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A History of Apologetics

A History of Apologetics Book Cover A History of Apologetics, Avery Cardinal Dulles, Ignatius Press, San Francisco CA, 2005. ISBN: 0-89870-933-4.

From the Foreword: Apologetics is for everyone. This particular history, while not lacking in learning, was written with the conviction that the issues with which Christian apologists have been concerned through the ages are, or should be, of interest to anyone who asks the basic questions of human life: Who am I? Where did I come from and where am I going? What is the meaning of my life, and of life itself? How should I live in this present world? Is there life beyond the grave and where will I be thirty seconds after I am dead? Such questions, of course, are not unique to Christians. Indeed, they are the property of all persons everywhere. But the Christian faith does not shrink from the task of considering such questions in the light of our common human strivings and with the aid of reason illumined by faith...

In addition to doubters and seekers, believing Christians of all traditions will welcome this volume and find it useful because, in his vast sweep of Christian history, Cardinal Dulles has dealt primarily with the pressing issues confronting Christianity itself, not with the internecine and interconfessional disputes often exploited by apologetics in the past. This is not to say that there is no place for polemical theology, or that the serious differences that still divide Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical believers can be easily aside in the interest of facile unity... But it is also important to recognize that ... there is an urgent need for a common front against the regnant ideologies of secularism, materialism, naturalism, and an anthropocentric humanism divorced from the belief that individual men and women are infinitely valuable and cherishable by the God in whose image each one of them was made.