Holdsworth and Me as Apologists

The following video is mainly on the Sacrifice of Abraham.

Here is Holdsworth's solution:

1. A test can benefit the person being tested and those who learn from the test, even if the examiner already knows the outcome.
2. Abraham’s test teaches Abraham and the reader about his faith, and points forward to Christ’s sacrifice.
3. Therefore, God’s test of Abraham can serve a meaningful purpose even if God already knows how Abraham will respond.

I'm not against that, just have something to add, and also comment on his intro.

Defending the Worst Thing in the Bible
Brian Holdsworth | 4 Nov. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmSbcZpU7HA

0:49 My background as an Apologist.

At fifteen minus a month, I arrived at a boarding school. I tend to say, on HP, whatever the pros and cons of fictional magic, it's still a boarding school story. Noting that Rowling never went to one.

I was at the time believing roughly like an Evangelical, minus the anti-Catholicism you find in some neighbourhoods, but tending to Lutheranism, since Lutheranism allowed Christians to resist Communist Revolutions and wasn't Pacifist.

I spent four years in two houses of that school. When I left, I was in the Swedish back then version of OCIA. Yes, I have a pre-Trad Catholic life too.

Part of the reason was, the strategy some had to push me away from the faith was pointing to Evangelicals owing the Bible to Catholics. "Oh, don't you say so? Well, I should probably be Catholic, then!" ... that's a very sunny résumé of dialogues that were often pretty grim, back and forth between debate and personal harrassment, like calling me a jerk or threatening me, or calling me a faggot, if I said sth they considered too right wing.

I had arrived a nearly sympathiser with Hitler. As I have part Jewish ancestry, you can guess what the not quite was about. I left a pretty solid sympathiser with Franco. You bet my saying right wing things wasn't a rarity. The second house was more quiet, but I already had Apologetics in my system. And there was one guy who had smoked weed in the Catacombs of Paris, before being sent up. So, more quiet, doesn't mean no occasions.

For some reason, the Sacrifice of Abraham didn't come up very often.

In recent months, I made a calculation on when the Arabian desert ceased to be green and lush. I concluded that Abraham might have blundered and nearly killed Ishmael, except for the miracle, while sending him to a place he thought was still liveable.

When Isaac later met Ishmael, perhaps it saved Isaac's life that Abraham had nearly killed him too.

Some bring up people who have certain mental conditions and kill their own, I think Hercules is a better butt of that rebuttal ... he actually did kill wife and more than one child with her, prior to precisely the twelve labours.

5:33 The initiation, it isn't into something like Freemasonry?

Including Catholic approved parallels. Knights of Columbus or things ...