A Brief Book Notice from Books At a Glance
Doug Groothuis’s Christian Apologetics has seen wide use for some years, and now it is available in a second edition. In this comprehensive text, Douglas Groothuis makes a clear and rigorous case for Christian theism. The second edition of this landmark work has been updated throughout to address current issues.
Quote & Unquote
Below are some selected quotes from the book.
- Truth is what matters most, particularly truth concerning our human condition in the world—its origin, its nature, its purpose (if any), and its destiny. (2)
- I am a professing Christian who believes the Christian worldview to be true, rationally compelling, existentially engaging, and socially, globally, and perennially pertinent. (5)
- Humility is the cardinal virtue of the apologist (and every Christian). (25)
- I take the best method of apologetic reasoning to be worldview hypothesis evaluation and verification through a cumulative-case method. (41)
- Does the cosmos stand alone and unsupported, or is its existence dependent on something outside of itself? This is the ultimate cosmological question. (201)
- Although relativism hides behind the makeup of commonly accepted social values, its true face is nihilism. (339)
- When combined with a robust natural theology, the anthropological argument further strengthens the Christian apologetic by helping to explain human beings to themselves and others. (432)
- Christ’s atonement was born of divine love fitted with divine justice. (517)
Table of Contents
Introduction: Hope, Despair, and Knowing Reality
Part One: Apologetic Preliminaries
1 The Biblical Basis for Apologetics
2 Apologetic Method: Evaluating Worldviews
3 The Christian Worldview
4 Distortions of the Christian Worldview—or the God I Don’t Believe In
5 Truth Defined and Defended
6 Why Truth Matters Most: Searching for Truth in Postmodern Times
7 Faith, Risk, and Rationality: The Prudential Incentives to Christian Faith
Part Two: The Case for Christian Theism
8 In Defense of Theistic Arguments
9 Original Monotheism
10 The Ontological Argument
11 Cosmological Arguments: A Cause for the Cosmos
12 The Design Argument: Cosmic Fine-Tuning
13 The Argument from Beauty
14 Origins, Design, and Darwinism
15 Evidence for Intelligent Design
16 The Moral Argument for God
17 The Argument from Religious Experience
18 The Uniqueness of Humanity: Consciousness and Cognition
19 Deposed Royalty: Pascal’s Anthropological Argument
20 Doubt, Skepticism, and the Hiddenness of God
21 Jesus of Nazareth: How Historians Can Know Him and Why It Matters—by Craig L. Blomberg
22 The Claims, Credentials, and Achievements of Jesus Christ
23 The Atonement: Stating It Properly
24 The Atonement: Defending It
25 Defending the Incarnation
26 The Resurrection of Jesus: Prolegomena on Miracles
27 The Resurrection of Jesus: The Evidence
28 In Defense of the Church
Part Three: Objections to Christian Theism
29 Religious Pluralism: Many Religions, One Truth
30 Apologetics and the Challenge of Islam
31 The Problem of Evil: Dead Ends and the Christian Answer
32 Lament as Apologetic for Christianity
Conclusion: Take It to the Streets
Appendix 1: Hell on Trial
Appendix 2: Apologetic Issues in the Old Testament—by Richard S. Hess