Trent sits down with senior apologist Jimmy Akin to talk about how all of us can become better apologists, both informally in our everyday conversations and formally for those who feel called to do this as a full-time profession.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
How do I become an apologist? That’s a question I’ve received from multiple people over the past week on my website, at trenthorn.com. So I thought, “Why not make a whole episode about it here on the Counsel of Trent podcast?” Welcome to the show. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker Trent Horn. You can contact me on my website, but actually the easiest way to get ahold of me if you have questions, or if you have comments about episodes of the Counsel of Trent podcast, the best place to submit those is actually at trenthornpodcast.com.
If you’re a premium subscriber there for as little as $5 a month, you get exclusive access to our podcast community. You can comment on episodes, you can directly message me. It’s easily the fastest and most guaranteed way to be able to get ahold of me, exclusively for our supporters at trenthornpodcast.com. You get special bonus episodes, bonus insights, and sneak peeks of upcoming content. I’ve shared little clips from my new course at the Catholic Answers School of Apologetics called “Evidence for Catholic Moral Teaching.” So, a little bit to whet your appetite. If you want the whole course, be sure to go to schoolofapologetics.com, and not just for my course, but also for “Evidence for Apologetics: Beginner’s Guide to Apologetics.” The name escapes me, but thankfully the correct name will be provided soon because our guest today is the teacher of that course. He’s the senior apologist at Catholic Answers. His name is Jimmy Akin. So, I thought he’d be the perfect guest to come on the show today to talk about this question, “How do I become an apologist?” Both in the informal sense of learning how to better defend my Catholic faith and even in the formal sense of making it a part time or even a full time job. Jimmy knows how to do that, and he’s going to walk us through that today. So, Jimmy, welcome back to the Counsel of Trent podcast.
Jimmy Akin:
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here, although you’re assuming that I know the name that marketing eventually settled on for my course. I happen to though. It’s “Beginning Apologetics.”
Trent Horn:
“Beginning Apologetics.” I knew it was something with beginning, like “Beginner’s Guide” or Beginning as an Apologist.” So, “Beginners Apologetics.” If you want to check out that course with Jimmy, it’s at schoolofapologetics.com. You can also find there my course, “Evidence for Catholic Moral Teaching.” So, what I want to talk today, Jimmy, is about the question about how to become an apologist, how to be a better apologist. That’s a question that I receive a lot from people, both informally, like how do they get better at apologetics, but then also people just asking, “Well, how do you become an apologist? How do you do this?” So I thought we’d start off with just you maybe sharing a little bit of your backstory. How did you get involved in the field of apologetics and then eventually becoming a full time apologist?
Jimmy Akin:
Well, it’s sort of … partly, it’s sort of my nature. I have an analytical mind and so I analyze stuff. In college I was a philosophy major. For a while, I was a mathematics major. I also was looking for a time at becoming a lawyer, and so I took the LSAT, which is a law school preparation test and I scored in the nineties in percentiles on that. So, it’s just part of my nature to look at and analyze things in terms of arguments, and that applied to my own life. I was not raised religiously, kind of nominally Protestantly. Then, when I was 20 years old, I had a conversion to Christ, but it wasn’t simply an emotional conversion. My intellect came along and so I needed to look at the evidences for the Christian faith. That was when I first started encountering apologetics books and reading them. Like everybody, when I first encountered the word apologetics and found out what it meant, it’s like, “Oh, come on, there’s got to be a better word than this,” but there wasn’t.
Trent Horn:
When I was at a talk once, Jimmy, a woman came up to me, an older woman came up to my table and she said, “I heard you’re an apologist.” I said, “Yeah, that’s right.” I explained in the talk and she said, “You should never apologize for being Catholic.” I said, “No, no, that’s not what it means. It means to give a defense,” but I know what you mean.
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah. So, I started reading books of general Christian apologetics. Then, when I was looking at becoming Catholic, I had to go over all of the areas of systematic theology with an open mind, because I had been preparing to be a Protestant seminary professor. That was the goal, and or pastor. So I’d already been giving myself a background in the different areas of doctrine and I had to review all of them with an open mind to whether the Catholic position might be right. As I did that, I had to basically argue my way through those, and so I gave myself a second background, not just in Christian apologetics in general, but in Catholic apologetics specifically. So, my own introduction to apologetics is very much tied to my life journey coming into first the Christian faith in a serious way, and then into the Catholic faith.
