Christian Apologetics

Rating:
Summary: Lacking
Review: All that you need to know about this book is from what's missing in the index. You won't see the words "Satan" or "hell". What distuburbs many secular thinkers like myself about Christianity above all else is that God created man and he would eventually burn, torture and poke the majority of mankind for all eternity. How can you defend Christianity and not address this point? Even for the worst among us, does the punishment fit the crime? Most Christian apologists don't like to talk about hell (I don't blame them), but for any chance at credibility it must be adressed.

Not only that, but the author doesn't try to defend any of the more disturbing passages in the bible. On the second to last page the author claims that the thirty nine written books of the old testament are the "authorative, written word of God". If he truly believes that then the author must stone his children to death when they misbehave. Otherwise, he's a hypocrite.

Like avoiding the question of hell, this entire book is a classic example of Christian selective observation.

Rating:
Summary: Comprehending The Argument
Review: Christian Apologetics written by Norman L. Geisler is not an easy read. Twenty years ago I had taken an introductory class in philosophy. My readings included Berkley, Kant, Hume , and Decartes. Depending heavily on lecture notes, I received B's in my reports. I have also listened to R.C. Sproul's series on Philosophy titled the Consequences of Ideas and his serious on Apologetics titled The Consequences of Ideas. I did not read R.C. Sproul's book on apologetics also titled Defending Your Faith. Geisler's book demands a more thorough understanding of critical thought than I have. The book is a text book and may be easier to understand if one has a professor guide a student through Geisler's thoughts, the other theologians thought, and philosophers cited in this book.

This book covers thoughts and philosophies in a couple of pages that the original author of these ideas took hundreds of pages to articulate and defend. Geisler also limits himself to a page or two debunking each theory. Understanding each theory was easier then comprehending the argument against. This despite my own disagreement with the original theory. Geisler's argument I usually read a second time and on occasion a third time before getting some sort of a comprehension and moving on. In the preface, the purpose of this work is to prove Jesus is the Christ and the Bible is the word of God.

The first part of the book deals with methodology; The process in determining the truth through a prior knowledge or lack of knowledge before moving forward. One must know God's attributes before one can make arguments about His existence. The discussion starts with agnosticism: The ability to know God and some of His attributes. The discusion continues in six different sections about Rationalism, Flideism, Experientialism, Evidentialism, Pragmatism and Combinationalism. These are six different arguments in how to determine truth.

The second part deals with six theories on who God is: Deism, Pantheism, Panentheism, Atheism, and Theism. Geisler calls these World views. Each has its defenders and Geisler discusses philosophers thoughts on each and makes an argument against those accept Theism. Which he defends. Which leads to the third part where he attempts to prove Christianity. By arguing for the existence for the Supernatural, the ability to know history, and the reliability of the Bible.

Rating:
Summary: Popular Intro to the Field of Christian Apologetics
Review: Geisler is a philosopher by education and has been a author of many apologetic works. This text serves many as an intro into the field.

Geisler is a Thomist in his approach as an Evangelical Protestant. He first builds a test for truth claims, then applies each worldview (philosophy) to this criteria. Then, having shown theism to be true, he presents evidence for its claims.

Primarily does Geisler rely upon the tests of unaffirmability for a false worldview, and undeniability for a true worldview.

When moving on from theism to its competing worldviews (Judaism, Islam, etc.) Geisler abandons the previous tests and uses rather "systematic consistency."

For this reviewer's apologetics, Geisler cides too much on the reason side. I prefer more of a classical approach, particularly William Lane Criag.

Rating:
Summary: Systematic, stimulating and substantial
Review: Have you been frustrated by the basic apologetics taught in your Sunday school class? Do many of the popular texts sold in Christian bookstores seem intellectually sparse? If so, this book is probably for you.

The thing that I liked most about this book was that it didn't start from a Christian point of view. It didn't even start from a Theistic point of view. It started more or less from scratch and examined a spectrum of philosophical belief systems. The text then progressed very methodically to Theism and finally, Christianity.

Another great feature was the precision and rigor with which Mr. Giesler approaches each topic. Like exercise for the body, his way of thinking reinvigorated my own critical thinking. While I have always approached Christianity with skepticism, this text made me realize that I was insufficiently skeptical of almost everything else.

Plan to take your time reading and making notes as Mr. Giesler takes a "no stone unturned" approach to each topic. However, if you have been starving for substance, this will seem like a fine meal. Mr. Giesler provides very helpful summaries at the end of each chapter. In addition to reinforcing what you've just read, these summaries are an easy-to-use reference for later use.

