Episode #78 - The End of Apologetics with Dr. Myron Bradley Penner

Kicking off our brand-new series on apologetics we begin with the end! Our first guest is Dr. Myron Bradley Penner, the author of The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context (published by Baker), and the Rector at the Anglican Parish of Saint Paul in the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, Alberta. Dr. Penner helpfully kick starts this series by asking what the goals of apologetics ought to be? He draws attention to many problems with the modern apologetic enterprise with their goals essentially being to win epistemic standoffs and show a force of rational domination. He highlights that many of the key figures in Christian apologetics are engaged in a project that is ironically secular, drawing as it does upon a modernist frame in order to attempt to win a battle against modernity. In our conversation, we discuss the problems that occur with reducing Christianity to propositions, as is so often done in this mode of apologetics. In our postmodern age, we are rightly skeptical of claims to “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral” knowledge, and so such an apologetic approach is also out of touch in addition to being so often less-than-Christian. Many of the questions that people are asking nowadays are also not the same ones in which classical apologetics first began. For all of these reasons, modern apologetics needs to die; and raised in its place must be something more personal, holistic, relational, and communal. Team members of the episode from The Two Cities includes: Dr. Amber Bowen, Dr. Josh Carroll, and Dr. John Anthony Dunne.

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