Customer Reviews

Unapologetic Apologetics: Meeting the Challenges of Theological Studies

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have not read every essay in this book (yet:) but so far I've been more than impressed and highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a refreshing and thought-provoking look at apologetic issues that face the Christian church. This isn't a Josh McDowell "an ancient scroll has been found in a cave proving that Christ is real" text book. The essays in this book, however, cover a broad range of topics and will help clear up confusion surronding so many troublesome issues. From Cannata's excellent essay on "The History of Apologetics at Princeton Seminary" to Dembski's "The Problem of Error In Scripture," you simply can not afford to wait any longer to purchase this must-read book.

As a graduate of Yale Divinity School, I relished most of what I read in this book. There are real limits to what only one volume can accomplish. Yet this book will be for many seminarians the beginning of a discussion that will free them from the staid "orthodoxy" that is straitjacketing most mainline Protestant seminaries and strangling the life out of the mainline Protestant denominations.

This "orthodoxy"--that spurns and subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) chastises conservative evangelicals, as well as traditional Anglicans, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox--often surpasses the uniformity and conformity found in fundamentalist institutions.

Dembski and Richards's plan of how traditional Christian students can be anti-establishment and counter the reigning orthodoxies of contemporary theology, without being triumphalistic or imperialistic, is exciting and will go far in renewing vibrant theological discourse on the campuses of mainline divinity schools, much of which is already going on at places like Yale, which for more than a decade has been actively recruiting evangelical students and faculty members. I hope that this book gains wide currency among young men and women in seminary.

While the discipline of apologetics has fallen into disuse and disfavor among mainline scholars who have subscribed to a more pluralistic philosophy, this intrepid group of Princeton alumni battle to keep that old apologetic spirit, so integral to "Old Princeton", alive and well. They succeed admirably. Many issues are tackled in this book, especially naturalism and the effect it has had on biblical and theological studies. The book reads like a conservative theological journal, and, believe me, I would be thrilled to see more books from this group on the market. Every person preparing to enter seminary or study religion in a college setting should read this book and keep it handy for research purposes. Although some subjects could have been developed further (the chapter on universalism ended much too soon), all in all it is an outstanding resource.

As a former student at a mainline theological seminary, I can attest to the fact that Dembski and Richards have described the atmosphere of such institutions with depressing accuracy. But this is not a book that complains about the sad state of theological education. Dembski and Richards provide a plan for what students can do to stem the tide of secularism and heterodoxy in religious schools. They and the other contributors offer a number of essays on timely themes, which carefully dissect unjustifiable assumptions in a variety of areas. Their approach exemplifies their conviction that the best solution to bad ideas isn't quarantine or overexposure, but inoculation. If you know Christian students who are struggling with intellectual assaults on their faith, even if they attend a "conservative" school, you should buy them this book.

By it's own account, Unapologetic Apologetics (UA) is a series of essays offering innoculation to contextualism, universalism, naturalism, and other challenges to Christian belief for those about to enter mainline seminaries. Noting that Christian apologetics have long since been cast aside, the contributors to this volume seek to gird the faith of those who, paradoxically, stand to have it shaken by the very theological institutions they plan to attend.

Accordingly, a fair portion of UA's apologetics are more complex than what the layman might expect. Laymen need only calibrate personal responses to our immediate cultural surroundings as we are largely free of pastoral leadership roles. We can be forgiven the occasional Pascal's wager. Not so the seminarian, who, while preparing for leadership, must confront the theological capitulations of today's mainline seminaries to a cynical, if not openly hostile, secular elite.

UA is a difficult book to grade, for a layman cannot measure it's effectiveness. We do not face the type of challenge seminarians face and require, perhaps, a different vaccine altogether. Nevertheless, UA is cogent, concise, and well worth the investment of the amateur theologian. 4 stars.

Contending for the faith "handed down" to us from the prophets, The Prophet, and the apostles to us, is the theme of this book, but without being contentious.

This flowed out of Seminary experience of editors to refute scholarly attempts to undo the handed down truth of Scriptures.

My ambivalence with this well written work is that it tends to fluctuate with on one hand suggest that the church must take the world of thought back through apologetics, and on the other hand, refute through apologetics attempts within the "visible" church the faith of our fathers.

I'm all in support of the latter, given the analogy in St. Paul of likening false teaching to yeast and its quick spread and dough dominance if left undealt with. To this I concur and endorse these enthusiastic apologists of the first class.

However, to suggest that the culture dominated by secular, deceived thinking can be countered with apologetics is naive and unbiblical to this reviewers way of confession. However, to be sure we cannot nor must be be discouraged to continue apologetics to the unbelieving world, but our sites must only be as "a minfield" clearing exercise that the Gospel might be heard in its purity. Prophecy predicts what we are seeing, both in and outside the visible church, e.g. 2 Tim. 4 and those who refuse to follow true doctrine and find and establish false teachers who tickle their ears. This has always been in the church of Christ and world, but we who are of the body of Christ are to be aware of this, test the spirits and develop discernment through constant time in God's Word (Heb. 5). When all the dust settles on theological debate within the visible church, true confession of the faith handed down can be the only practice that counts!

Thus, I commend this excellent collection of concise, precise apologetics with this mild comment. There is much here to chew on, pass on, e.g. "Christian apologetics that's worthy of the name is a call to martyrdom--perhaps not a martyrdom where we spill our blood (although this too may be required) but a martyrdom where we witness to the truth without being concerned about our careers, political correctness, the current fashion or toeing the party line." "Indeed, we have permitted the collective thought of the world to be controlled by ideas that prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything but a harmless delusion. It needs to be emphasized that we, the Christians, the church of Jesus Christ, have done this." "One we thoroughly understand a false idea, we need no longer be intimidated by it." "The Christian apologist is a contender for the faith, not merely a seeker after truth."

