Customer Reviews

On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision

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If you've ever desired philosophers to say things in easy to understand, yet not dumbed down language, then you will be pleased with this book.
On Guard seems to take all the great things William Lane Craig says during his debates, podcasts, and interviews, and puts them in one accessible read. For some reason, apologists speak so clearly during their debates, and yet when you buy their book, you get bogged down in technical jargon that keeps you busy either reading the same page 4 times, or rifling your fingers through a copy of Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion.
Before I got this book, I believed it would be one of those books that would be great for using in a young adults (or not so young adults) Sunday School class, or perhaps giving to someone who knows nothing of apologetics. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that that On Guard is not only that, but also much more! On Guard reminds me of a book that would be the result of an individual's gleanings of the best notes of his studies. (Now I don't have to spend the next year writing all my notes down, because WLC has done it for us! ha ha)

Ok, so now that I've given my impression of the book, allow me to go into greater detail:
On Guard begins with an impressive list of endorsements, ending with the finest by J.P. Moreland, who refers to Craig as, "the finest Christian apologist of the last half century." I wholeheartedly agree, and also place Moreland there too.

We move on to an excellent introduction by Lee Strobel. Lee reminds us of the great debate between Craig and Zindler (a debate I actually paid money to buy on cassette from Moody), and then closes with the claim that, "you'll learn the most compelling arguments in favor of Christianity."

Chapter 1 opens with a description of what exactly apologetics is, points out that it is biblical by giving references to Jesus (Luke 24:25-27; John 14:11), and Paul (Romans 1:20; 1 Cor. 15:3-8), and more. He continues by giving reasons why apologetics is important, such as: shaping culture, strengthening believers, and winning unbelievers. Craig closes by explaining how to get the most out of his book.

Chapter 2 is about "What difference does it make if God exists?" Starting with the absurdities of life without God, Craig discusses how there would be no ultimate meaning without God (illustrated by his excellent story of the astronaut marooned in outer space), no ultimate value, and no ultimate purpose. He moves on to talk about how people are living in denial, and then to the practical impossibility of atheism.

Chapter 3 discusses "Why does anything at all exist?" Craig begins with Leibniz's Argument in easy to memorize form. 1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence. 2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. 3. The universe exists. 4. The universe has an explanation of its existence. 5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe's existence is God.
The book goes on to raise objections to the premises, and also sufficiently addresses those objections.

Chapter 4 moves into "Why did the universe begin?" Here, Craig takes us to Al-Ghazali's Argument. 1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. 2. The universe began to exist. 3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
Craig then discusses premise 1, explaining that "something cannot come from nothing," and, "if something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn't come into being from nothing." He ends the discussion of premise one by pointing out that "common experience and scientific evidence confirm the truth of premise 1."
WLC moves on to premise two by discussing actual infinites, Hilbert's Hotel, Big Bang, beginning of time, Oscillating Universes etc. (again, I will remind the reader, if you are not familiar with these subjects, he makes these points in understandable language).

Chapter 5 asks, "Why is the universe fine-tuned for life?" I find this chapter especially interesting, since it addresses the impossible odds of life existing in this universe, such as, if the nuclear weak force was altered by only one part out of 10 to the 100th, life would not exist. Craig then discusses arguments against fine-tuning, such as "if they were different, different life forms might have evolved," and, "what if there were different laws?"
Taking time to body slam Richard Dawkins' objection presented in his best seller, "The God Delusion," Craig tidily shows the errors of Dawkins' conclusion, "Therefore, God almost certainly does not exist," and then moves on to the next chapter.

Chapter 6, "Can we be good without God?" Craig gives the moral argument for God's existence, explains the distinction between values and duties, addresses Euthyphro's Dilemma, answers notions such as, "moral values simply exist," "Whatever contributes to human flourishing is good," "we evolved morals," and then gives a clear description of the Genetic Fallacy, followed by a nice example.

