51ÂÜÀò

As the president of Stand to Reason, Greg Koukl is one of the leading Christian apologists today. Sean asks Greg questions about his personal faith journey and about life lessons he has learned thorough his radio, speaking, and writing ministries.

More 51ÂÜÀò Our Guest

Greg Koukl is the president and founder of Stand to Reason. He is the author of multiple books including Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted In Mid-Air and most recently The Story of Reality. He has been featured on Focus on the Family radio, interviewed on CBN, and quoted in many publications including the LA Times. Check out .

Episode Transcript

Sean McDowell: Welcome to the podcast Think Biblically, conversations on faith and culture. I'm your host, Sean McDowell, professor of apologetics at Talbot School of Theology, 51ÂÜÀò. We have a guest today that I can't believe we have not had on yet, even though we've been doing this podcast a year and a half, have wanted to have our guest on for a long time. One of the leading apologists today, a friend, mentor of mine, huge friend of 51ÂÜÀò, in fact you teach with me adjunct at the apologetics program at Talbot.

Greg Koukl: That's right, I spent many years there as a master's candidate in the MA Phil program too. Too many years, probably. 13.

Sean McDowell: We had classes together.

Greg Koukl: We did.

Sean McDowell: In the early 2000s. Now in case you don't recognize his voice yet, this is Greg Koukl is my guest. And you might recognize his voice because he's the President of Stand to Reason and he has a long going radio show now, a podcast that is one of the best apologetic podcasts that are out there. So if you haven't listened to his yet, hit pause, go the Stand to Reason, subscribe to it.

Greg Koukl: STR.org

Sean McDowell: STR.org. Regards to that, Greg, thanks for coming on.

Greg Koukl: Sure. Yeah, it's always a treat to chat with you.

Sean McDowell: Now we could talk about your book tactics, which you talk about how you have practical conversations with people about the faith. We can talk about relativism, your more recent book, The Story of Reality. You get calls every week and you wrestle with a number of issues theologically, ethically, culturally. I want to kind of peer behind the curtain a little bit and just give our listeners a sense of who you are, your journey of faith, and some life stories you've learned along the way.

Greg Koukl: Okay.

Sean McDowell: So maybe just start by telling us, you weren't raised in a Christian family.

Greg Koukl: No, I was raised actually raised in a Roman Catholic family, but like a lot of, in the 50s, I was born in 1950, and so I went to high school and began college in the 60s in that turbulent time. When I was about a senior, that's when I kind of let go of whatever religious trappings that I had.

Sean McDowell: Senior in high school.

Greg Koukl: Senior in high school, that's right. And of course when you're 18 in the mid 60s, the last thing you want to think about is purity and religion and God looking over your shoulder. I guess it's the same now days too, but the things that were happening in the culture were pretty monumental then, a lot was shifting and changing. And so I embraced the thought forms of the day, which were relativistic. I was against the war in Vietnam. I was actually in the army at the time, but I was still against the war in Vietnam, which everybody was who was in college. It wasn't thoughtful, but it was just what everybody did. When you're a certain set, like in college, it's group think.

But it wasn't until a few years later into the early 70s that my younger brother, who was more of the jock of the family, the boys, we were all in sports, but he was the one who was most accomplished. But he ended up becoming a Jesus follower during the Jesus movement. I was very dismissive of it at first because I felt I was too smart for that. And I was the only one of the five children to go to college, and I was in the honors professional at Michigan State University at the time. So I figured, "I've got this all worked out. I don't need this Jesus stuff." But as it turned out, I ended up moving to the West Coast, and my brother, Mark, was out here at the same time, and then 1973ish, and that's when he really turned on the heat.

And what I think is important about this, there's a couple things I just wanted to point out. I'm rushing through just a little bit, but I want to hit some points that I think your listeners would care about. And one of them is it was my younger brother who led me to Christ. So family circumstances sometimes are tough. And often times it's an outsider that gets at a family member you care about because they don't respect you and your testimony. So I understand this difficulty there, but in my case it turned out that Mark was the one that not only led me to Christ, but was instrumental in leading every member of our family, every sibling at least, all four of the others over time, it take a while.

