"Please Accept This Apology..."

Some book advertiser very churlishly put a link into my blog's trackbacks that pointed towards an advertisement for a book, Faith Has Its Reasons: Integrated Approaches To Defending The Christian Faith. An Apologetics Handbook.  The authors are Ken Boa and Robert Bowman.

Regular readers know that I believe that Christian apologetics (except in very limited cases where they explain what Christianity does and does not say) are a bit of a dead end, since the entirety of the evangelical Christian experience depends on an unverifiable historical claim and an existential one: that Jesus rose from the dead and that God lives a miraculous life out among humans of good will.  The rest of scripture you can take metaphorically, historically, literarily, or any other way that you like, if the facts don't contradict you.  But the two critical things that really apologize for the Christian faith, the ones that make it differ from any other major religion or philosophy, are the Resurrection and the life of God.

So, here's a quotation from the Introduction: 

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Fundamental to apologetics is answering questions commonly raised by nonChristians about the truth of Christianity. While many such questions are broached in this book, we will concentrate on those that are basic and crucial to the validity of the Christian faith. These questions are part of the unbelieving stance typified by [non-Christians]. Those questions are the following:

1. Why should we believe in the Bible?

2. Don’t all religions lead to God?

3. How do we know that God exists?

4. If God does exist, why does he permit evil?

5. Aren’t the miracles of the Bible spiritual myths or legends and not literal 

fact?

6. Why should I believe what Christians claim about Jesus?

Fundamental to apologetics is answering questions commonly raised by nonChristians about the truth of Christianity. While many such questions are broached in this book, we will concentrate on those that are basic and crucial to the validity of the Christian faith. These questions are part of the unbelieving stance typified by our model non-Christians... 

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The authors offer an intriguing and clever way of organizing responses to their questions, imagining four respondants: Tom (representing Thomistic logic and Christian rationalism); Joe (spokesman for Joseph Butler's evidentialism); Cal (arguing for John Calvin's emphasis on special revelation); and Martina (offering the fideistic perspectives of Martin Luther).  The book aims to integrate and synthesize these four approaches.

In spite of the fact that their marketing agency befouled my pristine Trackbacks, and in spite of the fact that I have no faith in the persuasiveness of such work, I look forward to reading the book, and take genuine pleasure in giving them more than the space they filched.

I hope the book doesn't suck.  The apologists it hopes to review and synthesize aren't terribly promising, to my mind.

At the least, though, it's promising to be a more entertaining read than the pap currently on the apologetics shelves.  It might be a worthwhile primer.

Comments

[Daisy]

So, is this the Rip Church version of the Small Group Study/Catechism/Sunday School class? As long as you don't start asking for testimonies, taking prayer requests or inviting Vestal Goodman wannabes to come and sing for the Lord, I'll bring the Krispy Kremes; this sounds super fun.