Augustine’s Apologetic Vision and How Doubt Can Lead to Faith

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Collin Hansen
What if the best way to defend our faith can actually be found by visiting pre modern North Africa? That’s the premise of the latest book by that dynamic apologetics duo of Josh Petro and Mark Allen. It’s called the Agustin way retrieving a vision for the church’s apologetic work. Witness excuse me, published by Baker academic. This is a special episode of gospel bound I’m sure you’re already seeing this. I normally record remotely from my office at basin Divinity School, where I co chair the advisory board and also served as adjunct professor here in Birmingham, Alabama. But today I am still recording at beats in Birmingham. But I’m in studio at beautiful Samford University with pieces newest Professor Joshua tro. He serves as the Billy Graham Chair of evangelism and cultural engagement. And Josh is also an inaugural fellow with TGC Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. Josh is glad for you to thankful for you joining me in person we walked all the way across the courtyard down a couple flights of stairs from our offices next to each other on the third floor of the South Hall. South Tower divinity hall so it’s let me give you a little bit more background for the viewers for the listeners here on the Augustine way but want to discuss want to let listeners know that we’re also going to be discussing one of your other new books. It’s been a big year for you, John, big books big change. That one is surprised by doubt how disillusionment can invite us into a deeper faith, which he wrote with Jack Carson for Brazos. Now both books explore themes that not everyone would associate with apologetics. You often think of apologetics as rational, logical, individual proofs of Christian truth. But Josh, you argue that today the question of Christians truth is closely bound up with the question of Christianity’s goodness and you build on this Augustinian theme of love. We desire to love and to be loved. And one reason and our reason works toward what we think will ultimately make us happy. And you cast a vision in these books for churches as a place where we can work through our doubts that churches should nurture apologists of virtue and skill through the ordinary means of grace. And I love this quote from the Augustine way. He said this, the church counter forms us and re aims our heart toward the kingdom that is to come equipping us with the diagnostic tools to see into a society’s idolatry and forming us into a source of healing and hope for our neighbors. I thought Josh, that line also captures the vision that we have for the Keller center as well. So thanks for joining me on gospel bound.

Josh Chatraw
It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Collin Hansen
And let’s start with the Augustine way. So you write that Augustine is confessions is one of the treasures of Christian spirituality, but that it’s really been mined for apologetics. What do you mean with that comment?

Josh Chatraw
Yeah, yeah. Well, I would just want to say that their scholars have pointed this out. Henry Henry, yeah. Chadwick points this out. And he’s one of the great Agustin scholars and translators. And points out that there’s an undercurrent throughout confessions, you have philosophers who are pointing out how confessions could work like this in the ancient world, I think especially given we have more information about the ancient world. Peter Brown, the great biographer talks about when he came back, later, he wrote his biography in 1960s. It came out here a second edition, and he has two additional chapters, he puts puts on there about new evidence and new lines of kind of thought. And one of the things he brings out out is that actually, during Agustin his lifetime, there was a lot more kind of Christianity wasn’t cemented as much and he didn’t have the authority. That brown he says he kind of wrote with Augustine has this, you know, Bishop kind of in the mind of almost a medieval bishop in Christendom. But Augustine really had to persuade. And one of the things is you see this happening? Confessions? I think this is what Chadwick was bringing out is that he starts off his intellectual journey with this existential question of the heart. And so he sees Augustine sees actually this inner intellectual question. It’s a very, in some sense, intellectual quest, bound up with questions of the heart bound up with his restlessness. But it’s also a story that I think can kind of map on to the deconstruction stories that we’re having today. Because Augustine, of course, grows up in the church with Monica. And Monica is a devout mom, taking little Augie to church. And, but he’s also in this kind of The backwoods of the empire in a kind of fundamentalist kind of community, authoritarian bishops rules for everything, very little interpretations of everything. And so very quickly he, he has his own coming of age story. And he’s wanting to adopt a kind of ancient kind of, for us a weird rationalism, but there still is a kind of rationalism that he adopts when he converts, or at least, is intrigued and spends nine years with Amanda keys. And so what you actually have in confessions is he’s at the beginning, he’s trying on all of these, yes, philosophical systems, but he’s also trying all these different ways of life. And he comes to a point where he sees the intellectual holes in them, he has stepped inside of them. And he also sees the existential holes in them. And they’re both combined not and simply, you know, you mentioned our work is, you know, typical apologetics is dealing with logic and arguments, and so is ours. So as Augustine He wants us to, but he sees this integration of what our heart wants, what our what we’re really made for, and our rationality and he weaves those together. And, and with spirituality, which is something that’s often not brought up in modern apologetics that is woven through the ancients, as they’re not afraid to mix these as we sometimes want to keep apart for various reasons today, but so all of those reasons, I would say, retrieving confessions as a kind of apologetic as well as doing other things, I think is really helpful for us today.

Collin Hansen
How long is this book? I’m going to grab your gun here for anybody wants to be able to see it the Augustine way. How long has this book been on your mind? Well,

Josh Chatraw
so this is the first time anyone’s called, referred to me and Mark as a dynamic duo. So we appreciate that.