Trent Horn:
That was something similar for me, and maybe you can comment on this. I think there’s a stereotype, if you will, that most well known apologists, especially for Catholicism, tend to be converts from other Protestant dominations or even from other religions. I know for myself, my journey to apologetics began very similar way. In high school, I encountered Christianity. I examined the arguments for it, found them convincing, then examined the arguments for Catholicism. So for me, after having defeated, so to speak, the arguments and objections in front of me to become Catholic, I felt equipped to turn around and then want to help other people do the same. Do you think there’s a kind of similar pattern that many apologists enter into apologetics as they’ve already kind of done it on the converts path?
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah. There’s no reason why a person who’s a cradle Catholic and who’s been devout all their lives, there’s no reason a person like that can’t be an apologist. It’s just that if you’re coming into the faith and you have an intellectual nature that engages with the faith in an intellectual way, the apologetics is sort of thrust upon you. So it’s something you have to deal with in coming to the faith if you’re having a conversion of an intellectual nature, rather than just an emotional conversion. I don’t want to disparage emotional conversions. God reaches loads of people through their emotions, and frankly, that’s often the most effective way to reach people, but certain people have an analytical bend. If you’re one of those people and you’re converting, then the apologetics question is sort of thrust on you.
Trent Horn:
One question I want to ask, though. It’s funny, when I think about myself growing as an apologist … when I first came here to 2020 Gillespie back in the fall of 2012, during … when I was interviewing for Catholic Answers, I sat down with Carl, I sat down with you, and it was just surreal for me to step into this building with people that I had been reading for years to learn how to be a better apologist, how to answer the Catholic faith. So it’s like, I’ve learned a lot from you and Tim Staples and others in becoming an apologist, but who or what path did you go through to learn and develop your skills as an apologist? Because I think for most of us, especially in the Catholic world, there is no school. That’s why we started the School of Apologetics here at Catholic Answers. There’s no … you kind of have to learn it through independent learning. How did you do that? I learned from you, who do you learn from?
Jimmy Akin:
Well, from two sources principally. One was just reading. So I would read books by C.S. Lewis. I would read books by J.P. Moreland. He’s a well known evangelical apologist. I would read Catholic books. I would read St. Thomas Aquinas. So a lot of it was, was background reading. Unfortunately, at the time there was no Catechism of the Catholic Church. These days, we’re very fortunate to have the catechism and it’s one of the books I recommend. If anybody wants to become an apologist, there are certain … especially in a serious way, more than just as a hobby, there are certain books that you should read cover to cover. One of them is the Bible. Another is the catechism, but reading only takes you so far, right? You also have to get personal experience, and so the other principle source of training I had was just interacting with people in apologetic settings.
When I came out to Catholic Answers in 1993, it was kind of an eye opener, because I’d been a philosophy student and a grad student and so I’ve been in this kind of academic environment where it’s not at all unusual to sit around a table in a seminar and discuss technical arguments for and against the existence of God and freewill and things like that, but those aren’t the questions that most people have.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Jimmy Akin:
So it was a big eyeopener. Now, when I came in the 1990s, there was a big liturgical controversy in the United States and so I got tons of questions about the liturgy. What’s supposed to happen at Mass? Is what is happening in my parish right or not, according to the church? All kinds of liturgy questions that it’s like, “Well, I’m an apologist. Why do you want to know this? I’m not a liturgist,” but I had to become a liturgist in order to answer those questions because Mass is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. So, if something is happening in the Mass that people are unsure about, they’re going to want answers and if they’re not being satisfied by the answers they’re getting locally, then they’re going to turn elsewhere for those and so I needed to learn those answers. That’s how I ended up writing my book, mass Confusion, was as a result of all the research I did on the liturgy.
