Christian apologetics on Rogan

Christian apologist Wesley Huff’s recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience is a conservative evangelical’s dream come true. For years, it seemed like wishful thinking that Rogan would even become aware that smart evangelical apologists existed, let alone invite one on his podcast as a guest.

Stephen Meyer broke into his bubble in 2023 through their mutual friendship with astrophysicist Brian Keating, but Meyer is unusually well-placed for such opportunities as a philosopher of science with many secular connections. When it comes to more church-focused Christian apologetics, the pond is small indeed and well outside Rogan’s normal sphere of interest. Until now.

The story of how Huff found himself on the show is a true viral media age parable. The first domino fell when Huff agreed to debate Billy Carson, an entrepreneur, TV personality, and self-styled expert in ancient civilizations—emphasis on “self-styled.” Predictably, Carson beclowned himself. (Among other embarrassing moments, he seriously attempted to argue that Jesus was never crucified.)

After the debate was released, Carson suddenly threatened legal action unless all clips from it were taken down. Of course, Huff knew this was pure theater since Carson was not only a public figure but a public American figure threatening to sue a Canadian. Because Carson was a former Rogan guest, the whole viral drama caught Rogan’s eye. The rest is podcast history.

Rogan fans who are Christians had suggested many hypothetical dream guests before Huff, but there are several reasons why he worked so well. As a missionary kid who experienced a miraculous healing before reaching high school, Huff has a uniquely compelling personal testimony. He’s also young, a fitness nut, a winsome communicator, and a scholar who can spend three hours comfortably moving through a wide swathe of topics. He even came bearing hardcore Christian nerd gifts for Rogan: not one but two papyrus facsimiles he made himself. One of them was the famous P52 fragment, containing the moment from Jesus’ trial when Pilate cynically asks, “What is truth?”

Rogan sounded more open to exploring that question with Huff than he’s ever sounded before, though evangelicals can sometimes be too hasty in their eager rush to claim almost-converts. Still, this was an encounter worth celebrating, as Huff ably represented a serious, Biblically rooted Protestant Christianity that never enjoys this kind of blue-skying in the media. Much of the information he presented would be familiar to a moderately well-educated evangelical (although I, for one, learned a lot of nerdy new fun facts about ancient Near Eastern languages), but it was all brand new to Rogan.

As the conversation turned to the Gospels and the Resurrection, there were also subtle ways in which Huff’s approach stood out from typical apologetics formulas. The received wisdom has been that when talking with skeptics, Christians should stick to a limited presentation focusing on a few “minimal facts” that enjoy broad consensus support in the scholarly literature. But those few facts were so minimal, stripping away all the rich, tangible detail of Jesus’ Resurrection appearances that made the disciples’ claims so shocking that the argument became underwhelming.

By contrast, Huff led with a “maximal data” approach, stressing those details for emphasis—that the disciples spoke with Jesus, ate with him, touched him, spent 40 days with him. If we only allow ourselves to claim the disciples were sincerely convinced by some experience or other, this greatly increases the difficulty of showing their belief was rational. But Huff confidently took the forward position, and he came loaded with specific arguments for the Gospels’ holistic reliability as accounts rooted in eyewitness testimony. (In a moment that sent New Testament nerds everywhere to nerd heaven, Rogan was especially wowed by Richard Bauckham’s argument from name statistics.)

This choice hopefully presages a tactical shift in how apologists make their case in the public square going forward. Old tools like the minimal facts argument were developed in an era when evangelicals were concerned about appearing in touch with consensus scholarship, using an approach that could scale down to a five-minute opening debate statement. But this is the age of the rambling three-hour podcast conversation, not the formal debate. And as Huff and Rogan discussed when Rogan brought up the anti-Christian prejudice among elites, listening audiences are increasingly open to consensus-bucking narratives. Apologists should discard inadequate tools regardless of their utility, but there isn’t even a shallow pragmatic excuse left for keeping them now. The future of apologetics is maximalist.

Huff closed with a short, sweet assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Jordan Peterson, gently pointing Rogan toward the gospel. The law is a mirror to show our face is dirty, but Peterson can’t wipe his face with the mirror. He needs something else, as do we all.

Now that he’s charmed everyone’s favorite dude, could Huff do the same for everyone’s favorite rock star psychologist? Like other public intellectuals, even Christian-friendly ones, Peterson tends to see rational faith as an oxymoron. But thanks to Huff, the world just got an expert demonstration that it’s very much alive and well.