McDonald , reading George MacDonald baptized

34:53

his imagination long before his actual

34:55

conversion. And I thought that's really interesting. So

34:58

what Magalia did was gave him this taste

35:00

for goodness, his vision of what goodness

35:02

and hope he said, he calls it holiness and surprised

35:04

by joy. And when you read the McDonald , that

35:07

it really is what you encounter is there's this

35:09

holiness that is present. I think,

35:11

in , in Tolkien as well though, there's not a lot

35:13

of explicit like religious things.

35:15

The whole thing is religious. It's just characterized

35:17

by this deep , uh , holiness. Uh,

35:20

and so I began to read McDonald because I

35:22

wanted to understand Lewis . And the

35:24

more I read him, the more that I saw that

35:26

when he was doing was addressing

35:28

the crisis of faith, which during

35:30

his time is the first

35:32

time in the English speaking world,

35:35

in the modern English world, where it

35:37

becomes socially acceptable to be an atheist.

35:40

You had atheist before, but it was always

35:42

socially unacceptable. And they had

35:44

to kind of be really careful and couch

35:46

what they said in particular ways. And so in

35:49

the 19th century, you're seeing all of these, there's

35:51

this whole body of literature, autobiographies

35:54

of, deconversion not unlike

35:56

sort of the ex evangelical thing that we're seeing

35:59

now where lots

36:01

and lots of people were writing these autobiographies

36:03

of walking away from Christian faith. And

36:06

so during this time apologetics

36:09

and the kind of more traditional sense Springs up where

36:11

you have public debates and

36:13

defenders of the faith, and you have William Paley's

36:16

design arguments about the watch.

36:18

And so George MacDonald goes a completely

36:20

different direction and what he does

36:23

instead of giving facts for the intellect, he really

36:25

looks for food for the imagination. And

36:27

so you can read in what it's called is

36:29

realistic novels. So he wrote all of these

36:31

kinds of fairytales. Then you also wrote

36:33

realistic novels and one

36:35

trilogy in particular deals with crises

36:38

of faith, the windfall trilogy, which

36:40

I focus on in my book. And yeah,

36:42

and it just really this beautiful exploration

36:44

of different characters along

36:46

the road of deconversion reconversion

36:49

deconstruction reconstruction. And

36:51

he's addressing those things imaginatively.

36:54

The second author Marilynne Robinson

36:57

was the result of me asking, okay,

36:59

Donald did that, that was the 19th century. Is

37:01

there anyone doing that now

37:04

in a way that has having a wide purchase

37:06

on not just within the Christian community,

37:09

but in the wider public. And

37:11

so Marilyn Robinson was the person that I

37:13

found after reading. There is this New

37:16

York times review of

37:18

the book Gilliad , which won the Pulitzer

37:20

prize in 2004. And

37:23

that book is about an elderly

37:25

preacher who lives in Iowa and

37:28

, uh , looking at the world through these kinds of grace

37:31

drenched eyes. And

37:34

the book was reviewed in the New York times by

37:36

a person who said, I'm an atheist, but

37:39

Robinson helps me imagine a world

37:41

that is fallen yet deeply

37:44

loved by its creator, suffused

37:46

, the divine grace. And I was like, that's exactly

37:49

what I'm looking for is an author

37:51

who can do that. So both

37:53

of these authors have had this incredible impact on

37:55

me. As I tried to read everything I could McDonald

37:58

wrote so much that I have not

38:00

been able to read all of his, his body of work,

38:02

but I tried to read as much as I could by them and just immerse

38:04

myself in them as anyone

38:07

don't always agree with everything they say, but

38:09

they do share this common approach

38:12

of taking the imagination extremely

38:14

seriously. And so I interact

38:16

with, you know, what I agree or don't agree with one

38:18

of the chapters of the book, but , um, I

38:21

think with them in the back of my mind, almost every single

38:23

day. Yeah ,

38:25

Well, yeah, it was enjoyable

38:28

to read about them because I had read

38:30

surprised by joy by CS Lewis. So

38:32

I had read about how George

38:34

McDonald was very important to him, but

38:37

I actually haven't gotten into either

38:39

Rick Giles' work or Robinson's work personally.