Another very practical place where the rubber meets the road in terms of people’s faith is marriage. Here in America, we’ve had a marriage crisis for several decades, with a lot of divorces, a lot of re marriages., And consequently, I needed to learn annulment law. Again, this is something that comes up all the time. In order to help facilitate people’s journey to the church, an apologist is going to need to know about these practical matters because you’re going to spend a lot more time talking to people about, “Do you need an annulment? And here’s why we have them and here’s how the process works.” You’re going to end up practically spending a lot more time talking about practical things that are of concern to people rather than just, “What do you think of Aquinas’s fifth way?”
Trent Horn:
Right. Well, I think that’s helpful. I know that for myself, when I’m trying to learn a topic, easily the best way for me to learn a particular … any kind of topic, but especially related to apologetics or theology or defending the faith is to be committed to writing a book on the subject. So like when I wrote my book, Hard Sayings: the Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties, I had known a lot about Bible difficulties, but when I was forced to sit down and write a systematic treatment of the subject and go over it over and over and over again, it really cements it. So actually, I guess when necessity calls for the faithful to get an answer to a particular question, when you have to answer it and then create the resources for answering it, that’s one of the easiest and best ways to teach yourself that very subject.
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah, and especially in the early days, I would write my way through topics that I was trying to figure out. I would write essays. They didn’t publish them publicly, but I would write my way through essays as a way of clarifying my own thoughts on a subject. Even today, when people ask me about areas I haven’t researched yet, I’ll do research and I’ll write about it, maybe a blog post, or an article or something like that as a way of both helping the person and crystallizing my own thoughts as I’m researching an issue.
Trent Horn:
Well, let’s then talk about the two different kinds of apologetics people might get into. The vastly more common one will be informal apologetics or, as a part of one’s spiritual life, engaging in evangelism, but also answering questions, answering objections to the faith, proposing arguments in favor of Catholicism. I think the Catholic Answers has done a great service to the laity to give them these resources that that didn’t exist many decades ago and now a lot of people are so excited, listen to Catholic Answers live, to our podcasts, and they want to get out there and have these dialogues and these conversations, and really defend the faith with people who disagree. So what advice do you have for lay people? But also, there’s a lot of priests who see the value of apologetics and homilies and when talking one on one with people. How do you develop that habit of apologetics in your own spiritual life and in your evangelist efforts?
Jimmy Akin:
There are sort of, I guess, a few basic principles. The first one is to be aware of the importance of this subject, because after the second Vatican council, and certainly in the English speaking world, but even more broadly than that, apologetics kind of went into an eclipse because it was viewed as being uneconomical and triumphalistic and things like that. It doesn’t need to be either of those things, but there was a kind of dimmed awareness of the need for apologetics, but apologetics is very important. One of the things that St. Peter tells us in his letters is “Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks a reason for your Christian hope.” He actually … In Greek, coincidentally, it happens to be the word [foreign language 00:14:01] for answer, but whether or not that had been the Greek word, the point is you need to be ready to explain to people why you’re Christian and why you believe what you believe, and so that means apologetics in some form.
People, also, if you’re doing evangelization, you’re going to need to give them a reason why they should be Christian. It’s not simply enough to say, “Hey, Jesus is God. Jesus loves you. You should come to Jesus.” Some people, that might be enough for them, but most people are going to have some questions. “Why should I believe in this Jesus?” What about this other idea I’ve heard?” As you start offering them evidence or responding to alternatives, you’re doing apologetics. So, kind of the first step in getting into the habit of thinking apologetically is being aware of the need and looking for opportunities. The second thing, other than be aware of people’s need for apologetics, is develop the habit of charity. This is one of the biggest, biggest problems that apologists get into is when they don’t really get the golden rule drilled into their brains. I see a lot of people doing apologetics, who … and this has changed over the years. I think it used to be worse in some ways than it is now.
Trent Horn:
Really?
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah, because originally, when apologetics was coming out of the eclipse in the Catholic world, there was a kind of tendency for Catholic apologists, and I was one of them, to feel their oats. It’s like, “Hey, we’ve got answers here,” and there is the kind of this macho, “We’re going to show them” attitude. As apologetics has matured, that’s gone away in some quarters. There are still, though, folks, and they’re not all apologists, but their voices in Catholic media, you listen to them and everything they say comes from a position of spiritual superiority, where they just look down on other people. They’re looking for excuses to either denounce someone or declare them to be, “Oh, you’re not a proper Catholic because of XYZ.” There’s a constant diet in some circles of just spiritual superiority and scorn on others, and that’s the devil’s work, right? That really, that is what the devil wants. So-
Trent Horn:
I think, Jimmy, let me just jump in here. Perhaps a rule people could follow, that I think is helpful both in my work and your work to exemplify to others, is, when you talk about a position, whether it’s a position held by other Catholics or a position held by non-Catholics, you should try to speak of it in a way that you would not be embarrassed if the person who holds that position were in the same room, listening to you at that very moment.
