People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.  For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you. (Acts 17:22b-23)

Introduction: The ‘world’ of apologetics

Even when it’s mentioned in our church contexts (if it’s mentioned at all), the discipline we call ‘apologetics’ can seem the purview of gifted ‘specialists’ schooled in esoteric philosophical arguments. We wouldn’t know a ‘Kalam cosmological argument’ if it came and bit us! Such timidity is only compounded when we contemplate ‘doing’ apologetics within our professional and academic setting within the university. We may be convinced intellectually that ‘Christ is the clue to all that is,’¹ but there appears a yawning chasm between theory and reality: from our perspective Jerusalem has never seemed so far from Athens. How do we introduce matters of ultimate concern in a world whose horizons appear to be stubbornly penultimate and procedural? How do we share the gospel of Jesus Christ to our colleagues in an authentic and organic way without us attempting the excruciating ‘crunch’ of conversational gear-changes that is both superficial and artificial? Might it not be better to keep our heads down, quietly get on with our work, and leave ‘apologetics’ to the experts who might occasionally come and do a mission at our university? 

In this presentation, I will attempt to demystify the ‘dark arts’ of apologetics and present a theological framework that I hope might give us traction in our desire for those around us to    consider the claims of Christ on their lives. We will do this in a number of stages. First, we will define exactly what mean by ‘apologetics’. Second, we will examine the cultural context of the late modern university. Third, we will look at the model of cultural apologetics known as ‘subversive fulfilment’ demonstrated by Paul in Acts 17. Fourth, we will look to fill out this model, looking at a particularly helpful tool for unlocking cultural apologetics, known as the ‘magnetic points’. In exploring this content, I am intrigued to hear the responses from my esteemed interlocutors. 

We might define apologetics as ‘the application of biblical truth to unbelief.’ ² Its locus classicus is 1 Pet. 3:15 ‘but in your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defence (apologia) to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect;…’ There are a number of things to note here. First, giving an apologetic readily takes on the sense of a reasoned defence, as in court of law. However it would be a mistake to think that giving a ‘defence’ mean being defensive, that ‘reasoning’ means being rationalistic, or that presenting arguments means being ‘argumentative’. We are to give a reason for ‘hope’ which is never to be a purely intellectualistic endeavour but one that engages us wholistically as embodied human beings who not only think, but who feel, will, desire, imagine etc. 

Second, as Johnson argues there is a particular dynamic which all who hope experience: 

The experience of hope has a narrative structure built right into it. When people hope, they lay a story arc over a certain span of history, one that identifies the limitations of the present, offers a vision of how those limitations may be overcome in the future, and furnishes grounds for expecting that that future will be realized. The story may not be fully articulated in the experience itself, of course, but the narrative structure is there just the same. And it becomes even more pronounced as soon as people try to express hope, packaging their experiences in such a way that they might share them with others and revisit them themselves.³

Third, we must never forget that the Christian hope is not in the ‘what’ of an argument but in the ‘who’ of a person: we offer people Jesus. It is for this reason that what we call ‘apologetics’ and what we call ‘evangelism’ are inextricably linked.  Finally, our verse from 1 Peter, evidences what has been called a ‘‘two-step” strategy in apologetics, neatly encapsulated based on Proverbs 26:4-5:

4. Answer not a fool according to his folly,
lest you be like him yourself.
5. Answer a fool according to his folly,
lest he be wise in his own eyes.

These verses appear to contradict each other but they both demonstrate the balance of biblical wisdom. Verse 4 encapsulates the ‘argument from truth’ ⁴ and is more defensive in posture. Like one standing on the rock of God’s Word, (cf. Matt. 7:24-25) the Christian must not reason with the assumptions of the non-Christian or else they will become like the fool who does right in his own eyes. Apologetically this won’t help anyone. Rather the Christian is one who in their hearts ‘honour Christ the Lord’ (1Pet. 3:15).  In other words we argue for Christianity from Christianity. 

Verse 5 encapsulates the ‘argument from folly’ ⁵ and goes on the offensive. For the sake of argument we must rehearse what it’s like to stand on the sinking sand of our own autonomous commitment, judgements and the authorities we put in place of the Living God (cf. Matt. 7:26-27). We want ‘fools’ to see the error of being wise in their own eyes. We must show them the outcome of what happens when their commitments are fully realised. We will return to this later on. 