This book was originally recommended to me by a friend who loaned me his copy. Since reading it, I have drawn upon it repeatedly while witnessing to educated, non-Christian friends. I am not a compulsive book buyer. However, it has proven so useful and enjoyable that I bought a copy of my own, even though I had already read the borrowed copy.

Rating:
Summary: A very informative book
Review: I am an avid reader of philosophy and apologetics and I have read a quite a bit of books concerned with the defense of the Christian faith. But, I must say that this one (along with Moreland's Scaling the Secular City) takes the cake. Geisler's presentation of the evidentialist's objections to Christian theism are by far the most fair minded representations of these arguments. Seldom do I find a Christian apologist who argues nearly as well for the opposing view as for his own and Geisler does just that in his CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS. He summarizes the objections to reality and theism with the force one would expect only of the proponents of these views, and he then procedes to refute these objections (or at least to point out the fallacious logic that is employed in delivering the argument) with rigor and tough-minded intellectualism. Geisler is not only capable of presenting the objections with force but he is equally capable of rebutting these objections with equal or even greater force. I give this book four stars primarily because I find his defense of the cosmological argument a little bit shaky. Personally, I am an advocate of the kalam argument that is advanced by Moreland and Bill Craig. Overall though, if you are seeking a cogent defense of Christianity I highly recommend that you purchase this book and spend some serious study time in it. Don't learn the answers to the objections but become well versed in the objections themselves for this book presents both equally well. Furthermore, if you have George Smith's ATHEISM: THE CASE AGAINST GOD you will find that most of his petty objections are answered and refuted quite thoroughly in Geisler's CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS.

Rating:
Summary: Tunnel Vision
Review: Norman Geisler --- a crusty old metaphysician whose rigorous (if needling, ultrapedantic, and neo-Hegelian) polemic is embalmed in a reeking formaldehyde of nomological conceits --- assumes that if science and philosophy cannot provide a total, architectonic world-view that completes every equation and solves every metaphysical problem, then it is a self-defeating Catch-22, a cipher in torment, another Promethean misfire that only distracts us from the one true godhead. He automatically assumes that epistemological limitations on human sense-experience (and he is correct in identifying these deadly strictures) "prove" that secular, naturalistic explanations are circular and self-defeating. Tantalized by this, Geisler (and we can admire his evangelical bravado) refuses to settle for anything less than a TOTAL world-view. But not surprisingly, his "faith" in metaphysics and obsolete forms of modal logic make *C.A.* unreadable to any but the antiquarian, who realizes that *no* amount of semantic distortion can ever put Hegel back to-gether again, and that no amount of saboteur misrepresentation of the oppositional viewpoints will make anyone a better Christian (or critic of Christianity).

Geisler spends so much time "grounding" his metaphysical theism that he spends literally *no* time defending the Bible itself, one of the most recalcitrant and schizophrenic texts mankind has ever inflicted upon itself. If God truly conforms to Geisler's architectonic theism, why wouldn't He justify himself as such in His autobiography, the holy scriptures (which Geisler concludes are true and unassailable, the product of a perfect mind), rather than as the shaggy, gruesome, anthropomorphic, arbitrarily indecisive, blustery, jealous, woman-hating, perpetually ticked-off, genocidal maniac of the Old Testament (and Jesus, for all his Buddhist civility, has plenty of his dad's hellfire-rhetoric burning in his veins), one of the most mentally unstable characters in ancient world literature? (Those who've read Geisler's exasperating *When Critics Ask* know his virtuoso knack of METICULOUSLY AVOIDING the most difficult criticisms of the holy book). When Geisler tries to shoot the gulf between his Infinite All-Powerful All-Knowing Perfect Deity and the chapter-and-verse reality of scripture and revelation, his position becomes feckless and desperate. Comparing his rigorously foreordained Theism with the Bible itself is like comparing a Crystal Palace to some demon-haunted village of mud-huts seething with locusts and hellfire. More importantly, if God can be described as an infinite, necessary, "uncaused cause" (a nifty little semantic distortion), then why can't the cosmos? Geisler's disappointing answer is that this Infinity must also be *intelligent* (he is presumably unimpressed by astrophysicists like Einstein, Feynman, Hawking, Atkins, and others who've argued vigorously for a non-theistic cosmology).

So-called "liberal" Christians (whether Darwinist or not) will have little trouble accommodating Geisler's views, since they too have done everything they can to distance themselves from a literalized, inerrant Scripture, blowing open the semantic floodgates to any and all sorts of "personal" God-relationship and/or Christological solipsism, destroying any ground for dialogue and communicative analysis. Once the Bible is de-literalized and de-divinized, everybody is free to believe whatever they'd like! And with Faith as your watchword and all-purpose panacea, *everybody* is right. *Everybody* is in a position to castigate the Other, the thinker, "the damned."