Collin Hansen
Folks in encyclopedias, we’ve done together, we’ve done

Josh Chatraw
two, we’ve done two. Okay. And so our first one, apologetics at the cross is we got to the end of that. And one of the things we wanted to do, which we saw as missing and apologetic textbooks is to have a couple of chapters on the great tradition. Seeing that as a really important part of understanding where we are with the modern apologetics. And in doing that, we kind of had a conversation about Augustine, what is Augustine doing? So this was rewriting around 2016. And it had to be kind of left because we we had a textbook to write so we couldn’t just spend their time. And Augustine but we had these intuitions. And after we got done and the dust had settled and people we weren’t expecting, kind of said yes, we’re on board with this project, this book you wrote, we said okay, let’s now explore Gustin a bit more and see what we might find. And our intuitions about what Augustine was doing in City of God and confessions, in particular, has come through in this book, and we were so we did a couple of your dive. So what was your question how long we’ve been thinking about it, in some sense, since 2016, but the actual writing process took two and a half years. And both of these books I want to mention have come out of deep friendships. Mark and Jack are two of my best friends. And so to write a book with your best friend, by the end, you’re going to strangle them and never talk to them again. Or you’re going to have a deeper friendship. It’s kind of like marriage, but that’s another book. I’m sorry, Tracy, you know what I mean by this but um, and so we’ve come out of those these books still really, really good friends and and there’s there’s a if you know anything about Augustine friendship was a part of Augustine was so important to Augustine. And I do say that maybe maybe I should mention this now is that sometimes with apologetics and apologists we can kind of be these, you know, we can be formed to think we’ve got to stand alone, we’ve got to be the superstore, no lone ranger mentor. Yeah, yeah. And I think there’s something unhealthy if we’re formed in that way. And so the right kind of friends, who will say, Josh, that was a junk paragraph actually helps in a book and it also helps in life. And so I’m thankful to have written this with with two friends.

Collin Hansen
Well, it’s worth noting, because as a scholar, that’s one of the ways that you do stand out as you do a lot of collaborative projects with folks. And so that helps give us a little bit of a vision behind what you’re what you’re doing there and why. I think if you and I did a book together at this point, we would just have a lot of things that we argue about disagree in there. So let’s jump to one of those. Yeah. Make your case for why we should be learning more for our own Christian situation today, from the fourth and early fifth centuries, as opposed to the second and I’ll just go ahead and say that on my side, I’ve got got Tim Keller I got called Truman. So I’ve got some got some heavies on there, but you disagree. So pick the key As for the fourth and mostly

Josh Chatraw
this is a revelation for me in the midst of that podcast because I, I was sure that Tim was on my side before he passed and had embraced the Augustine way. And then and now and I thought I had convinced you. I’ve given up on dramatizing

Collin Hansen
it a little bit as explain. Yeah, you’ve made that argument. I think part of what I mean, her todos work on the second century was a really big deal to Tim. Yeah. And so there’s a lot of natural parallels because you don’t go back to the first. Because the first is a totally different world, the early church, the Pentecost explosion, on the second, you do get to a position where the Christians are in a minority, but they’re not a tiny group anymore. They’re not controlling everything. They’re tiny groups. I think that’s one reason why a lot of people see from her todos work and others of this dynamic of, of their prophetic minority that’s having a lot of success, but they’re still very distinctly a minority. They’re not in control of anything. So for post Christendom environment, it seems like the second century would commend itself as opposed to, but I guess it depends on where we are. Because Agustin, of course, one of his great contributions he’s writing in a decline of an eclipse of the Roman Empire. Yeah. Yeah. And that seems to be somewhat analogous to our situation. Yeah,

Josh Chatraw
yeah. Well, I just want to affirm what you’ve said is that, you know, I think every century of the church we should learn from Alright, so it’s not as if the second century or the third century has nothing to teach us. And so I recognize we might be, you know, making too big of a thing out of this. But I guess what I’m saying is, I’ve heard a lot. And what we’re saying in the book is we’ve heard a lot in recent days, about like, we’ve got to return probably from town and coral and other people. We’ve got to, we’ve got to kind of return to the second century mindset. But if so, there’s a couple of things going on. One is where are we today in the West? Yeah. And I think one of the when I was right, well, writing this, it was a few years ago, and I had just in my mind was Trump holding up a Bible? Yeah. And then a little bit later in front of the church, we remember that scene. It’s 2020. Yeah. And then and I’m processing that, that. And then, and then Biden, who has his inauguration, and he’s quoting the Bible, and he’s quoting Augustine. And, and then you have the Superbowl commercial with the Bruce Springsteen commercial with kind of this cross and it has these all these echoes, I mean, explicit allusions to Christianity,

