Archive for the 'Apologetics' Category
Christopher Hitchens. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Hachette, 2007. 307 pp.
In the tradition of Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris’s recent bestseller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos.
With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope’s awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry of the double helix.
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Stephen J. Nichols. For Us and for Our Salvation: The Doctrine of Christ in the Early Church. Crossway, 2007. 176 pp.
The belief that Christ is the God-man is definitive of Christian orthodoxy and imperative to a right understanding of the gospel. By the middle of the fifth century, the church had wrestled with many challenges to the biblical portrayal of Christ and, in response to those challenges, had formulated the doctrine of Christ that remains the standard to this day. This look to the past helps as Christians contend with present-day challenges and seek to answer Christ’s question—“Who do people say that I am?”—for those living in the twenty-first century.
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Ray Comfort. What Did Jesus Do? A Call to Return to the Biblical Gospel. Genesis, 2005. 176 pp.
What Did Jesus Do? A Call to Return to the Biblical Gospel answers the skeptic’s question “Where is the Law used evangelistically?” The cynic will be surprised to find that three chapters of this book are devoted to Jesus and His use of the Ten Commandments to reach the lost. Two chapters are devoted to Paul’s evangelistic use of the Law. Paul imitated Jesus. So did Stephen, James, Peter, John the Baptist, and Jude. So did Spurgeon, Wesley, Whitefield, and others down through the ages. Each of these men of God did what Jesus did: they used the Law to reach the lost.
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Brad Stetson & Joseph G. Conti. The Truth About Tolerance: Pluralism, Diversity, and the Culture Wars. IVP, 2005. 207 pp.
We all want to be tolerant.
No one wants to be intolerant. But does that mean we have to accept all truth claims as true? Does this virtue rule out having any strongly held moral convictions?
In this book Brad Stetson and Joseph G. Conti explore the use and misuse of this important value in academic circles and popular media. They note that the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of tolerance are often taken to be mutually exclusive, and it ends with truth having to give way to tolerance.
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Kenneth Poppe. Reclaiming Science from Darwinism: A Clear Understanding of Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design. Harvest House, 2006. 320 pp.
Darwinism is a 150-year-old icon that has been propped up by unproven suppositions. The scientific discoveries of the last few decades are now kicking out the props.
Dr. Kenneth Poppe is convinced the icon is ready to topple. Providing extensive scientific evidence of Darwinism’s failures, this career biology instructor uses enlightening analogies and examples to explain the theory’s problems:
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Timothy Paul Jones. Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman’s “Misquoting Jesus.” IVP, 2007. 175 pp.
“What good does it do to say that the words [of the Bible] are inspired by God if most people have absolutely no access to these words, but only to more or less clumsy renderings of these words into a language? . . . How does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don’t have the words that God inerrantly inspired? . . . We have only error-ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals.”
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Randy Newman. Questioning Evangelism: Engaging People’s Hearts the Way Jesus Did. Kregel, 2004. 240 pp.
A much-needed look at sharing Christ with unbelievers, based not on the techniques of guerrilla hard-sell tactics, but on engaging questions and caring interaction. Filled with humor and stories, this book provides a challenging yet encouraging look at evangelism in our world today. This volume argues that asking questions and starting meaningful conversations is a far better method for sharing faith than prepared lectures or statements. It gives advice on what people need to hear in response to the world around them.
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R. C. Sproul. Faith Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine of Justification. Baker, 1999. 224 pp.
What can we add to God’s mercy to be saved? The Reformers broke with the Roman Church when they answered that Christians are justified by faith alone. But evangelicals no longer seem certain about that keystone of faith.
In Faith Alone, a Gold Medallion finalist and Evangelical Book Club main selection, R. C. Sproul discerns a softening of the doctrine of justification and explains why Christians must return to the biblical, Reformation view. He provides biblical evidence and theological reasons why Protestantism and Roman Catholicism divided in the first place, and why that division remains an uncrossed chasm.
