Today, Joe asks Jamie about his priority when he teaches Apologetics.
Jamie Dew: Hey everybody, I'm Jamie Dew.
Joe Fontenot: And I am Joe Fontenot.
Jamie Dew: And we welcome you back to our podcast, The Towel & Basin.
Joe Fontenot: Yeah. And so today, Jamie, I want to ask you a question about teaching.
Jamie Dew: Okay.
Joe Fontenot: Since I've never taken a class with you.
Jamie Dew: All right.
Joe Fontenot: I've never seen-
Jamie Dew: Nobody here has by the way.
Joe Fontenot: Nobody here has nobody has here since, do you teach?
Jamie Dew: I will next year.
Joe Fontenot: Well, you are also like the president of the seminary. So I don't think-
Jamie Dew: Yeah, so I got plenty to do, but if I don't get back in the classroom-
Joe Fontenot: What does this guy do all day?
Jamie Dew: Yeah. If I don't get back in there next year, I'm going to go nuts. I need to get in there.
Joe Fontenot: This is a question about that. This is a question about apologetics specifically, because you've done a lot of work in apologetics and teaching in apologetics. And so when you teach apologetics, what do you teach and what do you not teach? In other words, like what are the things that you think if you take nothing else from this, take this, what are the things that if you miss this, that's fine?
Jamie Dew: I think in some ways that's going to, that will vary from person to person. I think apologetics has to be sought after per the concerns that a person has in mind. But let me clarify real quick. When you say, when I teach it, do you mean like if I were assigned a class to teach Christian apologetics, what topics would I cover in the class? Or do you mean like if I'm speaking at an apologetics conference, what kinds of topics would I take up?
Joe Fontenot: So I would really say in a scenario where you have the most control to do what you think is going to be the most beneficial.
Jamie Dew: Yeah. So-
Joe Fontenot: Probably more of a conference in that case, maybe.
Jamie Dew: Okay. Yeah. Where in a conference I've finally gotten comfortable just saying when I'm asked to speak in these places, "Hey, look, I'll be happy to come speak if you'll let me speak on the stuff that I actually feel like I know a little something about and feel adequately prepared to do."
Joe Fontenot: [crosstalk 00:01:46].
Jamie Dew: Yeah, because in apologetics is not just a single field. There's a very... Man, apologetics is this sprawling enterprise. It spans all of the disciplines. It really does. I mean, there are major and tons of philosophical questions that apologists have to deal with. There are scientific questions. There are historical questions. There's textual questions. I mean, when you start looking at the various ways that Christianity can get attacked or cultural questions, man, there just thousands of questions and they span all the disciplines. There is a sense that apologetics has reached its heyday 20 years ago and still a huge industry.
There are ethical questions now that we have to deal with. This is one thing that's changed in apologetics today. So, when apologetics hits its heyday, I remember when I was coming along, there was this very real sense that the apologist had to be ready and should be ready to defend the faith in all regards. And I do think the body of Christ needs to be prepared to do that. But given the fact that apologetics spans all these discipline now, that's unrealistic.
Joe Fontenot: Sure.
Jamie Dew: That no one person can tackle everything. So if I'm teaching a class, I'm going to assign the basic standard books and we're going to deal with the eight to 12 major areas and I'll do the best I can on the ones where I'm weak at. And I'll probably emphasize the ones I'm strong in. If I'm speaking and can just pick the ones where I feel adequate, I'm probably going to deal with life after death and those possibilities.
Joe Fontenot: Interesting. I would not have guessed that.
Jamie Dew: So there've been two major of the apologetic issues in my life that I've been most interested in. It's for me, I quickly learned that one, apologetic spans all the disciplines as I was just saying. But then two, that as it sprawls across all these disciplines, that there were just certain types of issues for me personally, that didn't bother me that bad. And then there were certain areas that did bother me really bad. So for example, for me, it was, I quickly learned that it was the more philosophical types of questions that bothered me. Hence I go into philosophy and become a philosopher, right? The scientific questions didn't bother me so badly. The textual questions about, the New Testament or the Old Testament, whether or not it's been adequately-
Joe Fontenot: Reliability.
Jamie Dew: Yeah. The reliability questions. I'm not saying those aren't legitimate questions. They're absolutely, I understand people that have given their life to defending that, that I got it. But those questions didn't bother me personally-
Joe Fontenot: On a personal level.
