Kenneth D. Boa and Robert M. Bowman Jr.
2nd edition, Paternoster/Authentic Media, 2005; InterVarsity Press—Biblica, 2006
Overview of the Second Edition
Background
Faith Has Its Reasons was originally published in 2001 by NavPress. In 2002 it won the
Christian Booksellers Association’s Gold Medallion Award and the Christianity Today Award of Merit. The second edition, originally published by Paternoster/Authentic Media and now carried by IVP, was significantly revised and thoroughly updated. We paid special attention to critical assessments of the book, both published and unpublished, to make the book even more accurate and useful to students of Christian apologetics.
After three introductory chapters, we analyze four basic approaches to apologetic method:
classical apologetics, evidential apologetics, Reformed apologetics, and fideism. For each of these approaches we discuss their roots and their modern proponents. These include such authors as Norman Geisler and William Lane Craig (classical), John Warwick Montgomery and Richard Swinburne (evidential), Alvin Plantinga and Cornelius Van Til (Reformed), and Karl Barth and Donald Bloesch (fideist). We then examine how those approaches tend to handle knowledge claims (epistemology, theology, philosophy, science, history, and experience) and address specific questions in apologetics (the authority of Scripture, the truth of the Christian religion, the existence of God, the problem of evil, the reality of miracles, and the claims of Christ). The book concludes with a discussion of integrative approaches to apologetics (such as those by Francis A. Schaeffer and John M. Frame) that seek to bring together elements of two or more of
the four basic approaches.
Major Revisions in the Second Edition
Our revisions begin at the very beginning with a subtle change in the book’s subtitle. Instead of An Integrative Approach to Defending Christianity, the subtitle is now Integrative Approaches to Defending the Christian Faith. The plural “Approaches” makes clearer that our purpose in the book is not (as some critics have thought) to propose a definitive “fifth” approach to supersede the four basic approaches. Rather, our purpose is to commend integrative approaches generally and to contribute something to the discussion of how apologists can enhance, augment, enrich, and otherwise improve their apologetic by learning from other approaches, even while retaining their own preferred approach. Many of the revisions throughout the book, especially in Part Six, seek to clarify and reinforce this purpose.
Another significant set of revisions apply especially to Part Five in which we discuss fideism. As usually defined, fideism is the belief that apologetics is an unnecessary and even illegitimate enterprise because the Christian faith neither needs nor benefits from reasoned argument or proof. However, we follow C. Stephen Evans in arguing that there is a kind of fideism that is itself a type of apologetics—a way of seeking to commend Christian faith to modern people unconvinced by traditional arguments or evidences. In a backhanded, indirect way, fideism also seeks to show that Christian faith is compatible with reason, science, and history. Our treatment of fideism in the first edition of Faith Has Its Reasons gave some readers the impression that we thought that fideism was just as valid a position or approach to the subject as classical, evidential, and Reformed apologetics. One reader even thought that we were endorsing in toto the theologies of Kierkegaard and Barth (which we were not). To eliminate any possible misunderstandings along these lines, Part Five now makes it explicit that we are not recommending fideism in general or the theologies of modern fideists in particular. Rather, we present fideism as an indirect approach to apologetics that, despite what are in our view its deficiencies, has made some significant contributions to apologetics from which apologists of other approaches can benefit. At the same time, we argue that Christian fideists could retain the
legitimate insights and concerns of fideism without eschewing apologetics. In short, we urge Christian apologists to learn from fideism and urge fideists to become more open to apologetics.
A third kind of revision permeates the book. Various readers of the first edition took exception to our classification of certain apologists, such as our classifying C. S. Lewis as a classical apologist. These readers pointed out (correctly) that apologists we classified as exemplifying the same approach often were very different from one another (e.g., C. S. Lewis is very different from Norman Geisler). We addressed this concern by reinforcing the point already made in the first edition: the four approaches are broad categories with considerable variations possible, and many apologists do not fit perfectly or neatly into just one approach. We classify an apologist according to the dominant approach evident in his apologetic, while recognizing the limitations of such classifications. Two specific observations come up several times. First, apologists from earlier eras usually belong in the classical tradition but may in important ways anticipate or function as precursors to other approaches of modern origin. For example, neither Martin Luther nor Blaise Pascal were fideists, but they did help pave the way for the modern development of fideism. Second, the approach we call “Reformed” apologetics includes two very different camps, which are commonly called presuppositionalism (e.g., Cornelius Van Til) and Reformed
Epistemology (e.g., Alvin Plantinga). Some readers wrongly thought we were ignoring (or
ignorant of) the differences between these two camps. Our treatment of Reformed Epistemology makes more emphatic our acknowledgment of these differences and explains more fully why the two camps are properly understood as different species of the same apologetic family.
Other Significant Revisions
We have made many other revisions to the book, too many to catalog them all. We note just some of the highlights that we think will especially interest the book’s readers.
- A more thorough review of the New Testament use of the words apologia and
apologeomai (pp. 1–2). - Interaction with Kim Riddlebarger’s classification of B. B. Warfield as an evidentialist
rather than a classical apologist (pp. 53–54). - Inclusion of Norman Geisler’s rubric “Twelve Points that Show Christianity Is True” and an explanation of how they fit into his basic “two-step” apologetic (pp. 57–61).
- A summary of J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig’s handling of the relationship of philosophy to apologetics (pp. 79–80).
- A review of Robin Collins’s version of the fine-tuning design argument (p. 190).
- A detailed analysis of Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief (pp. 251–56; see also p. 289).
- More detailed, critical assessment of Karl Barth’s theology (pp. 358–59).
- A statement by C. S. Lewis relating to all four apologetic approaches (p. 425).
- Improved discussion of what is meant by an integrative approach (especially pp. 483–84).
- Exposition of how the evidential, Reformed, and fideist approaches can be “broadened” by integrating aspects of the other approaches (pp. 488–91); the first edition had shown how this could be done only with the classical approach.
- Comments on Steven Cowan’s observation that all apologists need to address all of the different aspects of the problem of evil (p. 507).
- Updated bibliographic endnotes on the work of numerous apologists and other thinkers (pp. 584–630).
We hope that you will find this second edition of Faith Has Its Reasons to be a valuable textbook for the study of the history and methods of apologetics.