Cultural Apologetics Video Lectures: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World

by Paul M. Gould

While interest in religion has increased in the twenty-first century, Western culture has grown increasingly disenchanted. Many--including many Christians--no longer perceive the world in its proper light. The world is viewed as mundane, ordinary, everyday, instead of deeply beautiful, mysterious, and sacred. Moreover, the church has grown anti-intellectual and sensate, out of touch with the relevancy of Jesus and how to relate the gospel to all aspects of contemporary life. In this disenchanted age, Christian wholeness remains elusive, blunting the church's ability to present a winsome and compelling witness for faith. As a result, the Christian imagination is muted.

Cultural Apologetics Video Lectures, along with its accompanying book, Cultural Apologetics, sets forth a model of cultural engagement, rooted in Paul's speech on Mars Hill, which details practical steps for re-establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination. The result is that Christianity will be seen as both plausible and desirable by those within modern Western culture, preparing the way, with the help of the Holy Spirit, for a genuine missionary encounter between the gospel and the contemporary world.

Session Titles and Runtimes:

1 - Paul at Mars Hill (31 min)

2 - What is Cultural Apologetics? (21 min)

3 - Disenchantment: Part 1 (24 min)

4 - Disenchantment: Part 2 (23 min)

5 - Reenchantment and the Awakening of Desire (21 min)

6 - Reenchantment and Returning to Reality (22 min)

7 - Imagination: Part 1 (21 min)

8 - Imagination: Part 2 (20 min)

9 - Reason: Part 1 (13 min)

10 - Reason: Part 2 (24 min)

11 - Conscience: Part 1 (22 min)

12 - Conscience: Part 2 (19 min)

13 - Addressing Barriers: Internal (21 min)

14 - Addressing Barriers: External (21 min)

15 - Home (24 min)

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Christian, Cultural, Faith, Christianity, Religion

DVD

Published March 12, 2019

Reviews

[Curby Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cultural apologetics is a relatively new field and this book, along with Dr. Holly Ordway's Cultural Apologetics, is a landmark work that anyone interested in the topic of apologetics should get and read carefully.

Paul Gould has his Ph.D in Philosophy from Purdue and teaches philosophy and apologetics. This book is a distillation of his thinking over the years on the topic of how Christians should evangelize.

He points out that we live in a "disenchanted" world and part of our role as Christians is to work to re-enchant the world by addressing imagination, reason and conscience.

I will be adding his material to the apologetics course I teach and recommending this book as widely as possible.

[Hank Pharis · Rating 2 out of 5]

(NOTE: I'm stingy with stars. For me 2 stars means a good book or a B. 3 stars means a very good book or a B+. 4 stars means an outstanding book or an A {only about 5% of the books I read merit 4 stars}. 5 stars means an all time favorite or an A+ {Only one of 400 or 500 books rates this!).

The more books I read on Apologetics the more I realize how multifaceted it could/should be. I was a little less drawn to this approach in contrast to some of the others but I still found a lot valid here. Here are a few quotes:

J.P. Moreland: “Cultural apologetics [is] the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying.” (14)

The term “cultural apologetics” has been used to refer to systematic efforts to advance the plausibility of Christian claims in light of the messages communicated through dominant cultural institutions, including films, popular music, literature, art, and the mass media. So while traditional apologists would critique the challenges to the Christian faith advanced in the writings of certain philosophers, cultural apologists might look instead at the sound bite philosophies embedded in the lyrics of popular songs, the plots of popular movies, or even the slogans in advertising .. (20)

I define cultural apologetics as the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying. (21)

One can be, for example, a classical apologist, an evidentialist, a cumulative case apologist, a presuppositionalist, or a Reformed Epistemologist and still employ the approach suggested in this book. (21)

I think the actual relationship between Christ and culture is more nuanced than any of these five postures, and to adopt one over another is to risk painting with too broad a brush. I do think, however, that sociologist James Davison Hunter’s “faithfully present within” is the most defensible approach or posture toward culture for the Christian as well as the cultural apologist. I adopt Hunter’s “faithfully present within” culture approach, augmented by Andy Crouch’s insight that Christians are called to be creators and cultivators of the good, true, and beautiful. (23)

The cultural apologist works to awaken those within culture to their deep-seated longings for goodness, truth, and beauty. (24)

