THEO 230 — Apologetics
THEO 230 teaches apologetics — the work of giving an honest account of the Christian hope to those who ask for one. It is a skills course, not a survey: rather than catalog arguments to be memorized, it teaches one way of answering and then practices it on every hard question in turn. The charter is 1 Peter 3:15 — always be ready to give an answer, yet with gentleness and respect — and the whole course is built to honor both halves of that verse, the readiness and the gentleness together. The student learns to meet a challenge by stating it at its strongest, weighing the Christian response with both its force and its honest limits, and commending the faith as something to be offered rather than a fight to be won. The course walks the classic questions: whether the world points beyond itself to God, whether mind and morality and being do; the problem of evil in its hardest forms; whether the Scriptures can be trusted; the historical case for the resurrection; the relation of science and faith; and the modern challenges of the new atheism, religious pluralism, and religious violence. Where a great argument or a great objection has a public-domain primary source, the student reads it in the original words — Anselm and Aquinas and Paley and Pascal for the arguments, Hume and the Epicurean formulation for the objections — so the steel-man is sometimes the skeptic’s own voice and the response is sometimes the saint’s own. The course is ecumenical and takes no house position on the questions Christians of deep faith and learning answer differently. On creation and evolution it presents young-earth, old-earth, and evolutionary-creation views each at full strength and endorses none; the apologetic schools — classical, evidential, presuppositional, Reformed epistemology — are shown as complementary postures, not parties to join. Every objection is given its full weight before any reply, and every reply names where it stops short. The aim throughout is the one the charter verse sets: to be ready with an answer and to give it in love, knowing that an argument won and a person lost is no victory.
Learning outcomes
- Answer any challenge to the faith by the signature method: state the objection at full strength, give the Christian response with its force and its honest limits, and commend it with gentleness and respect.
- Explain what apologetics is and is not, the charter of 1 Peter 3:15, the broad history of Christian apologetics, and the major apologetic approaches as complementary postures.
- Present and weigh the arguments that the world points beyond itself to God — the cosmological and teleological arguments — with their force and their limits.
- Present and weigh the arguments from mind, morality, and being — the moral and ontological arguments and Pascal’s wager — and the difference between a proof and an invitation.
- Engage the problem of evil in its logical, evidential, and existential forms, and the major Christian responses, with pastoral honesty.
- Assess the case for trusting the Bible — textual transmission, archaeology, and prophecy — and the honest limits of each line of evidence.
- Assess the historical case for the resurrection — the evidence, the alternative theories, and the minimal-facts approach — and the question of miracles.
- Engage science and faith without a house position, and the modern challenges of the new atheism, religious pluralism, and religious violence, and answer an unseen objection by the method.
What Apologetics Is
Apologetics is the work of giving an honest account of the Christian hope to anyone who asks for one, and this module sets out what that work is and is not. It opens on the charter verse, 1 Peter 3:15, which asks for readiness and gentleness in the same breath, and on Paul before the philosophers at Athens as a model of engaged, respectful answering. Here the course introduces its signature method, the three moves practiced in every module that follows: state a challenge at its full strength, give the Christian response with its force and its honest limits, and commend the faith with gentleness and respect. It also walks the broad history of apologetics and presents the major approaches, classical, evidential, presuppositional, and Reformed epistemology, as complementary postures rather than parties to join.
Does God Exist? (I): The World Points Beyond Itself
This module takes up the arguments that the world itself points beyond itself to God. It reads the cosmological argument, the move from a world that need not exist to a first cause of its existence, in Aquinas’s own words, and the teleological argument, the move from order and apparent design to a designer, in Paley’s. Each argument is given with both its force and its honest limit, since a first cause or a cosmic designer is not yet the Father of Jesus Christ. The module then states the strongest objection in the skeptic’s own voice, Hume’s critique of the design analogy, and asks how a careful apologist answers it without overclaiming.
Does God Exist? (II): Mind, Morality, and Being
Where the previous module looked outward to the world, this one turns to mind, morality, and being. It presents the moral argument, that the felt weight of obligation points to a lawgiver, in Newman’s words; the ontological argument, Anselm’s reasoning from that than which nothing greater can be conceived, with Gaunilo’s famous reply; and Pascal’s wager, which is less a proof than a prompt to the will. Each is weighed for what it establishes and what it leaves untouched. Running through the module is a distinction the whole course depends on, the difference between an argument that compels and an invitation that calls.
The Problem of Evil
This module takes up the problem of evil in its hardest forms, the logical, the evidential, and the existential cry of the one actually in pain. It states the problem at full strength, in the Epicurean formulation that has stood as a challenge for centuries, before weighing any reply. The major Christian responses follow, the free-will defense, the soul-making account, the appeal to a greater good, and Augustine’s account of evil as the absence of good, each measured for what it answers and what it leaves open. The module ends not with a tidy theodicy but with the cross, where God enters the suffering rather than explaining it away, and with how to speak to a person in grief.
Can We Trust the Bible?
This module assesses the case for trusting the Bible and is careful to name the limits of each line of evidence. It looks first at how the text came down to us, the manuscript record and the work of textual criticism, distinguishing a reliable text from an inspired one, since transmission alone cannot establish that what was faithfully copied is also true. It then weighs what archaeology can and cannot confirm and how fulfilled prophecy functions as evidence, with the honest cautions around dating, specificity, and hindsight. Throughout, the aim is a case stated soberly rather than overclaimed.
The Resurrection
At the center of the Christian claim stands the resurrection, and this module assesses the historical case for it. It begins with the data most historians grant, drawn from the early creed Paul records, and introduces the minimal-facts approach in brief. It then sets out the alternative explanations, the swoon, theft, hallucination, and legend theories, each at its strongest before it is weighed, and asks why the resurrection is offered as the best explanation of the evidence. The module closes with the strongest objection in Hume’s own words, his argument that no testimony can establish a miracle, and how the apologist answers it.
Science and Faith
This module engages science and faith, the ground where Christians who share a faith most often divide. It reconsiders the supposed warfare of the two, then presents three Christian views of creation and evolution, young-earth, old-earth, and evolutionary creation, each at full strength in terms its own adherents would accept, endorsing none. The held line is that faithful, learned Christians hold each of these. It closes on Big Bang cosmology and the fine-tuning of the constants, presented as openings for the argument rather than proofs, with the multiverse and other responses weighed honestly.
Hard Questions, Real People
The final module turns from arguments to the people who raise them, engaging the modern challenges with charity under pressure. It meets the new atheism at its strongest, weighing what it gets right and where it overreaches, and takes up religious pluralism as an apologetic question, how to hold the Christian claim while genuinely honoring other traditions and never disparaging them. It faces the problem of religious violence, including Christianity’s own history, owned honestly and never scored as a point against another faith. The course ends with a capstone in which the student answers an unseen objection by the method, and its last word is the posture, an answer given in gentleness and respect.