| Jimmy Akin | |
|---|---|
 Akin providing a rebuttal during his 2022 debate with Bart Ehrman. | |
| YouTube information | |
| Channel | |
| Years active | 2009-Present |
| Subscribers | 56k [1] |
| Total views | 5,800,000+ [1] |
Last updated: March 15, 2024 | |
Jimmy Akin (born in 1965, Corpus Christi, Texas) is an American Catholic apologist, author, speaker, and podcast host. He has been working for Catholic Answers [2] since 1993, their longest-serving staff member.
Born in 1965 in Corpus Christi, Texas, Jimmy Akin grew up nominally Protestant in Fayetteville, Arkansas. As a child, he attended services at the local Church of Christ with his parents but became interested in the New Age movement as a teenager. During his time in college, Akin encountered the preaching of the televangelist Eugene "Gene" Scott and became a Christian, finding a denominational home in the conservative Presbyterian Church in America, and wanted to be a pastor or seminary professor. [3] [4]
Soon after becoming a Christian, Akin met his future wife, Renee Humphrey, who had been baptized a Catholic but held many New Age beliefs. Over the course of their relationship, Renee reverted to Catholicism and resumed practicing the faith. They were married in 1988 and Akin soon after converted to Catholicism in 1992. Later that year, Humphrey died of colon cancer. [5] [4] [6]
He is the senior apologist for Catholic Answers. [7] While his academic training is in philosophy, he is also an autodidact, who has managed to acquire an extensive background in apologetics, biblical studies, theology, liturgy, canon law, and related disciplines. [8]
Akin is a weekly guest on the national radio program Catholic Answers Live, a regular contributor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a popular blogger and podcaster. His personal web site is JimmyAkin.com. [9]
He defended charges that Pope John Paul II engaged in self-flagellation, writing, "Self-mortification teaches humility by making us recognize that there are things more important than our own pleasure." [10] Akin said that while Chick tracts were inaccurate, he thought they brought some people to God. [11]
Since 2018, Akin has been the co-host (alongside Dom Bettinelli) of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, a podcast examining mysteries in the areas of the paranormal and true crime. [12] [13]
Akin debated New Testament scholar Dr. Bart D. Ehrman on the historical reliability of the Gospels in March 2022. [14] [15] He debated Baptist James White in back-to-back debates on sola scriptura and justification in April 2024. [16] [17]
In Christianity, Christology, translated from Greek as 'the study of Christ', is a branch of theology that concerns Jesus. Different denominations have different opinions on questions such as whether Jesus was human, divine, or both, and as a messiah what his role would be in the freeing of the Jewish people from foreign rulers or in the prophesied Kingdom of God, and in the salvation from what would otherwise be the consequences of sin.
The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events relating to first-century Christianity. The New Testament's background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible; together they are regarded as Sacred Scripture by Christians.
Sola scriptura is a Christian theological doctrine held by most Protestant Christian denominations, in particular the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, that posits the Bible as the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice. The Catholic Church considers it heterodox and generally the Orthodox churches consider it to be contrary to the phronema of the Church.
The five solae of the Protestant Reformation are a foundational set of Christian theological principles held by theologians and clergy to be central to the doctrines of justification and salvation as taught by the Calvinism and Lutheranism branches of Protestantism, as well as in some branches of Pentecostalism. Each sola represents a key belief in these Protestant traditions that is distinct from the theological doctrine of the Catholic Church, although they were not assembled as a theological unit until the 20th century. The Reformers are known to have only clearly stated two of the five solae. Even today there are differences as to what constitutes the solae, how many there are, and how to interpret them to reflect the Reformers' beliefs.
The King James Only movement asserts the belief that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is superior to all other translations of the Bible. Adherents of the King James Only movement, mostly members of Conservative Anabaptist, traditionalist Anglo-Catholics, Conservative Holiness Methodist and some Baptist churches, believe that the KJV needs no further improvements because it is the greatest English translation of the Bible which was ever published, and they also believe that all other English translations of the Bible which were published after the KJV was published are corrupt.
