What is apologetics? In short, it is giving good reasons and evidence to believe that Christianity is true. Apologetics focuses on some big questions about the truth of Christianity, like “Does God exist?” “Who was Jesus?” “How do we know Jesus is God?” “Is the Bible even historically reliable?” Often, these questions can be hard to answer to a skeptical world, especially when being confronted with them for the first time. In this course, we seek to equip teens with the resources they need to navigate these issues. This course contains most of the same basic material from the “Intro to Apologetics” course, but it is presented at a high-school level.

Is There a God?

Part 1: The First-Cause Argument for God

The first-cause argument for God’s existence, often called the “cosmological argument,” says that God exists because the universe had a beginning. If the universe had a beginning, then the universe needs a first cause. In fact, there have been many first-cause arguments made by philosophers in different cultures, such as Aristotle’s unmoved mover. Based on the evidence from modern scientific discoveries, such as Einstein’s general theory of relativity and Hubble’s red-shift observation, scientists agree that the universe did have a beginning. Since the universe began to exist, then the universe must have a cause. But what is this cause? From the first-cause argument, we can infer that this cause is God.

Part 2: The Design Argument for God

The design argument for God’s existence argues that God exists because things like the universe, earth, and life look like they have been designed. Through observation, we can see that every design has a designer, but how do we detect design? When something is both complex (it has multiple parts) and specified (the parts are not randomly arranged), it can be said to be designed. One way we notice design in the universe is by the fine tuning of its physical constants. We also notice design in the way that the earth is very specifically situated in our galaxy and solar system to allow life to exist. Finally, we notice design in the way life contains information in DNA. All of this evidence of design points to the existence of a designer, an intelligent supreme being like God.

Part 3: Does Evolution Prove There’s No God?

Some people might say that evolution is proof that God doesn’t exist and that Christianity isn’t true. Evolution is the idea that natural selection acting on random genetic mutations can explain all the diversity of life. We know that natural selection does happen since it has been observed taking place, but how powerful is this process? Can natural selection produce new types of organisms? One scientist, Michael Behe, argues that natural selection is not powerful enough to produce new species. Based on studying things like fruit flies and malaria interacting with sickle-cell anemia, Behe says that there seems to be a limit to what natural selection can produce. If this is true, then it indicates that evolution, on a large scale, is false. If evolution is false, then certainly it can’t prove that there is no God. However, even if evolution is true, it still doesn’t prove that there is no God or that Christianity isn’t true. Large-scale evolution still can’t explain the origin of life in the first place, and in addition, there are many other good arguments for God’s existence that aren’t related to evolution at all.

Part 4: The Moral Argument for God

The moral argument for God’s existence says God is the best explanation for the fact that there are objective moral truths. Objective morality means that there are moral truths that exist beyond anybody’s own individual preferences, beliefs, or opinions. Objective morality seems self-evident; we intuitively know that some things are right and others are wrong. So, what’s the best explanation for morality? Where does it come from? Some atheist philosophers like Erik Wielenberg argue that even though morality is objective, it doesn’t need a personal source like God. However, morality is very personal, and so it would make sense that morality comes from a personal source; thus, it is proposed that God, existing as a trinity in loving relationships, provides the best explanation for the existence of objective morality.

Part 5: If God Exists, Why Is There Evil?

The problem of evil is something we probably all struggle with at one time in our lives. If there really is a good God out there, then why is there so much pain and suffering in this world? There are two ways to look at the problem of evil: the logical version and the probability version. The logical version argues that if evil exists, then an all-powerful and all-good God can’t exist. In response, the free-will defense says that God allows human beings to have free will, which means we are free to choose evil. But since all this evil exists anyway, isn’t it the case that God probably doesn’t exist? This is called the probability version of the problem of evil. Christians have offered various explanations, called “theodicies,” of why God would allow evil. Examples of these include the Greater Good Theodicy or Adam’s own Divine Love Theodicy, which says that God allowed evil because he wanted to create beings who could love like He does, but love requires free will or else it’s not truly love.

Is Jesus’ Message from God?

Part 6: Whose Description of God Is Correct?

The first-cause, design, and moral arguments for God demonstrate that a supreme being exists. Many cultures around the world have recognized this reality because of these types of arguments. The Greeks recognized the existence of a supreme being behind the world, like Aristotle’s “Unmoved Mover.” The Persians held to a monotheistic religion called Zoroastrianism which affirmed a supreme being. Ancient Indian cultures, such as the Nyaya tradition, also posited the existence of a supreme being. Arabic thinkers, such as al-Ghazali, used philosophy to argue for the existence of a supreme being. However, whose description of this supreme being is correct? To determine this, we have to examine the evidence. Christians think that the strongest evidence seems to be that Jesus of Nazareth is this supreme bring; in other words, He was God. By studying history, we see that Jesus actually existed, He claimed to be God, and He did miracles to authenticate His claim to be God.

