Open Letter to Bradley J. Lingo, Dean of the Regent University School of Law
Within evangelical circles, legal apologetics denotes attempts to defend the Christian faith using legal arguments that would ostensibly "prove" certain central tenets of Christianity by the standards of the American legal system. Like other forms of apologetics, however, it is rife with buzzwords and relies on no identifiable criteria by which these tenets might be "proven" by established legal standards. Legal apologists also tend to respond to the arguments of fictional opponents to their "cases" for core Christian doctrines rather than engage real-world legal opponents. Since this has a more propagandistic than truth-seeking function, in this essay retired lawyer Robert G. Miller challenges the Dean of the Regent University School of Law—or any legal apologist for that matter—to accept his invitation to agree to initiate a real online debate with him by September 29, 2023 using long-standing legal standards to "prove" the central Christian doctrine that Jesus rose from the dead.