In recent years, Christian apologetics has entered a highly combative phase, often resembling ideological warfare more than it does faithful witness. Popular figures such as Mike Winger, Michael Jones (Inspiring Philosophy), and David Wood have all cultivated large followings through confident, often adversarial modes of argument. While some of these individuals display genuine intellectual engagement or concern for defending biblical claims, they collectively participate in a pattern that undermines the very gospel they claim to uphold. What is at stake is not merely tone, but the very mode of knowing—and being—before the living God.
The framework offered by Jo (Yossi) in his teachings, as well as the larger recovery of Torat Edom, provides a far more faithful way forward. Rather than viewing the Bible as a theological arsenal, it returns us to the reality that the Bible is first a library—a narrative repository, woven across generations, shaped by exile, covenant, song, prophecy, lament, and yearning. This library, unlike the closed systems of classical or modern theology, resists abstraction. It testifies to God in history, not to a system of belief.
Contemporary apologists often operate as if the truth must be systematized in order to be defended. They organize proofs, compile evidences, debate metaphysics, and engage in endless online duels. But in doing so, they adopt the very epistemology of the Enlightenment—a mindset more Greek than Hebraic, more Platonic than prophetic. Their God becomes a proposition, their Christ a conclusion, and their enemy a person to be rhetorically slain. This is not the way of Jesus, nor the way of Israel’s prophets.
Torat Edom offers a needed correction here. By returning to the typology of Esau and Jacob, Edom and Israel, we can see that abstraction is not neutral. Esau, the man of the field, is repeatedly associated with violence and domination. When Christianity enters Edom’s captivity, as it did through empire and later scholastic rationalism, it forgets its prophetic roots and begins to systematize what should remain narrative, relational, covenantal.
The failure of these apologists lies not only in their methods but in their assumptions. When someone like David Wood mocks Islam in grotesque terms, or when Mike Winger meticulously outlines a theology that cannot account for the tensions within the biblical text itself, they present a Jesus who is more interested in correctness than in covenantal faithfulness. They reduce discipleship to assent. They treat non-believers not as fellow image-bearers, but as theological combatants.
Compare this to the biblical library. Consider the prophet Jeremiah who weeps more than he argues. Consider Ezekiel who speaks in riddles and visions rather than syllogisms. Consider Esther, whose silent courage undoes genocide—not through debate, but through identification with her people. Even Jesus, in His final meal, does not argue the case for His divinity; He breaks bread and re-narrates the Exodus.
The recovery of Jo’s approach—emphasizing the chronological story of Scripture, the role of exile, the failure of Israel’s elites, the restoration through the suffering righteous, and the Hasmonean context of Jesus—is not just an intellectual correction. It is a call to theological repentance. The early Jesus movement did not win converts through intellectual dominance, but through lives transformed in the face of injustice, rejection, and cosmic struggle. They did not kill with the sword—they converted with the Word.
Ultimately, the path forward is not more combative apologetics, but a humble return to the library. It is to read the Scriptures not as prooftexts but as revelation—truth unfolding in time, often through failure, always inviting transformation. It is to reject the idolization of certainty and embrace the pilgrimage of faith.
Let us remember: the Word of God is sharper than any sword—but its aim is not to kill the other. It is to divide soul and spirit, to expose the heart, and to offer healing. That is a weapon the world does not know how to fight. And that is the fire from heaven.