1. A situational perspective: The ‘world’ of the late modern University

If we’ve sketched what we mean by the discipline of apologetics, what about the particular context in which we are immersed? What is the ‘world’ of the late modern university in which we live, move, have our being, and give a reason for hope?⁶ Understanding this context is important as it affects how we hear and how we are heard, what ‘defeaters’ we have to deal with,⁷ and plausibility, or in our case maybe implausibility, structures.⁸ Of course attempting to characterise the world of the late modern university will always be generalised with the danger of caricature and superficiality. We know that each university is its own world, each department and subject its own world, indeed, each academic is living in their own world.⁹ That notwithstanding, some have attempted such descriptions particularly when it comes to the place and acceptability of religious faith within the university. George Marsden famously describes the ‘soul’ of the American university as ‘established unbelief.’¹⁰ Gavin D’Costa surveys the scene as follows: 

The foundation of the universities took place in a universe with a sacred canopy, where people understood their practices to relate to a cosmic and organic pattern participating in the nature of the reality. This reality was divinely created for the good of men and women, for the flourishing of human society, and for participation in truth and love. The modern university, with some exceptions, in contrast, develops its programs and practices without any reference to a sacred canopy. Often finance is the chief criterion, without any organic vision of the relation of the different disciplines, without any shared value regarding the good of men and women, or concerning what truth might possibly be.¹¹ 

I find this a helpful statement. On the one hand we can, indeed we must, talk about the ‘isms’ (philosophical underpinnings), ‘ity’s’ (social conditions), and ‘isations’ (transitions from one condition to another) that have shaped the late modern university. We can talk about the fatal move from divine revelation to autonomous reason in the Enlightenment, of the divorce between ‘fact’ and ‘value’, of key figures, for example, a Max Weber. When it comes to the late (or post) modern university we see a complex mixture of intensification, inversion, and unmasking from the ‘modern’¹²: the rise of social construction and the language of ‘theory’, and key figures, for example, a Michel Foucault.¹³ It may be anecdotal but over the years I’ve come across some universities , disciplines, and academics that seem to remain thoroughly ‘modern’, and others thoroughly ‘late modern’ with, of course, a range in-between. Understanding our own academic world in which were are situated is vital, as well as a number of recent apologetics to accept ‘religious faith’ in the University, for example Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Religion in the University¹⁴ and the work of the aforementioned Gavin D’Costa. 

On the other hand, however, D’Costa’s statement above recognises that there are other ‘isms’ ‘ity’s’ and ‘isations’ at work in the late modern university that are perhaps overlooked but which  are hugely influential in shaping of the academy and their academics. We need to understand these commitments as well. What about the commercialisation of the university? What about the commodification of knowledge? What about trends towards juridification and bureaucratisation?¹⁵ Yes, we can talk in quite purist terms about the philosophical and ideological influences that shape the academic and which we engage in apologetically, but what about a rampant and seemingly more ‘worldly’ careerism and materialism that we see around us. These seem to be equally powerful commitments to which we subscribe both consciously and unconsciously. 

To conclude this section, we can talk about the world of the late modern university but we are actually talking about worlds within worlds. Understanding our own context is key but this complexity can be discombobulating. As Christian disciples who are to give a reason for the hope they have, we need a compass to guide us through the particular academic context in which God has placed us. We thank God that we have such a guide in God’s infallible Word. 

2. A normative perspective: The ‘world’ of the Bible. 

i) The exemplary model of Acts 17

Anyone interested in cultural apologetics will know Acts 17. Indeed, all roads seem to lead back to this Athenian outcrop, and it remains an exemplary model of cultural apologetics.¹⁶ There is so much we could say but for our purposes I will limit myself to three observations.¹⁷ First, the ‘discursive framing’¹⁸ of this whole episode is the apostle’s great distress over the idolatry he sees and concludes with the call to repentance in light of coming judgement in which Jesus’s resurrection is the proof. Paul’s distress leads to a determination and drive to proclaim the truth and to work hard at communication. Paul is not content to wash his hands of Athens and its inhabitants, leaving them stuck in their idolatry. Instead he gets stuck into strategic and thought-through evangelism. We know enough about Paul, his life and his gospel, to be sure that his motivation is not fuelled by malice or pride, but by a deep compassion and love for those who are lost because they do not know the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul himself was a living testimony of someone who had been lost and distant from God, but who had been wonderfully and graciously ‘found’ by the risen Lord Jesus Christ. As academics, do we have and pray for this same motivation and thoughtfulness in our apologetic witness within the university?

