Alister McGrath is the master of apologetics. With three doctorates under his belt and ranked among the ’20 most brilliant Christian professors’, he’s publically locked horns with the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.

But is there still a place in our culture for what many now see as an ‘old school’ overly rational approach to ‘defending’ the faith?

Image provided by Tyndale House Publishers. Used with permission.

BOOKS

Mere Apologetics: How to Help Seekers and Sceptics Find Faith

QUOTES

“People are locked into this old-fashioned rationalist way of evangelism as winning arguments. It’s not. It’s about relating to people, being able to share with them what the richness and depth of the Christian faith is. And the reason we’ve stopped doing these rather dull arguments is that no one gets converted by arguments. What apologetics tries to do is remove the roadblocks to faith. Sometimes [we] use arguments, but very often it’s simply explaining what Christianity is – giving people a new way of seeing things.”

“In the past, we tended to say it’s important to stress Christianity is right. Today it think it’s very important to stress that Christianity works – in other words, that it really can engage with experience and also with the deep questions of life that we wrestle with.”