20th-Century Apologetics: Addressing Modernism
5 Minutes in Church History with Stephen Nichols
Ligonier Ministries
4.8 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2020
⏱️ 5 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the start of the 20th century, the church began to face new challenges to Christianity. On this episode of 5 Minutes in Church History, Dr. Stephen Nichols explains several of the methods Christians used to defend their faith in a changing world.
Read the transcript: https://www.5minutesinchurchhistory.com/20th-century-apologetics-addressing-modernism/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode, we are starting a two-part series looking at apologetics in the 20th century. |
| 0:10.5 | You know as we began the 20th century we faced a brand new challenge to |
| 0:15.6 | Christianity. It was the challenge of modernity and modernism. We're coming out of |
| 0:21.0 | the 1800s with the views of Darwin and biological evolution. |
| 0:25.6 | We're also coming out of the 1800s with the views of higher criticism and |
| 0:30.0 | originating in Germany this scholarship that began to challenge the |
| 0:35.0 | authenticity of the biblical text, the mosaic authorship of the Penituke, |
| 0:40.0 | and then it turned to the Gospels and the so-called quest for the historical Jesus. |
| 0:45.0 | Well, all of this then pours into the turn of the 20th century. |
| 0:51.4 | It was an era of progress. It was an era of progress. |
| 0:53.6 | It was an era of completing big building projects like skyscrapers, like the Empire State |
| 1:01.6 | Building in New York City. and as culture was a wash in modernity, |
| 1:07.4 | the question arose, is Christianity still relevant? |
| 1:11.9 | Is the Bible still relevant? Or have we simply, as a people and |
| 1:16.7 | as a culture, moved beyond our Christian and ancient past, and we're now already in the modern world to find the perfect ability of man |
| 1:26.1 | within ourselves. Well, all of this sets the stage for an increased attention to apologetics in the 20th century. |
| 1:35.0 | And right around 1950 or so, Bernard Ram published a book called The Types of Christian Apologetics. |
| 1:44.7 | He revised it about a decade later |
| 1:46.8 | and published it through Baker entitled |
| 1:49.2 | Varieties of Christian Apologetics, |
| 1:51.8 | and Bernard Ram offered his own taxonomy of various apologetic |
| 1:56.4 | approaches. He identified three approaches that come from experience and so this would be one's |
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