The cultural apologist works to resurrect relevance by showing that Christianity offers plausible answers to universal human longings. And she works to resurrect hope, creating new cultural goods and rhythms and practices that reflect the truth, beauty, and goodness of Christianity. To summarize, cultural apologetics is defined as the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying, and it has both a global and local component.
… Cultural apologetics must demonstrate not only the truth of Christianity but also its desirability. (24)

How does our culture perceive the world? disenchanted materialists who are sensate (fixated on the physical, the sensory and the material), hedonistic, utilitarians. (28)

Four Characteristics of Our World’s Disnechantment: a. The “Felt Absence of God’
b. A Consumer Culture; c. Blindness and Foolishness; d. Idolatry. (54)

The first problem is that this modern scientific worldview is boring. A disenchanted world is without meaning, purpose, or objective values. There is no deep story that governs the cosmos or our lives. There is no Author, no play. Birth, life, death—that’s it.
(61)

A second pressing problem, highlighted by the prevalence of so-called contraband transcendence, is that we long for things the material world cannot provide, and these longings refuse to go away quietly. (62)

Only when we are united with God will we find true happiness. Cultural apologetics involves drawing attention to this universal longing for happiness and the fruitless efforts of humanity to attain happiness through self-effort or created things. (80)

The first step on the path to reenchantment is the awakening of desire. The next step is a return to reality. By “returning to reality” I mean that Christians ought to (1) see and delight in reality in the same way that Jesus sees and delights in reality and (2) invite others to see and delight in reality in the same way. (82)

A key task of cultural apologetics is cultivating and creating beauty. We must learn to utilize art, the imagination, and our innate longing for beauty to draw others to the beauty of Jesus and the gospel. (99)

Beauty calls us home. It awakens and transports us. Beauty—in nature, in art, in humans, in the divine—awakens a longing within us for a world where everything is as it should be, where everything fits together in the right way. This longing, once aroused, compels us. Beauty also transports us out of the mundane. (104)

Beauty is a divine megaphone to rouse a disenchanted world. (104)

Stories, especially good stories, can provide us, Tolkien argues, a means of escape, recovery, and consolation. Good stories command what Tolkien calls “secondary belief.” We escape from our primary world and enter a secondary world through the imagination. While we are “in” the secondary world, we experience joy and sorrow, hope and fear, as if we were part of the story. When we put the book down or leave the theater, if the story has done its job, we should see reality afresh. Stories help “clean our windows” so that we see the familiar in its proper light as beautiful, mysterious, and sacred. (112)

Through stories, the imagination helps us see and delight in reality as Jesus does. …
Consider the stories that have been most impactful in your life. What is it about these stories that has captivated you, holding your attention? How do these stories imaginatively help you understand the world? In my own reading journey, I’ve experienced the power of story through Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which shocked me with the absurdity of evil. Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables showed me the high cost of redemption, while J. R. R. Tolkien’s Leaf by Niggle freed me to pursue the one “leaf” God called me to paint in life. C. S. Lewis offered rich portraits of spiritual realities through his Narnian tales. These stories, and many others like them, have been rich sources of imaginative soul food … We are too small to apprehend and understand all of reality from our singular point of view. As Lewis eloquently states, “But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. … Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”44 Stories—whether found in literature, film, painting, music, theater—enlarge us by helping us understand our place in the world. (112-113)

Tolkien argues that we long for fairy stories because they point us to an underlying reality, one that is more real than the primary world of our experience. “The peculiar quality of the ‘joy’ in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth.” Tolkien, Lewis, and many others would argue that this underlying reality is the gospel story. It is a story that is alive and inviting—a true story that underlies fairy stories. For the task of cultural apologetics, we can generalize this point even further. Many, if not all, good stories are good precisely because they point to the one true story of the world: the gospel. In the gospel, as in the very best fairy stories, we find what we long for: a magical world, life eternal, love unbounded, the defeat of evil, and a happy ending. And all good stories point us to Jesus, even if they do so indirectly. We are drawn to some stories over others because we intuit that they reflect reality, that they are somehow connected to another, ongoing story. Fictional stories prepare us to recognize the true story when we see it. They are windows to another world, beckoning us to look through for the One who offers us joy unending.
(113)

In Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot, one of the characters provocatively states that “beauty will save the world.” (116)

In the Confessions, Augustine refers to God as the “beauty of all things beautiful.” Christians believe that Jesus is both beautiful and the source of all beauty. (118)

Alvin Plantinga boils down the major stories in the West to three narratives: naturalism, postmodernism, and the Christian story. (206)

[Libby Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really excellent dive into apologetics that succinctly and perceptively analyzes Western culture while offering a Biblical perspective for interacting as Christ's ambassadors in a society that has become disenchanted with the idea of God. Based on Paul's manner with the Athenians in Acts 17, the approach of engaging different pillars of culture and using them as "planks" that lead one to the Gospel was refreshing and convicting, especially in light of the recent movement of the church toward conforming to culture rather than to Christ. The idea of cultural apologetics is that of conforming to Christ in all areas of life, including philosophy, the arts, and plain old work (which isn't so plain or old after all), in order that the world would witness the truth and the beauty of Christianity in the everyday - in every aspect of life.