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah. That is a good principle because people at a distance tend to be less polite than they are face to face, although some folks are also rude face to face.
Trent Horn:
This is true.
Jimmy Akin:
But that’s one helpful approach, to imagine you’re talking to someone directly. Fundamentally, one needs to apply the golden rule. Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and consequently, if you don’t want something done to you, don’t do it to other people. So, if you would not want your views spoken of a certain way, do not speak of other people’s views that way. There’s a trick here that the devil tries to play on people, where he’ll use this tough love argument with people, where people will justify being a jerk on the grounds of, “Oh, well, if I was wrong, I would want people to give me tough love.” Probably not.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Jimmy Akin:
No. That’s that self deception. You would want people to speak to you lovingly and kindly and not be a jerk to you. It’s human nature, given our fallen state, to want to be unloving and just … to be unloving and rough edged and kind of a jerk about things and show our virtue, virtue signal to people. You really need to weed that out of yourself as you train in apologetics, because you will serve people better with a humble attitude and a loving attitude and a respectful attitude than you will with an attitude of superiority and virtue signaling.
Trent Horn:
Great segue then to a prayer I would like to read authored by C.S. Lewis called the Apologist’s Evening Prayer. If you enjoy apologetics, I heartily recommend you pray this prayer. I found it to be very helpful. This is what Lewis wrote. “From all my lame defeats and oh much more, from all the victories that I seem to score, from cleverness shot forth on my behalf, at which while angels weep the audience laugh, from all my proofs of Thy divinity, Thou who wouldst give no sign, deliver me. Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust instead of Thee, their thin worn image of Thy head. From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee, Oh Thou fair silence fall and set me free. Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye, take from me, all my trumpery lest I die.” So I think there are spiritual hazards, Jimmy, that come with being an apologist. So one is being a jerk, lacking in charity. Other things that you can … maybe you can speak more about other hazards. One that I’ll throw out there is that some people, they put their faith more in apologetics than actually in that which they believe and defend, the person of Christ.
Jimmy Akin:
Another pitfall for apologists, and this is especially true of people who do a lot of apologetics, is falling into the trap of thinking everything depends on you. That if you don’t help this person, bad stuff is going to happen. This person is going to be lost or things like that. There can be a tendency of apologists especially, and this is really true both of people who do it to a lesser extent and of people who do it to a greater extent, but there can be the tendency to assume everything depends on me. “I have to make this count.” In the small scale, if you’re someone who just does it occasionally, what that can result in, and the same thing is true for people who are professionals, but one of the things that can result in is a tendency to be a pit bull and not let go. At a certain point in a conversation with someone, you’ll hit diminishing returns and it’s better to say, “It sounds like we’re not going to agree today, but God bless you and we can talk another time maybe” and let it go, as opposed to being a pit bull, which can actually drive people away, because at a certain point, people are going to not want to continue a conversation. If you won’t let them go, they’re building up resentment towards you and you’re actually hurting your case.
Another that’s also related to needing to always get the last word. Longer term, the effect of that, if you can’t let situations go and you can’t have internal peace is you’re going to burn out. If you think you have to just spend yourself every moment on ministry and you have to answer every request that comes in and you have to spend endless hours administering to people, it can hurt your family life. It can hurt your own psychological life. There needs to be … Just like doctors and psychiatrists can’t bring all of the problems of their patients home with them, or it would be crushing, apologists can’t do that either. There has to be a kind of professional detachment and a realization that it all does not depend on me. God can make a million Saint Thomas Aquinas’s if they’re needed. God has an infinite number of ways of reaching this person that I’m trying to help, and he cares about this person even more than I do. He died for this person. So consequently, I can trust that God … I want to do my part, but I can also trust that once I’ve done my part, once I’ve done a reasonable service to this person, that I can be confident it doesn’t all depend on me. God can reach this person in other ways and I can trust him to do His will in this situation.
