To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview

by Francis J. Beckwith (Editor), William Lane Craig (Editor), J.P. Moreland (Editor)

In a society fascinated by spirituality but committed to religious pluralism, the Christian worldview faces sophisticated and aggressive opposition. A prior commitment to diversity, with its requisite openness and relativistic outlook, has meant for skeptics, critics and even many Christians that whatever Christianity is, it cannot be exclusively true or salvific. What is needed in this syncretistic era is an authoritative, comprehensive Christian response. Point by point, argument by argument, the Christian faith must be effectively presented and defended. To Everyone an A Case for the Christian Worldview offers such a response. Editors Francis J. Beckwith, William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland have gathered together in this book essays covering all major aspects of apologetics, Preeminent in their respective fields, the contributors to this volume offer a solid case for the Christian worldview and a coherent defense of the Christian faith.

Genres: Christian, Christianity

396 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 2004

About the author

Francis J. Beckwith is Professor of Philosophy & Church-State Studies at Baylor University, where he also serves as Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Philosophy and Co-Director of the Program on Philosophical Studies of Religion in Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR). With his appointment in the Department of Philosophy, he also teaches courses in the Departments of Political Science and Religion as well as the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies, where he served as its Associate Director from July 2003 until January 2007.

Born in 1960 in New York City, Professor Beckwith grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, the eldest of the four children of Harold (“Pat”) and Elizabeth Beckwith. He graduated in 1974 from St. Viator’s Elementary School and in 1978 from Bishop Gorman High School, where he was a three-sport letterman and a member of the 1978 Nevada State AAA Basketball Championship Team.

In 2008-09 he served on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame as the Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow in Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics & Culture. A 2002-03 Research Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, Professor Beckwith currently serves as a member of Princeton’s James Madison Society. He has also held full-time faculty appointments at Trinity International University (1997-2002), Whittier College (1996-97), and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (1989-96).

A graduate of Fordham University (Ph.D. and M.A. in philosophy), he also holds the Master of Juridical Studies (M.J.S.) degree from the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis, where he won a CALI Award for Academic Excellence in Reproductive Control Seminar.

He has served on the executive committees of both the Society of Christian Philosophers (1999-2002) and the Evangelical Philosophical Society (1998-2003) as well as on the national board of the University Faculty for Life (1999-present). The 57th President of the Evangelical Theological Society (November 2006-May 2007) , Professor Beckwith served from 2005 through 2008 as a member of the American Philosophical Association’s Committee on Philosophy and Law. In January 2008 he was selected as the 2007 Person of the Year by Inside the Vatican Magazine.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A VOLUME OF APOLOGETIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF NORMAN GEISLER.

Co-editor Francis Beckwith wrote in the Introduction to this 2004 book, “This volume is a festschrift to honor the career of Norman L. Geisler, a philosopher and theologian who has been a teacher, friend and colleague to and/or important influence on all the contributors to this volume… in such diverse fields as theology, philosophy, biblical studies, jurisprudence and religion. This volume attempts… to touch on issues in order to present a defense of the Christian faith as a worldview.” (Pg. 13-14) He continues, “Because the editors of this volume believe that general revelation is a legitimate means by which human beings may acquire knowledge of theological truths, we have asked the contributors of this volume to provide arguments that may be understood and appreciated by those who do not share our Christian faith. Consequently, we do not share the conviction of some Christians that theological knowledge is impossible apart from special revelation.” (Pg. 16)

In the opening essay, William Lane Craig note, “Christians who depreciate the value of apologetics because ‘no one comes to Christ through arguments’ are … shortsighted. For the value of apologetics extends far beyond one’d immediate evangelistic contact. It is the broader task of Christian apologetics to help create and sustain a cultural milieu in which the gospel can be heard as an intellectually viable option for thinking men and women. It is not implausible that robust apologetics is a necessary ingredient in fostering a milieu in which evangelization can be most effectively pursued in contemporary Western society.” (Pg. 22)