(As a side note, I would make the case that cultural apologetics and traditional apologetics are both important and have significant, if somewhat different approaches to explaining and defending the Christian faith).

Cultural Apologetics was insightful, compassionate, and Biblical - I'm truly grateful to have read it on the recommendation of a fellow church member, and take the opportunity to recommend it to you, my friend, if you're looking to better understand how to live as an ambassador for Christ in our culture.

[Todd Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favorite apologetics book. It will become a required text in my Apologetics and Contemporary Issues class.

[David Bruyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive

An unusually clear synthesis of truth, goodness and beauty as apologetic arguments. Excellent summary of recent works on culture, too.

[Clemente_in_right · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Gould has done an excellent job of delineating both the joyful task of spreading the love of Christ and the cultural challenges facing Christ followers in doing just that. Using the apostle Paul's work in the city of Athens as described in Acts chapter 17, Gould lays out a model for thoughtfully engaging the people around us.

While this is a broad reaching book (the bibliography is over 12 pages in length), Gould is masterful at pointing discussion squarely to the question that matters: what do you make of Jesus Christ? Though this is a work of scholarly effort, Gould's ability to explain complex philosophical ideas makes this accessible even to those without a rich philosophical background.

Highly recommended for followers of Christ and for seekers looking for truth.

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

So often, it seems, Christianity is defined as what we are against, rather than what we are for, and we are depicted as angry, raging, antagonistic, and judgmental. Who would want to be part of that? The mission of cultural apologetics is to engage culture in a winsome and intelligent way, and to establish the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and inviting and satisfying. This is a fascinating and helpful book, that encourages ways to resurrect the relevance of Christianity and the hope that we offer.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: Contends that in our disenchanted post-modern world, the apologist needs to engage in a culturally aware apologetic that appeals to goodness, truth, and beauty.

One thing anyone engaged in Christian witness for any length of time in a western cultural setting will tell you is that the landscape has changed. While the message of the gospel has not changed, the culture in which the message is shared has. Paul Gould's one word description of that change is "disenchantment." From a world shot through with the presence and majesty of God, the embrace of materialism and naturalism as all-encompassing accounts of the world results in a sense of the absence and irrelevance of God, and a culture that is sensate, focused on the physical senses, and hedonistic, focused on our desires. I found this intriguing, particularly considering the growing fascination with dystopian apocalypses, and conversely,  with fantasy and alternate worlds, that might suggest a longing for re-enchantment or despair of its possibility.

Gould contends that in this context, there is still a place for apologetics, but not that of past generations, focused exclusively on rational evidences, although these still have a place in Gould's proposal. Gould contends for what he calls as cultural apologetics. By this, he means the "work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying (italics in text)."

The author believes that a cultural apologetic that does this appeals to a universal longing for truth, goodness, and beauty. It is an apologetic that appeals to the longing of truth through reason (voice), that appeals to the longing of goodness through conscience, and that appeals to the longing for beauty through the imagination. The aim of this to foster the awakening of desire (satisfying) and a return to reality (truth) that constitutes a "re-enchantment" eventuating in the decision to trust and follow Christ.

Gould focuses a chapter each on imagination, reason, and conscience, employing C.S. Lewis's approach of both "looking at," and "looking along," the latter considering the reality to which truth, goodness, and beauty point. The chapter on imagination draws upon Makoto Fujimura's Culture Care (reviewed here), that makes the case for how beauty may open the hearts of people to faith, exemplified in Masaaki Suzuki's recognition that the music of Bach is a kind of "fifth gospel" that has led to interest in or the embrace of Christianity among many Japanese. The chapter on reason contends there is a case to be made for recovering the lost art of persuasion and sounds at first glance the most conventional of the three. However, Gould moves beyond classic arguments to appeal to the plausibility structures and sacred cores of one's hearers. The appeal to conscience addresses the longings for goodness, wholeness, justice, and significance and seeks to demonstrate in practice and examples how Christianity has made the world a better place and why that is so.