Collin Hansen
not to mention that he gets us campaign. Yeah, that’s,

Josh Chatraw
but what I’m, what I’m saying is that, although we can look at the last, you know, 100 years and and say, well, institutionally, we just Christians don’t have the power and this way that we once did. I agree with Ross Douthat, who says, you know, still given the weaknesses, we still have Christians and the church have an enormous amount of institutional, you know, leverage still now not what fleshly cultural Thank you, so that everyone’s appealing to the Bible in a way that if you go to the second century, I think you’re, you’re not going to find an empire? You’re not gonna,

Collin Hansen
you’re not gonna hear the right yeah, that’s not for the

Josh Chatraw
emperor is not gonna have propaganda for using Christianity as as an authoritarian, authoritarian, terian source. So what you have said that so there’s a difference there, because we tend to say, Oh, look, what we’ve nostalgically looking at the past say, well, oh, we just have no kind of influence. And I just think if you step back and you compare it to the second century, well, we have a lot more than the second century. You’re right, and then you and then you and then you kind of fast forward to Augustine stay, or Augustine, he’s in this unique spot where for the first time as far as I can tell, Christianity has risen enough has gotten has enough now institutional power to be accused by the pagans as being the big civic problem now they can convince you they could say

Collin Hansen
is more of your Charles Taylor. Yes, subtraction story. This is of Christianity. We got to get rid of this Christianity to save the Empire. Well,

Josh Chatraw
it’s, it’s not going to work. It’s not going to work for community. This is the problem that we have to stamp out now, though. They’re telling and they’re nostalgic story about you know, make making Rome great again, let’s go back to the pagan way. And so he’s Augustine and this is City of God. So this takes us the City of God, he’s having to respond to this to these pagans now who are coming into North Africa, who are you know, the the smart guys that the the intellects who are coming in North Africa and saying Christianity is the problem. Not just on an individual level, not only is it not good for you, it’s not good for society. And that is what prompts For the City of God, so So my argument is, is that it had gotten big enough that there’s there’s certain parallels that you just don’t have in the second century, because it’s more established. And so and and so that’s kind of it’s not to say we can’t learn anything from the second century. But it also might part of my concerns is, you know, their system ways in the second century, it doesn’t doesn’t map bone. I mean, we’re not in the West experiencing that type of persecution, as far as I can tell that they were. Yeah. So those are some of the concerns I have. All right, I’m

Collin Hansen
back on your side. I’m back on the fourth and fifth centuries now. So we’re,

Josh Chatraw
we can go on with it, we might be able to speak I just I think I think that was just like the confession of a good podcaster. He’s like, let’s move on to the next question. Boring our listeners with.

Collin Hansen
So you talk to speaking of changing the mind, Augustine, his views of the Roman Empire changed over time. It’s something that I learned from you guys in this book. And that led up to his more mature reflections that we’re referring to here in City of God. So what do we learn from his evolution and his use of the Roman Empire?

Josh Chatraw
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we picked up on again, other scholars pick this up and have had monographs on it is that he’s, he’s just becoming more realistic. Where you have earlier with you CBN, there’s very much this narrative of Rome as the internal eternal city that’s combined with Christianity. And now I think we can be sympathetic of why people would come to that here you have Jesus giving this promise in the gospels that the kingdom is like them, like a mustard seed, and it’s going to grow up. And so they’re being persecuted, and they have the story of the martyrs. And they’re saying, Yeah, Jesus said that this was going to be the biggest tree in the garden, and it doesn’t seem so and then Constantine is converted, then all of a sudden, it’s like, oh, yes, all of this is coming true. So I think we can be sympathetic to why they saw this tight kind of wedding of the empire and Christianity. But Agustin seems, seems to be sympathetic to that. But but he grows more realistic, as he gets older, about, about, well, the Roman Empire, and about this kind of tight wedding of the two, and he sees, and he wants to make clear that the Roman Empire is just like any, in some sense, is like any other empire. And, and, and it’s, you know, if it falls, the kingdom of God will still stand. And I think there’s some applications in the book, we kind of, we weren’t always drawing on that point. But I think if you’re asking me now, what are some things I think, a kind of non anxious presence as an American culture is things are changing, to say, like, we can also look around the world and see how the kingdom is the Lord’s still working and the kingdom is, is expanding in so many ways, and doesn’t need

Collin Hansen
the American empire to last forever for the kingdom to continue to

Josh Chatraw
Yes, and, and certainly, I don’t want the the barbarians to come. And so we’re not a kind of relishing in persecution, certainly not. But at the same time, this confidence that Christ will build his church. And, and so we don’t have to fear that. And then I think it also gives us a kind of position. And this is the remarkable thing about city of God, well, we’re, we can stand back and we can critique the Empire. And still, and still also recognize that there’s, you know, the kind of worldly peace is still a kind of good piece that we want to operate in and that still love your neighbor. That’s right. That’s right. And so even serve within it. And so and so with that, it gives us a position I think that can stand back and critique and yet still serve and care for people in it. And we see Augustine doing this in his own ministry in various different ways.

