“The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context” by Myron B. Penner

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Good points:

@Mervin_Bitikofer

Because it probably isn’t a given that we enjoy being around them. A prophet likely is quite the opposite of a barrel of fun. So while Jesus did draw many to him, he also repulsed so many (maybe for the very same reasons). Truth is not always a pleasant thing for me to be around - depending on my own spiritual state which is the much more fluidly changeable thing.

Especially if one denies the very possibility of sin (speaking as one who is a sinner).
 

@Mervin_Bitikofer

Both he and even Jesus (aside from answering their question about marriage in the after-life) did not spend much (or any?) powder or shot on the very “unbelievers” of their time who might have most anticipated or been like modern skeptics.

 
For any not recently familiar with that answer:

Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection [nor anything spiritual?], came to him with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I AM the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”

Mark 12:18-27