38:42

So you kind of made me want

38:44

to go out and read, although now you

38:46

sort of spoiled the ending, so sorry,

38:53

Both are acquired tastes. And

38:55

, um , you know, Robinson

38:58

writes books where nothing happens because

39:01

it's all about perception and seeing

39:03

the world in a particular way and

39:07

MacDonald combined spiritual formation

39:09

with storytelling. So a lot

39:11

of people find his writing to be kind of moralistic

39:13

because he's always kind of, he stops

39:15

in the middle of the narrates , like

39:17

for a long time, but that's kind of like

39:19

the pastoral heart that he has. So

39:22

you can read his fairytales. He doesn't do that in this fairytales

39:24

that much, but his realistic novels , sometimes people

39:26

don't like, so I'll say he's an acquired

39:28

taste, but so is coffee so

39:31

Well, you know, if Tolstoy

39:34

can give you his political opinions

39:37

for our chapter pod chapter,

39:39

that Georgia battle should be able

39:41

to do now is I think

39:43

when you're really good, you can get away with that kind

39:45

of thing. So in

39:48

light of your argument, that novels and

39:50

other works of art can serve as powerful

39:52

apologetic tools, how

39:54

would you assess the art and literature

39:56

being produced by the evangelical

39:59

report and world particularly here in north America are

40:01

Christian universities and seminaries

40:04

doing a sufficient job of training

40:06

students to produce works of excellence,

40:08

or have we essentially seated

40:10

this ground to the secular world?

40:13

Wow, that's a really great question. And a tricky

40:16

question. I mean, as a person who is employed by

40:18

a Christian university, I

40:23

mean, I think the obvious answer is no, we

40:26

failed and we've had a failure of imagination

40:28

to use that phrase again. I think

40:31

in some ways it is precisely because

40:33

we've been unwilling to embrace

40:36

the shift to authenticity

40:39

and we tend to process

40:41

or engage works with culture primarily

40:44

in terms of worldview compatibility rather

40:47

than empathy. So in other words,

40:49

we process culture and say, well,

40:51

do I agree with this? Is this exactly

40:53

the way I see the world rather than

40:55

seeing, okay, this is my

40:57

neighbor who I've been called to love this

41:00

people who made this and the people

41:02

who resonate with it. And maybe I resonate

41:05

with it that tells me something about

41:07

the conditions, the cultural conditions in which I find

41:09

myself in which the church has called to

41:11

now go and present the gospel. So

41:14

I think that, no, we haven't done a good

41:16

job. There are things that give me hope. There

41:18

are always outliers and people, artists

41:21

like Makoto Fujimura is a , is a great

41:23

hero of mine. Uh , contemporary

41:26

non-representational artists . Who's doing amazing, amazing work

41:28

and writing about it from a Christian and from

41:31

a reform perspective. And there are

41:33

bright spots like that. You know, I think of

41:35

Pete doctor , um , other people like

41:38

that, who've worked on Pixar films

41:40

from a place of faith. And so there's

41:42

bright spots. And sometimes, honestly

41:44

you don't always know. Uh , when I

41:46

lived in Los Angeles, I was quite

41:48

surprised to find out as I grew up in the Midwest

41:51

and then moved to Los Angeles, I was quite

41:53

surprised to find out how many Christians there were

41:55

in the industry. And, you know,

41:57

there may be not always the AA list stars

41:59

that you hear about, but they're working on

42:01

films and they're working in production.

42:03

And there , we had lots of them in our church

42:05

and just really trying to be faithful

42:08

in what they're doing in the part of the world

42:10

where God has called them. So there are reasons

42:12

for hope, but I think there definitely need

42:14

to be , um , some paradigm shifts in the

42:16

way that we think about cultural engagement.

42:19

This is part of the book that I'm writing right now

42:21

is really looking for a non anxious

42:24

approach to culture that isn't really

42:26

reactionary, but that is patient

42:30

with cultural works.

42:33

And non-anxious reproach that isn't

42:36

reactionary. That would definitely be in a minority

42:39

approach , I think, evangelicals

42:41

today. And I'm wondering

42:43

if, part of what

42:45

you mentioned there that you were kind of

42:48

surprised coming from the Midwest to get

42:50

to LA and define that there were, you

42:52

know, faithful Christians and the

42:54

film industry. And I

42:57

wonder if that isn't part of the problem that

42:59

we just assume that, oh,

43:01

the only people who would work on

43:03

Broadway or who would do art or whatever,

43:06

are all people who

43:08

are anti-Christian and

43:10

just, you know , completely give it into the sexual

43:12

revolution. And there's some truth there.

43:14

I mean, I have a report Fred , who actually

43:17

spent some time on Broadway

43:19

and told me at the time that, you know, yeah, pretty

43:21

much everyone I worked with was, I mean, she

43:24

didn't have anyone she worked with who she thought was a

43:26

faithful Christian in those days.