Collin Hansen
Well, he also mentioned here that Agustin is you alluded to this earlier that Justin was responding to the accusation that Christianity and Jesus Sermon on the Mount in particular just doesn’t work in public life that it’s impractical. That’s fascinating. Going back to my undergraduate years, my Russian literature professor said the same thing. Tolstoy’s conversions that he talked about and war in peace and Anna Karenina. In fact, my professor said they are the only genuine conversions in all of literature, Tolstoy’s conversions and war and peace and acronyms. But he says, but as we all know, they’re too good to be true. You just can’t live with that kind of benevolent love or that disinterested Christ like love in real life. sided Augustine defend the faith against the kind of charge.

Josh Chatraw
Well on one level, let me give you his kind of macro strategy. So that is exactly the charge that prompts city of God. Now I’d say prompt city of gotchas. Gustin is doing a lot of things in that book. But he has a very particular on the ground prompt, which is it’s actually mentions like How can you live Jesus’s teachings out and actually be good for Rome for the empire for for the world and Agustin takes? First thing he does is he says, Okay, well, let’s step inside the history of the Roman Empire. Let’s step inside. And the parallel for us would be Let’s step inside other ways, like, okay, what are other ways to live? What are other ways to live as a neighbor, and how’s that going to work out. And for him, he uses their authorities, their historians just show actually, that and he offers a deflationary account of it’s it’s actually the Roman Empire, although we can point to some things that have happened. It’s full of violence. It’s it’s even the virtues he says, this is a tradition and Augustine scholarship, the virtues were actually splendid vices is the way later scholars would kind of tag that. And what he’s saying is that even the kind of even the kind of things that grew within the empire, that is amazing, were actually, there were actually motivated by kind of glory, a sense of self glory, or protect just protection or like, you know, the wolf that the gay, so you better, you better have some real discipline here. And so he’s stepping in and not only giving a moral, psychological kind of critique of motivations, but he’s showing how, in times of peace, this turned into a kind of decadence in times. So he’s showing kind of the weak points from within their own history Inside Out apologia inside out. And then he steps in, and this is what philosophers call an eminent critique. And then he steps in. And he says, he narrates the Christian story. And he says, Actually, Christianity gives gives an individual a way to live, that doesn’t idolize the earthly cities, and an end, because they don’t, they’re actually better servants of it. They step in and live with the grain of the universe, which is to worship God, above all things. And then therefore, that actually makes you someone who has the capability to sacrifice for your neighbor. And to even, perhaps die for your neighbor. And so he’s offering this, it’s not a it’s not a cheap, easy, kind of glib response, right? 22 books, lots of words, he’s doing lots of different things, quite a project. But that’s his overall approach to sup inside to critique from the inside. And then let’s say, this is how actually Christianity and the teachings of Jesus actually, now, of course, as we know, he has to, he has to develop things like just war theory, right? All of a sudden, if Christians have a say, in how the Empire is gonna go, then what do we do when we have to defend ourselves. So all of these things, of course, are having to be developed, because of, because all of a sudden Christianity, Christians do have a place at the table. And even at times, they’re leaders at the table. So he’s having at that point to develop, you know, some some political fall. Another example

Collin Hansen
of the fourth fifth century dynamic versus the second, much more similar for us that we do have a say in it, even just as voters, or as people who can speak out about these things, versus in the second century, nobody’s listening to what the Christians are saying, at a macro level, at a micro level, there’s a lot of people listening and looking at what they’re doing in there. But that’s another good explanation for how those are different. Here’s the point in the book that for you guys book that I really want to drill on a little bit, you write this, our late modern communities have been inhaling ways of thinking, believing and living, not by way of logical syllogisms or analytic argument, but through the oxygen given off by stories, symbols and artifacts, that have made Christianity seem not only irrational, but oppressive and dangerous. Okay. So again, I think a lot of people would recognize that even up to our very moment of time if they go on, you know, the site formerly known as Twitter or anything like that. This sounds like a very 20,023 late modern critique. Yet the whole premise of your book is that we can learn from Augusta on this. How, yeah,

Speaker 1
well, Augustine doesn’t refer to Charles Taylor, or sexual magic or he’s anywhere and they’re probably

