Customer Reviews

The Christian Combat Manual

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Written by Christian apologist Dan Story, The Christian Combat Manual: Helps for Defending Your Faith: A Handbook for Practical Apologetics is emphatically not about physical combat, but rather a guide for Christians to promote and defend their faith, morals, ethics, and worldview in spite of philosophical attacks against it, especially naturalist and postmodernist attacks. In particular, The Christian Combat Manual meticulously deconstructs such postmodernist concepts as "There are no absolute truths" and "All religions are equal", as well as more self-indulgent arguments such as "You Christians have no right to judge other people's behavior." Written in plain terms especially for novice to intermediate Christian apologists, The Christian Combat Manual offers straightforward responses to some of the most common criticisms of Christian beliefs, values, and ethics ("How can you claim that God exists when there is so much pain, suffering, and evil in the world?" "Why do you blame God for evil acts that people are clearly responsible for?"). It should be noted that The Christian Combat Manual takes an unquestionably pro-life stance, and denounces homosexual sex as well as male-female cohabitation outside of marriage, among other traditionalist views, and offers numerous rhetorical tools to persuade and defend these viewpoints. An effectively worded and persuasive guide, though the focus on defending fundamentalist Christianity from uncompromising postmodernism ("There are no absolute truths") detracts from its effectiveness in defending fundamentalist Christianity from more moderate forms of postmodernism ("There are some absolute truths, but none of them cover your argument.")

Too many Christians are intellectually lazy in defending their faith and are too easily put on the spot by atheists and non-believers -- not because rational answers for Christianity don't exist, but because Christians don't know how to defend Christianity using reason and logic, the tools non-believers long ago learned to effectively use to shut Christians up. As a result of this lack of training on the part of Christians, Christianity has gotten a well-deserved anti-intellectual reputation. But no more.

While certainly not the first book of its kind to be published in recent years, this one is written for the rank beginner apologist, meaning that anyone can learn to use what he was (unfortunately) never taught in church, in Sunday School or at Bible studies; how to present an apologia (Greek for "defense", not "apology") for Christianity's exclusive message without merely saying, "It's in the Bible, that's why." Sadly, such "so's your old man" responses were all many untrained Christians had until books like this one were written.

Many books on apologetics, a discipline essential to engaging other thinkers on a non-emotional level, in large part are far too philosophically and theologically complex for beginner apologists. This one is not. In this book you will learn what you have been doing wrong; defending Christianity by quoting the Bible alone, instead of using the tools of proper debate such as reason and logic. It's a "must have" from-the-ground-up combat manual for any thinking Christian who wants to demonstrate that he/she has good reasons for believing what he believes. And make no mistake, this IS a war. Using gentle but reasonable techniques, the Christian learns how to go on the offense instead of always being on the defensive having no other recourse than to say something like, "The Bible says so, and I believe it." That doesn't win people to the Gospel message; it merely cements into place the anti-intellectualism non-believers are so convinced all Christians are mired in.

Paul and the apostles used reason, logic and eyewitness accounts, they never simply quoted the Bible to get people to accept the Good News. For the Christian who recognizes that threatening damnation and quoting Scripture at someone is not the way to spread the Gospel to other intelligent people, get this book as your "starter kit", then go on to bigger and better apologetics written by Zacharias, Geisler, Strobel, C.S.Lewis, Moreland, Packer, Andrew Murray and countless others.

The Bible, while still our best tool for learning about God and the Christian life, shouldn't always be our first tool in spreading the Gospel to willing and open-minded listeners -- apologetics should be. Apologetics takes work and if Christians are not willing to work at the Great Commission, why are they here?

Dan Story's reveals once again in his newest book--The Christian Combat Manual, that he is one of the most practical voices in contemporary apologetics in the Church today. A much needed aspect to defending the faith, in Story's view, is learning offensive tactics for dismantling false assumptions, and the misguided beliefs of those who make it their goal to undermine the truth of historic Christianity.