43:28

But I wonder if, so

43:30

, you know, maybe our assumption that

43:33

particularly if you live in the Midwest, you can kind of

43:35

assume that New York and LA, you know,

43:37

the big cities, they're kind of dens of iniquity.

43:40

I wonder if that keeps us from

43:43

being willing to engage and

43:45

get involved. And it

43:48

will become potentially increasingly difficult

43:50

for Christians to

43:53

engage in, in certain professions.

43:55

But I think that sometimes

43:57

we sabotage ourselves a little bit in

43:59

those efforts as well. So if

44:02

a person isn't capable of producing

44:05

great works of art or taking up apologetics

44:07

as a full-time career, how might they make

44:10

use of the principles in your book for their everyday

44:12

encounters, with those who need

44:14

to hear the good news of Christ?

44:16

Yeah. So I'll say a couple of things on that. Yeah.

44:18

First of all, I always have, I teach

44:20

a class called aesthetics on

44:23

faith, imagination, beauty,

44:25

and art. And I have a lot of

44:27

students who take it and say, well, I'm not creative.

44:30

And I think what they is, they're not artistic, but everyone

44:32

is creative because that's what

44:35

it means to be made in the image of God, is that

44:37

you have this creative birthright and

44:40

, uh , yeah. To take

44:42

a situation that you've been given and to seek, to

44:44

make it better and more beautiful is

44:46

a natural aesthetic impulse that humans

44:48

have. It's an imaginative impulse. If

44:51

you're in a situation that is

44:53

difficult to imagine how it could be better,

44:55

that's a natural thing that you do. So again, I'll just say

44:57

that even if you're not artistic and

44:59

you're not a person who spends time writing

45:02

or spends time making art

45:04

or dancing or whatever, whatever it is, then

45:06

you can still live a beautiful life, a life

45:09

that is characterized by excellence

45:11

and elegance. And even what

45:14

I'd call electricity, you know, a life that when people

45:16

encounter you, they're like, wow, there is something that

45:18

is really different

45:21

about that person. And so I would just say that

45:23

it means a living a life that provokes questions.

45:26

So Peter talks about be ready to

45:28

give an answer for those who, who ask about

45:30

the hope that is in you. And so when

45:32

was the last time you were asked , um , and

45:34

so have we lived the life that provoke

45:37

the question? It's like, wow, that's, that's interesting.

45:39

Why, why do you live that way? So

45:41

, um, I tell a story at the end

45:43

of the book about my wife, who,

45:46

when she was working in LA, I

45:48

worked at a company where somebody asked her the question,

45:51

why are you going to raise your kids as Christians?

45:54

Why are you going to kind of indoctrinate them with faith

45:56

rather than let them choose what they want to believe?

46:00

And, you know, most

46:02

of us, if we have faith and if

46:04

we have kids especially feel really defensive

46:06

at that idea, because it suggests

46:08

that I'm harming my children in some way. And

46:11

yet Melissa, my wife was

46:13

not defensive or anxious,

46:16

but what she did realize was that there

46:19

is a particular imaginative construal

46:22

of what it means to live with faith that

46:24

this person has. And that's

46:26

the thing that needs to change. And

46:29

so she said, well, you know, actually we don't

46:31

really think about it that way. So what's she doing

46:33

there? She's giving a different picture.

46:35

So you're thinking of it one way, but let me give you, let

46:37

me paint another picture for you. And then she

46:39

said, you know, for us, faith is

46:41

the most liberating thing we've ever experienced,

46:45

and we can imagine a greater gift to give

46:47

to our kids. So

46:49

now what she's done is she has

46:51

framed faith in a particular way

46:53

that is resonant with the thing that this

46:55

person wants, which is freedom, right?

46:57

And that's, that's very much part of the age of authenticity,

47:00

but to say, well, what if the freedom you're looking

47:02

for is not found outside

47:04

of commitment, but actually within it.

47:07

So it's reframing somebody's imagination

47:10

of what faith is and that friend

47:12

or that person was like, Hey , I have never

47:14

heard that before. Tell me more

47:16

about, you know , tell me more about your faith. And

47:18

that's just a very simple example

47:21

of what I think it means to do an imaginative

47:23

apologetic. It's inviting

47:26

an outsider. Well, first it's, it's

47:28

being willing to know some , to sit with someone,

47:30

to know them well enough to understand

47:32

what would be good news to them. And

47:34

that doesn't mean changing the good news

47:37

to fit them necessarily. But it does

47:39

mean in the same way that the gospel writers

47:41

do telling the gospel in a particular

47:43

way, that fits the audience that resonates

47:45

with the audience. So , you know, Matthew's

47:48

written to a Jewish audience. And so it's , Matthew

47:50

is framed in a way that answers the questions

47:52

they're asking. So what does that mean

47:54

when you meet somebody? What are the questions they're asking

47:57

and will it be good news to them? And then

47:59

as I said, like giving them a glimpse of what it's like

48:01

from the inside. So when

48:03

I look at the world, here's what I see here are

48:05

my reasons for hope. Yeah. There's

48:07

all these reasons for despair, but let me tell you why I have

48:09

hope. So that's again, inviting

48:12

empathy and also demonstrating empathy.