By now, hopefully you have a decent picture of what this book is like, so I shall forgo summarizing the rest of the chapters, choosing rather to merely list them.
Chapter 7, "What about suffering?"
Chapter 8, "Who was Jesus?"
Chapter 9, "Did Jesus rise from the dead?"
Chapter 10, "Is Jesus the only way to God?"

I'll close this review with a mention of two additional features I find appealing. One is the regular "Talk About It" boxes that are on many pages. These are great for reviewing with a class, or testing yourself to see what you remember. e.g. "How has this chapter shown that God: Is unembodied Mind? Transcends the universe? Created the universe?"
And, "Think of a movie you've seen recently. If you asked the main character, 'Why does your life matter?' what do you think he or she would say?"
The second feature is the wide margins on the side of the pages. There is plenty of room for taking notes.


Good luck and enjoy On Guard!

William Lane Craig is one of the top Christian apologists alive today. So when he writes a book on apologetics, I expect it to be well-argued and -reasoned. But I do not necessarily expect it to be accessible to the average reader, for better or for worse.

Yet On Guard, released this week by David C. Cook Publishers, is just that and more. This book is ready-made for undergraduate classes, church small groups or any Christian looking for an introduction to the key arguments in defense of Christianity.

Most of the content is not new to the discussion, but the format by which it is presented is. This is one of the primary appeals to this work. There are wide margins on the pages perfect for note-taking, unless that space is used for definitions of key words and logical fallacies. There are even profiles of some of the key thinkers along the way.

Craig presents the chapters in ascending logical order of arguments, from "What difference does it make if God exists?" to "Is Jesus the only way to God?". Along the way he hits some of the most popular arguments today for God's existence: the moral argument, the design argument, and of course the kalam cosmological argument, which Craig is especially well-known for modifying in his doctorate thesis.

If there is one weakness in the book, it is that it tries to be all things to all men. While the book is meant to be introductory, there are points when the content will simply be heavy lifting due to the subject matter at hand--despite the occasional single-panel cartoon thrown in. And the "Talk About It" questions seemingly geared for the small group are, in my humble opinion, more distracting than beneficial.

With only these few exceptions, William Lane Craig has written the perfect introduction to Christian apologetics. I know it will be among the first books I recommend when a Christian wants to get his feet wet in the defense of the Christian faith. Even to those familiar with the arguments, this book will be a worthwhile tool to add to the belt.

This book was a free review copy provided by David C. Cook Publishers.

Let me first say that I am a huge Bill Craig fan. His work has saved my spiritual bacon many times and I've also gone to several of his debates (have two pictures with him) and have donated to his organization.

I give this book a poor rating as a book, not so much for the arguments given, which are fairly standard for Dr. Craig. Things to like about the book include readability. I'm a slow reader and I could easily plow through a chapter in about 30 minutes. There is also a bonus chapter on how to defend that Christ is the only way to salvation, and differentiating the intellectual versus emotional reasons people have for rejecting the doctrine. Some who are not biblical inerrantists may not welcome this chapter, thus limiting the appeal of this book over Reasonable Faith in some circles. Fortunately, the book does have questions for discussion in the margin, unlike RF, which means you can use it for a group discussion without having to buy workbooks or print off seperate sheets.

And keep in mind, this book is designed to boil down RF, written on the "graduate" student level, and make it more "accessible" to the common church goer. After all, who really wants to spend the extra time and cost to clean up the brain matter from unsuspecting soccer mom's who chose to read straight through RF? Those kind of casualities just don't look good for the church.

The reason I give this book such a poor review is that scholars are frequently quoted and, aside from giving their names, there is no citation to tell us the work and page number. For instance, the quote from Roger Penrose on the odds of the initial conditions of the universe being a low entropy state (10^10^123) on page 196. This alone would be enough to fail any high school student's research paper. Why should Bill not receive an "F" for this? And how would it really help equip a would-be apologist to quote a scholar to someone only to have the listener say, "I don't believe that is true. Where can I look it up?...Oh, I see, Dr. Craig said so. He was probably just quoting one of his fundamentalist buddies who did some fuzzy math." If we can't check his work, we can't confirm the evidence.

