Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith


Michael Reeves - 2012
    He takes cues from preachers and teachers down through the ages, setting key doctrines of creation, the person and work of Christ, and life in the Spirit into a simple framework of the Christian life. A rich and enjoyable read on the basic beliefs of Christianity that avoids dumbing down its profound and life changing truths.

Grand Central Question: Answering the Critical Concerns of the Major Worldviews


Abdu H Murray - 2014
    The main worldviews each tend to stress a different central question. Secular humanism focuses on: What is the inherent value of human beings? Pantheism emphasizes: How do we escape suffering? Islam's main concern is: How is God great? Abdu Murray digs deeply into these three representatives of major worldviews of our day: secular humanism, pantheism and theism (specifically in the form of Islam). This lawyer and former Muslim brings compassion, understanding and clarity to his analysis, comparing the answers of each view to the central message of Christianity.

Why So Many Gods?


Tim Baker - 2002
    It tells the basic beliefs, short history, important aspects, and it identifies the religions in pop culture-all in a teen-magazine style of writing. The goal of this book is to educate teens to be able to identify the religions they come in contact with daily. All content has been reviewed by experts in Christian theology.

The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief


James S. Spiegel - 2010
    They come armed with arguments to show that belief in God is absurd and dangerous. In the name of societal progress, they promote purging the world of all religious practice. And they claim that people of faith are mentally ill. Some of the new atheists openly declare their hatred for the Judeo-Christian God.Christian apologists have been quick to respond to the new atheists’ arguments. But there is another dimension to the issue which begs to be addressed--the root causes of atheism. Where do atheists come from? How did such folks as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens become such ardent atheists? If we are to believe them, their flight from faith resulted from a dispassionate review of the evidence. Not enough rational grounds for belief in God, they tell us. But is this the whole story?Could it be that their opposition to religious faith has more to do with passion than reason? What if, in the end, evidence has little to do with how atheists arrive at their anti-faith? That is precisely the claim in this book. Atheism is not at all a consequence of intellectual doubts. These are mere symptoms of the root cause--moral rebellion. For the atheist, the missing ingredient is not evidence but obedience.The psalmist declares, “The fool says in his heart there is no God” (Ps. 14:1), and in the book of Romans, Paul makes it clear that lack of evidence is not the atheist’s problem. The Making of an Atheist confirms these biblical truths and describes the moral and psychological dynamics involved in the abandonment of faith.

A Theology in Outline: Can These Bones Live?


Robert W. Jenson - 2016
    Jenson at Princeton University in the spring of 2008. Based on a series of twenty-three course lectures, it offers a concise and accessible overview of Christian theology while retaining the atmosphere of Jenson's classroom. Much as does Jenson's Systematic Theology, A Theology in Outline treats a standard sequence of doctrines in Christian theology--God, Trinity, creation, humanity, sin, salvation, church, among others. However, its organizing principle and leitmotiv are less traditional. Reflecting his recent interest in theological interpretation of scripture, Jenson frames the whole of Christian theology as a response to the question posed to the prophet Ezekiel: "Son of man, can these bones live?" For Jenson, to ask this question is to ask whether Christian theology itself is a pile of dead bones. Can the story that God lives with his people be told today? From first to last the chapters of this book proceed under the impelling pressure of this question. They thus comprise a single sequence of illustrative conversations for the purpose of introducing beginners to Christian theology.

The Skeptical Believer: Telling Stories to Your Inner Atheist


Daniel Taylor - 2013
    But there are also Skeptical Believers, a particular kind of believer who lives with an Inner Atheist that is constantly raising objections. The Skeptical Believer is a book about making peace with your Inner Atheist, and about working out useful responses to questions that have no definitive answers. It steers a middle course between the modernist conviction that faith is agreement with a set of statements about God and the postmodernist assertion that religious faith is just one story among many, no more or less true than any other. The Skeptical Believer proposes that one can live a rich and meaningful life of faith without proof (and despite the weaknesses of the church) by seeing oneself as a character within an ancient story. As believers, skeptical or otherwise, always have.

Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture


Gene Edward Veith Jr. - 1994
    Assumptions that shaped twentieth-century thought and culture, the bridges we crossed to this present moment, have blown up. The postmodern age has begun.Just what is postmodernism? The average person would be shocked by its creed: Truth, meaning, and individual identity do not exist. These are social constructs. Human life has no special significance, no more value than animal or plant life. All social relationships, all institutions, all moral values are expressions and masks of the primal will to power.Alarmingly, these ideas have gripped the nation's universities, which turn out today's lawyers, judges, writers, journalists, teachers, and other culture-shapers. Through society's influences, postmodernist ideas have seeped into films, television, art, literature, politics; and, without his knowing it, into the head of the average person on the street.Christ has called us to proclaim the gospel to a culture grappling with postmodernism. We must understand our times. Then, through the power that Christ gives, we can counter the prevailing culture and proclaim His sufficiency to our society's very points of need."While pundits wring their hands over the radicalism of political correctness, speech codes, and outrageous art, Gene Edward Veith takes unerring aim at the intellectual roots of it all. The most important book for anyone who wants to know what's behind the political correctness movement." --Chuck Colson, founder, Prison Fellowship"An ideal guide for Christians who don't want to be like the notorious military strategist preparing to fight the last war instead of the next one." --Herbert Schlossberg, author, Idols for Destruction"Pinpoints the strengths and weaknesses of postmodern thought and points the way for Christians to take advantage of both." --E. Calvin Beisner, Covenant College

