Last fall I had the privilege of serving on Christianity Today's adjudication panel for the book of the year in the category of Apologetics & Evangelism. All four finalists were excellent (not perfect, but excellent) works, with different strengths. I'd like to take a couple of posts to share some of my thoughts on the four finalists:
Sam Chan, Evangelism in a Skeptical World (Zondervan)
David & Marybeth Baggett, The Morals of the Story (IVP Academic)
Alan Noble, Disruptive Witness (IVP)
Joshua Chartraw & Mark Allen, Apologetics at the Cross (Zondervan)
Chartraw and Allen have
written a highly engaging and comprehensive introductory apologetics textbook,
which would be a boon for college or seminary apologetic courses. Christian book clubs and reading groups could
also benefit from working through Apologetics
at the Cross (AatC).
The orienting motif of AatC is the humility and grace required
for reasonable Christian answers.
Chartraw and Allen spend considerable time establishing the context of
biblical apologetics – including the famous apologetic mandate of 1 Peter
3:15. The three-part structure of the
work is successful, establishing foundations (Chapters 1-4), structures
(Chapters 5-9), and practices (Chapters 10-13) for contemporary apologetics.
Some parts of AatC are stronger than others. The biblical and historical foundations are
quite comprehensive, but the biblical foundations for apologetics seemed a bit
of a mish-mash—an attempt to cover examples of Christian defense in Scripture
by topic. A chronological or canonical
approach may have been easier to follow; alternatively, identifying specific
apologists in Scripture and working out some of their methods and practices
could have been helpful. The history of
apologetics in Chapters 3-4, however, was quite masterful.
One of the most impressive
elements of AatC is the formatting
and style of the book. The text is
replete with helpful illustrations and figures (e.g., p. 24, 34, 35-36, 45, 50,
51, 57, …) and informative sidebars with definitions or quotations (e.g., p.
29, 32, 38, 41, …). Those reader aids
serve to give visual representations of the material Chartraw and Allen are
relating (thereby engaging multiple senses and relating to multiple learning
styles) and enhance the content of
the text.
Chartraw and Allen
provide a positive balance in their work, emphasizing not just reasons and
evidence for faith, but the need for faithful living witness that matches the
message being defended. There has been a
positive movement in academic apologetics toward focusing on the character of
the apologist and his/her speech—Chartraw and Allen are not breaking new ground
here, but they are furthering a very helpful impetus in the contemporary
landscape.
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