Addressing barriers to belief is an important part of this approach. It includes the internal barriers of anti-intellectualism, fragmentation, and unbaptized imagination within the Christian community. It also involves the external barriers of the belief that science disproves God, that objects to the exclusivity of Jesus, that believes God is not good, and considers the ethic of the Bible archaic, repressive, and unloving. Gould offers brief responses to each of these barriers and then describes the "journey home" from initial enchantment through disenchantment to re-enchantment as we join the "dance of God."

One of the things I appreciated about this work amid the strains of anti-intellectualism in significant swaths of evangelicalism was the affirmation of intellectual leadership. He writes, "If we are to be strategic in our cultural apologetic, we must work to cultivate Christian leadership and a Christian presence within the halls of the academy. The perceived reasonableness and desirability of Christianity depends upon how effectively we accomplish this task" (p. 143).

I also appreciate the integrated appeal to goodness, truth, and beauty. It seems that we often prefer one of these to the inclusion. If reasoning about truth alone is not helpful, abandon it for beauty or goodness. Gould recognizes that to be human means we long for all three. Also, the posture of culture care, as opposed to culture clash assumes that people are drawn by desire rather than overcome by arguments.

Finally, Gould reframes rather than retreats from the apologetic task. It seems to me that this is vital in an age where many are not merely indifferent to Christianity but vigorously opposed, and willing to make a case against the Christian faith. He reframes apologetics in a way that challenges the church to live into its heritage: to abandon trivial banality for a rich artistic imagination, to abandon a slovenly anti-intellectualism for vibrant intellectual engagement, and to abandon moral compromise for a fragrant goodness. It seems to me this would be good both for the church and the world.

________________________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

[Spencer R · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Full review at SpoiledMilks, 10/21/20)

People need to see the good, the true, and the beautiful. But most of us live in a disenchanted world. Due to scandals, arguments, and lack of conviction, "the church's prophetic voice, once resounding with power on issues of slavery and human rights, is now but a whimper" (18). Many are failing to give a high view of God that changes us to really be more like Christ. In the land of YouTube, the church just can't compete when it comes to entertainment. But it was never supposed to.

Gould argues that we need to employ cultural apologetics, "the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that christianity is seen as true and satisfying" (21). Anyone can use this method, even normal folk like me. It operates on two levels:

1. Globally: pay attention to how the culture thinks and lives, and then we work to create a world that is welcoming, thrilling, beautiful, and enchanted (more on that soon).
2. Locally: We remove obstacles that prevent people from coming to Christ and offer positive reason to believe in him so that people will see Christianity as true, satisfying, plausible, and desirable (23).

We want need to show how living as a Christian is better and more desirable than not. Everyone wants truth, justice, beauty, and goodness. We resurrect relevance by showing how Christ answers our human longings. We resurrect hope by "creating new cultural goods and rhythms and practices that reflect the truth, beauty, and goodness of Christianity" (24). All good stories point us to Jesus, even if they do so indirectly. Fictional stories are windows to another world, beckoning for us to look through for the One who offers us joy unending. (113)

Recommended?
This was a good push toward thinking about how to influence within culture. While Paul does say the cross is foolishness (aka undesirable), Gould gives a helpful perspective on thinking differently about our faith and how we are called to live as Christians among our neighbors.

[Trevor Atwood]

This is an excellent book. It has given me several patterns of thought affirming Gods calling in my life into more creativity. I will return to Gould’s ideas often and recommend this work to anyone seeking to understand and speak Truth to the western culture.

[Kevin Thumpston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gould challenges the believer to speak into our disenchanted world. We must engage the mind, the conscience, and the imagination. This generation needs truth to be plausible and desirable. Such a great read.

[Hannah Dietrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I think Gould approaches the topic of apologetics from a fresh perspective, providing a method for helping direct people towards a longing for God first since that longing has mostly been discarded by our culture. Suggesting a progression from disenchanted to enchanted and eventually directed on the journey home to God, Gould gives steps for every person in ever profession and role in our society a means by which they can grow our culture to be receptive to the truth of Christ.

[Monte Hickingbottom · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a FANTASTIC book! Very culturally relevant, yet never compromises on the Scripture!

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed to realize that the "audiobook" for Paul M. Gould's Cultural Apologetics is actually series of lectures given by Gould, and not the full text of the book itself. I assume the content covered in the lectures is largely the same as the book, so not a huge deal, but still, know that this is a review of the recorded lectures and not the book itself.

