My doctoral seminar in Apologetical Ethics grew out of a commissioned book I did for B&H, Moral Apologetics for Contemporary Christians: Pushing Back Against Cultural and Religious Critics. The syllabus has more descriptive content than some since I had to supply it to the faculty, who must approve new courses. The sections found in the course outline correspond to the four divisions of the book.
Though a number of the texts served to bolster the thesis that a Christian ethic is admirable for its structure, for the commendable lives of its advocates, and for the social fruit growing from its implementation, we read the strong dissent of Chris Hitchens. And though we work through the commendatory offerings of the evangelical Lawrence Kimbrough, we hear from the atheist, lesbian writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Rounding out the assigned texts are the not-distinctly-Christian voices of Paul Johnson, Stephen Prothero, Lawrence Harrison, Samuel Huntington, Jung Chang, and Jon Halliday.
The course is, indeed, an exercise in advocacy, meant to question the wonders of multi-culturalism, pluralism, and alleged moral equivalency among widely divergent religious and philosophical systems. It is certainly a work in apologetics, defending the faith. But it relies heavily on the deliverances of natural law, as well as the conviction that “all truth is God’s truth,” whatever the source.
I think the requirements serve the course well, requiring on-line give and take throughout the semester, regular scrutiny of the media for pertinent reporting and opining, and the choice of another book to round out the study.
In our modular system, students do a great deal of reading, writing, and interacting (with the prof and each other) throughout the semester, and then come together on campus for four days of “dawn to dusk” engagement around the table. They meet through Moodle (replaced now, at SBTS, by Canvas) for a dozen weeks of on-line disputation, and then pick up the conversation, face-to-face, primed with not-as-yet-shared material. It makes for a good seminar I think.
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Mark Coppenger
Mark Coppenger (BA, Ouachita; PhD Vanderbilt; MDiv, Southwestern) has taught philosophy at a number of colleges and seminaries, and also served as an Army officer and pastor. A good introduction to his work is available at his website, markcoppenger.com. Two new books are forthcoming this spring—Apologetical Aesthetics (Wipf and Stock), featuring a dozen of his doctoral students in theology and the arts, and a commissioned work from the Scottish publisher, Christian Focus (If Christianity Is So Good, Why Are Christians So Bad?).