Why does theism (whether you accept it or not) automatically lead to the Judaeo-Christian deity in particular? Geisler's solution is a brief chapter where he "proves" that history is as objectively knowable as chemistry or geology(!), and another brief chapter that tabulates the "inescapable" and "overwhelming evidence" that the Christian scriptures are, without a doubt, historically reliable. He points to the massive quantity of Christian documents that have survived in comparison to the insignificant trickle of classical, secular manuscripts, not seeming to realize that Church libraries and monastic scriptoria of the Middle Ages had a virtual monopoly on literacy and the copying/preservation of manuscripts (i.e. why would medieval Christendom go out of its way to preserve and copy classical "pagan" texts, especially if they contravened the dominant belief-system in barbarian Europe?). He also fails to mention that all historical reference to Jesus come from texts originating long after the hypothetical death of Christ, and that nothing substantial survives from 4 B.C. to 30 A.D. or shortly thereafter, when Jesus was apparently making such a ruckus in and around Palestine.

Geisler suggests that atheism is self-defeating because it fails to provide a "total world view". My dear professor, atheism *has* no world-view! Atheism is merely the absence of theistic belief (e.g. faith), but is more closely linked in our Heideggerized era with the absence of metaphysical assumptions (e.g. reality is not *linguistic*, our conceptual vocabulary cannot be strictly reified into cosmic correspondence with some nomological Cathedral of Truth -- even if one believes in a divine Logos, we morlocks in our "fallen" state could hardly generate a working-replica of this deistic Word). Like all wish-fulfilling metaphysicians, Geisler constructs his theistic language-game according to a predisposed conclusion he has decided upon before the game even started (Geisler was a conservative evangelical long before he was a philosopher). His judgement seems, to an extent, foreordained. To ensure that the Universe turns out the way he wants it to, Geisler COMPARTMENTALIZES the oppositional arguments into eunuch-ized crash-test dummies that any precocious seminary-student could knock down. For in *Christian Apologetics*, Geisler is himself the Gnostic Demiurge, trying to imitate the true God, while being careful not to introduce the Holy Scripture itself, which has a tendency to deconstruct itself in the brittle arms of biblical inerrancy and theistic perfectionism.

What Geisler has ultimately "proven" is that Metaphysics and Christianity deserve each other, a tomb within a tomb. His gimcrack City of God is a necropolis for slavering Hegelian morlocks. If one accepts Geisler's epistemology, then one must also accept that this sort of metaphysical gobbledygook can be used to justify ANY belief --- just rub the genie's lamp and set up a semantic house-of-cards that conforms to the ur-Language of whatever system you want to retroactively "prove."

Rating:
Summary: stong start but falters at the finish
Review: The book is composed of three parts, methodology, theistic apologetics and finally Christian apologetics. In the first section one Mr. Geisler presents and tests different apologetic methodologies, here he works very hard to demonstrate that skepticism and agnosticism are self-refuting and having `proven' that turns his attention to testing various worldviews (rationalism, fideism, experientialism, evidentialism, pragmatism and combinationalism), not surprisingly he finds them all wanting. He settles on the fact that theism is the only worldview that is logical.

In the second part of the book, Geisler exposes specific worldviews (Deism, Pantheism, Panentheism, Atheism and Theism). Geisler presents short synopsis of the tenants of each worldview and presents their positives points as well as their negative ones. Ultimately however he finds that all of those listed above are inferior to the Christian worldview. Often his conclusions are based on the fact that the worldview is inferior BECASUSE it is not a Christian worldview, according to the framework of truth testing he set up in the first section of the book this is not an appropriate argument yet he quietly goes about using it.

While Mr. Geisler attempts to present both sides of an argument about world view. The positive traits of non-Christian worldviews are listed along with the negatives. One is left with the feeling that he wasn't trying all that hard to present any other worldview in with the vigor that its adherents would. Importatn parts of opposing worldview have gone missing. Of particular note was the second section involving worldviews was his critique of Panentheism. Mr. Geisler declares, without actually showing, that the Panentheistic God is a finite one. Issues addressing these arguments have been fully addressed and addressed quite well in the works of Shepard.

Geisler finds the only rational choice of thinking and of worldview is that of theism, again no surprise. However being a Christian he must go one step further and show that all forms of theism is not equal, that it is only Christianity that is true and rejecting the Judaism and Islam. This is the third section of the book.

The first and the second parts of this book are rather abstract and philosophical, and somewhat dry. They are obviously prepared for individuals who have some grounding in philosophy and/or apologetics.

