What is cultural apologetics and why is it critical for today’s culture?

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

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What is cultural apologetics and why is it critical for today’s culture?

October 22, 2025

In this episode of Faith & Clarity, Mark Turman sits down with Skyler Flowers, Program Director for The Carson Center for Theological Renewal, to talk about what it really means to practice cultural apologetics. Skyler, who also serves as an elder at Grace Bible Church and is pursuing his PhD in Systematic Theology, shares how faith and culture intersect in the everyday questions people are asking about identity, technology, politics, and more.

Together, they reflect on voices like Augustine, C.S. Lewis, and Tim Keller, exploring how story, imagination, and truth work together to help people see the beauty and reasonableness of Christianity in our modern world. It’s a thoughtful, hopeful conversation about helping others understand—not just what Christians believe—but why those beliefs make sense and bring life in a shifting culture.

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Topics

  • (01:44): Introducing Skyler Flowers
  • (03:04): Skyler’s journey of faith
  • (06:58): The Gospel After Christendom
  • (12:56): Defining cultural apologetics
  • (19:44): Tim Keller’s influence and legacy
  • (26:03): Paul’s approach in Athens
  • (30:37): The role of the Holy Spirit
  • (33:13): Good, true, and beautiful
  • (37:34): Historical anchoring of cultural apologetics
  • (43:52): The power of storytelling
  • (46:19): Current cultural shifts and opportunities
  • (50:51): Conclusion and resources

Resources

About Skyler R. Flowers

Skyler Flowers (MDiv, Reformed Theological Seminary) is the Program Director for The Carson Center for Theological Renewal and cohort director for all TGC cohorts. He serves as an elder at Grace Bible Church in Oxford, Mississippi, and is working toward his PhD in systematic theology at the University of Aberdeen. Skyler served as an editor for The Gospel After Christendom. He is married to Brianna, and they have two kids.

About Dr. Mark Turman

Mark Turman, DMin, serves as the Executive Director of Denison Forum, where he leads with a passion for equipping believers to navigate today’s complex culture with biblical truth. He is best known as the host of The Denison Forum Podcast and the lead pastor of the Possum Kingdom Chapel, the in-person congregation of Denison Ministries.

Dr. Turman is the coauthor of Sacred Sexuality: Reclaiming God’s Design and Who Am I? What the Bible Says About Identity and Why it Matters. He earned his undergraduate degree from Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, and received his Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. He later completed his Doctor of Ministry at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University in Waco.

Before joining Denison Forum, Mark served as a pastor for 35 years, including 25 years as the founding pastor of Crosspoint Church in McKinney, Texas.

Mark and his high school sweetheart, Judi, married in 1986. They are proud parents of two adult children and grandparents to three grandchildren.

About Denison Forum

Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, the Faith & Clarity podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited. 

Dr. Mark Turman: [00:00:00] Near the end of the book of Romans, Romans 1513, the Apostle Paul was inspired to include a prayer, one sentence prayer that says this, may the God of all hope fill you with joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Our goal at Faith and Clarity is to help you do just that, to overflow with hope to be a bright light in the midst of a confusing time.

So we’re gonna do that today by a unique conversation. So welcome to the podcast, a Denison Forum podcast. I’m your host, mark Turman. We wanna help you think biblically to find clarity in these confusing times so that you can live by faith and not by fear. Like I said, overflow with hope Today. We want to do that by exploring a term you may or may not be familiar with called cultural apologetics.

You’ve heard of apologetics probably in a traditional sense about making arguments for the [00:01:00] faith, but cultural apologetics is a little bit more unique and distinct in some ways. We talk about at Denison Forum all the time about how do we connect biblical truths and winsome faith. To today’s questions and issues that are floating around in the culture.

Another way of saying that, what does Jesus have to say about the sanctity of life and related issues like abortion or euthanasia? What does Jesus have to say about identity and sexuality or technology and artificial intelligence? A lot of people wanna know, what does Jesus have to say about politics and how to live out your beliefs in that area in a civil way?

All of these things are a part of the work of cultural apologetics. My discussion partner for today is Skyler Reed Flowers. Skyler is the program director for the Keller Center. For theological renewal. He also directs the cohorts for the Gospel Coalition he serves has been serving as an elder at Grace [00:02:00] Bible Church in Oxford, Mississippi.

So good. Shout out to all you Ole Miss folks. We’re glad to have you along with us. And he’s currently working on a PhD in Systematic Theology at the University of Aberdeen. He is a, an editor. For the work that we’re gonna use as kind of the content of our conversation today, a new book that’s come out called The Gospel After Christendom, an Introduction to Cultural Apologetics.

We are reading that here at Denison Forum, and we’re gonna talk about it today with Skyler. He’s married to Brianna and they have two kids, so let’s jump into it. Skyler, welcome to the Faith and Clarity Podcast.

Skyler Flowers: Thank you so much for having me. And yeah. Shout out to all the Ole Miss Rebels out there.

Would love to hear from you if you’re listening. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Absolutely. And you know, could be a good year to be an Ole Miss student or alumni.

Skyler Flowers: Yeah, it’s a, it’s we’re hopeful and it’s great to to be living in the town right now. So the it’s, it’s busy and it’s fun, but we’ll see how long 

Dr. Mark Turman: the good times can roll.

[00:03:00] Absolutely almost everybody, not everybody, but almost everybody’s a college football fan these days. And so yeah, we’re glad to have you tell us a little bit about you, a little about your journey of faith and what you’re doing in ministry these days. 

Skyler Flowers: Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in South Mississippi in a little town called Somera.

It’s just north of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, which even if you’re not familiar with Mississippi, you might be familiar with the University of Southern Mississippi. That’s where it is. Somera, it was so small, didn’t even have a red light, you know, but I, I grew up in a family that we were at church.

Every Sunday, every Wednesday. That was the hub of communal life in, in a small town, especially in the deep south. I have two older brothers. They’re 11 and nine years older than me, and so I, and, and they took their faith seriously in high school. So I always really had great faith examples in my family and in my brothers.

