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[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.

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[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

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56:05

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56:11

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56:14

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56:16

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