Part 7: Reasons to Believe Jesus’ Message Is from God

How do we know Jesus’ message really was from God? There are various pieces of evidence that can support this conclusion. Jesus is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, moral teachers. According to the historical sources we have about Him, Jesus seems to have lived up to the moral standards He taught. Jesus is one of the most, if not the most, influential persons in all of world history, and He accomplished this by merely being a poor, itinerant teacher for three years. Jesus also fulfilled many prophecies about a coming Messiah which we can confirm were written hundreds of years before He lived. Two of the most notable of these are the Messianic prophecies from Daniel 9 and Isaiah 53. Finally, Jesus did miracles, including being resurrected from the dead. That is probably the strongest piece of evidence for thinking Jesus’ message came from God, since He could do miracles to validate His claim to have a message from God.

Part 8: Historical Evidence for Jesus’ Message and Miracles

If Jesus’ miracles are good evidence to believe His message was from God, how do we know that Jesus performed miracles in the first place? The New Testament contains evidence of Jesus’ miracles, but can we trust the New Testament? Does the text we have today accurately represent the original New Testament? Are the accounts historically reliable? Bart Ehrman, a non-Christian scholar, has laid out the criteria that both Christians and non-Christians affirm by which historical sources are evaluated. These include having multiple, independent, corroborating sources which are early, extensive, and non-biased. Historical sources that meet each of these criteria can be considered reliable and increase our certainty that the events they record actually happened. Additionally, when looking at the accuracy of the text of ancient documents, the number of copies we have and the length of time between the original and the copies that survived are considered. When we look at the sources that mention Jesus and His message, we find that they meet these historical criteria, and, when compared with other ancient sources, the New Testament exceeds all others in number of copies and closeness to the events it records.

Part 9: Four Reasons to Believe the Accounts of Jesus’ Message and Miracles

When the multiple ancient sources that mention Jesus, including the books of the New Testament, are examined, we find that they provide good reasons to trust their historical accounts. First, we have more than 20 sources that record Jesus’ life and words. These sources are independent and thus record the testimonies of multiple individuals about Jesus’ life. The sources written by Christians are consistent with one another and corroborate the facts contained in each account. For example, an early Christian named Papias provides an early, first-century account of Jesus that confirms what it written in the New Testament. Some skeptics point to differences between the gospel accounts found in the New Testament as evidence that they aren’t reliable, but many of these criticisms are the result of an overstated “hyper-skepticism.” Most gospel differences are small and reconcilable when various reasonable explanations are considered. Finally, the sources written by non-Christians also corroborate the facts contained in the Christian sources. For example, the Roman author Tacitus and the Jewish author Josephus both give us early corroborating information about Jesus. In fact, we could know many of the basic facts about Jesus’ life and ministry just from reading extrabiblical, non-Christian sources.

Part 10: Four More Reasons to Believe the Accounts of Jesus’ Message and Miracles

When examining the historical sources contained in the New Testament to determine if they accurately portray Jesus’ life and message, we can look to the fact that these sources are dated very early to right after the time that Jesus lived. In other words, the New Testament authors gave their testimony soon after the events took place. Some of the New Testament books even contain creeds that go back even earlier, to around the AD 30s, within two to five years of Jesus’ death. Additionally, the fact that the New Testament authors were wiling to suffer and die for their testimonies indicates that they believed they were telling the truth. Since many of them were eyewitnesses, they were also in the best position to know whether or not what they were saying was really true. The New Testament authors also included embarrassing details in their accounts that made them look bad, something that a person making up a story isn’t likely to do. Finally, Jesus’ resurrection is the best explanation of the well-attested historical facts about Jesus that we learn from these historical sources. The “minimal facts argument” shows that alternate explanations that deny Jesus’ resurrection simply don’t fit the historical data we have as well as simply believing that Jesus actually rose from the dead.

Is the Bible from God?

Part 11: How Do We Know What Books Should Be in the Bible?

How did the books that are in our Bibles today end up being included in the Bible? Who made that decision? How did they know which books should be included in the Bible? How do we know that they made the right decisions? The question of which books should be in the Bible is really just a question of which messages are truly messages from God. As was discussed in previous videos, we know that messages are from God by observing the ability of those who have such messages to do miracles. But can we really trust miracles? Some will object that miracles are impossible, that miracle claims are all fakes, and that we don’t see miracles today. They might conclude, like David Hume did, that you should never believe a miracle claim. However, upon closer examination, these objections fail to disprove the usefulness of miracles to confirm messages from God.

Part 12: What Books Should Be in the New Testament?