Second, we pause to examine Paul’s speech before the council. Contrary to the common criticism of the Areopagus episode, it’s not a problem or a deficiency that Paul does not give us a full-on gospel presentation. At the beginning of Acts 17 we learn that Paul ‘reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead’ (17:2–3). In Athens he has been proclaiming ‘the good news of Jesus and his resurrection’ (17:18b), before being brought before the Areopagus. Christ crucified is very much front and centre during Paul’s time in Athens, but the reception of his message is one of confusion. The Greek for ‘babbler’ in verse 18 can be rendered more literally as ‘seed-picker’, or one who scavenges and pecks at various ideas without really understanding any of them. Therefore when Paul stands up and starts to speak, his purpose is to give a defence of this good news; to put it in the context of life, the universe, and everything; to show its implications and applications for humanity. As Don Carson notes, ‘What Paul provides is the biblical metanarrative. This is the big story in the Bible that explains all the little stories. Without the big story, the accounts of Jesus will not make any sense.’¹⁹ We might say that what Paul is doing needs to do here is give a run-up and then a run-through. Can we learn from this? Do we presume too much of our academic colleagues of the Christian worldview and Jesus that they don’t believe in? Have they been inoculated to historic orthodox Christianity by a pseudo-Christian message? They may be experts in their fields but don’t presume that means they are gospel-literate. Do we need to have the patience to do this run-up and run-through in which Jesus and the resurrection would start to seem plausible and indeed persuasive? 

Third, Paul’s naming the Athenians as ‘very religious’ (deisidaimonesterous).²⁰ New Testament scholars and commentators interpret it differently: is it a positive admission of piety or a negative denunciation of ignorant superstition? Maybe, though, it’s both:

It is not beyond possibility that Paul cleverly chose this term precisely for the sake of its ambiguity. His readers would wonder whether the good or bad sense was being stressed by Paul, and Paul would be striking a double blow: men cannot eradicate a religious impulse within themselves (as the Athenians demonstrate), and yet this good impulse has been degraded by rebellion against the living and true God (as the Athenians also demonstrate). Although men do not acknowledge it they are aware of their relation and accountability to the living and true God who created them. But rather than come to terms with Him and His wrath against their sin (cf. Rom. 1:18), they pervert the truth. And in this they become ignorant and foolish (Rom. 1:21-22).²¹

‘Very religious’ beautifully captures the complexity of a biblical theological anthropology and the messy mix of human beings who are made in God’s image, and made for worship, but who suppress the truth and substitute God for all kinds of other ultimate commitments. As worshippers, we might usefully think of our ultimate commitments as presuppositions which are not simply a priori cognitions. Yes, we have presuppositions (beliefs) but also predispositions (patterns of life) and predilections (feelings). This is important because it means that the dissonance of God’s image bearers who have rebelled against their maker isn’t only cognitive. The sensus divinitatis (sense of the divine) as Calvin called it (Rom. 1:18-20) is the suppressed awareness of a broken relationship. At some level your academic colleagues will be experiencing this dissonance and we must not believe the lie that they can build their loves on a true foundation if that foundation is not the Living God. 

‘Very religious’ also captures beautifully the model of cultural engagement known as ‘subversive fulfilment’.²² Paul’s example in Acts 17 is the practical outworking of a principle he speaks about in 1 Corinthians 1:18–25. The Cross of Christ confronts and confounds the wisdom of the world but it also connects with Jews who look for signs and Greeks who look for power, but only because Christ is the power of God and is the wisdom of God. The gospel both subverts and fulfills at the same time. The gospel is the subversive fulfilment of all ‘worlds’ including the world and its inhabitants of the modern university. We can have confidence in the gospel being what the academy needs to hear even if it thinks that it is the last thing it needs to hear.

ii) The ‘Magnetic Points’

 ‘Very religious’ captures the response to divine revelation well but it is somewhat vague in terms of detail. Are we able to give anymore analytical and phenomenological definition to Paul’s term ‘very religious’? If this were possible then we would be able to say more precisely how Jesus is the ‘subversive fulfilment’ of other worlds, including the world of the university?