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David F. Wells. Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World. Eerdmans, 2005. 339 pp.
In our postmodern world, every view has a place at the table but none has the final say. How should the church confess Christ in today’s cultural context?
Above All Earthly Pow’rs, the fourth and final volume of the series that began in 1993 with No Place for Truth, portrays the West in all its complexity, brilliance, and emptiness. As David F. Wells masterfully depicts it, the postmodern ethos of the West is relativistic, individualistic, therapeutic, and yet remarkably spiritual. Wells shows how this postmodern ethos has incorporated into itself the new religious and cultural relativism, the fear and confusion, that began with the last century’s waves of immigration and have continued apace in recent decades.
Wells’s book culminates in a critique of contemporary evangelicalism aimed at both unsettling and reinvigorating readers. Churches that market themselves as relevant and palatable to consumption-oriented postmoderns are indeed swelling in size. But they are doing so, Wells contends, at the expense of the truth of the gospel. By placing a premium on marketing rather than truth, the evangelical church is in danger of trading authentic engagement with culture for worldly success.
Welding extensive cultural analysis with serious theology, Above All Earthly Pow’rs issues a prophetic call that the evangelical church cannot afford to ignore.
Author: Eerdmans Bio | Gordon-Conwell Bio | Theopedia
Overview: Amazon | CBD | Eerdmans | Google Books
Excerpts: TOC | Intro | Browse in Amazon | Browse in Google Books
Reviews: Amazon | Eerdmans | CBD | LibraryThing
Professors
- Douglas Groothuis at Denver Seminary (06/06) Review
Pastors/Church Leaders
- Ron Gleason at The Chalcedon Foundation (03/06) Review
- Richard Kew at The Kew Continuum (02/07) Review
- Guy Davies at Exiled Preacher (01/07) Review
Seminary/Ministerial Students
- Darren Larson at The Darren Larson Blog (06/07) Review
Laymen/Unknown
- Randy Newman at CLM’s Academic Imperative (ND) Review
- Walt Mueller at CPYU (ND) Review
- Will at Neither Here Nor There (06/07) Review
- Berny at The Inn Dwelling (12/06) Review
Extras:
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K. Scott Oliphint. Reasons for Faith: Philosophy in the Service of Theology. P&R, 2006. 363 pp.
Philosophy poses questions and problems that are often thought to undermine Christian faith. Christians need not shy away from these discussions. There is “philosophical good news for the Christian,” says K. Scott Oliphint. The Christian position is “not simply a plausible alternative,” but “the consistent, cogent, and altogether reasonable position that is able to offer solutions to the problems posed.”
Author: WTS Bio
Overview: Amazon | P&R | WTSBooks | Google Books | LibraryThing
Excerpts: Ch 1 | Misc. | Browse in Amazon
Reviews: Amazon | CBD | LibraryThing
Professors
This is a wonderful book. If given the attention it deserves, Reasons for Faith should change the discussion in matters relating revelation to reason from now on. There is nothing quite like it in the literature. Moving from Augustine to Plantinga, Professor Oliphint interacts with many of the major questions raised by philosophy, in areas including metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, and in every case shows himself to be thoroughly conversant with the issues. Most significantly, he is able to show how theology in the Reformation tradition provides the only credible basis for resolving the problems. Reasons for Faith will leave no one indifferent. It will leave many profoundly grateful. —William Edgar, professor of apologetics and department coordinator, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia
Since Van Til, no presuppositional apologist has given us such a deep and detailed analysis of the relation of Christianity to philosophy. Oliphint is at home in the philosophical literature, from the Greeks to Aquinas to Plantinga and many others, and he sheds light on many issues of importance to Christians. This volume is an exploration, much open to further discussion.” —John M. Frame, professor of systematic theology and philosophy, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando
- Paul Helm at Reformation21 (ND) Review
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