How do we know what is a message from God and what isn’t? We know by miracles, which authenticate that something is really from God. There were three unique time periods when many miracles took place, and these were the times that major parts of the Bible were being written: the time of Moses, the time of the prophets, and the time of Jesus and the apostles. There is good historical evidence that the apostles did miracles to back up their claims, so the New Testament should include the books that the apostles said were from God. The early church did the historical research necessary to conclude that the 27 books in the New Testament were really messages from God and that books like the so-called “Gospel of Thomas” were not. Early church councils like the Council of Nicaea didn’t make the Bible; they merely verified which books were really affirmed by the apostles. An apostle’s affirmation of a book was more important than its authorship, because not all books (Mark, Luke, Hebrews) were written by an apostle.

Part 13: What Books Should Be in the Old Testament?

Although virtually all Christians agree on the 27 books of the New Testament, there is not the same unanimous agreement with respect to the books in the Old Testament. Protestants only recognize 39 books in the Old Testament, while Catholics have 46 books and the Eastern Orthodox have even more. So, which books should be in the Old Testament, and how do we know? These books that Christians disagree about are often call the “apocryphal books” by Protestants and the “deuterocanonical books” by Catholics. There are many reasons that Protestants do not include these books in their Bibles. We can look at the development of the Hebrew canon and what Jesus and the apostles seem to affirm. We can note that many early Christians and the Jewish community did not accept them as Scritpure, nor does the New Testament refer to them as God’s Word. In addition, there are concerns with the accuracy and historical reliability of these works. In light of reasons like this, Protestants feel justified in not considering these books to be true messages from God that belong in Scripture. However, even though Christians do disagree on this, if God exists and Jesus is God, then Christianity is true, even if we’ve made minor mistakes about which books should be included in the Bible.

Part 14: How Can the Bible Be from God Since It Was Written by Humans?

The doctrine of inspiration tells us how God used human beings to communicate His messages. The Bible is indeed a message from God, but that message was written down by diverse humans who were inspired by God to write it, utilizing their own personalities and styles in the process. Additionally, the fact that God inspired that Bible and that God cannot lie leads to another conclusion: the doctrine of inerrancy, the idea that the Bible contains no errors. Since the messages from God contained in the Bible are written in human language, some skeptics will raise the issue of religious language. They will allege that, even if there were a God, since He is such an infinite and transcendent being, our language is inadequate to describe Him and thus meaningless. There are three main responses to this. One response says that language referring to God uses the exact same meanings as in other finite contexts. Another response claims that religious language is equivocal, meaning that our language can’t actually describe an infinite God because He always transcends the ability of finite language. A third response is that our language is analogous in that it has some connection to what God is like and can describe Him using comparisons and similarities.

Part 15: Is the Whole Bible True?

Christians believe the Bible is inerrant because God inspired the text of Scripture, and God cannot lie. The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy was written in order to explain what Christians do and don’t mean when they speak about the Bible being inerrant. For example, Christians who believe in inerrancy do not believe that all the copies we have of the Bible today are inerrant. In addition, they don’t believe the Bible approves of everything it records, nor is it always technically precise, has perfect grammar, or always explains events chronologically. Furthermore, believing the Bible is without errors doesn’t mean that the Bible contains all truths or that it doesn’t communicate using literary devices. Not everything in the Bible is meant to be taken literally, and even literally recorded historical events can be paraphrased or summarized. Some Christians object to the doctrine of inerrancy by claiming that Jesus only accommodated to His audience or that He had human limitations, but these objections don’t stand up to scrutiny. Finally, many specific allegations of errors have to be investigated on a case-by-case basis. However, even if we’re wrong about inerrancy, Christianity would still be true, because God still exists and Jesus is still God, even if the Bible contained some minor errors. Even though the Bible is from God, there are two senses in which it can be considered true: it can be true for all major historical events but may have small errors with minor details, or it can be completely correct in all details.

Part 16: Is Apologetics Biblical?

Does the Bible condone the use of apologetics? The intuition found in arguments for the existence of God is affirmed in several places in the Bible such as Romans 1 and 2 and Acts 17. Arguing that Jesus is God is also confirmed by the Bible when Jesus tells people to use the “miracle test” and look at His miracles to know if He is really God. In the Old Testament, God gives Moses miracles to prove a message was given to him by God. Moses said to test claims to have messages from God by evaluating the evidence, and the Bible affirms that we should use historical investigation to see if its claims are true. However, some Christians still object to the use of apologetics. Modern philosophy has influenced the church to separate faith from reason and look down on reason and think of faith as uncertainty. Thomas Aquinas used faith and reason together and did particularly well in balancing general and special revelation properly. It can be said that philosophy is the study of general revelation and theology is the study of special revelation.