I have only read sections of this book, which is not in my major area of interest, but found the following of much interest. When William Dembski attempted to reactivate interest in the field of apologetics at Princeton Theological Seminary, including support for Intelligent Design and a critique of Darwinism, he faced two lawsuits, and was "threatened with physical violence, accused of racism and sexism, denied funding that other campus groups readily received, had posted signs destroyed and removed, and were explicitly informed by faculty that membership in the Charles Hodge Society [set up to study apologetics] jeopardized their academic advancement" (p. 26). Princeton dropped their apologetics requirement in 1943 and in 1944 it was no longer offered even as an elective. One wonders if this is one reason for the decline of liberal Protestantism and the growth of the so-called conservative churches.

Great Author writting a great book. As a Theologian myself, I found this book very usefull and briliant. One of the 'Must read' book for the "Apostolic" Church Seminarians and religious, including the Theologians and the Philosophers. One of the kind. 5 Stars. ....

William Dembski and Jay Richards launch a scathing attack on naturalistic philosophy in this anthology aimed at a Christian audience, with various chapters explaining why naturalism is failing as a philosophical paradigm.

Richards notes that naturalism as a philosophy is impossible to establish, for it relies upon proof of the negative claim that there is no supernatural. Richards further argues that naturalism bows too strongly before Occam's razor, in that it is not appropriate to rule out the supernatural as an explanation if the supernatural may indeed exist. Finally, Richards recognizes that scholars sometimes make a distinction between methodological naturalism and naturalism. But he also explains that Christians have no business adopting the methodological "assumption" of naturalism when they believe that God sometimes directly intervenes in the world. God does not need to be invoked to explain everything, but the pendulum has swung too far to the extreme if we assume that God never acts.

William Dembski also provides a few chapters on intelligent design. He explains that at the heart of the creation/evolution controversy is the big question "Is there evidence of God interacting with the world?" Many theologians have thought that science cannot address this question. But Dembski protests otherwise, by laying out a detailed statistical method by which we can detect design. Dembski, who holds a Ph.D. in mathematics, a Ph.D. in philosophy, and a master of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, seems a good candidate to explain whether God's purposeful action really might be detectable in the natural world. Dembski explains that "intelligent design resists speculating about the nature, moral character or purposes of this intelligence" (pg. 225) and leaves it as a task for theology to answer religious questions about the identity or purposes of the designer. But the rigorous methods of science now permit us to empirically detect when an object was designed.

(...) What about this book? I read it and enjoyed its several essays. Although I am in no position to review its conclusions on the several domains (critique of naturalism, authority of scripture, virgin birth, the incarnation, design in science, etc), I tend to agree with the main conclusions. I also favour the return of apologetics to theology courses, as long as it is done with intellectual rigour. The entire point of the book seems to be that the premisse you start with really makes a difference on the way you deal with the main tenets of the christian faith. The main alternatives are:

1. Nobody created Nature. Nature developed intelligent beeings by pure chance (random mutation and natural selection). Our lives have no meaning. Some may try to find meaning for life, some may not. Some my even try to destroy life. Why not? Since there is no meaning, there is also no absolute moral and ethical norms. Madre Teresa and Osama Bin Laden are just a bunch of selfish genes trying to survive. Genocide may be considered a normal and legitimate strategy of gene survival, as Charles Darwin and many evolutionists acknowleged. Who can blame them for that? Even if it is the result of pure chance, our intelligence is suficiently powerful and reliable to be the measure of all knowledge. You can trust your selfish genes for that. You can also enjoy a free lunch and relax while you listen to a just-so story.

2. God may have created Nature, and let it develop into intelligent beeings by pure chance. God did not create Man in his image. He simply may have accepted the results of the evolutionary process with fair play. In fact we don't know that. There is no evidence of God whatsoever. If he exists, that's the philosophers and theologians problem. Let them speculate. In the real world (if there is one), objective science sees no place for God and no fingerprints of its presence. Faith is purely subjective and precarious. Knowledge is totally objective and reliable. They never meet in the real world. Here again you can trust your selfish genes for that. Here too, you can enjoy a free lunch while you listen to a just-so story.

3. God created man in his image. Subjective reason and objective matter have their own foundation in the Absolute Logos. Both are the product of intelligent design. Probabilities theory, design theory, complexity theory and information theory allow us to make a design inference scientifically beyond reasonable doubt. There is no free lunch here. There are no just-so stories. The complex specified information that structures matter also makes it intelligible and renders both possible and meaningful objective knowledge by our subjective reasons. You can trust the Word that became flesh and lived among us, for that. He is the source of all intelligence, all information, all matter, all life, all love, all freedom. He became flesh so that flesh can know the Word. He did it in a way that respects our freedom to accept or reject. If we accept him and his revelation as the foundation of all truth, instead of trusting our own "naturalistic-bunch-of-particles-reason", things start making sense. It even promotes the progress of mankind. Remember that all data shows that those countries mostly influenced by the genuinely christian revelation (the Inquisition, or the Index Librorum Prohibitorum have no place in that), tend enjoy stable democracies, economic progress, human rights protection and the rule of law.

This approach helped the authors of the essays that make this book make sense of problems that are complicated only for naturalism. I advise its reading.