Collin Hansen
learned a thing or two from Augustine, but

Josh Chatraw
but he does know a thing about rhetoric about persuasion. And he knows as a pastor, and this is often what has sometimes gotten missed, missed is that Augustine is first off a pastor, not first philosopher, or even a theologian, he’s, well, he’s a bishop, right? And he has a, he’s a congregation in HIPAA. So he’s very much on the ground and his life. You see it, I was just reading I was for another project, I was reading browns, biography rereading it, and you just see, he’s so taxed by the every day, he’s, he’s writing something. And then he gets, he gets, you know, three letters, and somebody visits him about this problem, this problem, he has to put that project down, and he’s got to address this. And so he’s very much on the ground in a way that in a way that he’s sensitive to how normal people think, and what’s going to persuade them. And so when he, when he’s getting these objections about Christianity that provoke city of God, in order to appeal, he actually part of the way he frames it is he frames it by alluding having echoes throughout to Virgil’s Aeneid. Because the knee it was, was this way that educated children would learn to read, reading Virgil. And so the way they imagined the world and Roman Empire in Roman glory and living from Rome, was so formed by Virgil it in the book, we draw a parallel here and don’t laugh, but to Disney. Yeah, sure. Because we don’t, we don’t mean that those are the kind of epics that we grew up with. And it forms our imagination. And so when he’s having to persuade, he’s going to step inside their social imagination before anyone had coined that term. And he’s going to say, yes and no, yes, you’re after a kind of piece. So he will quote them throughout your after this kind of piece, but it’s not found there. Like that’s going to lead to violence, that’s going to lead to lust of domination. And so for Augustine to step inside poetry, and we know from confessions that Virgil made him weep, as he was, as a as a, as a teenage teenager reading and in his Roman education, he loved Virgil. But then he went to, he saw the problems with living according to that script. So So I think we see a model here, whereas, and he understands the human predicament in ways and he incorporates that into his apologetic I recently, in our book, we cite a major apologist who says this, this new thing that Francis Schaeffer was doing, where he, he’s actually starting with the human predicament. And then making our human based out of that is, well, as I just said, it’s an it’s a relatively new thing. And we show hopefully convincing in the book, this isn’t a new thing. This is what Augustine was doing all along. In fact, the new thing is when you take away the human predicament, and you get into theoretical exercise that doesn’t touch the guts of who we are the core of who we are as humans. And this is what Augustine does, so well where he takes the social imaginary. And then he appeals to these deeper longings that they have. So I mean, Tim Keller didn’t invent this kind of stuff. I guess that’s one way to put this for. For the listeners on this podcast. You see it within the tradition. Augustine is doing it differently. Of course, people are gonna develop this in different ways. But this is deep within the tradition.

Collin Hansen
Because it probably would have seen it first in Schaefer, you and Rick mocker or others, make her in that in that early area there. So basically, what you’re trying to say is that all of apologetics is a footnote on Augustine.

Josh Chatraw
Well, I didn’t say that. No, of course, it’s not. I mean, the way we put it in the book is there Augustine. Augustine is the most influential Western theologian, right. And so, you know, we see things are downstream, Aquinas is Augustinian. And you have what what we would say is people picking up and kind of developing the seeds of Augustine in certain directions, but not in others. And so our book isn’t not about negating the great work that’s been done in the last 100 years. In in western apologetics. Ours is about saying, hey, what else can we retrieve? There’s parts of it that have already been retrieved. You see Agustin making historic a kind of historical argument for the resurrection, cause and effect with the building of the church and how can we get here except for the resurrection now? You see him making a case in City of God based on miracle. So I say grab Craig keener to book on miracles, because because he’s doing something like that his ancient context. So it’s not that it’s not that we haven’t picked up on Augustine already. It’s that we haven’t picked up the whole Augustine. And he’s also doing some other things that we can develop. And that’s what we’re trying to bring all of that forward in the book.

Collin Hansen
Well, we’re gonna get to surprise by doubt here next, but I want to read this quote from the Augustine way you write today the church remains having outlasted its rivals from the ancient world, as God’s apologetic community called to persuade others of this true happiness and hope and to raise up apologists who know how to use the things of the world. Both joys and pains, beauty and beastliness design and disorder, refracted through the light of the cross, and resurrection to display the manifold wisdom of God. That’s beautiful. That’s good stuff there. Let’s turn to then surprised by down here, how disillusionment can invite us into a deeper faith again, written with your friend, Jack Carson, a shorter book, like a book that’s more designed in some ways more broadly. Yeah. doesn’t have that same addict. Same academic overtones. So start with one of the things I’ve already seen picked up in people’s reviews of the book and interactions with the book, the concept of attic Christianity, explained the concept of attic Christianity AT T IC, attic Christianity from spreading it out. Yeah.

Josh Chatraw
Well, if you if you know your Lewis, you know, we’re already playing off surprised by joy. And, and we’re also with this attic Christianity playing off one of Lewis’s famous metaphors were in Mere Christianity. He speaks about trying to get people who are skeptics to come into the hallway of the house of Christianity, and he says he’s not trying to get them in a particular room, but he’s trying to get them into the hallway. And then and then encourages them, of course, not to stay in the hallway, which there’s probably could be a whole podcast on that we, you know, and in the different traditions and the importance of embracing one of a tradition, and in living there, but but our book is asking, using that metaphor, but asking a different question. Our question is, what happens if you’ve grown up in the house, but you’ve grown up in the attic of the house, with very little kind of awareness of what we call main floor, ancient Christianity. But a kind of the attic, in the way we are using that metaphor is a kind of reactionary space that’s reacting, at least this version of the attic is reacting against various modern pressures, which are really challenges and are understandable why an attic would be built. So it’s things like the pluralism and the fragility that modern pluralism brings to young people and people with their faith. And so one of the reactions to that is to kind of give either a kind of authoritarianism. Well just believe this, or a cut, or a kind of, to sell a kind of apologetic certainty. Like, if you just look at the evidence, then like, you’re just clearly not looking at the evidence if you don’t believe this, because it’s just straightforward, and it’s there. And so it’s a kind of over realized, apologetic that says, we’re going to solve all your problems. And by the end of this, if you still have, you know, you know, I think now we’re trying to have more apologists are reckoning with this. But we kind of created this structure that gives an error of kind of triumphalist stick posture towards evidences and oversold, how much it could achieve. It’s also we’ve responded to the moral decadence in our community with kind of different kinds of structures to help respond to that in the attic, for instance, like purity culture, which there is there needs to be response to moral decadence in our culture, for sure. But what created and many authors are pointing this out, it’s a kind of healthy, unhealthy purity culture, we need to be pure as Christians, that’s called the New Testament. But that doesn’t mean that we kind of elevate a kind of particular way to date in core and a particular way to dress as the kind of most important thing is the solution. Yeah.