Secondly, and maybe this is just me, but Dr. Craig seems to use more sweeping claims in this book, or at least more than usual. Instead of "Probably" or "most" we read more "We know" or "all" comments about what scholars say or various truth claims. One quote that causes me to question that Dr. Craig even wrote all of this material himself is the following:

"All historians agree that the gospels were written down and circulated during the first generation after the events, while the eyewitnesses were still alive" (191).

First, he should have said "virtually" all, since there are plenty of random quacks out there who are absurdly skeptical. But, two, this isn't even "virtually" true. You'd be lucky if half of historians would accept this claim. The mainstream view is that Mark was written around 70CE (40 years after the cross), with New Testament and extrabiblical evidence being agreed upon that Peter, Paul, James the Lord's brother, and the apostle James dying in the 60s CE or earlier. You would have a hard time getting even most historians to agree that the "eyewitnesses" of the events recorded in the gospels were alive at the time Mark was written, let alone Matthew and Luke (which mainstream scholars date to the 80s CE) and John (95CE). I emailed the reasonable faith team an they assure me that Dr. Craig wrote everything in the book, so I'm baffled. Perhaps he had a bad fish oil capsule that day. I kid because I love. Dr. Craig, please don't melt me with you brain...

The chapters on philosophical arguments are straightforward enough to use without external evidence, but particularly the chapter on "Who was Jesus?" will likely be found not well explained enough for the common person to use in apologetics. You would need the more careful explanation of the "criterion of authenticity" and such found in the fuller work (RF) for it really to be practical.

After all was said and done, I still ordered this book for our church class to use because I didn't want to spend more than double the time to journey through RF. I did not expect to do as much explaining of what Bill is and isn't saying. Perhaps that is one drawback of the brevity of the book. They seem to be enjoying it though.

I bought this book on the Kindle and by the end of the week I had devoured it and wanted to reread it as soon as possible. Dr. Craig presents his arguments in a step-by-step process that is easy to follow and well-thought-out. The book not only contains some of Dr. Craig's most convincing arguments for the existence of God and Christian belief, but is also peppered with definitions of new or difficult words, and questions addressed directly to the reader(s) so that they can also think about what he is arguing about. The book has ten chapters and follows this general layout:

Chapter 1 deals with the definition of apologetics, and why Dr. Craig thinks that it is essential for all Christians to be trained in it.
Chapter 2 explores the question of "Why does it matter?" that God exists. Dr. Craig demonstrates that morality, value, and purpose are all objectively meaningless in a world without God.
Chaptes 3-6 contain four (very convincing) arguments for the existence of God, in an easy-to-memorize format.
Chapter 7 deals with the common objection that God and evil cannot coexist. (This was a particular favorite of mine).
Finally, Chapters 8-10 defend the existence of Jesus, the truth of the Bible (particularly the New Testament), and the belief that Jesus is the only way to God.

(And for those who do not like books with a lot of scripture references all over the place, this book contains very few, especially in the first few chapters. Mostly the scripture appears in the later chapters, when Dr. Craig defends the Bible and the existence of Jesus, using scripture and comparing it to historical fact and logic. Most of the book is pure logic and reason, with little Biblical reference).

The book also contains interludes during which Dr. Craig describes his personal experiences (becoming a Christian, learning about apologetics, etc.) in a way which is just as good as any of his arguments.

Each chapter concludes with an outline or flow chart detailing what that chapter covered in a concise format, further helping the reader sort through all the data covered in each chapter.

So, in conclusion, I'd have to say that this is easily an amazing apologetics book. And I won't lie: after reading it the first time I quickly added several other books by Dr. Craig to my wish list. This is definitely worth buying. If you are a Christian then you do not want to miss out on this one!

I just wanted to start my review by saying that this book quite possibly saved my faith. Right now I'm a senior at Princeton and I've recently been going through the period where I had to stop believing things because that was what I had always been taught and start believing them for my own reasons and an objective appraisal of the truth, no matter where it led me. I'm still working out the kinks, but I'm on the right track now.