So that's one thing. The second thing, what's I think unique for people who do what we do is that a lot of our colleagues, J. Warner Wallace for example, you know, starts out an atheist and then he examines the evidence and the apologetics are instrumental, same thing with your dad, to bringing them to Christ. There was no role of apologetics in my life in coming to Christ.

Sean McDowell: Wow. I did not know that.

Greg Koukl: Yeah. It was not an issue. It was soon after of course, I discovered evidence and read Francis Schaeffer and C.S Lewis. But for me in that circumstance, even though I had objections to Christianity, the standard things that people raise up, it wasn't that that brought me to Christ. All I can say is Mark prevailed upon me with the Gospel, explaining the Gospel and being a Roman Catholic. There was a detail there that if something I had no access to as a Roman Catholic, and that is confidence of salvation. You can't know you're saved. Not on their view. Because who could know that? It strikes me now when I look back and I, "How could that possibly be good news then if you have no idea what's going to happen to you when you're dead?" It's good news because there's confidence we can have. And this is something I hadn't heard. Forgiveness. One time final, there it is, you trust Christ and you're covered. And I don't mean to speak frivolously of that.

Sean McDowell: Sure.

Greg Koukl: I mean just speak confidently of it. He secures you, he does what's necessary to rescue, one sacrifice for all time [inaudible]. So that just all settled in, and I had never heard the Gospel of grace and forgiveness like that before. And I think over time, that just wore me down. Then I told my brother, he came to visit me once and I said, "You don't have to tell me any more. I'm ready to become a Christian." And I have a suspicion that I probably actually de facto had been born again to be, just before that night that I prayed, I'm not sure how that works in God's whole thing. But I did say a prayer on September 20th, 1973, and that's when I formally in a sense started walking with Christ.

Sean McDowell: So what advice do you have for Christians with family members who are not to navigate the truth in the Gospel and relationships?

Greg Koukl: Well in a way, it's not super profound. The first thing is be nice.

Sean McDowell: That's great. [crosstalk] be nice.

Greg Koukl: You want to be really careful. I know when we started out, my brother Dave, who is four years my junior, Mark is two years younger than me, we all started as if walking with the Lord. They came out to California, the three Koukl brothers who are all together, they are just four years apart, all three of us, and so it's kind of, and we're all fairly new in Christ and we're really excited. But we ended up walking on a lot of people, especially me, because I was so energetic and ambitious and just overflowing. So I think just settle down and relax, and you've got a lifetime, really, with your family members. Realistically speaking. My dad was a really tough guy, and he ended up becoming Christian two years before he died at 71 years old. He just turned 72. And he was very dismissive of the boys, we became Christians, very dismissive of it. But he ended up becoming a Christian because of the influence of his older sister, my aunt, [Bernie], in his life.

So in that situation, it wasn't a family member who brought my dad in. Not our family, it was his sister that was really most instrumental. And that's a whole other story, but, so what was important for us, and I don't know how good we did this, but looking back at it is to just be nice. Be good, and to be good examples of Christians and followers of Christ, but also be ready to give an answer, to make a defense, to even explain the Gospel in terms that people can understand.

Sean McDowell: So if apologetics played essentially zero role in your faith conversion, what's your passion to doing apologetics and starting this ministry Stand to Reason, which equips Christians, but I'll say Christians do have conversations with nonbelievers. So it's discipleship and evangelism. Where does that passion come from?

Greg Koukl: Well two things happened early on. I became a Christian in September of 73. Let's see... February of 74, I moved into a Christian community in Westwood Village. And there were people-

Sean McDowell: What does that mean, Christian community?