Beyond that, I found this rather underwhelmed, for two reasons: first, it functions largely as synthesis of existing apologetics concepts (from thinkers like Andy Crouch, Ken Myers, and C.S. Lewis) but doesn't substantially build on the existing work. This is not necessarily a flaw, as having all the influences of the cultural apologetics school of though gathered and ordered together will certainly be valuable for some, but as I was already familiar with many of the books Gould quotes, more substance and fewer citations would have been appreciated.

Second, and more substantially, Gould's proposal of a "cultural apologetics" seems to be a combination of the firm confidence in reason's ability to access objectivity and absolute truth that marks conventional apologetics with a variety of sociological, philosophical, and scientific sources that complicate that very same confidence in objective reason. It's a weird marriage, not necessarily impossible, but certainly in tension.

What's frustrating is that I get the sense that Gould is either unaware, or discounting, the effects of that tension for his project. I've written before about the way certain evangelical scholars borrow from thinkers like Charles Taylor and James K.A. Smith to diagnose "our secular age" or the importance of liturgy for Christian formation but overlook or reject the epistemological implications of both of their projects. Of course, in these lectures, Gould cites both.

Similarly, in a strange section, Gould describes Alastair MacIntyre's After Virtue as "masterful", then promptly reduces MacIntyre's project to a diagnosis that "reason, virtue, and traditional notions of proper function no longer direct contemporary society" only to segway into the famous Benedict quote at the end of the book, only to segway into Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option, only to dismiss it as 1) not an effective way to change culture and 2) not "sufficiently missional". Gould: "Widescale withdrawal from culture shaping institutions is not a positive proposal for cultural engagement." Well, yes. That's the whole point. Dreher (following MacIntyre) is working from a fundamentally different understanding of the impact of modernity than Gould, and the BenOp is seeking (in Dreher's words, here) a "historically conscious, antimodernist return to roots, an undertaking that occurs with the awareness that Christians have to cultivate a sense of separation." There are good reasons to be critical of the BenOp, and good reasons to be critical of MacIntyre's project, but to fail to even acknowledge that it's working towards different aims from a different understanding of the church's relationship to modernity is a questionable choice, and I'm left wondering to what extend Gould has wrestled with MacIntyre, not to mention Taylor.

Finally, and this is neither here nor there, but if you took a shot every time Gould referenced C.S. Lewis, you'd be spectacularly drunk by the end of the fourth lecture, and dead of alcohol poisoning by the end of the lecture series.

[Brian Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read a lot of books on Christian apologetics, and this is one of the more enjoyable ones to read. That is a credit to Gould's writing style and the interesting nature of the book, which is an attempt to answer the question stated on page 15: "How does the gospel get a fair hearing in this day and age?" Gould defines "cultural apologetics" as "the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying" (p. 21). In short, Gould recognizes that Christians have some work to do before others will be willing to hear the gospel and consider that it's a plausible account of reality. In a "disenchanted" world in which Christianity isn't taken seriously, Christians must work at "reenchantment." The Christian apologist must use the "signs of transcendence" to awake those who have suppressed the truth about God. Such signs of transcendence include beauty, reason, and conscience. A naturalistic worldview cannot properly account for these things, though Christianity can.

There's much more to this book, but hopefully that will interest readers who are interested in evangelism and apologetics. This book should be read in conjunction with other books that provide sound defenses of Christianity and arguments for the existence of God.

[John Brackbill · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not really an audiobook. He gives lectures through the content of the book (in a halting way that makes it difficult to listen to at times). It was not completely clear to me how cultural apologetics differs from the other philosophies of apologetics. He claimed that it can work with all of them (classic, evidentialist, presuppositionalism, etc.). What is clear to me is that he has an overly positive view of the persuadability of spiritually dead people. There are helpful thoughts here if you are thinking theologically, but because he was not rooting everything in Scripture he often has an optimistic view of the reception of the gospel through the removal of obstacles that simply is not defensible biblically. But the gospel is not going to be "relevant" and the culture cannot be made receptive to the gospel. The gospel is relevant whether or not it is perceived to be so and fallen humanity will never be receptive to the gospel unless there is a work of grace by God through the word of grace. No doubt he would not deny this, but as far as I could tell by listening, this conviction did not inform the underlying fabric of argumentation in this book.