Trent Horn:
Ladies and gentlemen, take heed of that when you are on especially social media where there’s a lot of landmines because it’s impersonal, words can be misinterpreted, but one thing I hate on social media is thinking “If I don’t get the last rejoinder in this Twitter thread or this Facebook comment thread, that means I lose.” That’s not the case. As Jimmy says, don’t be the pit bull that has to always latch on. As long as what you say is peaceful and charitable, even if the other person keeps going, you have to discern where God is calling you to charitably enter and leave a conversation and allow the door to be open for future conversations.
Before we get to becoming a full time apologist, Jimmy, let me talk about two more hazards and get your views on this. They’d be related to the idea of overconfidence and under confidence in apologists. So one might be the under confidence of someone thinking, “Jimmy, I want to get out there and defend the faith, but I’ll never know enough to be able to do it. There’s just so much to learn. How would I do that?” Then the opposing vice would be those who do some reading and they start to defend the faith, but they’re actually talking about things and they don’t know what they’re talking about. They become overconfident in an area. So maybe you could speak to avoiding under and overconfidence.
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah. So these are sort of twin dilemmas obviously. In terms of under confidence, I would say take it a piece at a time. Start learning about … You don’t have to learn everything all at once. Start learning in one area and get a grasp of that area, and then you can engage in that area. Or, as people come to you with questions and objections say, “Oh, let me check that out” and you go off and you research those and you come back with what you find. You don’t have to know everything upfront. You can either learn particular things on your own, or you can learn responsively to the questions that are coming in to you, like I did with liturgy and annulments, for example.
In terms of overconfidence, this is another thing that people have. They tend to think they know more than they do. There are even psychological quirks that are part of human nature that have names like the Dunning Kruger.
Trent Horn:
Dunning Kruger, yeah.
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah, where people think they know more than they actually do. This is something that, for me, is kind of the twin principle that I try to employ in my own apologetics. The first sort of pillar for me is charity and the golden rule. The second pillar is precision. When I am researching an area or thinking through an area, I try to be as precise as possible, and that means looking at it, whether it’s a biblical text or a church document, or a text from the church fathers, reading carefully word by word and not assuming I already know what it means, but be very precise. Don’t claim the text necessarily means more than what I can prove it means. Being open to … Well, this could mean five different things, but here’s what I can say. It at least means this. Then, not trying to exaggerate what I can prove. There’s a saying that I’ve encountered in some areas of scholarship, what you can’t show you don’t know. So, if I can’t show that a text must mean something, then I can’t claim that it must mean that thing. I could say maybe, “Well, it looks like it means this” or “It’s probable,” but I can’t say it must mean this unless I can prove it must mean that.
So, that kind of … trying to be precise, that embrace a precision, I think, has helped save me from a lot of headaches that I would have otherwise had, and I have had some headaches when I haven’t been as precise as I should be, because there is a fundamental tendency of human nature to want to fudge the evidence in favor of your position. That’s something that apologists of all stripes, Catholic and otherwise, are attempted towards, and it needs to be resisted.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. In my book, Persuasive, Pro-life, I offered a similar tip. I talked about making evidence bulletproof, that the evidence you put forward for a position, you want to make sure that it can stand up to scrutiny and you can back it up. So when you quote someone, for example. I’ve seen Catholic apologists quote Martin Luther, but it turns out it’s an apocryphal Martin Luther quote, and the source for it is just another Catholic apologists, whereas you want to make sure to try to go back to primary and secondary sources. If you’re quoting church fathers or scripture, you get all of those elements right when you’re able to … you don’t want to overplay your hand.
I also wanted to comment, Jimmy, it’s so funny. We have so many similarities. I too almost thought … people kept telling me, before I started becoming an apologist, is that “You should be a lawyer. You should be a lawyer.” I said, “Well, maybe,” so I went and I registered for the LSATs, but then I canceled it. I didn’t take the test because I thought I realized I was becoming a lawyer for the wrong reasons, but now as an apologist, it is funny. I sometimes feel like God’s lawyer or the church’s lawyer when they’re under attack from others with charges levied against them. I like being this kind of lawyer, I tell people, because it’s nice knowing my client is always innocent. So that’s what I would say to that. Did you have another thought to add?
