In this gracious appointment, they nurtured my spiritual growth by providing me with many opportunities to teach, preach, counsel, and disciple, and facilitated the completion of this project. More than any other person, the completion of this project is due to my beautiful wife, Becky.
INTRODUCTION
In the revelation of truth, the glory of Christ shines forth with living brightness (2 Cor. 3:18). As such, it deals with how apologetics strengthens our faith in the truth of the gospel and thereby our sanctification of Christ.
Contending for the Faith
In any case, unbiblical worldviews pose a potentially mortal threat to the church by undermining faith in the truth of the gospel. God sovereignly uses a prepared defense of the gospel to cultivate in the hearts of believers a growing faith in the truth of the gospel. In the same way, the fight for the truth of the gospel protects the church from the danger of heresy and keeps believers in the love of Christ.
This suppression of truth causes unresolved anxiety and tension in the human heart. Embedded in the fabric of the universe is God's "law of creation" or "the totality of God's sovereign activity toward the created cosmos. All that is wrong with the world because of the fall is conquered at the cross of Christ.
The class information was also posted in the bulletin each week before the start of the course. As described in chapter 1, the faith of FBC members in the truth of the Word of God has been undermined.
Introduction to Apologetics
At the beginning of the course, each class member was given a copy of the class text, Christendom: A Student's Guide, by Philip Ryken. Each class began with prayer, a review of the previous week's lesson content, and a discussion of the weekly reading assignment in the class text. The scope and sequence of the course as described above was also given to the class so that they could understand how the individual lessons fit together and how they contributed to the course as a whole.
In addition, the biblical dualism of truth and falsehood evident in the passages examined served to introduce the topic of the nature of truth. Contending for the faith protects the spiritual life of the church by safeguarding the purity of the apostolic doctrine which was delivered in its complete and finished form to the church. Because religious truth is widely perceived in our culture as a personal choice, it was important to address the nature of truth at the start of the course.
Introduction to Worldviews
The apologetic task removes the clouds of unbelief and gives the faithful a clearer view of the glory of Christ; this renewed vision fuels a love for the body of Christ and the lost, and enables believers to engage with the world rather than withdraw from it or be conformed to it. The call to defend the faith is as pressing today as it was for the early church. The church today finds itself immersed in a relativistic culture not unlike that of first century Palestine.
It was also critical to emphasize that regardless of one's worldview, one's mind functions within one's own sphere. One of the tests of the truth of a worldview is whether it is viable—whether its adherents can consistently live out the implications of their beliefs in their everyday lives. Next, the captivity of the Church in false worldviews was discussed, as was a brief history of the cultural factors that led the Church to acquiesce to secular ideologies.
Assessing Postmodernism
Although many fail to live up to their worldview because it is untrue, Christians who fail to do so are victims of a cosmic battle. Moreover, because it does not offer universal explanations, it is not comprehensive and thus fails the test of a worldview. This class began with a review of the nature of the worldviews and conclusions of our study of postmodernism.
Relatively little time was devoted to the worldview of polytheism because it is not prevalent in the West and has obvious shortcomings. So it has no explanatory power because it is not all-encompassing; the gods are finite, living within the natural universe and limited by its laws; polytheism does not answer the origin of the cosmos or of the gods, nor does it explain many universal aspects of reality. Other important points to discuss were the pantheistic view of human divinity and the limitless human potential realized in enlightenment (as modeled by Jesus Christ), contradictions inherent in the system of reincarnation, the supposed illusory nature of the physical universe, and the inevitable implicit moral relativism. in the unity of good and evil.
Assessing Atheism
By definition, the scientific method tests only physical phenomena—it can neither prove nor disprove anything outside the physical realm. It was also important to demonstrate from the writings of atheist scientists that they unapologetically profess a religious commitment to naturalism that precedes any evidence and that strongly influences or determines their findings. Rather, it was the assumptions of the Christian worldview that gave birth to the scientific method.
Both options are untenable and insufficient to answer the origin of the universe. Another implicit difficulty of atheism is that reliance on the human senses and cognitive faculties to provide true knowledge of the world is simply unjustified given the assumptions of atheism. Also discussed in this lesson was the bankruptcy of the theory of evolution to explain the wonder of the human race, as well as the astonishing diversity of complex life on Earth.
