Archive for the ‘Apologetics’ Category

The main task of an apologist, which on some level is every Christian, has been to defend the core doctrines of the faith both within and outside of the church. The key doctrines that are most often under attack are:

• The Incarnation: Jesus was not just a good man or a prophet, but the Son of God, fully human and fully divine.
• The Trinity: God, though One, exists eternally as three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• Original Sin: We are all born with a sinful nature and exist in a state of rebellion against God and his law.
• The Atonement: Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross brought us back into a right relationship with God the Father.
• God as the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
• The Bible as the authoritative Word of God.

From the beginning of Christianity, believers have had to field questions similar to these:

• If God is all-loving and all-powerful, why are pain, suffering, and injustice in the world?
• How can Christians believe in miracles when events like the parting of the Red Sea, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the virgin birth, and Jesus’ walking on water clearly violate the laws of nature?
• How can a God of mercy condemn people to hell?
• How do we know we can trust the accounts of Jesus’ life that are recorded in the Gospels?
• Isn’t the story of a dying and rising God just a myth for ignorant pagans and modern children?
• Isn’t religion just a crutch and wish fulfillment for people too weak to deal with reality?
• Hasn’t science disproved Christianity and shown it to be false?
• Hasn’t the church done more evil than good and inspired more hypocrisy than any other institution in history?

In the new book Apologetics for the Twenty-First Century, Louis Markos equips readers to address these questions and more, while giving readers a crash course in the apologetics of C.S. Lewis, GK Chesterton, Josh McDowell, Dorothy Sayers, and Francis Schaeffer.

Two More Tips for Apologists:

• A good apologist not only answers questions, but addresses the anger, guilt, despair, and confusion that often lies behind the questions.
• A good apologist does not treat belief systems as inherently false, but begins by establishing common ground (whether it’s monotheism or the nature of a problem that an ideology addresses).

Learn more about Apologetics for the Twenty-First Century or pick up your copy!

From R.C. Sproul’s Defending Your Faith

The defense of the faith is not a luxury or an intellectual vanity. It is a task appointed by God that you should be able to give a reason for the hope that is in you as you bear witness before the world.

In Defending Your Faith, Dr. R. C. Sproul argues that at its core Christianity is rational. He focuses on the basic truth claims for two of the most crucial issues of apologetics: God’s existence and the Bible’s authority.

Why a book on apologetics is a worthwhile read:
Before I can call upon Christ as my Savior, I have to understand that I need a savior. I have to understand that I am a sinner. I have to have some understanding of what sin is. I have to understand that God exists. I have to understand that I am estranged from that God, and that I am exposed to that God’s judgment. I don’t reach out for a savior unless I am first convinced that I need a savior. All of that is pre-evangelism. It is involved in the data or the information that a person has to process with his mind before he can either respond to it in faith or reject it in unbelief (pp.23).

The task of apologetics is to show that the evidence that the New Testament calls people to commit their lives to is compelling evidence and worthy of our full commitment. That often involves a lot of work for the apologist. Sometimes we would rather duck the responsibility of doing our homework, of wrestling with the problems and answering the objections, and simply say to people, “Oh, you just have to take it all in faith.” That’s the ultimate cop-out. That doesn’t honor Christ. We honor Christ by setting forth for people the cogency of the truth claims of Scripture, even as God himself does. We must take the trouble to do our work before the Spirit does his work, because the Spirit does not ask people to put their trust and faith and affection in nonsense or absurdity (pp.25).

Defending Your Faith is now available in trade paperback.