As I was growing up. I came to faith through the ministry of our church when I was in early high school and I went to Ole Miss. And when I went to Ole Miss at least in Mississippi, and I don’t know what the Ole Miss reputation is. Outside of [00:04:00] Mississippi, but at least in small town Mississippi, the, the mentality about Ole Miss is that’s a party school.

You’re gonna go there, you’re gonna lose your faith. Everyone goes there and they just go absolutely crazy. And so that’s pretty much I walked into Ole Miss thinking, oh man, I’m gonna be the only Christian at Ole Miss. And actually, when I, when I got there, it was a totally different experience. And I think one of the reasons why I’ve, I’ve, you know, I lived near Southern University of Southern Mississippi.

Lived here in Oxford now for over a decade. And the only other time, and I’ll get to this in a second, that I’ve lived outside of Mississippi, was in Orlando, Florida, near the University of Central Florida. I’ve always kind of found myself near universities, and I think one of them is because of how influential university life was in my own life when I was here at Ole Miss.

Because I get here, I think I’m gonna be the only Christian, and what I really find is all of these Christians. Living so faithfully, so joyfully in community with one another, sharing the gospel, spending their summers going to foreign nations and sharing the gospel. And I really real, the Lord used that to really show me how much I still had to grow and ultimately used that to [00:05:00] call me into ministry.

I remember the first time I visited Grace Bible Church as a college student. This was early in the church’s life, and just hearing the pastor proclaim the word of God in a way that I felt like I had never heard. The word of God preached. And I, I, I grew up in a Bible believing church, but I’ve always told people, you know, there was, you know, probably if there was a really hard text, my church might just skip it.

Or if they did address it, that I may leave with more questions than I did answers. Even though they were faithful to the scriptures. And what I saw there was someone that was even in the modern world with all the challenges being brought against scripture was a church that was saying, we’re gonna be speak faithfully in a town, in a university life that may question a lot of these truths.

And, and that just compelled me and said, if this is what ministry is, this is what I wanna do for the rest of my life. And so I went to Orlando to Reform Theological Seminary in Orlando. That’s where I got my training. I worked at a church there. Through that we started a podcast that ultimately got involved with the Gospel Coalition.

I came back to Oxford when I finished seminary and I worked at Grace Bible Church [00:06:00] again for the last four and a half years. Serving mostly as the youth and family and college pastor here. And in August I transitioned full-time to work at the Gospel Coalition where I’ve been helping for the last couple of years with.

The, at the Keller Center doing our co online learning cohorts, where we cover a lot of the topics that are covered in this book. And then recently I transitioned to go help not only with the Keller Center, but also with the Carson Center, which were, is the Keller Center is more for cultural apologetics.

The Carson Center for Theological and Renewal, creating resources there. So that’s a little bit about me and, and what I’m currently 

Dr. Mark Turman: doing. And if if any of our listeners are not familiar with the, the Gospel Coalition, we highly recommend you check it out. A great partner and has a lot of kinship to what we do at Denison Forum and Denison Ministries.

And you can just find [email protected] and you’ll find all kinds of great digital resources that will inspire and encourage your faith. And include including in that not only articles, but podcasts and many other kinds of resources as well. So we would encourage you to check that out. Skyler.

Let’s talk a little bit about [00:07:00] this new resource that you helped as editor with called the Gospel after Christen them the story, the message of Jesus, the life of Jesus after Christendom. And just wanna make that really clear by way of just defining a couple of terms at the beginning. We hear the word Chris and dumb tossed around at universities and seminaries, not so much probably at church on Sunday morning.

But give us your kind of thumbnail definition of what do we mean by Christendom and what do we mean that we are in a season after or post christiandom? What does that refer to? 

Skyler Flowers: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great way to frame it. You know, there’s a couple of different ways you can think about Christendom.

You can think about maybe a more formal political Christendom where e essentially the state and the church are so closely identified with one another. If you’re a follower of the theologian ethicist Oliver o’ Donovan, he would say formal or political. Christendom largely ended with. The Declaration of Independence from Great Britain leaving a sort of state church model, and [00:08:00] especially with the separation of church and state that we see in the Constitution.

That’s less of what we’re talking about, but there’s gonna be remnants of that when we’re talking about a culture being proc Christendom. As we’re speaking of here, what we’re recognizing is that, especially in the West, that the foundation, so many of the things we value, the things we hold dear, as Glenn Scrivener titled his book on some of these subjects, the air that we breathe.

Is largely built upon the foundations that Christianity built foundations like every human having inherent worth created in the image of God. Even values of, of freedom and self-expression and the development of the self. There’s, there’s so many of these cultural ideas that float around, that are built on the foundation of Christianity and four.

The last, you know, hundreds of years and thousands of years, or couple thousands of years, what we’ve seen is that Christianity was largely the framework in which everyone interpreted the world around them. You know, Charles Taylor, when he’s writing in, in his book the Secular Age, he’s, he’s speaking of that, there [00:09:00] was.

A transcendent frame in which everyone kind of conceived of everything. There was a divine God who had created all things, who, who works all in and through the world that we live in, and that’s how you interpreted everything in your normal everyday life, from agriculture to your family, to your children, to the way you related to the, to the state, and to the church.

All of these things were defined, so we’re saying that Christianity is. Or the world, the culture that we find ourselves in now is post Christin. What we’re recognizing is that that idea has largely been moved away from, and there’s a, a myriad of factors. We don’t really in the book dive too much into why we’ve moved into post Christin, and I think that’s because there’s so many resources you can find including what I mentioned, what Charles Taylor Glenn Scribner’s book, also Carl Truman’s book, A Strange New World, hopefully dives into how did we get to where we are, but what we’re recognizing there.

Is that, and this is what Tim Keller wrote in his How to Reach the West again just a couple years before he died, is that up until this point, you essentially, when you’re going to share the gospel with someone, you could pretty much assume they [00:10:00] had a few different dots. And those dots were largely connected to one another.

And, and maybe the last thing the evangels had to do is you already have these assumptions of moral values of a transcendent world. And, and the last thing the evangelist has to do is just connect that to the gospel, connect that to you need Jesus Christ to forgive you your sins. On a post-Christian war, what we’re assuming is that these dots have been lost, these dots that have defined who we are, who have connected all these things to a more a spiritual transcendent frame.