Collin Hansen
prescribing a method that will guaranteed servers

Josh Chatraw
and so that yeah, and then you’ll have a happy marriage and all this will fall into place. And then and then you have anti intellectualism, that kind of as we step away from culture because of the moral decadence and so in an attempt to anti intellectualism develops and our response to that is often a kind of strong rationalism, or a kind of quasi intellectualism and then you realize it And then these young people realizing, oh, there’s actually smart people, when they kind of eventually peer out over the attic walls that are nice. That in many ways are ethical, and are really smart. They’re not just dummies, and they’ve seen

Collin Hansen
the evidence, but they don’t agree. Yeah. And,

Josh Chatraw
and so all of a sudden, they feel this overwhelming fragility. And if you were told all your life that well, if you just look at it, you can be certain and then you aren’t certain, then it feels like almost the this just even the doubt becomes evidence for Christianity not being true, because you shouldn’t be able to reach the certainty. And so it creates this kind of stifling environment. And people eventually look out the window, and they say, We want to jump. And I think some of our colleagues and friends have written, this is a huge problem with deconstruction, the church and all these things going on. Our book is simply saying, Okay, before you do that, let’s do two things before you jump. Number one, we need to look out and say, Where are you jumping into, because we all have to live somewhere. So let’s be just as critical as the spaces that that looks so good, at least from the attic kind of window. And in defense of the people thinking about jumping, I can understand, if they’re living their life kind of in this attic, and their posture has been over, it grows, you’re uncomfortable that you can look out the window and think, Oh, that looks pretty good. But before you do that, let’s examine that those different rooms outside the house closely. And then let’s also, if you still decide to leave, at least come downstairs first and explore the main floor of the Christian house. And then if you still want to leave, go out the main, at least you’ve gone through that. Jump out the attic, don’t jump out of the attic, be realistic about what’s outside the attic. And then also admit, although they might have some streets in your mind, you need to be willing to admit that they they probably have some weaknesses to and explore those weaknesses, and then come downstairs. Because if you’ve grown up and adding Christianity, what history the great tradition of Christianity provides, is it provides us with people who have yes doubted, but they’ve inhabited Christianity in a different way than you’ve inhabited your version or your parents version or your community’s version of Christian and all your life. So try that out first. Um, that’s what it’s in different ways. Jack and I have both done, and we’re still in the house. And I think there’s lots of other people who’ve done the same thing.

Collin Hansen
I was just speaking on Friday night talking with a dad, who was a teenager sound especially precocious with a lot of these questions. And the first place I went with him was to the your children have been raised to consider very carefully the objections to Christianity. But they don’t seem sophisticated enough yet to be able to consider what the alternatives are. And so you might think Krishna has a big problem with evil, until you’ve actually studied all the different answers to the evil and realized we know, to whom else are we supposed to go? Because you have the words to life Jesus. Yeah.

Josh Chatraw
And I think that’s a great exam. doubt your doubts, if you don’t, if you don’t mind? us sitting here for a second is that that’s a great example. Because the apologetic overreach says, oh, problem of evil, real easy. Let me give you the answer to that. To which me as an apologist, I put my, you know, I bury my, my, my head in my hands at that point, if I’m in the