48:14

And that's why testimonies, I think have so much

48:16

power and they will always have power because

48:19

they engage you not

48:21

with the critic at the critical intellect, but with the imagination.

48:24

So if I said, oh , let me tell you a story. Almost

48:27

like inside your psyche, something

48:29

shifts, right? Because you shift from

48:31

like, when you listen to a story you're not usually

48:33

being really critical. You're trying to enter into

48:35

the story. It's called the willing suspension

48:37

of disbelief. You know, like when you see a movie. So

48:40

I think it's those, those are the pieces, the basic

48:42

pieces of what sort of everyday conversation

48:44

looks like the wise apologists

48:47

have always known this and I've always done it this way, you

48:49

know, which is why Pascal Pascal

48:51

said already in 17th century,

48:54

you know, you make people

48:56

wish it were true. And then you

48:58

show that it is. Um, and so I think

49:01

that one of the critiques I have

49:03

of the way we've done apologetics is that we're

49:05

kind of standing on the street corner as

49:07

it were shouting. It's true. It's true. It's true. But

49:10

the people to whom we are speaking don't

49:12

care if it's true and it don't

49:14

understand why would this even be good for

49:16

the world if this was true. So

49:18

I think that's the ground we need to plow.

49:20

That's the work we need to do, you

49:23

know, just in our everyday conversations and the

49:25

way we live our lives, make

49:27

somebody say, well, I can't, I mean, Tim Keller

49:29

also says things like this. I can't

49:31

believe that, but I wish I could believe that when

49:34

you've engaged somebody

49:36

on that level, the way

49:38

they go about the quest for truth is completely

49:40

different.

49:42

Yeah. And there are some questions

49:44

that if you don't have the right,

49:47

I guess you could say philosophical

49:49

foundation and groundwork already

49:51

laid. Then when you give some,

49:53

you know, you make a statement like Jesus Christ

49:55

rose from the dead. I think about

49:57

when Paul spoke , uh, on Mars

50:00

hill and he gave that

50:02

great little short survey

50:04

where he appealed to lots of things that

50:06

his audience would understand. And then

50:08

he got to this part where he said, Jesus

50:11

rose from the dead. And they're like, oh, okay,

50:13

hold on. We don't know what, what

50:15

is this crazy thing you're talking about?

50:18

Their philosophical assumptions were

50:20

such that they just couldn't even comprehend

50:23

or come close to accepting

50:25

what he was telling about . And I don't know that that

50:27

was an error that Paul made because

50:29

sometimes, you know, it takes a lot of tries

50:32

and one person has to lay the seed and one person has

50:34

to water it. And it takes a long time to reset

50:36

people's assumptions, but

50:38

that's perhaps even a good case in scriptures

50:41

or detailing what you're saying. So

50:43

I mentioned that you have a new book

50:45

scheduled for release next year, called your

50:48

interpretation is your life. Could

50:50

you provide a brief preview

50:52

of that and discuss how it is

50:54

or is not related to this one?

50:58

Yeah, I think it's related to, it's not, it's

51:01

not so much a book about apologetics

51:04

though. It is a book about the way the church

51:06

and theology relates to culture. So

51:09

that's my basic project is I'm interested in

51:11

the ways that culture shapes, theology

51:14

and the way that theology prepares

51:17

us to care for culture and

51:19

to bear witness to culture. So

51:22

I'm always writing at that intersection

51:24

of the two. And , uh , your

51:26

interpretation is your life is a book about

51:29

theology and culture, putting them in conversation

51:31

and saying that this is a very complex conversation.

51:33

And so what I try to do is go through five

51:36

different layers. So meaning

51:39

than power, then ethics,

51:43

then religion, and then aesthetics, and

51:45

talk about how all of these layers

51:47

are. You could just spend a lot of time

51:49

talking about the religious aspects of culture.