And that was distinctly Christian, not just kind of a vague spirituality have been lost and therefore there’s a new culture that’s arisen that’s that’s reject, not even, not only does it have that, but it’s actually even set itself against these things. So we’re sharing the gospel in a context, at least in the West, that we’ve largely never found ourselves in, and that’s what we’re referring to as post.

Sindo. And, and if I might, I guess one asterisk to that would be to say, and this is the argument that, that like Glenn or even Tom Holland are making is that as much as this is post Christendom, it’s still largely built upon the foundations of Christendom in many ways. So [00:11:00] there’s maybe even more doubts than we presume.

That each individual has because every human is created in the image of God with those same sort of anthropological human nature foundations. I don’t know if that helps. Maybe you 

Dr. Mark Turman: may even offer a better definition than me. Yeah, no, that, that helps with kind of, that, that idea of it’s the air that we breathe and, and it’s.

Been the environment that we’ve been raised in, not just for a little bit of time, not even for a few decades, but even much longer than that. But that there has been a pretty significant change and culture is always changing, always moving in a direction. And it’s not so much that we would say that Christendom has fallen so much as it may have faded from the.

Primary awareness or orientation around the way? A lot, a lot of people in the West think we talk about even if we just go back, you know, somewhere around 75, 80 years to right after post World War ii, you know, if we had lived in that time in the South, as both of us do, we would’ve known that.[00:12:00] 

Church and Christianity was at a high place of respect. Even if you were not a Christian or a regular church attender, you had a lot of respect and an, and a fundamental awareness of the basic claims of Christianity and the values that emanate from it. But since that time. We’ve passed through a, a, a season in which Christianity in some ways seemed to become irrelevant to a lot of people.

And then even into a season, some 30, 40 years ago in which Christianity was cons, was seen as dangerous. And some of those things are still with us. Kind of an apathetic attitude as well as an antagonistic attitude, not against everything that Christianity has brought to the table, but to a lot of things that Christianity has historically been the source of and been the framework out of which we just lived our lives is maybe a way I would add a little bit to that.

Skyler, bring us into the next part of this. We wanted to the, the book that you helped to compilate [00:13:00] here is a, a book about cultural apologetics. What do we mean by cultural apologetics? How is it different from maybe what we would call traditional apologetics? And why is it important for the church today?

Skyler Flowers: Yeah, absolutely. We started essentially a couple of years ago, I think that we’re going on maybe the third year here of what we call the, the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics at the Gospel Coalition. And, and, and with that we’re trying to create these resources around cultural apologetics, and yet.

The thing that I kept finding was that the number one question I’d get whenever I would tell someone about, oh, you know, I work for the killer center. We do these things. The, the number one question they had was, what is cultural apologetics? And often whenever I, you know, kind of flip that question, what do they think cultural apologetics was?

Often what you would find is it maybe had some vague sense that it’s something like, you know, you watch a movie and you’re trying to find whatever the Christian theme in the movie is that in a way that you can, you know, turn that movie back into an evangelistic opportunity or [00:14:00] something like that.

I’m not saying cultural apologetics is, is is nuts. Would not, that can’t be classified as cultural politics, but that’s pretty much the way people, I guess you’re just trying to find the, the artifact within a, you know, that you can. Turn it into a Jesus moment in, in someone else’s life. And again, that’s it is not necessarily a bad way to view it, but, but I think it’s, it’s severely limited in, in exactly what we’re referring to.

So we saw this need to say, how are we going to define cultural apologetics so that, that if we don’t define it, then, then someone else will, or we’re always gonna have to be trying to explain it. So that’s why we saw the need for a book like this that says, let’s answer what the different contours of this is.

Now a couple of things in setting it apart from, say. Traditional apologetics, and this will help us move towards a definition of cultural apologetics. Is that I actually don’t really see it as as being that distinct from traditional apologetics. Maybe what if we, we mean tra traditional apologetics in the sense of the for proofs or appeals to even evidence of making a defense of the Christian faith?

Well, cultural apologetics, it, it, it actually employs all of those tools [00:15:00] depending on the culture or the conversation that it may find itself in. Cultural apologetics is really getting to the heart of is what are. The desires or what are the narratives? What are the stories? What are the loves that any given culture has?

This is true of every culture you can, you can find these values that are laden within it. The stories that we tell ourselves, the ways that we think think to create the world around us and explain the world around us. Every culture, supplies, answers to the big questions of life. Cultural apologetics is trying to look at those questions and see where in those questions.

Oh, sorry. Where in those answers, wearing those answers is there’s something we can affirm. There’s this seed, this desire within that that is good, that is given by God. But where is the rebellion in that too That, that the gospel actually tells us this desire that you have is good. The way that you’re seeking it is never going to fulfill you.

It’s a rejection of God, and actually this very desire that you have is. [00:16:00] Only fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ. So cultural apologetics is this work in which you know, and there’s a Colin opens up the book with an illustration from the sociologist James Davison Hunter, where he’s speaking with James Davidson Hunter about the work that he does, and, and he’s asking him about the current political election at the time.

He has his opinion and Hunter kind of waves him off and, and, and when Colin really presses on him, what Hunter essentially says is I’m not a, I’m not a weatherman, I’m a cultural climatologist. And what he means by that is that if you think of cultural projects as we’re just looking out and we’re just trying to tell you if it’s raining, if it’s hot, if it’s windy, you’re just trying to stay up to date on whatever the current thing is.

That would be maybe viewing it more as. As a weatherman, a cultural climatologist is taking that further step out to look at the atmosphere, to look at the culture that we’re living in and saying, where are the gospel opportunities? Where is it that the gospel cuts to the heart of the human life and mind today in a unique way?

And how can we share the gospel in that place? So I think it, it, it uses traditional apologetics. He uses, it’s built on [00:17:00] a on a theology that you one could call presuppositional. It’s built on all of these different ideas, but it’s saying any given culture has unique opportunities and cultural. Is trying to seek out those opportunities and make the most of them in their gospel proclamation.

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That, that helps to frame it some more. Let’s, let’s go a little bit further down this road. One of the scholars that’s quoted in this book makes a statement that Christianity has made the western world weird and that word weird as an acrostic for the culture being western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.