To me, the strongest parts of this book are the beginning and the end: the parts that deal with the philosophical arguments for God's existence and the responses to the two problems of sin and the fates of the unevangelized. Those were very strong and, after having read several atheist authors (Quentin Smith, John Loftus, Richard Dawkins, etc.), I believe that Craig offers much stronger arguments than they do. He also represents their views pretty accurately, and doesn't resort to setting up straw men.

The weaker part of this book has to do with the peculiarly Christian aspects of God: Jesus' teachings and his resurrection. I found his attempts in such a small amount of space to be overly ambitious and a bit too unnuanced. I personally preferred Michael Licona's excellent work The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. While Licona makes strong arguments for his personal beliefs, he confines his main analysis to the facts that are agreed upon by almost all biblical scholars, both Christian and atheist: the historical "bedrock." I've listed them here for those who are interested:

1. Jesus existed.
2. Jesus was a man regarded as a prophet and moral teacher who performed what many interpreted as miracles, magic, or exorcisms.
3. Jesus believed himself to have a special role with God as a prophet or son.
4. Jesus died on the cross.
5. After Jesus died, many of his apostles, in different times and places, had experiences that led them to believe and proclaim that Jesus had been resurrected and had appeared to them.
6. A few years after Jesus died, Paul, a devout Jew with a history of persecuting Christians, had what he interpreted as a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to him.

Licona then examines the various atheist explanations for these known facts and finds them seriously lacking in merit (as did I--the cases against Jesus' resurrection are very tenuous). Ultimately, I found Licona's case more persuasive than Craig's, although a large part of that simply has to do with the fact that Licona's work has much more room to make a serious case, since it is much longer and devoted entirely to one subject. I simply mention it here as an avenue of further study for people who are interested.

In short, I have a newfound admiration for Craig. His thoughts are clear, logical, and insightful. I currently still disagree with him on some matters (primarily on the issue of biblical inerrancy), but I will engage in further research before coming to any firm conclusions.

Maybe it's just me, but I've found the past few years that anti-theists are getting nastier and more nonsensical. The new atheist's philosophical artlessness (plus its gullibility and imbecility) is more than astonishing; it reflects a deep-seated immorality and irrationality. No one has exposed this little secret more than the outstanding public debater William Lane Craig and in "On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision," he equips the average Christian with potent apologetics. This is a "concise training manual" for the non-scholar because it is written in an easy and accessible style. Craig makes classical and evidential apologetics easy to understand as he offers a winning formula for those rationally pre-committed to evidential procedures in obtaining and defending truth.

Recommended by:
- Ravi Zacharias
- Lee Strobel (additionally he wrote the forward)
- Mark Mittelberg
- Jim Thomas
- J.P. Moreland.

This is a resource that is comprehensive enough that the reader need not purchase another evidential book. Craig covers in depth countless subjects that will help train the believer to confidently defend the faith within the bounds of evidentialism.

Topics included within the pages of "On Guard" include"

- What is Apologetics?
- Why does anything at All Exist?
- Why Did the Universe Begin?
- Fine-tuned universe
- Can One be good without God?
- Suffering
- Who was Jesus?
- The Resurrection of Christ
- The exclusivity of Christ
- And much more.
- Bill Craig's apologetic testimony.
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The author supplies wonderful charts, graphs, illustrations, small biographies of famous scholars, and "talk about it" questions for the apologetic trainee. I particularly liked the chart that outlined the correspondence and parallels of the resurrection accounts contained in 1Corinthians, Acts, and the Gospel of Mark.

Yes, I personally begin my apologetic with "p presupposes q" and I do not affirm that one who starts his argument for theism with the premise "p implies q" offers the proper form inasmuch as all men must begin with some a priori assumptions within sound or unsound argument forms. I know that Craig's Deductive and Inductive arguments are very persuasive whereas most men in the West have rational pre-commitments to evidential means to discern and defend truth.