Theistic Arguments
Along these lines, atheistic materialism is completely unable to explain non-material aspects of daily human life for purely materialistic reasons; these include the most compelling facets of human experience such as love, joy, morality, worship,. Given atheistic materialism, humans are merely biological machines that respond to the stimulus of their environment in ways that are completely determined—this view, held consistently, leads inevitably to nihilism and makes the atheistic worldview utterly unlivable. Two additional arguments advanced in favor of the theistic worldview were the moral argument and the anthropological argument.
Since it is true that all moral laws require a moral lawgiver, and it is likewise true that universal moral laws exist, it must be concluded that there is a transcendent moral lawgiver. These two pieces of evidence constitute a paradox: the profound beauty and glory of humanity and its tragic corruption. This is a powerful argument because it connects directly to everyday human experience; all men desperately seek to understand this tension that plagues humanity and unsettles their own souls.
Refuting Islam
The introduction was followed by a brief history of Islam and the historical contrast between the spread of Islam by the edge of the sword and spread. This section covered doctrines such as: true theology and the absolute unity of Allah, Islamic prophets and the denial of the deity of Christ, Islamic holy books and the alleged corruption of the manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments, Islamic anthropology, doomsday and soteriology, and the five (or six) pillars of Islam. Much evidence has been presented to prove that the Qur'an was not inspired: it contained many contradictions, it was not uniquely preserved, it did not contain valid prophecies, and it did not in any way indicate a supernatural nature.
Evidence has also been presented to demonstrate that while the unity and diversity evident in creation perfectly reflect the Trinitarian God of the Christian worldview, the perfect unity of the God of Islam is not reflected in the created order. Islamic anthropology and soteriology and the inadequacy of these doctrines to explain human depravity and to resolve human guilt and alienation were discussed at length. To build bridges to Muslims, Christ's supernatural nature can also be shown from the Qur'an.
The Case for the Christian Worldview Worldview
The detailed results of the pre- and post-course survey results are illustrated in Table 1. The fourth goal of this project was to equip FBC members to defend the truth of the gospel using apologetics. The second strength of the project was the precise analysis of the need for an apologetics training program for FBC members.
The fourth strength of the project was the scope and order of the worldview and apologetics curriculum as described in Chapter 4. The second weakness of the project was the sporadic presence of some classmates. The level of involvement of the participants in the training was a limitation that was recognized at the beginning of the project.
Would Do Differently
Please provide only the last 3 numbers of your Social Security Number: ________
How many years has it been since you came to faith in Christ? ________
How many of the eight apologetics training classes have you attended? ________
Please circle the answer that best indicates how often you dialogue with others about ultimate beliefs and the truth of the gospel
Please circle the answer that best indicates how often you try to analyze media sources to identify wrong views and philosophies as you encounter them (This includes the
Please circle the answer that best indicates how often you try to analyze media sources to identify false views and philosophies when you encounter them (This includes. I am confident in my ability to defend Christ's resurrection from Scripture, evidence, and reason. If God is were good and all-powerful, then there would be no evil in the world.
All the evil and pain in the world makes it hard for me to believe in God. The third part of the WVAS looks at your worldview and how well you understand the worldviews that shape our culture.
What are the dominant worldviews in our culture? _____________________________
How do people’s worldviews influence the way they see the world? _______________
Explain how your worldview shapes the way you live.__________________________
Explain how people should determine their worldview. _________________________
How do we discern the worldviews of others? ________________________________
I read my Bible (check only one) ___ A. more than once per day
I meditate on Scripture (check only one) ___ A. more than once per day
I pray (check only one) ___ A. more than once per day
I have a specific time set aside for prayer
The panel will use the rubric to measure the biblical faithfulness, factual accuracy, clarity, completeness, and practicality of the curriculum. The participant evaluation rubric on the next page was used to measure the effectiveness of the course in equipping FBC members to defend the truth of the gospel using apologetics. The table on the following page illustrates each class member's score for each criterion, each class member's mean score, the class mean score for each criterion, and the class mean for all criteria.
New Evidence That Demands Judgment: Evidence I and II completely updated in one volume to answer the questions that challenge Christians in the 21st century. Love your God with all your mind: The role of reason in the life of the soul. We hope this project will help FBC members to see and accept the truth about the glory of Jesus Christ.