Most of the common challenges to the Christian faith are addressed in the book, including: Establishing the truth and reliability of the Bible; exposing the cracks in evolutionary theory, demonstrating the existence of God and the necessity for an intelligent designer, for the moral law written on our hearts, and by giving solid evidence for the Historical Jesus. The last section of the book centers on engaging the contemporary postmodern culture. Showing how we should respond to political correctness, moral relativism, religious pluralism, the new secular view of tolerance, and other postmodern beliefs.

Although this book is an excellent starting place for those new to the study of apologetics, or even new to the faith, it is also for those who have felt equipped in the WHAT and WHY of what they believe--but have felt lacking in the HOW aspect of contending for the faith. The unique factor of The Christian Combat Manual that is woven throughout--is the HOW of apologetics. In other words, HOW do I put this knowledge in to practice in my everyday life...not only in my work place, or around my friends and relatives, but especially in secular academic circles?

This added "tactical" approach, is designed to remove the "obstacles" and "potholes" or stumbling blocks on the road to salvation, thereby, lowering the skeptics defenses, and taking them from a "closed minded", "hard atheistic" mindset, to a more open minded "soft agnostic" mindset. Dan Story's new book accomplishes this task--directly, simply, consistently and energetically.

I have read all of Dan Story's books and I think The Christian Combat Manual is his best yet. Dan Story is a first-rate Christian apologist with the unique ability to synthesize and summarize complex material and make it more palatable for the average thoughtful layman. This book is an excellent overview of the major themes in Christian apologetics. One strength of this book is that it not only covers some of the central issues of classical apologetics, such as the existence of God, the nature of Jesus Christ, and the reliability of the Bible, but also with many of the most crucial contemporary issues facing the Christian church. In fact, part 5 alone is worth the price of the book. Here, Mr. Story deals with the major worldviews that set themselves up against Christian Theism--Naturalism and Postmodernism. The section on postmodernism also offers a succinct treatment of postmodernism's stepchildren--moral relativism, political correctness, and multiculturalism--and tactics that can be used to refute these false ideologies. This book would be an excellent choice for small group study, high school or college ministry, or for any thoughtful Christian who wants a succinct overview of the reasons Christianity is true, and why the major worldview competitors simply do not possess the same explanatory power.

If you want to read one book to sum up Dan Story's thought and apologetics ministry, read this one. This book has the potential to be his most useful and practical book yet.

I was a bit apprehensive when I bought this book because I thought it would be too "heady". Dan Story begins by pointing out how Christians have basically surrendered our heritage of being innovators and thinkers. ("Oh, boy. Gonna be theoretical, impractical intellectualism.") As I kept reading, I realized that I could keep reading; Mr. Story is very readable and presents his points very well. EDIT: Forgot to mention that this book is heavily supported with endnotes. Mr. Story appears to be well-read. He is definitely not just making words, he has documentation for the Christian and the skeptic.

However, I could not give it a full five stars because I did not find it as readily practical as, say "Tactics", by Greg Koukl. (You're REALLY be ready to rumble if you get "Tacts" as well as "The Christian Combat Manual"). Here's a "however" to my however: There is a great deal of information that will help give a Christian confidence that his or her faith is indeed grounded in fact, and is eminently reasonable. That alone is worth the purchase price. In fact, an open-minded skeptic who is willing to honestly examine the evidence could read this book and get something out of it. The "combat manual" aspects are not as readily available until the appendix. After reading the book, the appendix becomes invaluable, and not just an alleged vestigial organ.

The Christian faith is reasonable, factual and intellectually satisfying. Dan Story's The Christian Combat Manual: Helps for Defending Your Faith : a Handbook for Christian Apologetics helps YOU be certain, and helps equip you in standing up for your faith in this secular-minded world.

Don't let my four-not-five star rating put you off, I recommend the book and even have an Amazon Associates link to it on my sites.

This was a gift for my son-in-law, he is very active in his church and I think he will appreciate this good book.

When i first order this product i wasn't confident to get it on time,in good shape . but i got it more than i expect.thanks