Greg Koukl: A fraternity house that had been changed into like a, well a Christian community. It was a school called the Jesus Christ Light and Power House, kind of a corny name. And they were a bunch of guys basically who had all left Bill Bright's campus crusade at the same time, and they started their own thing. So these guys had a lot of experience on campus. They mostly were DTS grads, and they were sharp people, but they also had street smarts. And one of them was Dick Day, who was instrumental in discipling your dad way back when. And I entered into a discipleship relationship very soon with a fellow named Craig Englert, who is now been pastoring 30 years in Maui. But he had been instrumental in the Jesus movement there. And so here I am in this environment, living in this community, learning the Bible. We had Bible classes all morning, and then we had afternoons free, take a job, or do whatever we do.

But it was really a magnificent experience. I was 23 years old, I was a brand new Christian, there were Christians all around me investing in me in these classes and stuff and spending a lot of personal time with Craig Englert. And I think that's when I really began to, it's his personal investment that made such a difference in setting the trajectory on my life and gave me a steep commitment to discipleship. And over the years, having groups that I spend direct time with as a group, maybe for a year or something, other times just individuals that I traffic with, I try to encourage.

And I realize, and it wasn't really until probably three or four years ago, Sean, now it's almost 26 years with Stand to Reason. But I realize reflectively now that what Stand to Reason is about is principally about discipleship. Because our mission statement from very early on starts out, "We train Christians." In other words, we're working the believers. We're not evangelistic. We're not like Ravi Zacharias or other organizations who crusade. A lot of discipleship, a lot of evangelists do. My interesting was in building the body of Christ. Because I figured if I could build individual Christians, I could leverage my impact in an evangelistic way. This may sound strange, I don't know if I've ever talked to you about this. Occasionally we had, people imagine things about you, so then they work them into the introductions. And so people would say, "I've heard of Greg Koukl and he's got such a heart for the lost." Or say something like that. It's very sweet and everything, but I would never characterize myself that way. I wouldn't say that I have a heart for the lost. I have a heart for the body of Christ and for discipleship. And that's kind of where my niche is. And of course that's kind of all part of the larger project of God working to build the kingdom of God, which includes bringing the lost in and glorifying-

Sean McDowell: That makes sense.

Greg Koukl: All kinds of other things. But I like the building of Christians. The apologetic stuff started out for me two fold. First of all when I became a Christian, it was a lot of evangelism because I'm on the streets of Westwood Village there where UCLA is at. I was a student there at the time. And all kinds of crazy things were going on in the early 70s, spiritually speaking. Everybody is talking about their trip on the streets, so I'm in the action too, and I had to figure out ways to make sense of my own deal. I had asked questions, I got answers. So this is what got me interested. Plus that first community, there was a lot of emphasis on apologetics because of Dick's role with your dad. That whole thing there. And I actually saw your Dad speak at UCLA when I was-

Sean McDowell: Oh my goodness.

Greg Koukl: Yeah, it's so amazing because your dad went first and i went second on the same stage in this event we're at right now. But I don't think he even knows that. But 45 years ago at UCLA, I went to an event and saw him do a presentation at UCLA and answer questions and everything. It was really amazing. So I need this for conversing with other people, but also something that really built my own conviction stronger and stronger and stronger.

Sean McDowell: Got you.

Greg Koukl: And one of my main people that I read was deeply influenced by was Francis Schaeffer. And I remember I can even picture it in my mind's eye sitting at my desk there in that old fraternity house looking out over Westwood Village through the window, and I'm reading Francis Schaeffer, and something powerful. And what I was thinking is, "Oh my gosh. This stuff is really, really, really, really, true." That's what I said to myself. I was a follower of Christ. I moved into this community. But there was a much deeper sense of conviction, confidence that take hold of my heart as a result.

