Unapologetic Apologetics: Meeting the Challenges of Theological Studies

As objective truth has come under suspicion in theological study during recent years, scholars and students have also begun to take less seriously the task of persuading others to believe. Apologetics has been neglected, misunderstood and misrepresented. Unwilling to accept this new status quo, editors William Dembski and Jay Wesley Richards, along with their team of expert contributors, firmly hold that apologetics once again deserves our attention.The editors and contributing scholars, all one-time students at Princeton Theological Seminary, squarely meet some of the most vexing issues in contemporary theological studies

• pervasive contextualism
• the question of error in Scripture
• feminist challenges to our concept of God
• the nature and coherence of the incarnation
• the presumption of universalism
• incursions of science into theology

Taking up in turn foundations, Scripture, Christology, theology and science, the essays comprising Unapologetic Apologetics expose the tenets of naturalism and other philosophical systems that too often permeate theological studies without remark, let alone critique or debate. Dembski, Richards and their contributors expertly administer their cure for false ideas--not quarantine but inoculation.Contributors include Michael D. Bush, Raymond D. Cannata, Gary W. Deddo, William A. Dembski, Matthew Frawley, Phillip E. Johnson, James Parker III and Leslie Zeigler.For seminarians and anyone pursuing theological study, Unapologetic Apologetics will become a trusted guide to the philosophical and cultural forces at work in religious education today.

William Dembski (Ph.D., mathematics, University of Chicago; Ph.D., philosophy, University of Illinois at Chicago) is senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.He has previously taught at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Dallas. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University, and he has been a National Science Foundation doctoral and postdoctoral fellow. Dembski has written numerous scholarly articles and is the author of the critically acclaimed The Design Inference (Cambridge), Intelligent Design (InterVarsity Press) and No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence (Rowman and Littlefield).

Richards (Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary; Th.M., Calvin Theological Seminary; M.Div., Union Theological Seminary) is a research fellow and director of institutional relations at Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, MI. He has published articles in philosophy of religion (Religious Studies), theology (Christian Scholars' Review) and science (Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith). His books include The Privileged Planet (Regnery, 2004), Are We Spiritual Machines (Discovery Inst. Press, 2002), The Untamed God (IVP, 2003), and Unapologetic Apologetics (IVP, 2001)..

Phillip E. Johnson taught law for more than thirty years at the University of California--Berkeley where he is professor emeritus. He is recognized as a leading spokesman for the intelligent design movement, and is the author of many books, including Darwin on Trial, Reason in the Balance and Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds.

Parker, D.Theol. (New Testament, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland), M.Div., Th.M. (Princeton Theological Seminary), M.A. (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), postdoctoral fellow (Johns Hopkins University), is associate dean and professor of worldview and culture at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He also directs the Trinity Institute, a residential Christian study center located in Tehuacana, Texas. He serves as the national coordinator for the Religious and Theological Studies Fellowship, a branch of the graduate ministry of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He is editor-in-chief of Foundations, an international theological journal aimed especially at seminary students and faculty.