And that’s where ideas like America as a Christian nation comes from the idea of the, the binding together of biblical faith and American freedom. Some of those things are attached to that. But Tom Holland, who you mentioned a moment ago and others kind of in, have indicated that Christianity has been a victim of its own success, that it’s become.

Too pervasive in the culture to be distinctive. How do you help us understand that? What are, what [00:18:00] are they driving at in that idea? 

Skyler Flowers: Yeah, what they’re driving at, and this is a little bit of what I was speaking of at the beginning, and, and, and I think actually one of the fellows at the Keller Center, he’s not a contributor in the book.

He, he even acts that we’re not just weird, but we’re weirder and he adds two more letters to it. And I can’t exactly remember. You know, one of them is maybe enlightened in the, I know romantic is the other one. I, I can’t exactly remember. But yeah, essentially what they wanna say is, is that there’s some, the west, is built upon these foundations of the Christian faith. And I liked it the way you framed it earlier when you said you know, some people wanna maybe today look at it and say, Christianity or Christendom has fallen. But the reality is that it’s faded. And when we say that something is faded, we don’t necessarily mean it’s just ceased to exist.

But rather it’s just maybe not on the surface level anymore, but so many. And when they say, you know. Christianity is a victim of its own success, is that the values that were promoted by Christianity? Again, the things like the Imago Day, these things are just assumed in human life now to where you can have the, the, you know, the United [00:19:00] Nations Human Rights Declaration, I think signed and adopted in, in 1948 or 1949, just there in the wake of World War ii.

And it does so without reference. To God in a, in a large way. It’s, it’s, it’s acknowledging that there’s inherent human rights, but, but different than even say the Declaration of Independence, which says that these rights are given to us by our creator. So Christianity, when it’s saying it’s a victim of its unsuccess thing, Christianity has created a world that allowed for these different worldviews to flourish and to.

See human life flourishing and long lives to be longer, to see success in, in all these ways that have created the West. But in doing so, it also created the foundation went by which someone might reject Christianity. And so I think that’s the claim that they’re trying to make there. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that helps as well.

Many people listening, I think Will, will key off of the name Tim Keller. Many of us are fans in different ways and have followed his work for decades. How is his presence, how is his influence? Seen in the gathering up [00:20:00] of this. This book includes 13 contributors as well as you and Colin as editors and other influences, but how is Keller’s approach to apologetics, how his approach to the sharing of the gospel and the guiding of a church, how is that expressed in the book?

Skyler Flowers: Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, obviously all of us are, including the contributors are all attached to in some way. The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, which bears Tim’s name the Keller Center, came together through an initiative at the gospel cion to want to create these resources.

To want to say we want to, in many ways be. You can say research and development for the gospel collectional for Christianity more broadly of we someone a group of individuals who are already practicing apologetics already you know, theologians in their own rights already, practitioners and, and pastors in their own rights who are doing this, who can also.

Through the coming together of this group build off one another, collaborate with one another to create even greater resources and to have even better, [00:21:00] and to be able to create resources that put these in the hands of individual pastors and Christians, young people to help them to be able to do the work of apologetics and evangelism in the world.

Today. Tim was he’s a founder of the Gospel Coalition along with Don Carson. That’s where the names for the two centers come from. But Tim was also, I think, and I, I’m not exactly, I wasn’t quite around. Whenever they were forming, but also I think, pretty hesitant to lend his name to anything but especially any kind of center.

And I think there was but even still, there’s the recognition that this, this thing, the Gospel Coalition, but also the Keller Center was going to be tied to his legacy, whether he he liked it or not. And actually by attaching Tim’s name to it, what we’re not trying to say is honor the man. Though Tim, I believe was a godly man, a faithful pastor, someone that has been personally influential in my life, and I’m sure the life of.

Of many of the listeners, but but also more so attached to a framework of approaching evangelism in the world today that is respectful to the person that we’re speaking to, that’s seeking to understand them and the world that they live in, and the, the conceptual [00:22:00] and spiritual and, and value world that they have created for themselves.

Giving them that sort of respect while also trying to point them to the gospel consistently. And so Tim had a major hand in, in drawing together all of the fellows at the Keller Center, of which there’s, I think, 24 here in the book. I think we only have 14 because we, you know, if we had 25 contributions, it’d be a quite longer book.

You know, some people just had to sit on the bench for this one. But I think what you’ll see in each one of these is not that each one of them are simply Keller clones, as if, you know, we can’t have a book written by Tim Keller today because he sadly has passed away. So therefore we’ll just try to replicate it in the aggregate or something like that.

No, I think that’s what you actually find. And even within the volume, you’ll find that there’s actually even maybe some disagreement, maybe some differences in the way of defining what this the task of cultural apologetics is. Some differences and disagreements on how that we should go about this.

The thread through all of them is largely the same, is that there’s an opportunity in every culture to share the gospel. This is the historic [00:23:00] practice of the Christian Church to share the gospel in the ways that is intelligible to the culture. It inhabits. This, I believe, has been modeled so well by Tim Keller.

Now, he was a pastor in a very specific context. Being in New York City, Tim Keller’s ministry, I think would’ve. Certainly flourished in Oxford, Mississippi or in Dallas, Texas, but it probably would’ve looked very different. And so the recognition of this book and, and, and of Tim Keller’s personal influence on it, is that I think we’re taking those principles and we wanna honor the man.

The book is, is certainly dedicated him while also recognizing that this looks different given any time, place and culture. And, and I think that’s recognizing. Exactly what Tim would’ve wanted to be. If this was just a, a, you know, a, a book in honor of him I don’t think he would’ve found it to be been too beneficial.

Yeah. But a book that’s continued to build on the contributions that he had as a pastor, I think is largely where his influence is seen. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, absolutely. And, and a great segue to an idea that I wanted to, to bring up next, which is this idea of, of cultural apologetics being the [00:24:00] practice of engaging people, individuals, but also engaging kind of the larger orientation that people live in with sympathy.

With you know, the Bible repetitively tells us to do all of our ministry with patience toward all. Seemed to be a favorite exhortation of the Apostle Paul from the Holy Spirit. But this idea that all of us struggle with when we’re trying to represent Christ and trying to speak for Christ in all different kinds of relationships of how do we be how can we be?