What's Your Worldview?: An Interactive Approach to Life's Big Questions


James N. Anderson - 2014
    And how you answer is one of the most important things about you.Not sure what you'd say? Join James Anderson on an interactive journey of discovery aimed at helping you understand and evaluate the options when it comes to identifying your worldview. Cast in the mold of a classic -Choose Your Own Adventure- story, What's Your Worldview? will guide you toward finding intellectually satisfying answers to life's biggest questions--equipping you to think carefully about not only what you believe but why you believe it and how it impacts the rest of your life.

The Deadliest Monster: A Christian Introduction to Worldviews


J.F. Baldwin - 2001
    Not surprisingly, the initial assumption colors all other beliefs, so that the book becomes a fascinating catalogue of the ways in which the Christian perspective better matches reality.

Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution


Michael J. Behe - 1996
    It sparked a national debate on evolution, which continues to intensify across the country. From one end of the spectrum to the other, Darwin's Black Box has established itself as the key intelligent design text -- the one argument that must be addressed in order to determine whether Darwinian evolution is sufficient to explain life as we know it.In a major new Afterword for this edition, Behe explains that the complexity discovered by microbiologists has dramatically increased since the book was first published. That complexity is a continuing challenge to Darwinism, and evolutionists have had no success at explaining it. Darwin's Black Box is more important today than ever.

The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus


Dallas Willard - 2014
    In The Allure of Gentleness, esteemed teacher and author Dallas Willard not only assures us of the truth and reasonableness of the Christian faith, but also explores why reason and logic are not enough: to explain Jesus's message, we must also be like Jesus, characterized by love, humility, and gentleness.Based on a series of talks and lectures on apologetics given by the late author and edited by his daughter, Becky Heatley, this book constitutes Dallas Willard's most thorough presentation on how to defend the Christian faith for the twenty-first century. This beautiful model of life, this allure of gentleness, Willard tells us, is the foundation for making the most compelling argument for Christ, one that will assure others that the Christian faith is not only true but the answer to our deepest desires and hopes.

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible


E. Randolph Richards - 2012
    Because of the cultural distance between the biblical world and our contemporary setting, we often bring modern Western biases to the text. For example:When Western readers hear Paul exhorting women to "dress modestly," we automatically think in terms of sexual modesty. But most women in that culture would never wear racy clothing. The context suggests that Paul is likely more concerned about economic modesty--that Christian women not flaunt their wealth through expensive clothes, braided hair and gold jewelry.Some readers might assume that Moses married "below himself" because his wife was a dark-skinned Cushite. Actually, Hebrews were the slave race, not the Cushites, who were highly respected. Aaron and Miriam probably thought Moses was being presumptuous by marrying "above himselfWestern individualism leads us to assume that Mary and Joseph traveled alone to Bethlehem. What went without saying was that they were likely accompanied by a large entourage of extended family.Biblical scholars Brandon O'Brien and Randy Richards shed light on the ways that Western readers often misunderstand the cultural dynamics of the Bible. They identify nine key areas where modern Westerners have significantly different assumptions about what might be going on in a text. Drawing on their own crosscultural experience in global mission, O'Brien and Richards show how better self-awareness and understanding of cultural differences in language, time and social mores allow us to see the Bible in fresh and unexpected ways. Getting beyond our own cultural assumptions is increasingly important for being Christians in our interconnected and globalized world. Learn to read Scripture as a member of the global body of Christ.

Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them


Bart D. Ehrman - 2009
    Here Ehrman reveals what scholars have unearthed:•The authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was & how salvation works•The New Testament contains books that were forged in the names of the apostles by Christian writers who lived decades later•Jesus, Paul, Matthew & John all represented fundamentally different religions•Established Christian doctrines—such as the suffering messiah, the divinity of Jesus & the trinity—were the inventions of still later theologiansThese aren't idiosyncratic perspectives of just one scholar. They've been the standard widespread views of scholars across a full spectrum of denominations & traditions. Why is it most people have never heard such things? This is the book that pastors, educators & anyone interested in the Bible have been waiting for—a compelling account of the central challenges faced when attempting to reconstruct Jesus' life & message.

The Long War Against God: The History & Impact of the Creation/Evolution Conflict


Henry M. Morris - 1989
    Henry Morris, long an opponent of Christian Compromise with evolution, presents in riveting detail the very old plan to undermine God's Word. Drawing from the text of the Greeks, Babylonians, and other ancient philosophers, Dr. Morris shows the path that has led to today's neo-Darwinists, and how evolution - the philosophy of death - is in itself dying.

Hidden Worldviews: Eight Cultural Stories That Shape Our Lives


Steve Wilkens - 2009
    Building on the work of worldview thinkers like James Sire, this book helps those committed to the gospel story recognize those rival cultural stories that compete for our hearts and minds.