Jimmy Akin:
Oh, I was going to mention that I also use the phrase bulletproofing in terms of apologetics. Actually, I have a section in the Beginning Apologetics CASA course on how to bulletproof your apologetics, which is basically a process of stripping away the weaker arguments and not wasting people’s times with debatable stuff that’s weaker, but just going for “Here’s the strong undeniable stuff.”
Trent Horn:
All right. Well, I think we’ve given people a lot of great resources on doing apologetics, and they should, as evangelism is sharing the faith. We are all called to be apologists in the sense of giving a reason for the hope within, First Peter 3:15, but I do believe that some people, a small minority of people, will be called to do this a significant amount of their lives, whether it’s as a hobby or as a part time job, or even as a full time profession. Those are the questions that I received recently, Jimmy, that focused on “How do I do this part time or even full time?” You actually have an article on catholic.com that deals with this that you wrote a while ago, called “Skill is gained by experience.” So I’m going to link to that in the description of our podcast episode. I wrote an article on this as well, called “How to be a fulltime apologist” that I will make available to our premium subscribers at trenthornpodcast.com. So, subscribe there if you want that great premium content, but maybe, Jimmy, you can give us some of your thoughts on getting into this part time or full time and how things have changed since you first got into the field.
Jimmy Akin:
Well, the most notable change is technological, because when I got into the field, the internet was not yet commercially available. It was a DARPA project that the government had created to provide Cold War command and communications control in the event of nuclear war. A lot of people don’t know that’s where the internet came from, but that’s actually where we got it. So now we have the internet. Now we have access to all kinds of information that was previously locked up in research libraries. I actually remember the moment back in the nineties where I realized I had the greatest research library on earth sitting on my desk and my first impulse shouldn’t be to go to a physical library and look for a book. It should be to go online and look for information.
Also, we have a lot of new ways of interacting. Obviously social media exists now, so do blogs, other forms of online publishing, and that’s relevant to what you’re going to want to do. Whether you want to do it semi-professionally or professionally, you’re going to need to get experience producing apologetic content. That could be by oral speech, or it could be by written speech, but one way or another, whether it’s giving presentations or writing apologetic materials, you’re going to need to start doing that and you’re going to need to get good at it. I talk about some of the ways in the article you mentioned. It’s a little dated because blogs didn’t exist when I wrote that article
Trent Horn:
Tapes no longer exist, cassette tapes.
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah. Cassette tapes no longer are a thing, but basically you’re going to need to start getting experience with writing and or speaking, and you’re going to need to get good at it. You’re going to need to get good at it. If you want to do this, semi-professionally or professionally. You’re going to need to get good enough at it that people see enough value in what you’re producing, that they will pay you for it. Nobody is going to just start and immediately get a position somewhere.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Jimmy Akin:
You’re going to need to have a track record. So, start small, give small local talks or write articles for magazines or for websites, and start building a track record of professionally published things. That’s going to mean building some muscle as you do that in terms of your ability to deliver. It is not enough to just be enthusiastic. If you’re wanting to write, for example, you’re going to need to learn the rules of professionally publishable style. Those are, unfortunately, are not things we are born with. You may need to take a composition class. You may need to read books on style. You’re going to need to get your essays critiqued by people. You’re going to need to learn how to write to a word count. So you can’t just write 5,000 words whenever you want. Most people are not going to read a 5,000 word article. You’re going to need to learn how to say what you need to say concisely for people in maybe 500 words.