Sean McDowell: Was it like personally true to like cosmically true? Like I see it in ways that I-

Greg Koukl: [crosstalk] and I don't know, it wasn't as if I was thinking merely subjectively about the truthfulness [inaudible]. I'm out there going face to face with people who don't like this message at all. So I'm paying a price because I think it's actually so. So it wasn't like I was going to subjective to objective. The only way I could explain it is though I thought it was objectively true, maybe I was taking a step from believing to knowing. In other words, I have enough confidence that it's so that I believe it's so that I can step out. But you know how you get more information about something and then more justification, then it starts to move into the knowledge. "Okay, this is really, okay I know this is the case for these reasons." And this is what apologetics really helped me do.

Sean McDowell: You felt that in your life and thought, "I want to help the rest of the church really have this power to live their life, do their profession, do evangelism from the church." Is that fair?

Greg Koukl: Yeah, I think what you're saying is true, but I don't think it was, I thought it through very much early on. What I did want to do is I wanted to bloom where I was planted is the words that I use now. I wanted to make a difference for Christ where I was at. And I remember I was probably a year, not even a year old in the Lord, and I remember telling my discipler, Craig, that I don't ever want to have any secular job ever in my life. I want to just keep working for the kingdom. Now I laugh at this because it took me about 10 or 12 years to end up getting out of secular work of some sort. And that wasn't God's purpose for me. He knew that I needed to get my butt kicked up and down the street for a decade before I was going to be very useful to him. And that's another important part of the process. But that was my sentiment. And what was I going to do? Well I can use the gifts that I have. So I had no broad vision at all.

Sean McDowell: Got you.

Greg Koukl: But it's only now as I look back, and like I said, only in the last three or four years that I've been thinking, "I have been committed to discipleship for most of my life. This is why I've had these different groups of people. This is why I know about that." And now I think about what Stand to Reason has been, and it's really a big effort of discipleship to train Christians, and even our vision now is confidence for every Christian. That's one part of a three part vision. Confidence for every Christian, clear thinking for every challenge, and courage and grace for every encounter. But that confidence for every Christian, that goes right back to when I was sitting there reading Francis Schaeffer. That really helped me. And so again, it's easier to kind of tease these things out when you look back over a life time of these things happening. But for me, I didn't have a big, giant plan. I just was kind of following my nose the next step. "Well what can I do? Here, I can do this, I can do that."

Sean McDowell: So is this true for tactics as well? Because I think one of the I think most powerful contributions that you make on your podcast when I listen to it, and I still do, is I'm not always listening to what you're saying. I'm listening to how you think through and answer and unpack a question all the assumption behind it so people make sure they grasp, here's how you arrived at this answer.

Greg Koukl: It's hard work.

Sean McDowell: Is this just an extension of the way you're wired? Where does this come from? Because you really clarified it in the book Tactics. And it's one of the most helpful, must read books for Christians to learn how to navigate spiritual conversations. A lot of people don't approach it that way. Is it just your wiring, spiritual gift, experience?

Greg Koukl: To me, I don't need to divide it out. I think spiritual gifts and natural gifts are both things from God, and he uses our experiences, he saw my life before I even became a follower of Jesus and all that. So I think that all kind of blends together.

Sean McDowell: Sure.

Greg Koukl: I wanted people not just to get right answers. And this is part of Stand to Reason, but you've probably heard this before. We don't want to just tell people what to think. We want to teach you how to think.

Sean McDowell: Exactly.

Greg Koukl: And so by stepping through the process of how I get there, it then shows people how that thinking process works. And to some degree, I think there's some native capabilities here that have helped. But I was helped tremendously by J.P. Moreland and the MA Phil program. I got a master in apologetics first, and then I went, and I kind of made reference to it a few moments ago. I was 13 years in that MA program, which you're probably not supposed to be in it that long. But we were bringing lots of people into the program and out of the program at the same time, so they had a lot of patience with me as we were doing Stand to Reason while I was working on that. But that whole enterprise with J.P. and dog and Scott Ray and the whole crowd, the team of our family, our colleagues over there really helped me in the process of thinking. How to make distinctions and how to tease out things that really are important to keep us from being confused. So that added to my in a sense skill set.

