Product Description

A multiple-view book on apologetic methods, this material deals with a very relevant topic in the midst of a changing culture. Its primary contributors are: William Lane Craig, Gary R. Habermas, Paul D. Feinberg, John M. Frame, and Kelly James Clark.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #34917 in Books
• Published on: 2000-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

From the Back Cover
The goal of apologetics is to persuasively answer honest objections that keep people from faith in Jesus Christ. But of several apologetic approaches, which is most effective?

Five Views on Apologetics examines the “how-to” of apologetics, putting five prominent views under the microscope: Classical, Evidential, Presuppositional, Reformed Epistemology, and Cumulative Case. Offering a forum for presentation, critique, and defense, this book allows the contributors for the different viewpoints to interact.

Like no other book, Five Views on Apologetics lets you compare and contrast different ways of “doing” apologetics. Your own informed conclusions can then guide you as you meet the questions of a needy world with the claims of the gospel.

The Counterpoints series provides a forum for comparison and critique of different views on issues important to Christians. Counterpoints books address two categories: Church Life and Exploring Theology. Complete your library with other books in the Counterpoints series.

About the Author
Stanley N. Gundry is senior vice president and editor-in-chief of the book group at Zondervan. With more than thirty-five years of teaching, pastoring, and publishing experience, he is the author or coauthor of numerous books and a contributor to numerous periodicals.

Steven B. Cowan (M.Div.; Ph.D.) is associate professor of Philosophy and Apologetics at Southeastern Bible College in Birmingham, AL.

Willaim Lane Craig (PhD, University of Birmingham, England) is research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University and lives in Marietta, GA.

Gary Habermas (PhD, Michigan State University) is distinguished professor and chair of the department of philosophy and director of the MA program in apologetics at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Paul D. Feinberg, (ThD, Dallas Theological Seminary) was professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Dr. John Frame serves as J.D. Trimble Chair of Systematic Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary in Oviedo, Florida.