Not, how do we not accommodate those things which are not biblical and right and holy in the framework of scripture and the life of Jesus, but also how do you not condemn people at the same time? How do you find that sweet spot? And are there some examples of that in the book or in Keller’s life that, that come to mind when you think about how can we equip people to, to walk that line?

Skyler Flowers: Yeah, that, that’s a great question. So when we think of, yeah, what [00:25:00] you’re getting at there is that we believe that the practice of cultural apologetics has its own distinct posture. Now by even saying distinct there, i, I don’t necessarily mean that, you know, all apologetics couldn’t have the same posture, but I think cultural apologetics especially calls for a certain type of posture.

And this is because of the, the theological foundation upon which I think cultural apologetics is built. Cultural apologetics is building on, the work of you know, again, this practice, and I’ll get to some examples maybe in a second, that that recognizes that there are within every human, within human nature, a desire for God that they do not recognize and even reject and rebel against the fact that that comes from God.

Humans have creative capacities through the work of God in common grace to to work, to develop cultures and societies and personalities within families, within the unique works of their gifting that enriches the life of this world that enriches its diversity. And yet all of those things are striving after something that they do not yet understand.

And I think in [00:26:00] cultural apologetics with that sort of understanding. You can look in the Bible and you can see Paul’s example, and he goes into a city and he walks around and he spends time analyzing the city speaking of Athens here. And then he goes into the temple and then he’s, when he is able to speak, he’s speaking from an informed position, but he is also speaking, as you said, a, a second ago in a sympathetic position, this thing that you desire.

You desire that? What you do not know The unknown God, I, I’ll tell you about the unknown God, he speaks, even quotes their own philosophers to them at different times. I think you could even look at the Bible itself as you know, considering the, the Book of Genesis as its own sort of cultural apologetic because it’s being written in a context in which there’s these other gods, there’s other creation accounts that are floating around.

Israel, who is your God? And then when we go, we get the creation account of Genesis one, which is a direct affront to the creation accounts You’re gonna see in, in Ba in Babylonian Gods. All of these are saying your gods are false. This thing that you know happened, that this world has come from, something that’s come from [00:27:00] someone.

You understand it in a wrong way, but there’s actually this one true God that has created things in this way. So the posture then therefore is neither accommodation, which is just saying everything you believe is right. No big deal. Come into the big house, you know, you don’t need to turn from anything.

You can bring all your idols into the house with you. You can, you can tr you know, go into the temple. You can worship the unknown God and the one true God and these other gods, and it’s neither accommodating, but it’s also not condemning. It’s RA rather saying. This thing that you believe or this thing that you hold, or this thing that you, you value, this thing that you love it actually has a deeper meaning than you’re even realizing, and that is found in our Lord Jesus Christ.

So if, you know, whenever you have this accommodation path. Posture you lose what makes it anything distinct distinctly Christian. But when you have this condemning posture, you might be tuning out the, the, the hero before they even have heard the case for Christianity. Because you’ve said you are so wrong and you, you, you come at this with this posture that just [00:28:00] condemns.

Now that doesn’t mean that you can’t speak boldly in within this. I think actually what you see in the example of Paul, what you see in the example of, say Augustine in the city of G, which is an example that’s highlighted in the book here through, in a couple of chapters of this long pre. Mere work in Christian history of what we might term cultural apologetics is he’s speaking quite boldly.

I mean, he’s calling out the idols of Rome and these, these ideas that have failed them, we are trying to highlight for them these ideas, these values, they have failed you. That requires boldness, that requires something that, that might be rejected or might even be viewed as intolerant in some ways, right?

But it’s not necessarily condemning. What condemns them is only their sin. And we’re calling these people we’re calling their, our neighbors, our friends, those that we encounter to believe in Jesus Christ, not I comment. Them where they’re at or condemning them where they’re at, but calling them to something else.

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. It’s such a important thing for us to pray about and, and to pursue. Like I said, the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul, the other leaders of the early churches. So much examples and helpful for showing us how to do [00:29:00] this in various kinds of contexts and different cultures. They went in and out of different kinds of experiences in different kinds of communities that.

Them to have to think through it and to think through how, how do we express that we really do care about these people? We’re not trying to beat them down, but we’re also not interested in letting them to, letting them continue to live the lies that, that they have. Accepted or created on their own. We’re talking about how can we be really equipped as believers to share the greatest story in the world, the story of Jesus with people in our context, in our situation.

Our world is our world. And we’re not gonna, we won’t know until we’re in heaven. Whether it was harder or easier for us than it was for others. It’s just our time. How how can this particular resource, how can cultural apologetics largely how can it help to make Christianity more plausible to people in our [00:30:00] world today?

We live along among a lot of people who are skeptical. Some who are even battling really deep experiences of cynicism. And, and the idea of. Jesus being God. The idea of Jesus dying sacrificially as an atonement and a ransom for all of us. The idea that Jesus came back from the dead and is a, is not only a but the ruling king of the universe.

For many people in our culture that is no longer plausible, how do we reverse that direction? 

Skyler Flowers: Yeah, that’s a one thing I wanna think of right off the bat is to say, by our own efforts and skill, we’re, we’re unable to reverse that. It’s only by the work of the Holy Spirit and the Lord working in people’s lives.

And cultural projects, you know, has to understand and assume that, that it’s not simply, this is the better method by which you’ll, you know, suddenly have the power that you never, you know, you’re unlocking a new power that you’ve never had. No, we’re [00:31:00] still deeply and fundamentally dependent on the Holy Spirit and therefore cultural apologize.

Requires that, that we be in prayer and that we seek the Lord for wisdom that he, and ask the Lord that he would transform people’s heart. But I think you also identified what’s really at the heart of cultural apologetics in many ways, which is making Christianity not only intelligible, but also desirable.

That someone even before they believe, may even reach the point where they say, I want this to be true. This, this gives a better explanation of the life that I’ve wanted to live, or the life that I’ve been striving after, and the thus far been unable. To get to, I love the chapter in the book that Gavin Orland, he writes and I can’t exactly remember the title, but I remember the, the working title for it was essentially secularism is, is Unlivable.