Sean McDowell: Makes sense.

Greg Koukl: And this allowed me then to be more almost pedantic about it when I'm talking. "No, we're going from here to here to here to here." But my experience has been my stepping carefully through those things, it becomes another discipleship or mentoring of the people that are listening.

Sean McDowell: It definitely is. So you've done radio how many years now?

Greg Koukl: I'm in my 29th year.

Sean McDowell: 29th year. So I don't know if you've ever gone back and tabulated how much time that is or roughly how many questions you've been asked. That would kind of be interesting to estimate. But what are the hardest questions? It could be emotionally, experientially, intellectually, like what are those questions where you just feel like, "This is the least satisfying answer I have. It doesn't make me question Christianity because of everything else." But are there one or two where you go, [crosstalk]"

Greg Koukl: Oh yeah, sure, and I'm candid about this on the air. I think that the hardest issues, generally speaking, are theological, and they're not apologetics. And for all the kinds of challenges people might raise apologetically regarding the Bible or God's existence, or any of those kinds of things, there's always a question in the back of my mind. And the question in the back of my mind is, "What's the alternative?" Because you can't sit in the fence when it comes to world views. You're either one place or another. And I know people are sometimes uncertain, that's agnostic, about particular things. But the point I'm making is if you reject Christianity as an adequate picture of reality or view of the way the world actually is, that characterization of reality, then you have to adopt something else. And whatever else that you adopt is going to be a whole lot messier than Christianity, because Christianity does the best job of, it's the best explanation for the way things are, I think is the way I put it to my daughter once. So those particular, there are problems that people raise. And some things I'm much more comfortable with than other things. I think Old Testament stuff. Even yesterday when you were answering, no it was like three days ago-

Sean McDowell: Wednesday night.

Greg Koukl: You were at my church.

Sean McDowell: That's right.

Greg Koukl: So here we are in Seattle, but we were also together in L.A. a couple days ago.

Sean McDowell: For listeners, we're in Apologetics Conference together recording this on the road.

Greg Koukl: That's right.

Sean McDowell: In Bellevue.

Greg Koukl: And three days ago we were at another conference where I was in the audience and it was my church, and Sean was talking. But I think trying to validate the Old Testament kind of independently is hard because of the antiquity of it, but I think your approach was validating the New Testament, and that validates Jesus, and then we look at what Jesus' view of the Old Testament was. And so I think there's a legitimate thing too there. And I think your dad said something, actually I took notes on this last night. I had never heard this before. How do we know that the prophecies that were fulfilled in the life of Christ antedated him? I've always gone back to the Dead Sea scrolls because we have a lot of that in Isaiah and we know the dates of that and everything. He said, "We have the [inaudible], which is 200 years before the time of Christ. The Greek Old Testament recording all of that." I thought, "Oh man, that's fabulous." So those are ways to argue that. But that's a little less tidy, I think, than what we'd like. The New Testament we can do a lot more with. So that I think is a little bit troublesome.

I think the harder ones though, that the theological ones are, is the difficulty for me of the concept of original sin and our responsibility for the sin that someone committed, Adam and Eve, and how we participate in that. It just came up on the radio for me last week I think. And there are two classical answers. We were in Adam, and so we participated, and so that's one way. Or that he was the federal head and he was acting for the human race, which is the view that I hold and is in the book The Story of Reality. But I think both of those are not emotionally satisfying for me. And I've said this before. So one of the things though, this is a subtext here, I want Christians to feel comfortable with saying that there are things about what they know about God and the Bible that are not tidy, that may not be satisfying, and that we don't know the answers for. This isn't a problem with Christianity, this is a problem with being human. This is a problem with reality. Everything is untidy. Every view is untidy in some ways. We have limited our ability to know. And we have all kinds of other things that are going on, biases and stuff that influence it. So we shouldn't be surprised when we run into things that are a little bit tricky.