In what might be called a religious morphology  based on his exegesis of Romans 1:18-32 and his encounter with other religions in Indonesia, the Dutch-Reformed missiologist J. H. Bavinck (1895-1964) posits a universal “religious consciousness” that can be described in a series of “magnetic points”:

There seems to be a kind of framework within which human religions need to operate. There appear to be definite points of contact around which all kinds of ideas crystallize. There seem to be quite vague feelings—one might better call them direction signals that have been actively brooding everywhere…Perhaps this can be expressed thus: there seem to be definite magnetic points that time and again irresistibly compel human religious thought. Human beings cannot escape their power but must provide an answer to those basic questions posed to them.²³

These ‘magnetic points’ can be summarised as follows:

The first can be called ‘totality’ and is concerned about a way to connect. As humans we have an innate sense of totality, that we are connected and part of something much bigger, ‘the feeling of communion with the cosmic whole.’²⁴ This gives us the understanding that we do not stand alone as islands in the universe but instead we have a sense that we somehow belong.²⁵ With this though comes a tension as in the face of the cosmos we simultaneously experience that we are insignificant nothings but also ‘so powerful as to experience all things converging and uniting within oneself.’²⁶ We crave connection, feel abandoned after we’ve experienced it, and crave it again and again.  How do academics in their life and work evidence this magnetic point of totality and the tension between insignificance and significance?

The second ‘magnetic point’ can be called ‘norm’ and is concerned about a way to live. We have a vague sense there are rules to be obeyed. We know and accept that there are moral standards and codes which come from outside of us but to which we must adhere. There is an appreciation of transcendent norms of behaviour which apply to all people and which are cosmically ordered. This brings with it a sense of responsibility to live up to those norms, ‘life is a dialogue between law and reality, between natural self-fulfilment and the moral demand for self-restraint. People chafe against the law and they want to be enveloped by it, carried by it.’²⁷ Again, what are the academic norms in the world of the university? 

The third can be called ‘deliverance’ and is concerned about a way out. We know there is something not right with the world. There is finitude, brokenness and wrong-doing in the world and the problem of suffering and death consistently confronts us. We mourn for a ‘paradise lost’ and long for deliverance from these evils, craving redemption. And so we ask: is redemption an act? Can we bring it about ourselves? Are we saved from the world or with it? What is this redeemed state we long for? How are we both part of the universe and yet free and responsible to be able to sin, to be able to be saved?   

The fourth can be called ‘destiny’ and asks whether there is a way we control. Although we know ourselves to be active players in the world, we have that nagging feeling that we are also passive participants in somebody else’s world. This creates an existential tension between human freedom and boundedness. Life courses between action and fate, like actors on a stage, aware that though they act out their part, they are working from someone else’s script. It might be helpful to give an example of this within the academy. I have spoken to a number of undergraduate students in the last few years who are disillusioned because they had been told they had the power and agency to ‘change the world,’ only to arrive at university and find out very quickly that there is little they could change. However in presenting this material at a church in Pittsburgh where there are many hi-tech medical companies that employ the brightest students from elite universities, one professor told me that issue with these students is the fear and almost paralysing weight of responsibility because they know they can change with world.

The fifth and final point can be called ‘higher power’ and asks whether there is a way beyond in terms of the transcendental.  People everywhere perceive that behind all realities stands a greater reality. This greater reality is variously conceived but is always a superior power. There is also a sense that humans stand in some sort of relationship to this higher power, or at least, they should. This understanding creates the expressed desire to seek connection with this power but what is it? Who is it?  

With the spectacles to see the world through this magnetic morphology, we can take great encouragement in our apologetic engagement. As we walk around and look carefully at the objects of worship within the university,²⁸ the magnetic points are flashing left, right and centre. They are ripe for engagement and us demonstrating how Jesus Christ is the subversive fulfilment of these magnetic points. He is the Magnetic Person. 

