Some thoughts from spending a week with Norman Geisler

This past week, my good friend J.P. Harmon and I decided to man up and take an entire class in one week. The class was Christian Apologetics & World Religions with Dr. Norman Geisler, one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century in Christian apologetics. This was particularly momentous for me because Dr. Geisler had had a unique impact on my decision to come to seminary. He taught and inspired Ravi Zacharias while at Trinity, and Ravi's sermons, lectures, and question and answer sessions on college campuses had a major impact on me feeling the responsibility to be intellectually prepared for ministry. Dr. Geisler was also an author I would read when trying to understand the usual criticisms of the Christian faith.

Needless to say, the experience was incredible. We spent the mornings having Dr. Geisler lecture through his twelve-step apologetic method which is the following:

1. Truth about reality is knowable

2. Opposites cannot both be true

3. The theistic God exists

4. Miracles are possible

5. Miracles performed in connection with a truth claim are acts of God to confirm the truth of God through the messenger of God

6. The New Testament documents are reliable

7. As witnessed in the New Testament, Jesus claimed to be God

8. Jesus’ claim to divinity was proven by an unique convergence of miracles

9. Therefore, Jesus was God in human flesh

10. Whatever Jesus (who is God) affirmed as true, is true

11. Jesus affirmed that the Bible is the Word of God

12. Therefore, it is true that the Bible is the Word of God and whatever is opposed to any biblical truth is false

Following morning lectures, we were given an hour for lunch in which that we spent watching the Euro 2008 with fellow students from across the world who knew an exponentially greater amount about soccer than I did. The afternoons were spent watching some of Dr. Geisler's debates with leading thinkers in secular humanism or other religions, as well as lectures on other world religions.

The experience was powerful and made me all the more thankful for men like Dr. Geisler who I could look to while at USC when challenged with difficult questions and criticisms of Christianity in my various classes. While the world doesn't often admit it, there truly are great thinkers who also happen to be conservative, evangelical, Bible believing Christians.