Sean McDowell: I love that, especially coming from you, one of the people I look to for answers frequently. That's encouraging to me, and I know both of us saying that can be meaningful. That's a part of life. So what motivates you? And by that I mean you've had Stand to Reason, I think you said 26 years.

Greg Koukl: Let's see. In a couple of days, three or four days, three days it will be 26 years.

Sean McDowell: 26 years. By the time people listen to this, it was 26 years.

Greg Koukl: That's right.

Sean McDowell: And you continue to write, continue to speak. I heard my dad say something on stage. He's done this almost five decades with crew. And he said, "You know what still motivates me is I think about the people that my grandkids are going to marry someday if they get married." I thought, "Oh my goodness." I hadn't put myself at that stage what continues to motivate him. You don't have to have a deep answer like that, that wasn't my point. But what still wakes you up, what gets you excited, what motivates you to keep doing that you do?

Greg Koukl: Well I'll tell you what comes to mind, and this has come to mind many times for me. And it's just the words, "Well done. Good and faithful servant." That's it. That's it. I just want to hear that. I want my father in heaven to say that to me. I want to finish the course. I want to take the things, whatever that I have that have been entrusted to me. Paul tells Timothy in second Timothy chapter one, "Guard that which has been entrusted to you." Okay, so I feel like this baton has been passed to me, been entrusted to me, and I want to carry it well for as long as I can carry it, and then I'll pass it on to somebody else and go be with the Lord. I don't think about all these people getting saved, that's God's business. He cares more about it than I do. I like having an impact in somebody's life, so if I can have an impact in someone's life and they pay it forward, that's the best compliment that I could be given. I don't need all the kindness strokes and stuff. And I probably get more attention than I deserve or is good for me already.

But one nice thing about radio is you don't have a big audience in front of you. You're just doing your thing and then you let God take care of it from there, just like we're doing now. And then he multiplies it, kind of like [inaudible]. It just goes out there and feeds the multitudes. And I'm glad. And sometimes people tell me generations removed from me how God has used that in their life. When I say generations, I mean spiritual generations. The reverberating effect of that. I just want to be faithful. I just want to just keep doing that. It's the only thing I can really control.

Sean McDowell: I love that.

Greg Koukl: I can't control how many people whose lives I change, I can't even control if my kids are happy with me, if my wife is with me, anybody is happy for that matter. Even the ones closest to me. What I can control is what I do. And I work hard to try to be faithful with that.

Sean McDowell: We had Os Guinness on a few episodes back, and he said the idea of legacy is a secular idea. Christians should be motivated by hearing the words, "Well done by good and faithful servant." He said the same thing, and that really stuck with me.

Greg Koukl: Yeah. I call it an audience of one. And I actually wrote recently on it with some material that's going out for Stand to Reason. But like I was saying before, you can't guarantee that people are going to be happy with you. You can't play for the crowd. You don't play for the crowd. Pilate played for the crowd. Played for them. Mark 15:15. "Seeking to satisfy the crowd, he released Barabbas and had Jesus scourged and crucified." That's what it says. I don't want to be in his team.

Sean McDowell: That's a great answer. We have time for maybe one or two more. I'm curious. You've been doing this longer than I have. How have the questions people are asking changed in the time you've been doing evangelist apologetics radio, and what are the big questions or you see where this is going?

Greg Koukl: I'm going to give a different answer than some people. For one, it isn't like I'm on the line answering non-Christians questions all the time, okay?

Sean McDowell: Sure.

Greg Koukl: Just so people know. I answer a lot of questions on the radio, but most of the time they're Christians who are navigating with non-Christians. The second thing is this is deeply influenced by Francis Schaeffer. Human beings are still human beings, they're made in the image of God and they have [crosstalk]

Sean McDowell: Amen.