To the magnetic point of Totality we proclaim Jesus as subversive fulfilment. The imago Dei affirms both our insignificance (we are not God), and significance (we are images of God). We are Adam—ones “from the earth” and so our need for connection is natural. However, we need to realize that we are disconnected: from ourselves, each other, the creation, and, most of all, the Creator from whom we have rebelled. Being connected to this world means being connected to a world that is under judgment and perishing. Jesus, the Second Adam, offers a new kingdom in which we enter by repentance and faith. This kingdom is both “now and not yet,” but it is inexorable. For those entering this kingdom, it means death and sacrifice but not a loss of self in terms of individuality and responsibility. Rather, it means a rebirth and resurrection, communion with God in our union with Christ, and community in the body of Christ, the church.²⁹ It also means a concern for culture and the kingdom of God. As Bavinck states,

In our time we still struggle with the idea of the Kingdom of God. For a long time Christians have overemphasized the fact that the Christian faith is something that concerns man’s innermost being and is the way to salvation, without paying enough attention to the fact that faith places man in the perspective of the Kingdom. That includes the fact that the believer must strive after a new world. Something of the power of the new life in Jesus Christ must penetrate social and economic life, commerce and industry, science and art. We must not leave any sector of individual or social life to its own devices. God wants us to gather together right now all things in this world under one head, Christ. It goes without saying that this matter is very much of current interest in our modern world. Modern life is too compartmentalized. The university has too little to do with the church, the church in turn too little with the factory.³⁰

To the magnetic point of Norm, we proclaim Jesus as subversive fulfilment. Jesus offers himself both as the standard and the Saviour. The world is not as it should be and we cannot save it ourselves: 

Transgression of the law is not an assault on good order or agreement, but it is very definitely rebellion against God and an attempt to pry oneself loose from God’s grip and to attack his image of God. That law is Jesus Christ, in whom the entire law is fulfilled and who kept every commandment in our place out of the depths of his divine love…outside of him safety is nowhere and never found.³¹

To the magnetic point of Deliverance, we proclaim Jesus as subversive fulfilment. The enmity within ourselves, between ourselves, and with the spiritual and natural realms from which we seek deliverance are the fruit of the root cause—enmity with God, his righteous wrath, and an eternity in hell. Deliverance can only be found through a work outside of us through one mediator, the God-man Jesus Christ—and him alone. In him there is not only escape but restoration in which we are God’s agents and ambassadors.

To the magnetic point of Destiny, we proclaim Jesus as subversive fulfilment. The world is not governed by a grinding fate or malevolent forces but by a sovereign God who is Lord over all creation, both natural and supernatural. This sovereignty does not take away human freedom but is its precondition. 

To the magnetic point of Higher Power, we proclaim Jesus as subversive fulfilment. We do not worship a non-Absolute deity, or an impersonal force but a Someone, maximally Absolute and maximally Personal, one who is both transcendent and immanent, Judge and Saviour. We worship One who has reached down to us in grace, the Word made flesh: ‘That Higher Power is the one that came into the world in the form of Jesus Christ and removed the veil over his face so that we might see the Son and the Father. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”’³¹

The Lord Jesus Christ ‘subversively fulfils’ the magnetic points of the human heart and the cultures we build on our common objects of love. By putting together Paul’s strategy in Athens, subversive fulfilment as seen in the magnetic points, we can break cultural apologetics into a replicable four-stage process: 

1. ENTERING: Stepping into the world and listening to the story:  ^“For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship…” (v. 23) 

2. EXPLORING: Searching for elements of grace and the idols attached to them: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god.” (v.23)

3. EXPOSING: Showing up the idols as destructive frauds: – “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill.” (v.29)

4. EVANGELIZING: Showing off the gospel of Jesus Christ as ‘subversive fulfilment:’ – “So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship – and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.” (v. 23).³²

Conclusion: An Existential Perspective: The ‘world’ of ourselves. 

The university is a mission field where as one academic to other academics, we are to give reasons for the hope we have. I hope the above analysis, framework and tools might begin to show where we might find a natural traction with our academic colleagues as we relate to them both professionally and personally. 

