Christian Apologetics Alliance

answering seekers, equipping Christians, and demonstrating the truth of the Christian worldview

Book Review: "Five Views on Apologetics"

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9780310224761Apologetics, as a discipline, is meant to help unbelievers overcome obstacles to faith in the Gospel and to help strengthen believers in their faith. However, when it comes to how exactly to go about that, you are bound to get caught up in debates about methodologies and hear phrases like “evidentialism” and “presuppositionalism” and “classical apologetics”. What do these phrases mean? What’s the big fuss about them? How should we go about defending the faith?

Five Views on Apologetics, edited by Stanley N. Gundry and Steven B. Cowan, attempts to clarify one of the biggest areas of disagreement and contention among apologists today. Five well-known apologists makes the case for why their methodology of apologetics is the best: William Lane Craig for Classical apologetics, Gary Habermas for Evidential apologetics, Paul Feinberg for Cumulative Case apologists, John Frame for Presuppositionalism, and Kelly James Clark for Reformed Epistemology. Each contributor explains his position, allows for others to critique his position, and then respond to those criticisms in the end.

Strengths
The five points format is the biggest strength of this book and allows for all five contributors to interact with each other and say what they want. Each essay is very well written and while some responses are stronger than others, each contributor provides thoughtful and careful analysis of their own method and the methods of others. While there are some interactions that get a bit more contested than others (namely Kelly James Clark contra Gary Habermas), each contributor is respectful towards their colleagues in their work and responses. The book may not be the easiest read for an apologetics newbie, the text isn’t bogged down with technical details (save for a few of Craig’s responses where he whips out Bayes’ Theorem), and there are plenty of footnotes with clarifications and references to external works. This is not a popular level book per se, but it finely straddles the line between being an academic work and being accessible enough for the layperson who is willing to redline their brain power. I’ve been studying apologetics for around 5 years now and while there were moments in the book that I had to re-read a few times to make sure I got it, the majority of the text was very straightforward and clear. 
Weaknesses
Aside from one layout weakness of the book – the location of the closing comments section – the biggest weakness with the book isn’t really with the book itself, but with the subject matter of the book. William Lane Craig, in his response to Gary Habermas, makes this interesting comment:
“The difficulty in responding to Habermas is that he has so qualified evidentialism that it ceases to be an interesting alternative to other approaches to apologetics. Pity our poor editor!….[the editor] winds up with a Presuppositionalism who argues like an evidentialist and an evidentialist who endorses belief in Christian theism on the basis of the testimony of the Holy Spirit apart from evidence!” (pg. 122)
While Craig, Habermas, and Feinberg would (and do) stress their respected methodologies are unique from each other, one can’t help when reading their essays (and responses) and wonder how different from each other they really are, and how significant or major those differences really are in the long run. Contrasted with Frame and Clark the differences become strongly apparent, but even then (as Craig points out) Frame uses evidences in a way that is one would expect Habermas to use. Even in the conclusion of the book the editor notes this as one of the areas of disagreement:
“As noted in the introduction, the issue of apologetic taxonomy is difficult, and not all of the contributors to this volume are agreed on how to delineate the various approaches.” (pg. 337)
Not that this observation defeats the point of the book – one can definitely tell that while every contributor shares much agreement with the others that there are differences between the five. But, in the same breath, it does cast a shadow of doubt upon the importance of getting worked up over a colleague’s methodology if his/her defense is not sinful or dishonoring to Christ. Why do we let a subject cause so much “partisanship and divisiveness” (pg. 326), as Frame notes, when there appears to be no hope of consensus even among the masters of our craft?

The Verdict
Five Views is a fascinating read, and every apologist who takes their studies seriously ought to give  it a run through. However, it has left me with the opinion that sometimes we can make apologetics way, way too hard on ourselves. Each of these five men have contributed greatly in the defense of the Christian faith, and each of them have done so with their diverse and unique way of doing so. We must take care, despite disagreements on methodology, to not let a secondary in-house discussion override our call to make disciples of all nations, and thankfully Five Views on Apologetics keeps this point in clear focus. If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between these methodologies and how they compare and contrast to each other, Five Views on Apologetics is definitely the book for you.