Similarly, if you’re learning to speak, you may want to take a public speaking class. They have groups like Toastmasters that are devoted to helping people learn public speaking skills, but you’re going to need to start building those skills. Whether it’s oral presentation or written presentation, you’re going to need to start small, develop those skills and develop them to the point that you can actually make money from them. As you build that track record, then potentially you might either be hired by an existing ministry, or you might start your own ministry, which has its own challenges,
Trent Horn:
Right, and so that’s always the path that people take. In my article, I use a similar principle. I talk about bloom where you’re planted, like for me becoming an apologist, it was something … I think, for all of us, it starts as a hobby. It’s a passion that one does outside of … it’s kind of like Paul’s tentmaker strategy. St. Paul was a tentmaker. He said he had the right to receive funds from the church to do his evangelist efforts, but he didn’t want to burden the church, so he had a job being a tent maker and to provide for himself. So I think many people who want to get into apologetics, you’ll want to start with that tentmaker strategy. I had a job, I worked full time, and then on nights and weekends, I would give free talks, free seminars. I would write articles. I would travel and do free mission trips to help people, but all the while accruing a portfolio of here’s what I’ve written, here’s what I’ve done, that I was able to show Catholic Answers to see, “Hey, this is what I want to do. I think that it has value for people.”
That’ll be similar for a lot of people who are discerning full time apologetics, either developing a platform where you handle everything yourself and you’re kind of your own company and you have your own media platform to share with the world, or going and working for another organization. There are trade offs. I do like, Jimmy, in your articles skills gained by experience. You talk about a benefit of working with an established company in that there’s safety in numbers. What do you mean by that?
Jimmy Akin:
Well, so it means a number of different things, but one of the things that’s just a universal law of business is most startups fail and so if you’re starting your own ministry, odds are it’s not going to work out. I hate that being the case, but those are the odds. Most new businesses don’t succeed. So, if you’re joining up with a business that already exists, there’s some safety in that, but there’s also another piece of safety, which is, if you’re working with colleagues who are already experienced in a field, they can help save you from making mistakes you might make on your own, because as the saying goes, “Two heads are better than one.” So, if you’re brand new and you’re starting out, it’s easy to get distracted by an idea or an approach that you find particularly attractive. If you have people around you who are experienced, they can say, “Maybe you want to rethink this. Maybe there’s another side to this,” or maybe “We’ve tried that approach before and it hasn’t worked.” So, having additional input from experienced professionals can really save you some headaches.
Trent Horn:
Definitely. Before we go, can you tell our listeners about your course, Beginning Apologetics? Because that would be my first reference for people if you’re listening and you say, “I want to really get started and learn from experienced people to become a better apologist.” I would check out Jimmy’s course, Beginning Apologetics. So Jimmy, can you tell us a little bit more about the course and where people can access it?
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah. So you can access it at schoolofapologetics.com and it’s a course that has, I think, around 70 short video segments in it. The total amount of time it takes to go through is … I think it’s like seven hours of video content. I start by talking about what apologetics is. I talk about the history of apologetics, beginning in the Bible, in the Old Testament, because they had to do apologetics back then, and then in the New Testament, I show you how the New Testament authors did apologetics, and all the way up through church history. Then I talk about the different styles of apologetics, the different ways of approaching it, like classical apologetics, evidential apologetics, and other things people may or may not have heard of, but there are different schools of thought about how to approach it. Then I go through the major sections of apologetics, the existence of God, the evidence for Christ and thus the Christian faith, and then the evidence for Christ’s church, for the Catholic Church.
Then, to conclude the course, I go through the practical side of apologetics and I talk about techniques that you want to use or avoid using. I talk about attitudes, like the attitude of love, because that’s the real driving factor to Christianity and to apologetics. It’s charity, it’s love for other people, and that needs to be front and center in our apologetics. So I actually close on that note in the course, but we talk about apologetics, its history, its different approaches to it, the major divisions of apologetics, like God and Christ and His church, and then finally the practical techniques that you can use to help share your faith and defend it with other people.
Trent Horn:
Very good. If you want to check that out, go to schoolofapologetics.com. You can also check out my course, Evidence for Catholic Moral Teaching, a nice follow up to Jimmy’s course there, all that at schoolofapologetics.com. Jimmy, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Jimmy Akin:
My pleasure. Thank you so much.
Trent Horn:
Great. Just a reminder, everyone, I’ll be including a link to Jimmy’s article, “Skill is gained by experience,” as well as bonus content in my article, “How to be a fulltime apologist,” available exclusively to our patrons and subscribers at trenthornpodcast.com. Check it out there. Thank you guys for listening. I hope you all have a very blessed day.
If you like today’s episode, become a premium subscriber at our Patreon page and get access to member only content. For more information, visit trenthornpodcast.com.