Thinking About Christian Apologetics: What It Is and Why We Do It.

Mattes, Mark

Thinking About Christian Apologetics: What It Is and Why We Do It. By James K. Beilby. Downer's Grove: IVP Academic, 2011. ISBN:978-0-83083945-2. Paper. $17.00.

Written by James Beilby, an Evangelical, this book is not a primer in apologetics but instead offers a kind of prolegomena to apologetics, a defense of the Christian faith. Beilby focuses on the nature, history, and practice of apologetics, as well as approaches and objections to it. Usually, apologists do not reflect on their own assumptions. This author frankly admits that many Christian apologists are arrogant in their attempt to defend Christianity (158).

Beilby distinguishes proactive from responsive apologetics. In the former, apologists claim that Christianity makes sense, while in the later they seek to show that objections to faith are unsuccessful (17). Helpfully, Beilby offers a bird's eye overview of apologetic stances gleaned from the Bible and the church fathers (such as Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine), the Reformers (Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin), and the modern world (Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Newman, and Alvin Plantinga). The upshot of historical study is that at its best, apologetics is sensitive to and grows out of its intellectual milieu. Beilby notes that the three most important contemporary approaches to apologetics are (1) "evidentialism," which seeks to provide reasons to support faith, seen in the work of C. S. Lewis, (2) "presuppositionalism," which is skeptical of providing reasons for faith but does think that the weaknesses of unbelief should be exposed, exemplified in the work of Reformed theologians, such as Cornelius Van Til, and (3) "experientialism," which sees the truth of faith as grounded in religious experience, modeled in philosophers like William Alston.

It is valuable for mainline Christians to think about apologetics since they, as much as Evangelicals, presume an apologetic, even if they are not always aware of it.