Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today

281 Pages·2002·0.97 MB·English

by  John G. Stackhouse Jr.

Humble Apologetics:
Defending the Faith
Today
JOHN G. STACKHOUSE, JR.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Humble Apologetics
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HUMBLE APOLOGETICS
Defending the Faith Today
J G. S , J .
OHN TACKHOUSE R
2002
Oxford New York
Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai
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Copyright © 2002 by John G. Stackhouse, Jr.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stackhouse, John Gordon.
Humble apologetics : defending the faith today / John G. Stackhouse, Jr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-513807-4
1. Apologetics.
I. Title.
BT1103.S73 2002
230—dc21 2002008382
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To
Trevor, Joshua, and Devon
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
PART ONE: CHALLENGES
1. Pluralism 3
2. Postmodernity and Postmodernism(s) 22
3. The Problem of Plausibility 38
4. Consumerism 54
PART TWO: CONVERSION
5. Defining Conversion 67
6. Deciding about Religion 86
7. Defining, Directing, and Defending
Apologetics 114
PART THREE: COMMUNICATION
8. Principles of Christian
Communication 131
9. Audience-Specific Apologetics 145
10. Guidelines for Apologetic
Conversation 161
11. Other Modes of Apologetics 206
Conclusion: Humble Apologetics 227
Notes 233
Index 259
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Acknowledgments
I have been thinking about apologetics for almost 30 years. Over
that time, I have accumulated intellectual debts far too numerous to
record or even, alas, remember. I have acknowledged several of
these debts in the text that follows. Several more, however, deserve
mention here.
Among authors, I am chiefly indebted to C. S. Lewis, the twentieth
century’s most popular apologist. After discovering Lewis in my teens,
I flattered myself briefly (I am ashamed to say) that I had “gotten
beyond him” in graduate school. Returning to his work once I be-
came a professor, I have found over the successive years endless riches
in his thought and expression. Lewis isn’t right about everything, of
course. But he is right about so many things, and suggestive about so
many more, that I have found him an inexhaustible resource.
Os Guinness inspired and informed me about how to engage in
apologetics in a mode other than the typical evangelical style that was
all I knew as a youth—namely, what I call “apologetics as martial
arts.” Ever since meeting him as an impressionable undergraduate, I
have been grateful for the impress of Os’s brilliant writing and speak-
ing. I trust he will forgive me for failing to recall the source of each of
the many ideas I first received from him somewhere along the way.
The so-called Reformed epistemologists, especially Alvin Plan-
tinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, have shaped my general views of
thinking, and thus my particular views of apologetics, in fundamen-
tal ways. I am the more grateful to Nick for originally recommend-
ing this project to Oxford, and then generously agreeing to read and
comment on the manuscript.
ix