William Lane Craig is an exceptional and commanding speaker, author, and debater and he delivers a fine volume to assist the reader in these same pursuits.
God Does Exist!: Defending the faith using presuppositional apologetics, evidence, and the impossibility of the contrary
Letter to an Atheist Nation: Presupositional Apologetics Responds To: Letter to a Christian

William Craig gives his answers to the tough questions that all Christians struggle with! I enjoyed the book a great deal, as I have enjoyed all his work that I have read.

I've known Dr. Craig personally for a number of years and cannot say enough about his incredible character as a person and author. I would recommend this book to any and everyone! HOWEVER, a number of my friends and I all bought this book on Amazon and every single copy had a major publishing error. Pages 160-193 are missing, and pages 193-224 were duplicated! That means that over two chapters are completely missing from the book. I'm confident that once we contact the publisher that he will replace the books. Don't let this deter you from buying the book, but please do not hesitate to contact the publisher to get a new book if yours is from the defective batch.

Apologetics is the discipline of defending Christianity as true, rational, and pertinent to life. The apologist may be a philosopher, historian, theologian, or a practitioner of some other intellectual discipline. However, in the broadest sense, all Christians are commanded to have a reason for the hope within them, to offer this with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15), and to love God with all their minds (Matthew 22:37-38; see also Romans 12:1-2). Jesus defended his views through argument (see three examples of this in Matthew 22), as did the Apostle Paul throughout the Book of Acts (see especially his speech to the Athenians in Acts 17). (I defend the claim that Jesus was a philosopher and apologist in On Jesus [Wadsworth, 2002]).

Learning apologetics (first from Francis Schaeffer) transformed me from an intellectually insecure and timid Christian into a thinker who had found confidence and certainty in the challenging world of ideas. All Christians need this kind of confidence and should receive the exhortation that the Apostle Paul gave to his disciple Timothy, "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7). While I have learned much from many apologists, William Lane Craig work's has been formative for me in many respects. As a respected philosopher who often writes at the highest intellectual levels in academic journals and books, Craig has, through his long and fruitful career (which includes debating influential atheists and other non-Christians), also offered apologetics at a more popular (but always intellectually serious) level. With On Guard, Craig distills and simplifies work available in other books (such as Reasonable Faith and God: A Debate Between a Christian an a Atheist) in order to present a thorough defense of Christianity. While taking the reader fairly deep into apologetic arguments, the book does not presume much knowledge of philosophy. To keep the reader's interest, it uses charts and graphics--but not to excess. The book is also punctuated by two "personal interludes" in which Craig presents his own "journey to faith."

In ten chapters, Craig explains the nature and purpose of apologetics, the significance of God's existence for the meaning of life, why the existence of the universe is best explained by God, how the universe reveals God's design, and how the existence of morality is best explained by God as its source. He also takes up the problem of suffering, and the identity of Jesus as God Incarnate and as raised from the dead. The final chapter asks, "Is Jesus the Only Way to God?" and addresses the claim that Christianity is too exclusive and harsh (consigning unbelievers to hell). While presented in a rather popular form, Craig does not cut any corners, and he gives ample documentation where needed.

While I disagree with Craig's strategy at a few points (particularly on religious exclusivism and the problem of evil), the book deserves high praise as a complete, readable, and compelling defense of Christianity. While Craig uses the design inference to defend the fine-tuning of the universe for human life (given its unlikely combination of constants, proportions, and laws), he fails to use this argument to infer design at the biological level, as do the proponents of Intelligent Design such as William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, and Michael Behe. But this is a small complaint given the overall excellence of this work, which I highly recommend to who are all interested in apologetics at the beginning to intermediate level. After reading On Guard, one will want to explore Craig's more advanced works, as well as writings by J.P. Moreland, Paul Copan, Winfried Corduan, Norman Geisler, Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, and other philosophical apologists. Nothing less than the rational defense of eternal truth is at stake.

I just finished On Guard and found it to be an excellent book for tackling the most important issues in defending the Christian faith in a concise, readable format. The book also lends itself well to group study or a Sunday school which I intend to use it for this fall. Craig is a leader in this area but he is able to write at a level that most will be able to comprehend.