Kelly James Clark (PhD, Notre Dame) is associate professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Steven B. Cowan
Fairly early in my life as a Christian — somewhere in my late teens, I think — I discovered apologetics. This discovery was very timely because I had also discovered that the faith I had in Christ was not shared by everyone. In fact, I discovered that some people outright rejected, even ridiculed, my faith. What’s more, I found out that skeptics had raised arguments against my faith. And being the inquisitive fellow that I am (I hate unanswered questions!), I wondered myself, quite apart from all of these skeptical challenges, what reason or reasons there might be for believing the religious beliefs that I embraced. Thus, Paul Little’s little book, Know Why You Believe, and Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict came at an appropriate time in my life, introducing me to apologetics. And from Little and McDowell, I jumped right into Sproul, Gerstner, and Lindsley’s Classical Apologetics — the book that sparked an insatiable thirst in me for apologetics, philosophy, and theology.
No sooner had I discovered apologetics, however, than I also uncovered the fact that not every apologist did apologetics the same way. It was Sproul, Gerstner, and Lindsley’s fault, if the truth be known. They distinguished between something they called “classical apologetics” and this bogeyman called “pre-suppositionalism.” And I soon discovered that there were other varieties of apologetic methods as well, and that the disagreements between them could sometimes be sharp. As a young college student, I had a hard time trying to figure out who was right and who was wrong in this debate. I distinctly remember (this was in the early 1980s) wishing that someone would publish one of those “multiple views” books on apologetic methodology so that I could see all the different views side by side and have an easier time making up my own mind. I waited and waited for well over a decade, and no such book appeared. Then I decided to do it myself! And Zondervan has been gracious enough to assist me.
The Nature of Apologetics
This is a book about apologetic methodology, not a book of apologetics per se. That is, it is not a book that seeks to do apologetics as much as a book that discusses how one ought to do apologetics. But for the sake of some of our readers, it may help at this point to spell out what apologetics is. Apologetics is concerned with the defense of the Christian faith against charges of falsehood, inconsistency, or credulity. Indeed, the very word apologetics is derived from the Greek apologia, which means “defense.” It was a term used in the courts of law in the ancient world. Socrates, for example, gave his famous “apology,” or defense, before the court of Athens. And the apostle Paul defended himself (apologeomai) before the Roman officials (Acts 24:10; 25:8). As it concerns the Christian faith, then, apologetics has to do with defending, or making a case for, the truth of the Christian faith. It is an intellectual discipline that is usually said to serve at least two purposes: (1) to bolster the faith of Christian believers, and (2) to aid in the task of evangelism. Apologists seek to accomplish these goals in two distinct ways. One is by refuting objections to the Christian faith, such as the problem of evil or the charge that key Christian doctrines (e.g., the Trinity, incarnation, etc.) are incoherent. This apologetic task can be called negative or defensive apologetics. The second, perhaps complementary, way apologists fulfill their purposes is by offering positive reasons for Christian faith. The latter, called positive or offensive apologetics, often takes the form of arguments for God’s existence or for the resurrection and deity of Christ but are by no means limited to these. Of course, some apologists, as we will see, contend that such arguments are unnecessary or perhaps even detrimental to Christian faith. These apologists focus primarily on the negative task and downplay the role of positive apologetics. Nevertheless, most, if not all, would agree that the apologetic task includes the giving of some positive reasons for faith.
The Question of Taxonomy
Although apologists agree on the basic definition and goals of apologetics, they can differ significantly on the proper methodology of apologetics. That is, they disagree about how the apologist goes about his task — about the kinds of arguments that can and should be employed and about the way the apologist should engage the unbeliever in apologetic discourse. To use a military analogy, differences of opinion exist regarding the best strategy to use in defending the faith. These differences in apologetic strategy usually turn upon more basic disagreements with regard to important philosophical and theological issues. This leads me to the question of taxonomy.
How do we delineate the different approaches to apologetics? Of all the other books on apologetic methodology, no two classify the various methods in exactly the same way. For example, Gordon Lewis classifies apologetic methods according to their respective religious epistemologies. He distinguishes them by what each one takes to be the correct approach to acquiring knowledge of religious truths. On this basis, he differentiates six apologetic methods.
Religious epistemology can be the decisive factor in distinguishing one apologetic method from another. For example, two of the methods Lewis distinguishes are pure empiricism, defended by J. Oliver Buswell Jr., and rationalism, defended by Gordon H. Clark. Buswell’s methodology requires us to make observations of the world and draw causal inferences from those observations, which, he believes, will lead the objective observer to belief in God and in the truth of the Christian faith. He uses the classical theistic arguments and appeals to historical evidences for the resurrection of Jesus. Clark, on the other hand, repudiates the use of such arguments and evidences, largely on epistemological grounds. Instead, he argues that the apologist must begin with Scripture as a first principle. That is, Scripture serves as a rational axiom by which all other truth claims are tested. Clark then argues that Christianity is the only coherent system, all other worldviews being logically inconsistent. Thus, the religious epistemologies of these two apologists lead them to very different apologetic approaches.

Customer Reviews

Useful but dated
This book is useful in that it presents a catalogue of methodologies that have been used in apologetics in the not so distant past. It also indicates (unwittingly) the need for a new style of apologetics for the present day. Evidentialists use a one step approach, Classical Apologists use a two-step method. What is needed for today's culture is a ballet.

Classical Christian Apologists usually employ a two-step approach in their methodology. The first step is to establish the claim that God exists, and then to establish the claim that God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. One strength of this approach is that pedagogically, people usually accept new ideas generally before they do specifically. The Apostle Paul uses this method in every epistle. The approach is also more useful in times like the present when atheism (both explicit and implicit) is more prevalent.