Jamie Dew: And so for me coming along, when I start really dealing with this stuff, I found that it was the big philosophical questions that bothered me the most, and that for example, does God really exist? It hit me when I was a young fellow that man, I had not just believed this stuff I had given my entire life to this stuff. And yet I'd never seen him, touched him, tasted him, smelled him or anything else. And I could not help, but ask the question, "Hey man, are we sure?" You know? So my first area of work academically was in natural theology and arguments for God's existence. And what you can know about God independently of the Bible or the creeds of the faith and things like that. What can you know, what can you infer deductively or inductively, or abductively? Just from creation itself. And is there any reason to think that there really is a being out there?
Which took me then into epistemology. So that area of philosophy that deals with knowledge and religious epistemologies and knowledge of God-
Joe Fontenot: It is what can we know and such?
Jamie Dew: Yes. So that's really where I ended up doing my first major bout of work, you could say. But it was all because of the question of God's existence. My second big area of work came along because I was pastoring a church. I've always been the kind of guy that thinks about my death. I think about death every day, my own death every day and not in a creepy weird way or anything, but I'm very much mindful every single day about the end. And the fact that, what I will be judged on later will be what I'm doing right now. So I've always thought about those types of things.
Then I go pastor a church, that's largely an elderly church. And in eight and a half years, I did 60 funerals, not an exaggeration. I was around it all the time, it seemed like. And so I started thinking about death a lot and the Christian message that we live after we die. It's so deeply... That's not just by the way, what Christians believe. That is what virtually anybody and everybody in our culture believes. That's what we call a folk religion at this point, the religion of the masses, everybody believes, "Man, Oh yeah, you live after you die.?
And so it's deeply ingrained. And yet, none of us have ever experienced that or seen anybody come back or, and that began to strike me as strange. And so anyway, life after death. And so the second round of academic work that I did at the doctoral level was aimed at those types of questions.
Joe Fontenot: Okay. Let me ask you-
Jamie Dew: So if I'm asked to speak, to answer your question, I'm not your guy to deal with textual criticism and stuff.
Joe Fontenot: Sure.
Jamie Dew: No, that'd be bad.
Joe Fontenot: Let me ask you this question in teaching, whether it's been in the classroom or it's been feedback that you've gotten to conferences or anything like this, have you found that this really resonates with a lot of people or do you find that this is an issue that a lot of people are, maybe you're kind of bringing some of these things up for more or less the first time? Where do you find most people are on this?
Jamie Dew: All over the board. I mean, when you get into the specific kinds of things that I'm dealing with, bodily resurrection and what it takes for this body that we're in right now to be resurrected. It's inevitable that that's interesting and tends to draw people's attention. And so when I do give those talks, it's very interesting to people and there's a lot of engagement. But then I also almost always have, if I've got 50 people in the room, listening to my talk, you've got the two, three or five of them that just think this dude is nuts. You know? Why are we even... For them, that's not their issue. What I find is that every people believe for different reasons and they doubt for different reasons. Belief and doubt are not one size fits all enterprises. What causes one person to believe didn't have any effect on me at all.
I can't tell you the number of people I've heard say, "Man, I saw my child be born. And I just..." Look, it was a beautiful moment when my four were born. I loved it. But in terms of my belief in God, it did nothing for me. I didn't believe more after watching them be born. It didn't work like that for me. So the things that motivate me towards belief will be different from somebody else's. Vice-versa the things that cause me to have struggle in doubt about my faith will be different from person to person as well.
So what I find is that, people are not monolithic like that. They're not just all, we don't all doubts, not a one size fits all thing, evidence or rationales that persuade and that motivate belief are not one size fits all. And so therefore the apologists, there is a definitely a sense in which the apologist has to be ready to kind of talk about almost anything, but shouldn't be surprised and shouldn't be pressured therefore, when he or she realizes, but I can't be the expert or the specialist in everything, you just can't.
Joe Fontenot: I think that's quite a relief considering how much is out there and how much things change. New issues come up and such. Last question. Is there anything that you just kind of pass over, because you're like, "Oh my gosh, just read this chapter and it'll be a bonus. Because I don't even want to talk about it." Is there any of those kinds of issues that come up in apologetics that you just really don't enjoy?
Jamie Dew: Yeah, but again, I think part of it is my own intellectual nature and then part of it is my particular things that I have had stress about. To me again, it was the big philosophical question, is there a God, do we really survive our death? Those have been the two big questions for me that have motivated pretty much my entire academic and intellectual journey. For me, if I could wrap my head around the existence of God, believing that he would speak to us and give us a book. Well, that made perfect sense, right? So if I could just really rest on he's there-
Joe Fontenot: The big rock.
Jamie Dew: Which by the way, for our listeners, I do.