And it’s this recognition that there’s so many ways in which every individual is approaching life and trying to, to find just most basically human flourishing, whether that’s found in riches and wealth and in status and name and career, or even something which is inherently good like family. And, and [00:32:00] secularism or a world that’s lived without reference to God is seeking these things in, in certain ways.

But what we’re finding, and I think you find all sorts of even empirical studies now that are backing these things up, is that it’s an inherently unlivable lifestyle that it only ever leads to, to dead ends or unmet expectations or lacking the fulfillment. That one. That, that we hoped it would be when we’re presenting Christianity in a way that we might call cultural apologetics, we’re presenting as Christianity as the, as the answer to those human longings, as do you find secularism to be unlivable?

Maybe you haven’t now or currently haven’t gotten to the end of of yourself and the end of this lifestyle of, of the end of the road of secularism, but maybe one day you will. And so what we’re offering is that Christianity isn’t just. An alternative and a possibility of, of many different lifestyles and worldviews, but actually Christianity is the one that makes the most sense of the world that we live in.

That makes the most sense of the desires that you have. Because Christianity is true. Christianity is good, and Christianity is. Ultimately because it is true. [00:33:00] Because it is, it is good, it is beautiful, and therefore it draws the human into and longing for it. Cultural projects, and again, this is where it employs some of these other tools and things.

It, it seeks certainly to make things intelligible but also desirable. Hmm. 

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, let’s, I, I wish you’d run a little bit further with those ideas of good, true and beautiful. One of the writers in this section I especially following Rebecca McLaughlin have read some of her work and others, but these, this idea of longing and you see it, you see it every time you turn on any screen.

In our culture, you see some expression of longing. Even a person, you know, some of the most quote unquote successful people in our society you still see evidences that. Their longings are going frustrated because they’ve reached the pinnacle of their pursuit and it still hasn’t been meaningful or it hasn’t been satisfying to them.

Chase that out a little bit more. Do you feel [00:34:00] like that these things are universal to us? The longings, particularly for goodness, for truth for beauty I remember reading a quote, can’t remember who it was that, you know, will Beauty save the world but those are. Those are unique kinds of ideas about presenting the gospel in our context.

Are they not? Yeah, I think they are 

Skyler Flowers: now. I think that they are, you know, these are what we call the transcendentals is what historic Christianity has referred to them and, and what we were trying to answer, and this is the, the third section of the book is what questions does cultural apologetics answer?

And, and, you know, there’s so many topics you could talk about. You could talk about sexuality you could talk about scientific arguments. You could talk about even, even specifically historic ones like slavery and Christianity’s relationship to that or the crusades. So there’s so many questions you can answer in cultural apologetics.

And so we boil. ’em down to these three questions. Is Christianity good? Is it beautiful? And is it true? And so I’d certainly think in the West, these three ideas, they, they’re, they’re so seeped in again, because the West is largely built on these Christian foundations [00:35:00] that, that those transcendentals inhabit so much of the way we even relate to the world and relate to things.

But, but I think they also, and they’re called transcendentals. So there were just in the name of that as referencing that they are spiritual. They’re not merely some sort of imminent or human construct. Recognize that that means that every human is, whether it’s an Asian culture, an African culture have these desires for, for life to be good and to, to enjoy things that are good for life, to be beautiful, and to enjoy beauty.

And, and to recognize that these things can only be built on a stable foundation of truth by which we, we build our world. So yes, I, I certainly think that, and, and, and I don’t think that you’re gonna encounter your, your neighbor and they’re going to have these categories already built into their head.

Hey, I’m looking in my worldview for things that are good, beautiful, and true, and then you just gotta work through the categories with them to, to tick the box there. But rather, it’s the recognition that. Th this, the, the, the, this is true, that this is something that you have, whether you wanna recognize it or not.

In Rachel Gilson’s [00:36:00] chapter, she’s writing on Christianity as Beautiful and she’s building on the fact that Christianity can only be beautiful if it is, if it is good, if it is presented as morally good, we don’t call things beautiful that we find to be morally disturbing, morally disgusting.

There’s something inherent within humans that is re repulsed by certain images or certain actions but is drawn to other images and other actions. There’s something inherently human about that. What is it that’s this shared thing? If it’s explained by Darwinism, then it’s simply, this is just the something that was developed over the course of centuries and humans were inha habituated into this because it promoted.

The benefit of the group for survival, right? But we know something, we have a longing for something. I think actually in today’s modern culture in the West, especially as things have changed from maybe a more rationalist, naturalist kind of mentality I do think that there is this awakening.

You’ll see this in, in, in what people call even remix spirituality, remixed religion of this recognition. No, [00:37:00] actually naturalism cannot explain all of these desires I have. But can I also even know and tap into the whatever. Greater truth connects me to all other human beings. And that’s where you’re getting this kind of odd mixture and of, of different religious beliefs.

And that’s where I think Christianity being true. The one truth, the, the, the Christ is the way to God is an important truth to emphasize 

Dr. Mark Turman: even today. Yeah. And that, that kinda helps to frame the idea that, you know, we’ve been talking about cultural apologetics today and in this book as if it were something new, if it were a new discipline that is emerging.

But in reality, I, I, one of the essays in this book has to do with the historical anchorings of cultural apologetics that going all the way back to the book of Acts and, and perhaps even further you could say that. This kind of thinking and this kind of discussion of what is true, what is good, what is biblical, what is beautiful has always been a part of what the people of God [00:38:00] have been attempting to do and to be that salt and light that Jesus said we would be as his followers.

Talk a little bit about the historical anchoring and grounding that you find in this. Part of the book and something that maybe illustrates that or a person or a season a movement in history that kind of illustrates what we’re talking about in terms of, hey, this is not new. It may be new to us in the way that we’re describing it, but it’s actually very old.

Skyler Flowers: Yeah, absolutely. And this is probably comes from my favorite chapter in the book. Mostly just ’cause I love history and but Josh Charo, his chapter, what he calls it, it’s a framework for retrieval. And what he does there is essentially just surveys. You know, Chris Watkin, the chapter before that he’s gonna really ground.