Third portion of the book is by far the part with the least foundation. Geisler takes more than a few liberties with history and draws conclusions that left me scratching my head. One of the stranger notions he presents is that history is objective. He verifies this claim by informing us that historians make accurate value judgments when deciding what happened and where and why it happened. In the first section Mr. Geisler spent a great deal of time and energy laying the groundwork for describing adequate tests of truth yet he virtually ignores what he has written in the third section.

The book is recommended for its first section, the vigorous outlining of objective thinking. However as the book progresses it becomes less effective in its arguing and more suspect in its logic.

Rating:
Summary: stong start but falters at the finish
Review: The book is composed of three parts, methodology, theistic apologetics and finally Christian apologetics. In the first section one Mr. Geisler presents and tests different apologetic methodologies, here he works very hard to demonstrate that skepticism and agnosticism are self-refuting and having 'proven' that turns his attention to testing various worldviews (rationalism, fideism, experientialism, evidentialism, pragmatism and combinationalism), not surprisingly he finds them all wanting. He settles on the fact that theism is the only worldview that is logical.

In the second part of the book, Geisler exposes specific worldviews (Deism, Pantheism, Panentheism, Atheism and Theism). Geisler presents short synopsis of the tenants of each worldview and presents their positives points as well as their negative ones. Ultimately however he finds that all of those listed above are inferior to the Christian worldview. Often his conclusions are based on the fact that the worldview is inferior BECASUSE it is not a Christian worldview, according to the framework of truth testing he set up in the first section of the book this is not an appropriate argument yet he quietly goes about using it.

While Mr. Geisler attempts to present both sides of an argument about world view. The positive traits of non-Christian worldviews are listed along with the negatives. One is left with the feeling that he wasn't trying all that hard to present any other worldview in with the vigor that its adherents would. Importatn parts of opposing worldview have gone missing. Of particular note was the second section involving worldviews was his critique of Panentheism. Mr. Geisler declares, without actually showing, that the Panentheistic God is a finite one. Issues addressing these arguments have been fully addressed and addressed quite well in the works of Shepard.

Geisler finds the only rational choice of thinking and of worldview is that of theism, again no surprise. However being a Christian he must go one step further and show that all forms of theism is not equal, that it is only Christianity that is true and rejecting the Judaism and Islam. This is the third section of the book.

The first and the second parts of this book are rather abstract and philosophical, and somewhat dry. They are obviously prepared for individuals who have some grounding in philosophy and/or apologetics.

Third portion of the book is by far the part with the least foundation. Geisler takes more than a few liberties with history and draws conclusions that left me scratching my head. One of the stranger notions he presents is that history is objective. He verifies this claim by informing us that historians make accurate value judgments when deciding what happened and where and why it happened. In the first section Mr. Geisler spent a great deal of time and energy laying the groundwork for describing adequate tests of truth yet he virtually ignores what he has written in the third section.

The book is recommended for its first section, the vigorous outlining of objective thinking. However as the book progresses it becomes less effective in its arguing and more suspect in its logic.

Rating:
Summary: A great book for beginning Christian Apologetics
Review: The reason I liked this book is twofold. Firstly, it looks at many of the secular worldviews, and shows their inadequacies. This is not something you learn in the intro to Philosophy course taught by most liberal arts colleges. Secondly, Geisler is not afraid to acknowledge the contributions of some of these worldviews. In effect, He "plunders" the secular worldviews and takes all the gold, if you will, even if it only means acknowledging some of the important and legitimate questions raised by these non-Christian worldviews.

Rating:
Summary: Standard Apologetics Textbook
Review: This book is a standard apologetics textbook in many seminaries and schools in the U.S.. This is so for many good and obvious reasons. First, Geisler is well known and considered by many to be one of the greatest apologists of this century. Second, the contents of this book are so thorough and concise that there is actually no other book that has been published before or after this one that could be considered a viable rival. This is not to say that there are no other great apologetic texts out there. But there are very few that match this one. Geisler covers every imaginable worldview, describes the view, and proceeds to defend the Christian faith in light of the opposing view at hand. The book is philosophically rigorous, and laid out in a systematic fashion that helps the reader keep organized while tackling the many beliefs that stem from each of the views covered. Geisler covers rationalism, agnosticism, fideism, experientialism, evidentialism, pragmatism, combinationalism, deism, pantheism, panentheism, atheism, theism, etc. He has a chapter that is devoted to the formulation of adequate tests for truth, and then a section that details Christian apologetics from History to the deity and authority of Christ. This is why this book has been a standard text for classes all over the country in the area apologetics. I cannot recommend this book enough!