Craig version utilizes the kalam cosmological argument to make his case for a personal God. It is the strongest of the proofs for the existence of God, in that rests on the finite existence of the universe, which can be argued effectively with common sense and mathematics. Craig, in fact, claims that the finiteness of the universe is proven philosophical in two ways. Actually there are three ways and they are more mathematical than philosophical. The "proof" still suffers the question-begging problem, however, in that it is not clear that existence must always entail cause, and even if a cause is accepted, why must the cause be God, especially a personal one? On the other hand, his defense of the claims of Jesus based on the historicity of the resurrection seems as ironclad as these sorts of claims can be.

Craig also makes much of the distinction between knowing and showing and the important role of the witness of the Holy Spirit. That is all well and good, but isn't apologetics more about showing? So why so much discussion on how Christians know?

Evidential Apologetics claims as its distinctive, that it is a one-step approach to establishing the truth of Christianity by historical evidences. If Christianity can be so established, then there is no need for the preliminary step of establishing theism. Habermas is aware of the difficulty, nay, the impossibility of unbiased historiography. Consequently, he limits admissible evidence to "minimal facts", i.e. data that is 1) well-evidenced and 2) general admitted by critical scholars. He also admits to the epistemic differences between believers and unbelievers, but does rely on certain shared commonalities between believers and unbelievers such sense perception, scientific theories, and the rules of logic.

He begins on a weak note by laying the foundation for his case with the testimony of Jesus regarding himself - this as recorded in the New Testament. Unfortunately this is a testimonial account of a testimony, which for anyone who does not accept Biblical inspiration, approaches the status of gossip. He does access pre-New Testament and extra-biblical sources to support some of his data, but they are admittedly few. Habermas' biggest problem is his overlooking the fact that all the evidence in the world will not affect most people. How people view evidences will be dependent on their respective presuppositions. Two people may draw opposite conclusions from the same body of evidence. In addition, there are some people whose minds are already completely made up, and they don't want to be confused with the "facts". The best that evidential apologetics can do is, to paraphrase Clark, defeat the defeaters.

Much like a legal case, Cumulative Case Apologetics relies on the collaboration of a number of aspects, which, while not complete as individual arguments, are convincing when taken together. The most important strength of the cumulative case approach is that it establishes a Christian worldview and not just a logical argument for theism and/or Christianity. Ultimately, people live their lives according to their worldview, not according to some logical argument. Few individuals qualify for this category of apologists, because it is global, not narrow, and defies academic or theological categorization.

Feinberg does an adequate job of defining the apologetic style, but a poor job of fleshing it out. Where's the "law, history, and literature"? He only presents a toolbox of truth tests and an org chart of the witness of the Holy Spirit. To his defense, the category is enigmatic due to its comprehensibility and organic non-formal nature. Nevertheless, what he tries to do in description is somewhat akin to killing the frog by dissecting it.

In spite of Craig's inappropriate and paranoiac response to Feinberg's treatment of postmodernism, Feinberg does a fair job of recognizing the postmodern culture. What he ultimately misses, however, is that he thinks that certain states of affair "require some explanation". That's the real problem. Many postmodernists don't "require" explanation; they don't even want them. They will, in fact, resist them if you try to explain. They can only respond to a life lived, against which there is no argument.

Presuppositional Apologetics by definition presupposes something. What it presupposes is what (who) classical apologetics seeks first to prove - the God of Scripture. It is economical in that sense. The claim is that a basic belief in God is not irrational, but is, in fact, essential to any attempt to think clearly at all. The question is not "Your place or mine?", but the statement, "My place or no place at all", commonly stated as "My way or the highway." While the claims of Presuppositional Apologetics may be true, they present an attitude that doesn't serve well as an entrée to dialog, especially in this day and age of pluralism and "tolerance."

Having said that, Frame lists an admirable array of methodological items, especially "2. Apologists, therefore, must resist temptations to contentiousness or arrogance" and 7. The actual arguments we use in apologetic witness will vary considerably depending on who [sic] we are talking to. Apologetics is `person variable.'"