R. Douglas Geivett says of the “Kalam Cosmological Argument” for God’s existence, “The philosophical argument that I do not consider here reasons… that actually infinite sets are impossible and that the universe must therefore have a beginning, for otherwise the events that constitute the history of the universe would form an actually infinite set. Since I have not been able to convince myself that actually infinite sets are impossible, I find that I cannot endorse this version of the kalam. The first problem is that the reasonable supposition that the set of all natural numbers actually exists constitutes a good reason to think that actually infinite sets of a certain type are possible. The second problem is that the more telling paradoxes that are generated by the supposition that there are actual infinites of this or that sort all happen to pertain to objects or states that differ from abstract objects in important ways.” (Pg. 64)

Paul Copan notes, “The atheist may push the Euthyphro dilemma further by questioning whether the very character of God is good because it is God’s character or it is God’s character because it is good… the naturalist’s query is pointless since we must eventually arrive at some self-sufficient and self-explanatory stopping point beyond which the discussion can go no further… it would appear silly to ask, ‘Why is the GOOD good?’ Rather, we have an ultimate ground for morality, and everything is good in approximation to this. Again, why is the ‘independent moral standard’ any less arbitrary a stopping point than God’s nature?... God, who is essentially perfect, does not have obligations to some external moral standard: God simply acts, what he naturally does is good… God’s goodness should not be viewed as his fulfilling moral obligations but as expressing the way he is.” (Pg. 121)

Winfried Corduan suggests, “much of the time---perhaps even most---the central issue is neither whether miracles have occurred nor whether miracles are even possible, but what one’s worldview is. The confirmed antisupernatural atheist… is under an intellectual obligation to deny the reality of miracles in general and specific miraculous events in particular. However… he is not within his rights to assume the atheist standpoint as normative for anyone else or… to insulate his atheistic presuppositions from the discussion.” (Pg. 169)

Ronald Nash asserts, “Few naturalists seem to realize how their relativistic approach to good and evil disqualifies them from being proponents of the problem of evil. Whenever they seek to raise problems for Christians by pointing to this or that instance of evil, they do so in terms that are not consistent with their naturalistic and relativistic understanding of things. For a naturalist, there cannot be any real, objective, transcendent standards of good and evil. The Christian worldview allows Christians to recognize the existence of real goods and real evils. The naturalistic worldview does not.” (Pg. 212-213)

Nash continues, “We may ask, ‘But why did God permit evil?’ However the relevant issue here is that such a reason need not be known or produced for the argument of this section… The rules of modern logic make the strategy of this argument successful, whether or not we can identify God’s reason. The point at the moment is that the claim that God has a reason for creating a world that now contains evil is logically possible. Since it is, the argument succeeds and the attempt to locate a contradiction at the heart of Christian theism fails.” (Pg. 217)

J.P. Moreland wrote in the Conclusion, “Not only are naturalism and postmodernism false, but … they are exposed as the shallow, destructive frauds that they really are. By contrast, the worldview of Jesus provides deep, satisfying, true answers to these questions… Still, many in Western culture have a suspicion that Christianity has been weighed in the intellectual balance and found wanting… nothing could be further from the truth… It has been inadequately defended and proclaimed and, thus, too frequently ignored. But that is changing, and this book is an attempt to set the record straight.” (Pg. 373-374)

This book will be of keen interest to those studying Apologetics.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good, semi-academic overview of Christian apologetics (ie a defense of the faith). I've read this book off and on for a couple years. Some of the chapters are excellent, some are a bit slower (probably why it took me awhile to finish!) but nearly all were thought-provoking.

I most liked Part 2 - an overview on the different arguments for the existence of God and Part 5 - a discussion of how Christianity differs from other religions.

I would recommend this, but if you're looking for a less academic book on apologetics, I'd probably recommend "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist" instead.

[Jonathan Fontenot · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great tool written by various trustworthy scholars who have seriously contended with assaults on Christianity. Great read.

[Roger Price · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary compendium of essays.