Apologetics and Cultural Engagement
PRTH 570
Summary
Explore the Apologetics and Cultural Engagement course and what you can expect to learn through the semester.
Course Overview
Apologetics and Cultural Engagement covers the broad outline of apologetics and seeks to develop materials and skills to engage contemporary cultural issues.
Students will master a case for Christianity and responses to common objections.
The course covers the nature of truth, the existence of God, the authority of Scripture, the claims of Christ, and His bodily resurrection.
Students will develop responses to pressing cultural questions, including the problem of evil and human sexuality.
Textbooks
- See the current booklist.
Professor: Dr. Mark Bird
Assignment Overview
- Apologetics Foundations: Study key texts by Craig, Markos, Blomberg, and Stonestreet to master a case for Christianity and responses to common objections
- Real-World Application: Engage with skeptics online and in-person while documenting these interactions. Create and maintain your own apologetics website, contribute to a class Facebook group, and teach apologetics in church settings—turning theory into ministry practice.
- Cultural Response Development: Address contemporary challenges—relativism, atheism, evolution, evil, biblical reliability, and sexual ethics—through weekly essays, discussions, and a final research paper.
Intended Outcomes
You will appreciate
- More deeply value the role of apologetics in evangelism.
- Appreciate the work of apologists who are engaging the skeptics of this age, and desire to use some of the same tactics/strategies.
- More deeply love the skeptic and more deeply long that they come to know the Lord, with hope, knowing that the impossible with man is possible with God.
You will be able to
- Analyze and critique arguments against Christianity, while constructing positive arguments in favor of Christianity.
- Comfortably interact with unbelievers in online discussion forums, and in-the-flesh discussion groups.
- Apply human relation skills to “win friends and influence people” toward a Christian worldview.
You will understand
- the difference between presuppositional and evidentialist apologetics.
- the phases of spiritual discovery that unbelievers move through on their journey to the cross.
- key questions to use in conversations with unbelievers, to help them make progress in their spiritual journey.
- logical arguments against atheism and for theism.
- and master some of the other major issues in Apologetics, such as the nature of truth, the problem of evil, the resurrection of Jesus, and the authority of Scripture.