Sounds like a straw man argument against apologetics. If Penner is ranting against the formal apologetics of debates in academia, perhaps there is a place to oppose it. When one sees apologetical prep work with a goal to help remove a person’s opposition to the Gospel, and the practice of "gentleness and respect” in its delivery, one sees the value of apologetics. Content AND delivery are both required.
Agreed! What I find interesting is that Van Tilian presuppositionalists have made some of the same critiques that Penner makes. I’m not a Van Tilian, but in a critique of this sort, one ought at least to have engaged with others who have made the same critiques instead of engaging in a wholesale dismissal.
Would not a “wholesale dismissal” of apologetics because it is too intellectual for the average person be a capitulation to that anti-intellectualism? Would not a better response be to correct the delivery part and leave the content part alone?
Perhaps. I think Penner would say that he is only dismissing modernist/Enlightenment-grounded apologetics and that the problem isn’t that it’s too intellectual in terms of complexity but too rational in terms of orientation. Practically, however, he dismisses far more than merely the Enlightenment models of apologetics.
Sounds like a straw man argument against apologetics. If Penner is ranting against the formal apologetics of debates in academia, perhaps there is a place to oppose it. When one sees apologetical prep work with a goal to help remove a person’s opposition to the Gospel, and the practice of "gentleness and respect” in its delivery, one sees the value of apologetics. Content AND delivery are both required.
Agreed! What I find interesting is that Van Tilian presuppositionalists have made some of the same critiques that Penner makes. I’m not a Van Tilian, but in a critique of this sort, one ought at least to have engaged with others who have made the same critiques instead of engaging in a wholesale dismissal.
Would not a “wholesale dismissal” of apologetics because it is too intellectual for the average person be a capitulation to that anti-intellectualism? Would not a better response be to correct the delivery part and leave the content part alone?
Perhaps. I think Penner would say that he is only dismissing modernist/Enlightenment-grounded apologetics and that the problem isn’t that it’s too intellectual in terms of complexity but too rational in terms of orientation. Practically, however, he dismisses far more than merely the Enlightenment models of apologetics.