James Robert White is a Baptist theologian, the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, an evangelical Reformed Baptist Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona and a Christian scholar. He is the author of several books.
Scott Walker Hahn is an American Catholic theologian and Christian apologist. A former Protestant, Hahn was a Presbyterian minister who converted to Catholicism. Hahn's popular works include Rome Sweet Home and The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth. His lectures have been featured in multiple audio distributions through Lighthouse Catholic Media. Hahn is known for his research on Early Christianity during the Apostolic Age and various theoretical works concerning the early Church Fathers.
Bart Denton Ehrman is an American New Testament scholar focusing on textual criticism of the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the origins and development of early Christianity. He has written and edited 30 books, including three college textbooks. He has also authored six New York Times bestsellers. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Richard Cevantis Carrier is an ancient historian. He is long-time contributor to skeptical websites, including The Secular Web and Freethought Blogs. Carrier has published a number of books and articles on philosophy and religion in classical antiquity, discussing the development of early Christianity from a skeptical viewpoint, and concerning religion and morality in the modern world. He has publicly debated a number of scholars on the historical basis of the Bible and Christianity. He is a prominent advocate of the theory that Jesus did not exist, which he has argued in a number of his works. However, Carrier's methodology and conclusions in this field have proven controversial and unconvincing to most ancient historians, and he and his theories are often identified as fringe.
Soli Deo gloria is a Latin term for Glory to God alone. It has been used by artists like Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, and Christoph Graupner to signify that the work was produced for the sake of praising God. The phrase has become one of the five solae propounded to summarise the Reformers' basic beliefs during the Protestant Reformation.
Robert McNair Price is an American New Testament scholar who argues in favor of the Christ myth theory – the claim that a historical Jesus did not exist. Price is the author of a number of books on biblical studies and the historicity of Jesus.
The term proto-orthodox Christianity or proto-orthodoxy describes the early Christian movement that was the precursor of Christian orthodoxy. Older literature often referred to the group as "early Catholic" in the sense that their views were the closest to those of the more organized Catholic Church of the 4th and 5th centuries. The term "proto-orthodox" was coined by Bentley Layton, but is often attributed to New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman, who has popularized the term by using it in books for a non-academic audience. Ehrman argues that when this group became prominent by the end of the third century, it "stifled its opposition, it claimed that its views had always been the majority position and that its rivals were, and always had been, 'heretics', who willfully 'chose' to reject the 'true belief'."
Bibliolatry is the worship of a book, idolatrous homage to a book, or the deifying of a book. It is a form of idolatry. The sacred texts of some religions disallow icon worship, but over time the texts themselves are treated as sacred the way idols are, and believers may end up effectively worshipping the book. Bibliolatry extends claims of inerrancy—hence perfection—to the texts, precluding theological innovation, evolving development, or progress. Bibliolatry can lead to revivalism, disallows re-probation, and can lead to persecution of unpopular doctrines.
Michael R. "Mike" Licona is an American New Testament scholar, author, and Christian apologist. He is Professor of New Testament Studies at Houston Christian University, Extraordinary Associate Professor of Theology at North-West University and the director of Risen Jesus, Inc. Licona specializes in the resurrection of Jesus, and in the literary analysis of the Gospels as Greco-Roman biographies.
In Christianity, the term biblical authority refers to two complementary ideas:
The Shape of Sola Scriptura is a 2001 book by Reformed Christian theologian Keith Mathison. Mathison traces the development of sola scriptura from the early church to the present. He views the Protestant Reformation as a time of recovery of the doctrine that had been under assault from the fourth century. He argues that relativism and individualism permeate present-day teaching on the subject, and that widespread misunderstanding of the doctrine of sola scriptura has been eroding the church from within. This, in Mathison's view, has led to conversions from Protestantism to other religions, and has undermined the relationship among Scripture, church tradition, and individual believers as set forth by the early church and restated by the Magisterial Reformers.
Dave Armstrong is an American Catholic apologist, author, and blogger.
Keith A. Mathison is an American Reformed theologian.
Tim Staples is a Catholic author, apologist, and lecturer. He is the Director of Apologetics and Evangelization at Catholic Answers.