Greg Koukl: ... That God made. I think you mentioned this last night in one of your presentations. This is the reality of it, and this helps stabilize me. It keeps me from being tossed to and fro with every wind and wave of culture. Which generation is this now? We just had Z. We just ran out of letters. I don't know where we're going to go next. See, I don't give a lot of thought to that. This is something that you're much better at, and Brett Kunkle for example is on Stone Street, [inaudible] more into those trendy things. I can't keep up with all of that, basically. And so my thinking is human beings are still, they have this existential need, they know they're broken, they know they're sinful, they know the world is broken, and they still have the same kinds of objections. The post modern thing is a veneer. Everybody really deep down in their heart is a common sense realist. That is they know there is truth in the world. We are truth seekers by nature. But when it comes to certain kinds about ultimately reality, Christianity for example, religious spiritual things, then people have push backs, and that's why they ask questions.

And you know this as well as I do, even with all the post modern noise out there, it's unanswered questions that are keeping a lot of people from, young people especially, from Christianity. So in a certain sense, that task hasn't changed too much. There are some new boutique things going on with the gender issues and all of that, but this too shall pass, and it will be something else. What's being expressed there is two things, I think, is a deep hunger for significance and acceptance, but also a deep desire to be autonomous. So you've got a hunger for being part of God's family, and also a desire to be your own person. And those things are fighting each other of course, and those are all part of what it means to be human in a broken and fallen world.

Sean McDowell: It's a great answer. When I do a talk about Gen Z, I talk about the studies and trends and beliefs. I always began by saying, "These stats are only going to take us so far." And then I'll say, second I'll say, "Keep in mind, you have much more in common with this generation than you do differences. Human nature transcends individual trends that are going on." Now there's timely questions, questions like certain gender questions, seem to really be timely now. But then there's timeless questions that will never, ever change.

Greg Koukl: Just to give you an example of this, I don't know how often you go on Amazon and see how your books rank, but every once in a while I take a look and them.

Sean McDowell: I take a look, I want to know.

Greg Koukl: So you look at the top apologetics something. You look at the top 10, and I guarantee you no matter when you check it, one author will have at least three titles in there.

Sean McDowell: C.S. Lewis.

Greg Koukl: C.S. Lewis.

Sean McDowell: Yeah.

Greg Koukl: Okay. [inaudible] Christianity was written in like the year I was born, 1950, or right around-

Sean McDowell: I thought it was in the 40s. I didn't think you were that old.

Greg Koukl: Well he di the radio shows in the 40s, but I think it was [inaudible]. But you're right. This is like 70 years ago, and this guy is still pounding them off right there at the top of the list in apologetics. Like he doesn't know post modern from what. No gender this, that, and the other thing, but the guy understands the truth, and he's able to communicate it in an attractive, insightful fashion, and so he survived the test of time, and people are still being transformed by what God is doing in him.

Sean McDowell: That's a great word. I have so many more questions I want to ask you about your book Relativism, which you wrote roughly two decades ago, right?

Greg Koukl: 1998.

Sean McDowell: 98?

Greg Koukl: [crosstalk]

Sean McDowell: It's still so timely. Your book Tactics, our listeners, if they haven't got it, need to pick it up. And more recently, maybe we'll have you back on to talk about the story of reality.

Greg Koukl: Yeah, I'd like to do both. Actually come back on Tactics because in November, the revised and expanded edition, 40% new material is coming out. So I'm really excited about the Tactics.

Sean McDowell: We'll have you back and we'll walk through the particulars of that in the update. I look forward to it. Thanks so much for coming on.

Greg Koukl: Great talking to you, Sean.

Sean McDowell: This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically, Conversations on Faith and Culture. To learn more about us and today's guest, Greg Koukl, and to find more episodes, go to 51ÂÜÀò.edu forward slash Think Biblically. That's 51ÂÜÀò.edu forward slash Think Biblically. If you enjoyed today's conversation, give us a rating on your podcast application and share it with a friend. Thanks for listening, and remember, think biblically about everything.