51:52

You could spend a lot of time talking about morality

51:55

and the way that sort of moral frameworks

51:57

are implicit and cultural judgements

52:00

and kind of going through all of these things. And ultimately

52:03

what I'm trying to do is to articulate

52:05

a approach to cultural engagement that

52:08

is non reductive,

52:11

non dismissive, and

52:13

non-anxious. And I think

52:15

that that follows from faith and love

52:17

and hope. So non reductive because of faith,

52:20

because we believe that we live in a world that belongs

52:22

to God, the world in which it's filled with complexity,

52:25

but all things hold together in Christ. And

52:27

so we don't, yeah

52:30

, it's a disservice to , to reduce things.

52:32

And a big problem is , is reductionism, right?

52:35

And we, that happens on all sides

52:37

and people reducing things down to something,

52:39

something very beautiful and complex and

52:41

reducing it down to something simplistic . And

52:43

then second non dismissive, which

52:46

is born out of love for neighbor. So

52:48

we should not dismiss our neighbors

52:51

because we are called to love them. And then finally

52:53

non anxious . And that's born out of the theological virtue of

52:55

hope. So there's lots of reasons

52:57

for anxiety. There's lots of reasons to worry,

53:00

but ultimately if Jesus Christ

53:02

is raised from the dead, you

53:05

don't have to worry as, as a Christian.

53:07

And , uh, and so that means that you

53:09

don't have to fear culture as

53:11

if it could somehow undo the resurrection

53:14

or as if it could undo God's work in

53:16

the world or as if the church is going to sort of just

53:18

like disappear and go out of business

53:20

because of whatever the latest threat to

53:23

the churches, the church has this

53:25

beautiful, broken work

53:27

of God across time and space

53:30

and in all across all different

53:32

challenges. And so I'm just trying

53:34

to articulate an approach that is

53:36

trying to get a sense of the complexity

53:39

of the conversation, and yet

53:42

give hope that we can actually

53:44

make a difference in the way that

53:46

we engage it . And to

53:48

say that your interpretation

53:51

of culture and your interpretation

53:53

of scripture is not just what you think

53:55

about it, but it's actually, when you

53:57

do like the way that you live your life, that's

54:00

your interpretation. Finally,

54:02

the way that you put it all together and make

54:04

a life that is either resonant with

54:07

scripture or not resonant with

54:09

scripture. So that's the basic,

54:11

that's the basic idea. I'm

54:13

still working on the elevator pitch , uh , you know,

54:15

32nd version, but that's what I'm

54:17

trying to do.

54:19

Well, I liked the many times you

54:21

mentioned reducing anxiety because

54:23

in this time of COVID, I think if one

54:25

thing we all need is to step to

54:27

reduce our anxiety and our

54:30

contentiousness. So I appreciate

54:32

that. And thank you so much

54:34

for taking the time to talk with me today. I think

54:36

it's been a very beneficial discussion.

54:38

Yeah. Thanks so much, really great questions. And

54:40

thank you.

54:49

[inaudible] where we arrive at [inaudible]

55:07

[inaudible]

55:09

It was a pleasure to speak with Justin today about

55:11

his book re-imagining apologetics.

55:13

Next week, I'll be talking to Dr. Alex

55:16

sang about the at times uneasy

55:18

relationship between Christianity and philosophy.

55:21

I hope you can join us as we take a deep dive

55:23

into church history. This podcast

55:25

is written and produced by yours. Truly please

55:28

send all complaints by mail to 1600

55:30

Pennsylvania avenue, Washington, DC.

55:32

The music you've been listening to is from the song

55:35

citizens by Christian recording artists

55:37

, John Guerra, off his album, Keeper of Days.

55:40

Reviews and ratings are important and helping people

55:42

discover new shows. If you have a moment,

55:44

please leave an honest rating or review

55:47

for this podcast, wherever you listen to it.

55:49

Also consider mentioning it to friends or sharing

55:51

episodes on social media. I know your

55:53

time is valuable and thank you in advance for

55:55

any help you can provide now

55:57

to him who is able to keep you from stumbling

56:00

and to make you stand in the presence of his glory.

56:02

Blameless with great joy to the only

56:05

God, our savior through Jesus Christ. Our

56:07

Lord be glory, majesty,

56:09

dominion, and authority before all

56:11

time and now and forever. Amen.

56:14

Have a great week.

56:16

[MUSIC PLAYS]

Rate

Join Podchaser to...

  • Rate podcasts and episodes
  • Follow podcasts and creators
  • Create podcast and episode lists
  • & much more

Episode Tags

Do you host or manage this podcast?
Claim and edit this page to your liking.
,

Unlock more with Podchaser Pro

  • Audience Insights
  • Contact Information
  • Demographics
  • Charts
  • Sponsor History
  • and More!
Pro Features