Within Christian Apologetics, Wesley Huff is the hottest name and has quickly risen to prominence since his appearance on Joe Rogan. As the Vice President of Apologetics Canada, he was a fresher, theologically Reformed face to Protestant apologetics that was not a Pelagian Molinist like William Lane Craig, not a political/theological liberal like Gavin Ortlund, or embrace of charismatic cringe like Cliffe Knechle. He also was not egalitarian, which is another tendency in Protestant apologetics, like Frank Turek.
His rise to fame has been an improvement for Protestant apologetics, yet it has not been without issues, many of which come with fame. Because he is a hot commodity, many want to collaborate with him or conduct interviews, which poses the risk of entangling his reputation. Going into 2026, he has partnered with Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, which has given him access to MBTS professors to interview on his YouTube channel. In a more recent interview with Sadie Robertson Huff, he incidentally went along with her egalitarianism. As he rises in prominence, more of these situations will befall him.
Recently, Jordan Peterson’s Peterson Academy announced an eight-hour lecture series by Wes Huff titled,”The Historical Reliability of the Bible.” As is common for Peterson Academy lectures, the first episode was released for free on Sunday.
While the obvious criticism of the promotional video is the invocation of “Judeo-Christian” ethics with regard to the Bible, as the two words oft stand opposed to one another, the rest of the preview sounds more like an apologetics lecture that might happen during a church Sunday school than an academic deep dive behind a paywall. The one-minute promotional clip does not sound like anything that one could not get from Huff’s existing content or the thousands of hours of apologetic content freely available online.
Having listened to the first lecture, it is an hour-long teaching on the basis of the biblical canon and how we arrived at the books of the Old and New Testaments, with greater emphasis on the Old. While the content was unobjectionable, much of the subject matter has been covered by other YouTube apologists like Mike Winger or James White. There is no groundbreaking arguments for those who are well-versed in apologetics.
The Peterson Academy brands itself as an accessible college-level education for a fraction of the price. Their subject matter includes philosophy, social sciences, psychology, history, biology, and mathematics, so it is far beyond the musings of Jordan Peterson. Peterson Academy charges $600/annually, though it does go on sale, and they boasted 60K students in the Huff announcement tweet. Financially, this is a $20-30 million business at a minimum.
Perhaps the Peterson Academy is using Huff’s mass appeal to pitch their more thought-provoking courses, making his content more of a marketing endeavor than a rigorous academic education. This would be akin to a Netflix content creation strategy to drive new subscriptions/students. It could further be suggested that this entanglement to the Peterson ecosystem could expose students to his Jungian-influenced bible interpretations and some of the other non-Christian philosophers that are partnered with the Peterson Academy. However, the price tag is a deterrent for most consumers, even avid fans of Wes Huff.
Regardless of one’s thoughts on Peterson as a man, the Peterson Academy has the potential to be a disruptor to the college education system and so one should root for its success as a business.
In contrast to Huff is a seven-hour course on Thomas Aquinas by Bishop Robert Barron, where the goal of his series is to simplify Aquinas and his famous Summa Theologica. Huff’s content, like his Can I Trust the Bible series, is very approachable for the layman, but Barron is selling something far more complicated and exclusive, which is a selling point of the series. The exclusivity of the content is a major selling point which Huff lacks in his own preview. The exclusive value was not quite evident in the first lecture.
Compared to Huff, Barron was a Catholic seminary professor and had experience giving lectures across the world. One of the things Huff lacks is his doctorate, which he is currently pursuing, so he is not yet a professor by training. Being a professor in a classroom setting and preparing material for academic purposes is a different medium from either a church service or a podcast. His content is very digestible for the masses, which is not the same audience as those who would pay for Peterson Academy. Given the fact that the material is behind an expensive paywall, the content should be elevated beyond YouTube apologetics. In this case, the lecture fails to deliver.
Powered by RedCircle