Joe Fontenot: Just in case there's anybody-
Jamie Dew: I don't want anybody listening to this going, "Man, this guy."
Joe Fontenot: [crosstalk 00:10:26] they just went to the jamiedew.com questions and they were already typing it out.
Jamie Dew: Brother, do you really believe? Yeah, no. No, please don't. I do. I absolutely, I have great rest in this, but I haven't always. I mean, I've had moments where, especially early in my faith where this bothered me. But in those moments, if I could get to the place where I rested, "No, there really is a God." Then resting that he's spoken to us that just has never bothered me. [crosstalk 00:10:56]. So having confidence in the Bible, and everybody's not that way. And that's fine. So therefore for those reasons and because I am a linguistic idiot, I mean-
Joe Fontenot: Idiot like obsessed with it or idiot in like?
Jamie Dew: Meaning I'm not good at it.
Joe Fontenot: Okay. All right.
Jamie Dew: Greek and Hebrew, I was awful at this. German was the one thing in a PhD program that made everything else about the PhD was just hard work, man. And I knew I had the ability to do hard work. So nothing about the PhD program freaked me out. The dissertation didn't freak me out, but boy, German. German, why in the world do you need that many articles? 16 of the definite articles and indefinite articles. And many of them are the same one in various places.
Joe Fontenot: Have you been to counseling for this?
Jamie Dew: Oh gosh, no, but it took me forever to get the German. So you know what? I have good friends that just breezed right through German. And I was like, "Did you grow up Germany or something?" Like, "No."
Joe Fontenot: No.
Jamie Dew: I hate you.
Joe Fontenot: I'm sitting right now in my mind.
Jamie Dew: Yeah. So I struggle with language. And so anyway, I think because of those natural struggles and the fact that that's not where my concerns were. And I get, those are legitimate apologetic questions and I thank God that we have brothers and sisters in the body of Christ that have the training, the ability and the desire to handle those things because the body of Christ needs them.
Joe Fontenot: Absolutely.
Jamie Dew: But it's very clear to me. That's not what I'm supposed to tackle. And so, I mean, yeah. And if I were teaching an apologetics course, that would probably be the parts and say, "Yeah, just read that chapter. I'll do the best I can to guide you through it." But I'm not a linguist and have no expertise whatsoever in that.
Joe Fontenot: Yeah. That's really helpful. And I think a big takeaway that I got from hearing you talk about this is there really is so much out there and we do the best when we kind of follow these natural passions that we've developed over time, I think. And because there's so much out there, we don't need to feel the burden to answer every question that comes to us.
Jamie Dew: Yeah. I'll tell you just as a... And I know this is rough and probably way too general, but I noticed a big difference between American academics and British academics in the two programs that I did. It seems to me that, so in America, especially doing a PhD at a seminary, there was this sort of unwritten expectation that whether real or not, it was felt that, "Hey, I'm supposed to be an expert on the Bible. I'm supposed to be an expert on theology. I'm supposed to be an expert on all a philosophy since I was doing a philosophy degree. And therefore I should know all this stuff in apologetics too." So the generalist you're supposed to have the comprehension, like a generalist, but man, you've got to be able to go after all of it.
Joe Fontenot: The depth of a specialist.
Jamie Dew: Yeah. On everything. And then I get to England and I start doing my work over there. And man, those folks had no... Most of the time, those folks had no sense whatsoever that they were supposed to be an expert on everything. Now, even like in philosophy that like, man, I know this issue and they would, man, let me tell you, they would know that particular issue backwards, forwards, front to back, side to side, but then you get outside of that and they didn't feel the pressure that they were supposed to be an expert on all these other things too.
Joe Fontenot: That's nice.
Jamie Dew: Yeah. It's very nice.
Joe Fontenot: I think that's a good model to it.
Jamie Dew: So they were very drilled down, but they didn't feel the pressure on the bread.
Joe Fontenot: Interesting.
Jamie Dew: And so anyway, that's a word there. You don't have to tackle everybody's specialization. The other thing I'd just say very quickly to people out there starting out or even gearing up, man, look just because it's the popular topic doesn't mean that that needs to be what you're passionate about. Don't fake it. If you're not interested in it, don't pretend, just go after the thing that you're actually interested in and do the best work you can do there. And let Christ use you in that regard.
Joe Fontenot: Yeah, that's great. All right. Thank you.
Jamie Dew: You bet.
Joe Fontenot: Hey Everybody, this is Jamie and Joe again. If you liked this podcast, would you leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts? That helps other people find it.
Jamie Dew: And if you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them. Just go to jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way. And we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.