Thursday, June 29, 2006

Book Recommendation-Introduction to Defending the Faith by Robert A. Morey

Since my header reads-
A listing of recommended reading, links, random thoughts and comments from a reformed Christian perspective. And it's Western Canadian too.

Maybe I should have another book recommendation.

I can't recommend every book by Robert Morey, but there are some well worth reading.
When he's good, he's very good.

The format of this book is a little different than most—as it’s not one you would just pick up and read like most books. (You could do that-but it's not structured that way.) Instead it is made up mostly of outlines-(with details added)—and charts, all intended to show the importance of defending the faith. Then he deals with how to get started doing it. As the title suggests it is introduction, but it does contain a “Suggested bibliography” if you want to dig in further. The suggested books are aimed at various levels of readers.

Morey looks at the basics of and the application of the gospel and the Christian world view. He uses ethics, marriage and the arts as examples of application.

One of Morey’s strengths is getting at the real reasons for people’s views. What’s behind them? What presuppositions are behind them? Morey takes a pre-suppositional approach to apologetics (the fancy word for “defending the faith”). Briefly, this approach realizes all people have presuppositions-so instead of just banging people over the head with evidence—it gets at the reasons people hold the views they do—and takes into account how those pre-suppositions affect how they interpret the evidence.

Taking that into account it shouldn’t be a surprise I found the appendix highly useful. In it Morey addresses objections non-Christians often use against Christianity and the pre-suppositions that are often behind the objections. Therefore Morey refers to the objections as “surface objections”-they aren’t the real reason that person rejects Christianity. Morey doesn’t leave it there as he also gives the Christian answer to the real reasons/pre-suppositions.

This book is valuable for its defense of defending the Faith, and it’s outline approach to getting you started.

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