Monday, May 28, 2007

Apologetics Syllabi

No, I am not offering one. I am doing an informal study of how apologetics is taught at seminaries and colleges. If you know of a good apologetics syllabus, please send it to me or give me a link. Email me at DRGroothuis@aol.com.

It seems that mine (the Mother of all Apologetics Syllabi, it seems) is far more extensive and rigorous than what I am turning up. Just ask my students--or those who survived it. Some students have taken out second morgages just to buy all the books... Others went into counseling. And so it goes.

7 comments:

Craig Fletcher said...

I was thinking that you could ask your peers for their syllabus.

Folks like Corduan, Moreland, Giesler, Craig, etc.

MJ said...

I doubt I can find it in my files, but I had a very impressive apologetics course in high school. Not sure you'd be in much substantive agreement, as it involved a heavy does of VanTil, Frame, Bahnsen, the Bible (of course), and memorizing and understanding the Biblical foundations of sizable portions of the WSC. I still am quite sympathetic to this introduction to presuppositional apologetics, and it was very rigorous for the 11th grade mind.

MJ said...

..and I almost forgot we covered Rushdooney and J.G. Machen.

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. said...

It is spelled Rushdoony. I had my fill of presuppositionalism years ago. I read acres of books by all of them, but realized the limits of that method: it is all negative apologetics. There is no place for positive evidence.

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. said...

J. Greshem Machen, however, was not presuppostional.

MJ said...

Well certainly he cannot be a "presuppositionalist," per se, since he died before VanTil laid out his thought, but he most ceratinly would not be the intellectual odd man out of the camp I mentioned.

Rushdooney [sic] was a typo, with apologies.

I'd like to hear more of your thinking presuppositionalism lacks place for positive evidence. Seems to me that it is the sine qua non of the apologetic form. It appears largely negative since it presumes positive evidence (found in long standing Christian arguments based on ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments) and proceeds directly to a transcendental approach.

But I'm simply a layman...hoping not to incur your shrugging off again... :)

Grace Baptist Church, Somerset, KY said...

Dr. G, is your syllabus posted anywhere that it could be viewed?