Collin Hansen
medical defense,

Josh Chatraw
like it’s gonna, it’s gonna solve everything gonna solve your problems. Now, I think there’s something to the Free Will defense. I just want to add this, but plantago himself says, and he came out and playing a champion of free Well, defense, within the reformed tradition. I’ll let I’ll let you guys can read up on that. But playing a guy who I loved I mean, he says he’s he said, I don’t think the Free Will defense or any defense completely solves the problem of evil planet doesn’t actually argue that. It’s a response. And I we have responses as Christians. But what often happens is, if we’re over trial, Trump’s ballistic about our answers to some of these things, then, and we give glib answers, then people will eventually grow out of those. And they said, Well, that didn’t really solve this and this and so I think, saying that there’s a response. And there’s a way to respond to this. That many listeners probably have heard, which As I mean, the approach I take is more of a skeptical theist approach, which is to say, if there is a God, then why would we think a God like anything described in the Bible? Why would we think we would have the prerogatives or the site to see exactly all the reasons for evil? And so, but the Bible does give us various different responses of why sometimes evil happens. But if you keep pushing that question back, pushing it back, pushing it back, pushing it back, there is a mystery there that Augustine realize. And But Christianity does give us a way to respond, to evil to walk with God, in the midst of it. And there is this thing called lament. And so this is this posture of lamenting and then responding to evil. In a way, of course, Lewis understood what you were alluding to before, CS Lewis understood, as an atheist, his problem was the evil in the world. But then he realized he had no standard by which to even call something evil. And so from a good, yeah, it’s a problem of good and so but that doesn’t, I think we need to be honest, that’s a response. And that’s, I think that’s helpful. But it doesn’t solve everything. Somebody with this kind of over rationalistic posture wants. Yeah. And so we walk into that in conversations with saying, Oh, that’s really easy. There’s a lot of questions that they’re going to bring up that, of course, they might be wanting, but that we don’t have. And so so it’s important to flag that at the beginning. And so I do think, hopefully, by bringing this example up, everybody listening will kind of see that there is actually a difference on how to approach this. Even though we’re using we’re both using plan again, if you’re more traditionalist, but but then we’re actually kind of more modest about what we think that argument can achieve. Yeah, so

Collin Hansen
to boil that down, if you’re, if you’re watching, you’re listening, your your parent, your friend, young or old, with people who are working through these doubts, I think, I know when I’m teaching on cultural apologetics here at Besian, that I’m training future pastors and also featuring current parents as well. often tell them that trying to over explain everything that happens, including in Christianity is one of the worst things you can do, as a parent or as a pastor, to promise people certain levels of understanding or certainty, that are not promised in Scripture by God Himself in there, he promises that we can trust him to we can walk with Him, that He loves us in all things that he loves the world, that he created this world and that he’s redeeming the world and that Jesus is coming again. These are all sure promises that we have. But they’re not explanations for everything that happens. Yeah. We should see that that’s obvious from the book of Job, and from Ecclesiastes, and from all sorts of things. But I think we do want whether that’s a modernist mindset, I’m not really sure. But we really do want. I think what Tim Keller would say is that it’s actually a problem that’s developed in in a late modern age, like our problems have become worse because we expect all these answers from life and from the world and from God that previous generations did not expect to get. And so suffering was difficult for them, but not as difficult existentially for them, as it was for us as it is for us, because we think it’s an interruption of life and a world that were promised, which is obviously not what the Bible says. Yeah.

Josh Chatraw
Yeah. Not true in the end, and I think he’s, I think Keller, I think Tim was picking this up from Taylor, who’s, who’s narrating this in secular age and the Lisbon earthquakes and this turn in the middle of 18th century to Voltaire to the Odysseys. We’re, we’re trying to justify and fully explain all the ways we’ve gotten out that certain forms of theodicy aren’t helpful. So I there, but there is something important there that I want to back up to. And that’s what Taylor is getting at and what what Tim was drawing upon is this kind of different way to attend to the world, a different posture, that that requires a certain amount of humility. And so this is one of the things that we’re trying to do both in the Augustine way show and this is Augustine who was really pushing on humility, but in a way that I’m discussing this with somebody who’s doubting is the first thing we need to do is I need to exhibit some humility, but I also want to encourage that on their behalf and help them See that these demands for everything to get fully explained in ways that we will accept? Yeah. Yeah. Is is a kind of is a kind of way to attend to the world in a way that isn’t actually very, which is very modern. And if your turn because it’s a centering of the self, and if you’re only going to, you know, accept things with with that kind of rationality, that kind of hard rationalities, you will only get what Alister McGrath calls shallow truths, because there’s a lot of things that you’re taking for granted, because you’re part of these late modern scripts that and Tom Holland talks about this, that he’s a believer, all these things might not be a Christian yet, you know, he says, But he says, I’m a believer in all these things like human rights and justice. And I’m a heart I’m a heart. I mean, I’m very much a believer in those things, but I can’t prove them. And I think so there’s a kind of humility, that that we need to encourage rather than just step in and say, I’m going to argue kind of, on your level here, we need to come in and say, well, actually, we’re all believing to understand, we’re all loving something. And this is where, again, to go back to Augustine, the kind of it’s not, it’s not anti rational by any means. But it’s being rational about our rationality. And that what that means and you can read this and Jonathan high you can read this and Ian McGilchrist, the list goes on. People who aren’t Christians are saying similar things. We need to become more rational about our rationality and, and recognize that we’re all believing to understand, and that that some trying to create a posture about who we are as humans, what we can know what we can’t know. And then the turn we make in the book, and I’m not sure how this is sounding. It’s really not as academic in any movies. But but then we we bring in Pascal to say we’re all having to make certain wagers Yeah. And not only are we wagering on, do we believe in God, but we’re even wagering on different types of rationality? And so we’re asking the question in the book as well, what’s really rational to wager and let’s take in everything we know about human nature, let’s take everything in, don’t let’s not leave out any evidence, let’s bring it all to the table. But that that’s also included the profoundly existential reasons as Pascal because that’s what part of what it means to be human, to love to have a moral code to seek peace. And let’s bring all of this information on the table, and then compare and see how the Christian story actually fits alongside that,

