Defending Your Faith: An Introduction to Apologetics

Rating:
Summary: A Basic but Good Philosophical Apologetics Text
Review: R.C. Sproul as devoted his life to teaching the lay people in the Christian community sound biblical theology as well as apologetics. This text is a strong reflection of his lifelong work in the arena of apologetics.

Sproul is a classical apologists with a strong philosophical background. That philosophical background comes shining through in this text.

He begins the work by delineating the 'Task of Apologetics.' In other words, how do we go about defending our faith, and why is that necessary. After he has described the early Church Father's apologetic task, how faith and apologetics work together, and how proofs and persuasion fit into the equation, he turns his attention to the epistemological rub of apologetics.

In this book, Sproul focuses his attention on four 'principles of knowledge.' These four principles are (as best as I can determine from the way the book is formatted): The law of non-contradiction, The law of causality, The basic reliability of sense perception, and The analogical use of language. Within these four principles, Sproul provides his reader with examples of how these laws function, their effect upon our thinking, and certain philosophers who have either criticized these laws, or failed to use them in one way or the other.

A little later in the book, Sproul tackles God's existence via what he calls 'Four possibilities. These possibilities include Illusion (Descartes is the major thinker here), Self-creation, Creation by chance, and a self-existent being and universe.

The fifth section of the book is a look into what Sproul calls "God and the Philosophers." This of course is apparently in the same vein as Etienne Gilson's past work "God and Philosophy." In this section Sproul tackles Kant's moral argument for the existence of God from Kant's work 'Critique of Practical Reason.' Moreover, Sproul discusses nihilism, the psychology of atheism (which he has done quite well in the past via a book of the same title), and finally Sproul wraps up his work in a final section on a case for biblical authority - why the Bible is without error and authoritative.

The only downfall that I believe exists in this work is Sproul's view on Kant's epistemology. Like Norman Geisler, I believe Sproul has unfairly misread, or better, only 'half read' Kant. What I mean here is Sproul (like Geisler) holds to a Neo-Kantian view of Kant. The Neo-Kantian view declares that Kant has asserted that there is a 'gap' between the noumenal and the phenomenal and never the twain shall meet or be crossed. This view, I firmly believe is a misunderstanding of Kant's overall philosophy. Of course, this view would certainly be the case had Kant only written the 'Critique of Pure Reason,' but Kant is quite clear in his 'Critique of Practical Reason' how this 'gap' is crossed (a point that could not be adequately delineated in this review). Otherwise, Sproul's book is wonderful and I highly recommended it for those who are beginning their research in Christian Apologetics.

Other apologetics text I recommended are Geisler's 'Christian Apologetics;" Moreland's "Scaling the Secular City;" and Boa's and Bowen's "Faith Has Its Reasons."