Transcript Apologetics - St Peter`s Maghull

Apologetics
Session 4:
Questions of Morality
Apologetics
“Apologetics”????
 “…but
in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.
Always be ready to make your defence to
anyone who demands from you an
accounting for the hope that is in you;
yet do it with gentleness and reverence…”

1 Peter 3:15-16a NRSV
 defence/answer/case
= apologia
Apologetics
What keeps people from
believing?
 Conflict
with science
 Religious wars

Terrorism
 “There’s
so many religions – which is right?”
 “It’s all about power”
 “It’s all about money”
 Problem of Suffering
Apologetics
From last time…
Denominations
The
supernatural (demonination?)
Predestination
Revelation
5
6
7
8
9
Supernatural
C.S. Lewis:
“There
are two equal and
opposite errors into which
our race can fall about the
devils. One is to disbelieve in
their existence. The other is
to believe, and to feel an
excessive and unhealthy
interest in them.”
Denominations
Christian unity vs. doctrine
Does
doctrine – what we believe have to be sacrificed for the sake
of unity?
Why has this not been the case?
Is there ever an excuse for starting
a new church?
Supernatural
What interests us?
How
many angels can dance
on the head of a pin?
How many aliens can live on
the planets of our galaxy?
Which is more important?
Supernatural
In the news this week:
Stephen
Hawking and Yuri Milner take
out ad in FT to promote alien quest
Predestination
God outside of Time
 Sees
the whole spacetime block universe
 Past, Present, Future are the same thing
 Can change the universe in answer to prayer

at the time of its creation
G
D
Revelation
Some different approaches:
1.
Preterism
1.
2.
Futurist
1.
3.
it’s all about the end-times
Historicist
1.
4.
it has no meaning beyond the time in
which it was written
It’s about the whole of history
Idealist/Poetic
1.
Expresses key theology not details
Revelation
Some different approaches:
1.
Pre-millenialism
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
1st coming
church age
2nd coming
1000 years (the millennium)
eternity
Popular when things are getting worse
Revelation
Some different approaches:
1.
Post-millenialism
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
1st coming
church age
1000 years (the millennium)
2nd coming
eternity
Popular when things are getting better
Revelation
Some different approaches:
1.
A-millenialism
1.
2.
3.
4.
1st coming
church age=1000 years (the millennium)
2nd coming
eternity
Popular at various times!
Apologetics
video
 Biola

University promo
(American apologetics college)
 Ravi
Zacharias (of RZM)
questions
1.
2.
3.
Are society’s moral values in
decline? What evidence would
you give for this?
Has the perpetrator become
innocent and the victim guilty?
Are we ruled too much by “our
hearts”? If so, then what about
asking God to write all His laws
in our hearts?
questions
4. Do you agree with this
statement from the video?
“Ours is an age where ethics has
become obsolete. It is superseded
by science, deleted by
psychology, dismissed as emotive
by philosophy, it is drowned in
compassion, evaporates into
aesthetics, and retreats before
relativism.”
questions
5. What is the basis for your
morality? How would you defend
that against someone who says
“that’s OK for you, but not for me”.
6. Is there really an absolute right
and wrong or does it always
depend on other factors?
7. People can have great
knowledge without knowing God:
but can they have great wisdom?
questions
8. Anything else?