Collin Hansen
I think a way of summarizing so much of this, Josh, is that when you grow up in the attic, or even in the upper rooms of the house, sometimes, especially when you’re a young adult, and especially when you’re working with your children, or you’re somebody in college ministry or youth ministry or something like that, you’re dealing with people who in a pluralistic environment have learned enough to be able to critique what they inherit, yeah. They’ve learned enough to know that their parents might be really bad people because of the way they vote, you know, just who knows all this sort of thing. But, but they don’t, they’ve not lived the other life. I think that’s one of the aspects of Augustine, his biography that stands out that he had lived two other lives. Yeah, he lived a licentious life. And he lived the mannequin life. He got to be tomorrow, again, from from Jesus here, and the parables he lived, you got to be both brothers, right? Can be the younger brother, the older brother in there, and realize they’re not both of them fall short, in there, but but grace is the way in there. So you show in there. And so I think that’s the sort of non anxious posture, again, that you’re talking about to recognize that part of the mat maturation process is that we react against what we know, we don’t yet know what we don’t know. And so there’s also an element here of for pastors and parents and others to play the long game of you don’t know how this story is going to go Augustine story was, was looking pretty bad for his mother and her faithful prayers for Monaco’s prayers for a long time before. Look how it ended in there. And so I think that’s one of the most helpful postures we can adopt. As Christian teachers and leaders and parents. There’s

Josh Chatraw
this great scene in Monica, who is this you know, ancient helicopter mom. Before for I wrote a book on coddling of the American mind, but she’s, you know, bulldozer parent if there ever was one into She’s trying to figure this out as probably parents listening to this podcast is how do I save my son? Who’s got a with these crazy mannequins? What do I do? And so she finds a priest who used to be a man of key and she comes to him and she’s explained to him what happens and she wants the priest to go talk to Augustine, but it seems to preach recognizes that he’s not ready. He’s got too much pride. And he says to her, Oh, I’m gonna mess up the quote. But he says, basically, the CHA the son of these tears will not perish. Now, maybe there’s, you know, hyperbole there. I don’t want to claim what kind of health wealth gospel if you just pray enough, but there’s something to the fervent prayers, that, that, that has to become part of the first place we go, the first place and last place we go. And I think we want to answer is we want to save our kids, we want to save the next generation. And that’s going to start, and that’s going to end with prayer. And just to see that, that the spirit has to work and humble, and yes, he can use our arguments, you can use our persuasion, but this isn’t simply persuading them who to vote for this. This is battling the needs of the King of the universe, and the weightiness that comes with that, but also our dependence on God, and the apologetic task and the task of caring for people who are doubting

Collin Hansen
good place to end, I want to share this quote, again, from surprised by doubt from Josh and Josh Metro, and Jack Carson, this quote, it’s love it we intuitively live, like our lives really matter. We all search for all search for beauty. We all want to love and be loved. And ever since the light of Jesus’s moral revolution penetrated into the deepest parts of our culture, it has seemed unnatural and difficult to revert back to a previous time and deny the aspirations that have led to the ideals of human rights and universal benevolence. We desire justice, and we sense that each person’s life is sacred, grounded in historical claim and centered on a person Christianity affirms explains and provides motivation to act on the deepest human ideals. Where else can you find a story that does all that? Great quote, there are a couple product placements in here. We referred a number of time to Peter Browns biography of Augustine. Everybody, if you haven’t read it, they need to go read it is a model and I just I don’t think I realized this the other day he was in his 20s. I think when he wrote that. Yeah,

Speaker 1
I think maybe early 30s. We need to look that up. Don’t quote us on it. Maybe we’ll finish. And he just wrote his autobiography too. Oh, yes. Right. So that’s it. I haven’t read it. I mean, heard great things.

Collin Hansen
But that is even if you’re not I remember, sometimes these podcasts, I think I just want to make them helpful. I remember when I was young, I would ask older Christians just what are some really great Christian biographies and to the recommendations I got one was rolling Benton’s on Martin Luther. And then he go over mine as well, eco pramana on Luther, but then also, Peter Brown on Augustine, and those really changed. I think, a lot of the course of my life, those recommendations. So those are good places to go after you’ve read these books. And then also, if you’re enjoying this podcast, enjoying gospel bound in general, you’ll definitely appreciate our colleagues at the Keller Center for Cultural apologetics. Andrew Wilson and Glen Scrivener, and their podcast post Christianity question mark, because it deals with a lot of the questions that we’re talking about here of what does it mean to be post Christian and yet in ways that are inescapably Christian understandings, so people can go check that out as well. And if you’ve enjoyed learning from Josh, on this podcast, we’d love for you to study evangelism and cultural engagement with Josh at Bayesian Divinity School, Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama and also give a thing a special shout out to rob Willis and his team for their help in recording and and producing today, Josh, thanks for his books surprised by doubts and Augustine lane. Thanks for joining.

Josh Chatraw
Thanks, Collin.