By Eden Morris | Reporter
Ratio Christi, an apologetics organization on campus, invited guest lecturer Dr. K Scott Oliphint to speak on biblical foundations for apologetics.
According to their website, “Ratio Christi equips students with the tools and skills to defend their faith and share it with others.”
Oliphint is a professor of apologetics and systematics at Westminster Theological Seminary, currently teaching in his last year before retirement.
Houston junior Saul Winebrenner is the president of Ratio Christi at Baylor. Winebrenner gave a warm welcome to Oliphint and the audience before the lecture.
“Our mission is to teach Baylor students why they believe what they believe and to answer questions they have about God, Jesus and the Bible,” Winebrenner said.
Oliphint spoke on what the Bible says about apologetics, saying that it wasn’t discovered by some academics, but is referenced in the Bible itself.
“It’s actually a Bible word, and if the Lord uses a word, it’s incumbent upon us as his followers to see what he means by it,” Oliphint said.
Oliphint further discussed the derivation of apologetics from the Bible and ways to defend the Christian faith using Scripture.
“Apologetics gets lost in the philosophical jargon so that it’s hard to understand what’s going on oftentimes,” Oliphint said. “What I’ve tried to do is help people understand that apologetics begins with Scripture.”
Oliphint said that apologetics has to be a biblical discipline. It is necessary to properly sharing the message of the Bible to others.
“Our responsibility is not vengeance. It’s not to lash out.,” Oliphint said. “It’s to help people understand that there’s only one way to have hope.”
Quoting well-known theologians such as John Calvin and B.B. Warfield, Oliphint encouraged students to learn more about their faith in order to share it with others and to draw on theologians of the past while doing it.
“[Calvin] says, ‘There is within the human mind, and deep by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity,'” Oliphint said.
Rosenberg freshman Clarissa Dickson recently started attending Ratio Christi and said she was happy she attended the lecture.
“I learned a lot about what apologetics actually is and how to better defend my faith, just the different reasons that we need to do it and the biblical foundations for it,” Dickenson said.
Ratio Christi is open to new members and meets three times a week to discuss apologetics in different contexts and locations on campus.