This is a biblical practice, not merely that the Bible provides conceptual foundations, but the Bible itself is actually practicing cultural projects. And you mentioned the example of Paul in Acts 17. That passage is highlighted in a number of chapters, but again, I think you can go back [00:39:00] to Genesis.

Chris is really gonna make an argument from First Corinthians. So you’re gonna see that we believe that, again, not only that, the Bible provides theological foundations by which you can build a cultural apologetic, but that the Bible itself is practicing this as it is practiced in the early church.

Cha Josh in the next chapter, what he does is surveys a few different thinkers and I think, we’re gonna, he’ll, we’ll have an article come out next week from not one of the contributors here at the Keller Center. He’s a Keller Center fellow. He was not a contributor in the book on viewing Athanasius as a cultural apologist.

In next year, we’re thinking about running a an online learning cohort where we just. Each week is just a different thinker across Christian history that we see was doing this. What Josh does in this chapter is he, how it’s three and I know he would highlight more if he could. But he really wants, its first one is Augustine and that, and that’s where he really looks at it.

And I already mentioned the, the book, the City of God. But if you wanna, you know, if you’ve never read the City of God or you’re looking for recommendation, first off, it’s quite long. I’ll go ahead and give you a heads up if you were hoping for a, a, you know, a hundred page, you know, short book on cultural projects.

But just to give you a sense of the framing of it, the first five books of [00:40:00] the, of City of God are. Augustine looking at the gods of Rome and, and what the Romans have already believed. About what their gods would do for them and provide for them if they did these things. And then he also walks through the atrocities that have occurred in Rome and against Rome, and how Rome at this time, it had just been sacked.

And, and there’s again, all these horrible atrocities have been committed against the women there. And, and, and what Augustine is essentially saying is, you hold these things to be true, but look where it’s gotten you. These, you, you’re, you’re, you are an indictment against yourself by your beliefs.

And so that’s essentially the first five books, and he goes through that a little bit more. But then when it gets to the last 10 books and what I’m referred to books here, it’s essentially the chapters, the last 10 chapters. He just walks through the narrative of scripture and what he’s doing there is saying all of these things that have let you down, these failures, these, these desires that you have of of hope and prosperity and protection that these gods have let you down Christianity answers in the story of the Bible and the story that God is telling.

And he’s gonna highlight [00:41:00] it. He high, Josh knows Augustine so well, so he highlights so many ways that Augustine’s doing this. But he also walks through Blaze Pascal and one that’s probably more familiar to you all, which is CS Lewis. Mm-hmm. And he views CS Lewis both in his fiction and in his nonfiction.

As someone who is not merely, you know, and maybe, you know, if you’ve read mere Christianity, you, you’re probably familiar with some of his more formal or traditional apologetics there. But if you really go and you read in some of these other ones not only in his other works, but even in mere Christianity, you’re seeing an apologetic that is largely for a western people at a time in the, you know, world War II era to right after World War ii.

Even some ways pressing. When you look at his fiction and his, his space trilogy, when you get to that last book there, which again. Quite long. It’s a little bit of an odd book but when you really begin to understand the argument he’s making there, you really begin to see how much he was anticipating the world that we inhabit now, and the anthropology of how we understand humans and what the end result of this would be, [00:42:00] even at all the way down to maybe even speaking.

Quite powerfully about what we might call artificial intelligence today. I mean, it’s really a stunning book. What he’s doing, and again, is surveying his culture and seeing where it fails and seeing where the gospel answers in. Yes, cultural projects and, and one case that we wanna make in the book and elsewhere is to say, this practice is not, it’s not new, it’s not even necessarily unique.

We’re, we’re maybe consolidating it and, and trying to give it a term. But really this is the practice. And in fact, one thing Josh would want me to say is that there’s no such thing as apologetics that isn’t cultural. All apologetics is cultural. It’s all spoken. When you speak in a language, I speak in English, or if someone else speaks in Chinese and another speaks in Spanish.

Right off the bat, we’ve already begun to contextualize our message into that culture because we’re speaking in a language, this is cultural. Apologetics is recognized that all apologetics is cultural ’cause all apologetics is accommodating itself in some way or another to the, to the people that it’s speaking to.

And this has been the practice across Christian history. 

Dr. Mark Turman: And it is something that [00:43:00] we take seriously here at Denison Forum, we take inspiration from that verse about one of the tribes of Israel called the Mene car, that they understood the times that is, they understood the context and the culture.

The environment that they were living and operating in and trying to relate to God and also trying to relate to others. Try trying to relate to each other and then to the cultures around them. What does it mean for us to walk in that same kind of spirit and that same kind of step of. God help us to understand the times that you have placed us in and then to live faithfully and boldly and beautifully in the midst of all of that.

And that does come down to some things that you mentioned ago. You talked about Augustine, CS Lewis, who we love in every way and the power that they found in telling stories. How that relates to apologetics. As we kind of have time for maybe a couple more questions and we kind of bring this down to a practical level for believers and for churches, for [00:44:00] church leaders how, how would you encourage us to use storytelling as we try to practice a more effective cultural apologetic p experience?

Yeah, absolutely. 

Skyler Flowers: I, I mean, I think of, I always tell people when I’m even thinking of my sermons, I’m, I’m thinking of them in terms of a narrative, in terms of you know, not just, you know, proposition, proposition, proposition, conclusion, but even trying to understand that you want to bring the hero, and I think this goes.

This is true for preaching. This is true for evangelism. You’re trying to bring them into a narrative in which they conceive themselves as a, a participant in because, because they are, they, I mean, we all exist, especially, at least in the West, and the way we conceive of ourselves as individuals in some sort of grand story or story we’re telling about our lives.

And so what you’re, I think that the power of storytelling is so important because it brings in all these things we’re talking about about. Goodness and beauty and truth pro, you know, if it’s just truth, it’s just proposition. Proposition. If it’s beauty, but it’s unmoored from truth, then, then, then [00:45:00] you’re giving me something to, to, to enjoy.

But, but maybe not something to move me into any sort of new life. But good storytelling recognizes that this person is somewhere in, in, in the journey of their lives and the star in the story that they tell of themselves. What we’re saying is that that story will only find its ultimate and beautiful and satisfying climax in the power of Christianity.

