Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics addresses a wide range of apologetic issues. The average Christian should not feel intimidated. The contributors have, for the most part, managed to discuss issues related to their fields of expertise in ways that are accessible for a more popular audience. These popular leanings affect more than just the book’s tone; they influence the subject matter as well. Some of the articles even respond to challenges and criticisms that are being raised not in technical academic journals but on the internet. This is indicative of a major emphasis of the book, which is to address the questions and challenges being raised against the Christian faith by “real” people and not simply by its more scholarly critics. In this respect, the book is both unique and helpful.
Come Let Us Reason is divided into five parts:
- Apologetics, Culture, and the Kingdom of God
- The God Question
- The Historical Jesus and New Testament Reliability
- Ancient Israel and Other Religions
- Christian Uniqueness and the Other Religions
For the most part I found the articles contained in Parts 3 and 4 to be the most helpful. These articles address questions and challenges that have been raised in relation to the Old and New Testaments, such as:
- How reliable are the Gospels?
- How did people think about “authorship” in Greco-Roman letter writing?
- Was the story of Jesus adopted from pagan mystery stories?
- Did God command Israel to commit genocide against the Canaanites?
- Does the Old Testament endorse slavery?
If you are a Christian who engages in apologetic discussions with unbelievers even occasionally, then you have probably had to deal with some of these questions. This is doubtless the major strength of the book; the editors have compiled a helpful collection of responses to the types of questions that have been known to fuel late-night debates in college dorm rooms. I’ve known what it’s like to face an objection against my faith that I’d never even heard before, let alone one for which I had a response. Similarly, the average Christian likely hasn’t studied pagan mystery religions sufficiently to have a ready response when someone confidently asserts that the Christian faith borrowed its major tenets from the cult of Osiris. Copan and Craig’s volume, then, could be one means to both educate and encourage Christians who need to see examples of thoughtful responses to some common and difficult questions.
My major reservation isn’t fundamentally with what the book says, but what it leaves out. We should seek to discern with every apologetic book the underlying methodology it is assuming or promoting. The current apologetic landscape is divided on some fundamental questions about the nature of the apologetic enterprise itself—questions that thoughtful Christians cannot afford to leave unaddressed. What, for instance, is the role of both general and special revelation in apologetics? How does sin affect our reason? What is the proper use of evidence? What role do our presuppositions play in our interpretation of that evidence?
Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics
Paul Copan and William Lane Craig
Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics
Paul Copan and William Lane Craig
Come Let Us Reason is the third book in a series on modern Christian apologetics that began with the popular Passionate Conviction and Contending with Christianity’s Critics. The nineteen essays here raise classical philosophical questions in fresh ways, address contemporary challenges for the church, and will deepen the thinking of the next generation of apologists.
The essays in this book do a fine job of presenting certain lines of evidence in response to specific objections. I found a number of the articles in this book helpful with historical and factual evidence. But as an apologetic, to present evidence without addressing the epistemological issues related to the interpretation of that evidence is, in my opinion, to leave the apologetic task unfinished. Of course, one cannot be expected to address everything at once. But at the same time, if it is the biblically robust faith of Christianity that we would commend to the world, we must make explicit the radical nature of the Christian faith and its implications for the apologetic process itself. In not bringing forward the epistemological distinctives of the Christian faith we defend, then, our hearers will default to their natural patterns of thinking, and it is with these patterns of thought that the Christian apologist is fundamentally called to battle (2 Cor. 10:5).
All things considered, though, if you’re looking for a collection of accessible responses to some common challenges to the Christian faith, then this would be a helpful resource. If, however, you’re after a broader apologetic methodology that seeks to provide a foundation for apologetic arguments and evidence, then this volume will prove insufficient. A great deal of foundational theological and epistemological issues are assumed rather than addressed, though it is over these very issues that the real disagreements between Christian and non-Christian begin to be articulated.
