SPCK - Alister McGrath
Mere Apologetics - 8d Working the Angles: Applying the Case Studies
Mere Apologetics - 8d Working the Angles: Applying the Case Studies
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Working the Angles: Applying the Case Studies In the previous two sections of this chapter we have explored some themes relating to two classic questions of Christian apologetics and identified some components of answers to two important anxieties about faith. But apologetics is …
Mere Apologetics - 8c Case Study 2: God as a Crutch
Mere Apologetics - 8c Case Study 2: God as a Crutch
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Case Study 2: God as a Crutch One of the most familiar criticisms of Christianity is that it offers consolation to life’s losers. The only way such sad people can cope with life, it is argued, is by inventing a God who comforts them. Real people don’t need such spurious reassuran…
Mere Apologetics - 8b Case Study 1: Why Does God Allow Suffering?
Mere Apologetics - 8b Case Study 1: Why Does God Allow Suffering?
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Case Study 1: Why Does God Allow Suffering? Our first case study is an issue that is regularly raised both in public debates and private conversations. If God is good, why is there suffering in the world? Why do bad things happen in a universe created by a supposedly loving God? …
Mere Apologetics - 8 Questions about Faith
Mere Apologetics - 8 Questions about Faith
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Questions about Faith Apologetics is about communicating the joy, coherence, and relevance of the Christian faith on the one hand, and dealing with anxieties, difficulties, and concerns about that faith on the other. This has always been the case, from the time of the New Testame…
Mere Apologetics - 7c Gateway 4: Images
Mere Apologetics - 7c Gateway 4: Images
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Gateway 4: Images For postmodern writers, pictures, rather than words, are the supreme form of communication. Advertising corporations spend fortunes determining the best image for a company. They develop television commercials presenting images that make us want to buy certain p…
Mere Apologetics - 7b Opening the Door to Faith
Mere Apologetics - 7b Opening the Door to Faith
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Opening the Door to Faith First, this approach is not well-grounded in the Bible. Truth, especially for the Old Testament, primarily designates reliability and trustworthiness. The apologetic issue is that God is a secure base, a place of safety on which to build the life of fait…
Mere Apologetics - 7 Gateways for Apologetics
Mere Apologetics - 7 Gateways for Apologetics
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Gateways for Apologetics Apologetics can be likened to drawing curtains to one side so people can catch a glimpse of what lies beyond, or holding a diamond up to the light and allowing its facets to scintillate and sparkle in the sunlight. It’s about establishing gateways for fai…
Mere Apologetics - 6e Clue 7: Eternity— The Intuition of Hope
Mere Apologetics - 6e Clue 7: Eternity— The Intuition of Hope
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Clue 7: Eternity— The Intuition of Hope Some biblical passages are difficult to translate into English on account of the richness and complexity of the original Hebrew or Greek. As they say, things get lost in translation. The third chapter of Ecclesiastes takes the form of an ex…
Mere Apologetics - 6d Clue 6: Beauty—The Splendor of the Natural World
Mere Apologetics - 6d Clue 6: Beauty—The Splendor of the Natural World
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Clue 6: Beauty—The Splendor of the Natural World Many find themselves deeply moved by a scene of natural beauty— for example, a great mountain range, a glorious sunset, or wooded valleys. So how can we help someone move from a love of what God has created to a love of God the cre…
Mere Apologetics - 6c Clue 5: Desire— Homing Instinct for God
Mere Apologetics - 6c Clue 5: Desire— Homing Instinct for God
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Clue 5: Desire— Homing Instinct for God Many arguments for the existence of God involve an appeal primarily to reason. Others involve an appeal to experience, finding their plausibility within the human heart as much as in human reason…
Mere Apologetics - 6b Clue 3: Order—The Structure of the Physical World
Mere Apologetics - 6b Clue 3: Order—The Structure of the Physical World
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Clue 3: Order—The Structure of the Physical World Our instinct to discern order within the world is expressed clearly in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. The natural sciences are also based on the idea of the regularity of the universe. Without an ordered cosmos, the s…
Mere Apologetics - 6 Pointers to Faith
Mere Apologetics - 6 Pointers to Faith
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Pointers to Faith American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) spoke of “a meteoric shower of facts” raining from the sky. These facts are like threads that need to be woven into a tapestry, clues that need to be assembled to disclose the big picture. As Millay pointed out, …
Mere Apologetics - 5d Making Sense of Things: A Case Study
Mere Apologetics - 5d Making Sense of Things: A Case Study
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Making Sense of Things: A Case Study To explore this further, we shall consider how effective the Christian way of seeing things is at making sense of what we observe. How good is the fit between theory and observation? So how can we make sense of the shape of history and the dis…
Mere Apologetics - 5c The Philosophy of Science as a Resource for Apologetics
Mere Apologetics - 5c The Philosophy of Science as a Resource for Apologetics
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
The Philosophy of Science as a Resource for Apologetics In narrating the story of his conversion in Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis makes it clear he did not come to believe in God as the result of a deductive argument, but rather by reflection on his experience. This thought leads…
Mere Apologetics - 5b Why Does the Reasonableness of Christianity Matter?
Mere Apologetics - 5b Why Does the Reasonableness of Christianity Matter?
by SPCK - Alister McGrath
Why Does the Reasonableness of Christianity Matter? Why is this point so important? Why should we need to show that Christian belief is reasonable? Why not just assert it? One of the apologetic points we need to emphasize here is that it is difficult to defend ideas that seem cou…
Mere Apologetics - 5 The Reasonableness of the Christian Faith