Ironically, a first step in our engagement is not so much analysing the magnetic points in terms of our neighbour, but actually applying them to ourselves. How are we to be magnetic people who stay magnetised and attract others to Christin our lives and our work? A key point here that I have come to believe more and more is this: that our evangelism flows from our discipleship, rather than being an add-on activity. The starting point to share the gospel in a meaningful, connected way is how we frame our relationship with Jesus. As Christian academics, our whole lives are connected to the gospel, and if I‘m growing as a disciple in every part of my life, then the task of connecting the gospel to the lives of other non-Christian academics becomes more natural because as academics we often face similar struggles. This common human solidarity and fellow-feeling is important in our apologetic witness. Apologetics in the academy while intentional is not some huge extra thing. Rather it is being Christian disciples in a full, rich way which overflows in and permeates all of our life and studies, for ‘The mouth speaks of what the heart is full of’ (Lk. 6:45). We will need to dig deep into how Jesus subversively fulfils both what we study and how we study, and as we grow in those areas personally, they will shape how we interact with others.

Conversely, we need to be aware that are can easily be demagnetised, or more accurately pulled to other ultimate commitments and loves. We are either being formed by Christ or being deformed by something or someone else. If we are not being drawn to Christ, we are being drawn away by something else. For our own spiritual health as academics it might be helpful to go back over those magnetic points and honestly consider where our connections, norms, deliverances, destinies, and higher powers are other than the Lord Jesus Christ. As we do this, and by God’s Spirit, any pride or vain-glory in our apologetic posture will be replaced by what J.H. Bavinck calls the warm undertone of meeting-in-love: ‘the recognition of myself in the other person, a sympathetic feeling of their guilt and a sincere desire in Christ to do with this person what Christ has done with me.’³³  As we do this, we will stay magnetic attached to and pointing towards the Lord Jesus Christ, the one ^‘in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’ (Col. 2:3). 

1. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Eerdmans, 1989), 103. [↩]
2. K. Scott Oliphint, Covenantal Apologetics: Principles & Practices in Defense of Our Faith, (Wheaton: Crossway, 2013), 29. [↩]
3. Daniel Johnson, ‘Contrary Hopes: Evangelical Christianity and the Decline Narrative’ in in The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition amid Modernity and Postmodernity, eds. Miroslav Volf and William Katerberg (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 27–48. [↩]
4. Richard Pratt, Every Thought Captive: A Study Manual for the Defense of the Truth (Philipsburg: P&R, 1983), 86. [↩]
5. Ibid., 92. [↩]
6. By ‘world’ I use Chris Watkins definition of ‘a set of particular figures that give a rhythm to the space, time, ideas, reality, behavior, and relationships in a particular sphere of life, among a particular community, or in a particular artist’s work, giving them a distinctive style.’ Biblical Critical Theory (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2022,  xxxv. For Watkin ‘figures’ are the both the patterns and rhythms that shape our lives, a way of understanding how we live in the world, ‘and the sorts of truth that can be produced in a given culture, the shapes and rhythms that must be followed if an idea is to be counted as truth’ (xxxi). He gives six broad categories of ‘figures’ what make up a ‘world’: Language, ideas, and stories; time and space; the structure of reality; behaviour; relationships; and objects. [↩]
7. ‘defeaters’ are those culturally specific beliefs that ‘defeat’ other beliefs, i.e., ‘I couldn’t become a Christian because….’ [↩]
8. James Sire defines a plausibility structure as ‘a web of beliefs that are so embedded in the hearts and minds of the bulk of a society that people hold them either unconsciously or so firmly that the never think to ask if they are true. In short, a plausibility structure is a worldview of a society, the heart of a community…One of the main functions of a plausibility structure is to provide the background of beliefs that makes arguments easy or hard to accept.’ Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept (Downers Grove: IVP, 2004), 112. [↩]
9. I also confess that while I am an academic, I do not work within the university sector. [↩]
10. The subtitle of George Marsden’s book The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Unbelief  (Oxford: OUP, 1996). [↩]
11. Gavin D’Costa, Theology in the Public Square: Church, Academy and Nation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 2f. [↩]
12. To use Peter Leithart’s analysis of postmodernism in Solomon Amongst the Postmoderns (Downers Grove: Brazos, 2008).  [↩]
13. As Christopher Watkin opens in his study of Foucault, ‘By one measure, Michel Foucault is the all-time most cited author across every academic discipline from fine arts to hard science, with over a quarter more citations than his nearest rival.’ (Philipsburg: P&R, 2018), xxi.  [↩]
14. (Grand Rapids: Yale University, 2019).  [↩]
15. For a stimulating article on this, see Aaron Edwards, ‘The Violence of Bureaucracy and the Gospel of Peace: A Theological Response to an Academic Problem’, International Journal of Public Theology 12:2 (2018), 195-217. [↩]
16. For example see, Flavien Pardigon, Paul Against the Idols: A Contextual Reading of the Areopagus Speech (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2019). [↩]
17. Drawing on the work of David Pao and others, Flavien Pardigon in  Paul Against the Idols argues that the determinant hermeneutical key for the whole of Luke-Acts is that of the Isaianic New Exodus, a sub-theme of which is an anti-idol polemic which in Athens reaches its climax in the city being submerged in idolatry. [↩]
18. A term used by Litwack in Kenneth D. Litwak, “Israel’s prophets meets Athens’ philosophers: scriptural echoes in Acts 17:22-31,” 2 (2004):  199-216. p. 211. Quoted in Span, “The Areopagus: A Study in Continuity and Discontinuity.” 527. [↩]
19. D. A. Carson, “Athens Revisited,” in Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns ed D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000),  384-98, 395. [↩]
20. This term is a hapax – it appears only here in this form.  [↩]
21. Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith,  (Texas: Covenant Media Foundation: 1996), 254. [↩]
22. See Daniel Strange, For Their Rock Is Not As Our Rock: An Evangelical Theology of Religions (Nottingham: Apollos, 2014; Zondervan 2015, published as Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions); ‘For Their Rock Is Not As Our Rock: The Gospel as the “Subversive Fulfillment” of the Religious Other,” JETS 56 (2013): 2; “An Unholy Mess,” Primer 7, 2019, 6–19; Plugged In: Connecting Your Faith with What You Watch, Read and Play (Epsom: The Good Book Company, 2019). The actual term “subversive fulfilment” is not original to me but used by Hendrik Kraemer, albeit only once, in an essay he wrote in 1939: “This apprehension of the essential ‘otherness’ of the world of divine realities revealed in Jesus Christ from the atmosphere of religion as we know it in the history of the race, cannot be grasped merely by way of investigation and reasoning. Only an attentive study of the Bible can open the eyes to the fact that Christ, ‘the power of God’ and ‘the wisdom of God’ stands in contradiction to the power and wisdom of man. Perhaps in some respects it is proper to speak of contradictive or subversive fulfilment.” Hendrik Kraemer, “Continuity or Discontinuity,” in The Authority of Faith: International Missionary Council Meeting at Tambaram, Madras, ed. G. Paton (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 5. [↩]
23. Bavinck, J. H. Bavinck, ‘Religious Consciousness and Christian Faith’, in eds. John Bolt, James D. Bratt, and Paul J. Visser, The J. H. Bavinck Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013),226–27. Bavinck describes these magnetic points in two places using different orderings: Religious Consciousness, 151–98; J. H. Bavinck, The Church Between Temple and Mosque, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966), 37–106. The same points are also described in a less schematic way in Bavinck’s Introduction to the Science of Missions, 247–72.  [↩]
24.  Bavinck, Religious Consciousness, 160. [↩]
25. As Tess Hovil pointed out to me, it is interesting that university shares linguistic roots with ‘universe’? [↩]
26. Bavinck, Religious Consciousness, 162. [↩]
27. Bavinck, Religious Consciousness, 293-294. [↩]
28. Cf. Acts 17:23. [↩]
29. I have filled these points out more fully in “The Magnetic Person: The Doctrine of Missions,” Theology for Ministry, eds William R. Edwards, John C. A. Ferguson, Chad Van Dixhoorn (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2022). For an attempt to apply the magnetic point to “secular” culture see my Making Faith Magnetic: Five Hidden Themes Our Culture Can’t Stop Talking About—And How to Connect Them to Christ (Epsom: The Good Book Company, 2021).  [↩]
30. Bavinck, The Church Between Temple and Mosque, 148. [↩]
31. Bavinck, Religious Consciousness, 294. [↩] [↩]
32. I do into more detail on these stages with examples in my book, Plugged In: Connecting Your Faith with What You Watch, Read and Play (Epsom: The Good Book Company, 2019). [↩]
33. Bavinck, Introduction to the Science of Missions, 127. [↩]