As for the postmodern phenomenon, Frame applauds it for its rebellion against Modernism, but rails against its immature claims against absolute and objective truth. He shows that the claim against objective truth is self-refuting, a philosophical card trick that has become old hat, and despite being true remains oddly ineffective. Frame concludes his chapter with an altar call worthy of any revivalist meeting.

Reformed Epistemology Apologetics resists the requirement of evidence and argument as a starting place for apologetics and claims that it is proper and rational to accept belief in God for three reasons: 1) few people have the ability to access theistic arguments, 2) God has given people an innate sense of Himself (sensus divinitatus), and 3) belief in God is more like a belief in a person than in a scientific theory. Claims 1) and 3) are non-controversial. 2), however, is open to debate. The debate is internal to Biblical studies, which makes the claim doubly vulnerable. There is disagreement even amongst those who hold the Bible to be authoritative. To those who do not hold the Bible to be authoritative, the premise never gets off the ground.

It is common sense to admit that most of what people believe is not based on comprehensive investigation of evidence. Indeed, most of what we all believe is based on no investigation at all, just the testimony of someone else. Why would belief in God differ? Reformed epistemology also maintains that the innate awareness of God has been impaired by sin so that the real project for apologetics is a moral one, not an intellectual one. This seems right and Biblical and corrective to the direction of those who attempt to win by rational argument alone. In fact, those who rest their case on argument, even with their perfunctory appeals to the work of the Holy Spirit, are themselves remnants of the Enlightenment era that they claim to eschew.

We're To Contend For The Faith (Jude 3) -- Here Are 5 Ways How
Apologetics is an extremely important and yet overlooked aspect of Christianity. We are ready to give an answer to every man for the hope that is in us (1 Pet. 3:15), and to contend earnestly for the faith (Jude 3). But how do we do this? Leave it to human beings to come up with organized systems to approach this, and this book introduces us to five different styles to accomplish this.

Let me explain the five views as I would define them:

1. Classical, represented by William Lane Craig: One should start off proving the existence of God before moving to miracles, the resurrection of Christ, etc.

2. Evidential, represented by Gary Habernas: One does not need to prove God's existence before addressing miracle/the resurrection of Christ.

3. Cumulative Case, represented by Paul Feinberg: One cannot prove God's existence or other things by formal argument, but one can informally show Christian theism to be the best alternative.

4. Presuppositional, represented by John Frame: One needs to address people's presuppositions as they are making the case for Christianity.

5. Reformed Epistomology, represented by Kelly James Clark: One cannot prove any argument rational, but one can believe without any evidence.

There can be some variation between the approaches. Most of these authors have been accused of others at not really representing their views. Steven Cowan, the book's editor, pointed out that in the past some of these methodologies acted like you could do it their way or you can do it wrong, particularly Classical, Evidential, and Presuppositional.

This actually is a strength for the book. One reason people avoid apologetics is because it is divisive. These authors come across as if they're aware they're co-soldiers, on the same side. I believe this is the way it should be in the Body of Christ.

To be honest, like evangelism methodologies, I would say the answer to the question "Which is the correct methodology?" is "Yes." God designed each person differently. Some people work better with a certain methodology. And different people would respond to different methodologies.

Let me conclude by stating that I'm in the process of starting a novel, involving a murder mystery during an apologetics conference. This book actually will come in handy for this project. My Dad gave this as a gift, and I am very appreciative of it.

A good taste, but not a comprehensive introduction to RE
The text gives a good taste of the differences between these schools of apologetics. Some reviewers have shortchanged Clark's Reformed epistemology position, referring to it as "weak" and "timid." For those who really want to understand RE and have no prior exposure to analytic philosophy (e.g., Wittgenstein, Thomas Reid, etc.), I'd advise supplementing Clark's essay with something written by Alvin Plantinga or Nicholas Wolterstorff. RE operates with an entirely different epistemology from that relied upon by evidentialists and classical apologists. I don't see this as a weakness of Clark's essay. The fact is that most evangelicals have had little exposure to analytic philosophy (except for covenental Calvinists, of course).