So that means that we need to, to work to understand the stories of the cultures that we live in. And I don’t think that even necessarily has to be an academic exercise, though. Certainly by, by reading the newspaper or reading, you know, certain authors and certain books will help you to do that. I always tell people what you’re really working to try to do is when that person is sitting across from you, you’re trying to read.

Them. You’re trying to read their life, you’re trying to read what, who, what is outside of just the, the surface levels things they tell me what are the values underneath them? What are the things that they love? What are the things that they are desiring about their life? Every human has these, and you know, it may take years to draw that out of someone.

It may take only seconds depending on where someone’s at in [00:46:00] that. Viewing cultural projects or evangelism even more broadly as storytelling is, is tapping into once you begin to understand that story and saying, I know how that story, your story, can find its ultimate conclusion in climax, which is in embracing Jesus Christ as your only Lord in Savior and the life that he has promised for you.

Dr. Mark Turman: Hmm, yeah, maybe that’s a, a good place for us to land with with one other question, one other idea, there’s lots of rumblings, lots of talk going on right now that there’s some kind of a vibe shift that people are talking about especially among young men, younger generations some in the west.

We’ve seen some indications that even in recent months that parts of Western Europe are seeing. You know, really large changes in church attendance and in questioning. And we’re seeing some of that in other survey data from Barna. The other sources like that that young people may be moving in their mindset, maybe maybe the people who have gone [00:47:00] before us and maybe some of us as well in our practice of cultural apologetics are actually, you know, the Holy Spirit’s being able to use some of that to stir something fresh.

I heard a California pastor just a few months ago who said, you know, we kind of passed through a season of aggressive atheism to a period of indifferent cynicism where people were like, I don’t know, and nobody can know, and I don’t care. Are we now in a season of what some have described as skeptical curiosity?

How do you think this book, how do you think the work of the Keller Center is speaking to that and can continue to equip Christians to, if that, if this is in fact happening among our culture right now, how do we add fuel to the fire under the direction of the Holy Spirit? 

Skyler Flowers: Yeah, the and this goes back to even a, a, a little bit, what I had said before is that I think that what you’re even seeing in this quote unquote vibe shift and, and we’re still, you know, early on and to see what the [00:48:00] fruit and, and even nature of the, of what’s going on culturally is happening.

But I think what you’re even seeing at minimum, I think we can, we can at least recognize that this is probably the fruit of. A culture that had discovered what, what we were saying earlier is that the secularism is an unlivable proposition. That the f that the, the seeds that we, you know, what we were sold about the world and, and what it would be if we embraced a, you know, a secular mentality this, you know, about humans, about sexuality, about life, largely was found empty and largely found wanting. And what you’re seeing per, perhaps, in younger generations is, is them rejecting that and saying, no, there has to be something more. There has to be, okay. This is not, this did not work out for the generation before us. This has not worked out for our society.

We’re not more unified, we’re not more loving we’re not more, this is not the bill of goods we were sold, has failed. There has to be something else. Think, think at minimum you can say this vibe should at least entails a curiosity that’s [00:49:00] rejecting the failures, the secularism a trans an ascended secularism that defined probably maybe the you know, the, the, I don’t know, the post-financial crisis or maybe even going back into the nineties at least re.

The fruits of that and saying this was found unsatisfying. And so I think what we’re trying to do at the Keller Center, certainly as I mentioned, we, we view ourselves in many ways as, as research and development in, in terms of evangelism. For today, we’re trying to recognize there are new opportunities, always presenting themselves.

These new opportunities call for new stories that we’re, we’re telling about ourselves and about our culture. And so therefore recognizing that the gospel. Speaks to these things. Now, even with the vibe shift, and this is where I can be somewhat hesitant at times, is, is almost saying if there’s a vibe shift, then we don’t have to do anything else.

The work has been done for us. And, and I don’t think that’s true because like you were mentioning, maybe it, it does signal that there’s more spiritual curiosity today, which, in which case speak more boldly. Speak. Which, or maybe we, you know, maybe we should have always been speaking boldly and not sorry, I lost my train of thought there.

But essentially to say, a vibe shift may recognize that [00:50:00] people are more open to, to the gospel now, or, or are more open to spiritual options. But Christianity is more than just an option. Christianity is the truth that we have to clinging to, that we have in, in order to find life today and for life tomorrow.

And therefore there’s always going to be a need for a cultural apologetic that recognizes whatever opportunities, the cr, the culture presents itself from its most global to its most intimate, to its most local culture. Recognizing that. That even as the winds change and the vibes shifts here and they shift back wherever the vibes may go or wherever the culture may go, is recognizing that the gospel of our Lords Christ speaks to every one of those shifts.

Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that’s a a good word. And when we live it out personally and when we live it out in the context of our church communities we are. Presenting that testimony in a faithful way as we try to walk faithfully with Christ every day. Skyler, thank you for the conversation today. Thank you for the work that you did on this book.

Tell us where people can find the book and where they can find [00:51:00] more of your work at the Keller Center. Yeah, you can just find 

Skyler Flowers: [email protected] or the keller center.org. If you go to the Gospel Coalition, it you can always find us just in the upper right hand corner. You can go to stuff there, but if you type in the Keller center.org, you’ll, you’ll pretty much find us there.

We always have different articles as hoping to always have an article each week where we’re covering a full range of topics. I mean, if you were to go you know, even now to our website, you would see cultural apologetics as evangelism. You’d have an article about. Contextual criticism about churches as quote unquote magnetic spaces, and an article about CS Lewis’.

Again, the space trilogy, you can always find more there. We have podcasts, we have cohorts where these are interactive with our different fellows, working through different topics. So you can find everything and more 

Dr. Mark Turman: [email protected]. All right. We appreciate that. We’ll continue to follow your work and wanna say a word of thanks to our audience today.

Thanks for being a part of Faith and Clarity and we hope this has been encouraging and equipping to you. If it has, please rate review us on your podcast platform, share [00:52:00] it with others so they can join the conversation with you or with us. And we’re glad that you came along today and we’ll see you next time on Faith and Clarity.

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