[James Tetley · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent summary of the issues addressing the church in the West. The challenges of living in a disenchanted, hedonistic and sensate culture, and the need to both show the reasonableness and the desirability of Christianity. The strength in this book is the apologetic emphasis on the imagination and conscience. Much of apologetics focuses on the reasonableness of faith and misses this second aspect of desire.

This is important, as I believe in today's consumer culture to show Christianity as desirable is far more important. The Christian faiths image is tarnished and so this is where much work is needed. Paul's model is very helpful, and has opened my eyes to a helpful model in bringing the gospel to our culture.

There is an accompanying study guide which I can strongly commend as the real work starts when applying it in one's own context, and the questions in the guide really help ground the book. I obtained a free copy at
https://www.twotasksinstitute.org/wp-...

[Rod Zinkel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Paul Gould’s Cultural Apologetics is a combination of some classical arguments for God, such as inherent morality in humanity, with contemporary approaches, such as addressing the paradigm of postmodernism. Primarily, Gould argues that Christians, today, need to be able to present Christianity as reasonable and desirable, contrary to what many non-believers might think of Christianity at present. Gould emphasizes how Christianity appeals to the universal desires for truth, goodness, and beauty. So believers should assert this. The author states the importance of doing this by engaging with culture. He defines cultural apologetics as “the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying” (21). The author acknowledges how influential culture is, and presents an alternative to the Benedict Option – working within it, rather than withdrawing from it. A very good book.

[David Chang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply loved this book.

This book outlines the framework for cultural apologetics and how as Christians, we are called to bring beauty, truth, and goodness to a disenchanted world.

Gould outlines each aspect of beauty, truth, and goodness and argues how the Christian faith brings fullness in all three of these aspects. Something I appreciated is how he doesn’t share on what Christians should do to reach a disenchanted world but how we should think and perceive. I will say that he doesn’t go into each aspect in a comprehensive way but he does bring some level of basic principle.

Probably will need to revisit some sections of the book like moral and reason as they were pretty dense for myself.

[Caroline Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! It’s helpful in explaining our culture’s problems with the gospel and how to reach people well, appealing to longings and desires rather than only intellect.
There may be a few things I don’t agree with and parts where the discussion of an “enchanted” world sounded a little like fluffy spiritual ideas, but I actually think the main ideas are true. The world is charged with the glory of God, we do long for something more than the basic physical things we can see. There is a lot more to our world than our culture likes to admit.
I also love all the examples from different works of literature! It was super fun to have points illustrated through stories I am familiar with.

[Ezechel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much needed reshaping of apologetics. I have used traditional apologetics before, but I was never a fan of its debate-to-win attitude. This concept of Cultural Apologetics is something I can endorse and something I can use. I'm still a fan of W. L. Craig's apologetics ideas, I just don't think they are useful (as presented) outside of academic debates. A more down to earth approach is needed in practice, even as we keep traditional apologetics as an organization system for reasoning in our minds.
I would recommend adding "Telling a Better Story" by Josh Chatraw and "Broken Signposts" by N. T. Wright to the reading list, to complete the curriculum for a guide to apologetics done in today's world, not apologetics developed hundreds of years ago in the study room of a monastery.

[Mana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this thought-provoking book which widens the typical understanding of apologetics to incorporate beauty and truth and goodness. I appreciate the author’s conviction that in our time, a merely reasoned and reasonable defense of the gospel is not enough. That many are rather questioning the goodness of God and whether Christian faith is a good thing at all. I might call his approach “pre-apologetics”. Gould calls us to be people who listen and recognize the cries within the hearts of those around us.

I also found this book challenged me to consider how I live, as a Jesus follower, “disenchanted” myself.

Really interesting book.

[J.J. Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audio-book version of this which was done directly by the author. This is a little bit of a different style of book in that it's not a book. It's actually a set of 15 lectures that Paul Gould gives on Christian Cultural Apologetics. However Gould is a gifted speaker and the lectures aren't remotely boring if you're interested in the subject. I enjoyed it so much, the next time I listen to this won't be in my car but at my desk taking notes so I can attempt to retain and apply more of it to my studies and personal evangelism.

[pianogal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked most of the one. I thought the first half was really good, and it ended strong. However, the middle got a little too academic for me. The author made some good arguments, but I would say that no one outside of academia would care. I didn't and I already love Jesus. He's not wrong, but it became dry and hard to follow. When this book is really good it's really good. The middle is just a little off for me.

[Peter Dray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great holistic approach to apologetics, engaging rationality, conscience and imagination. I'm absolutely convinced of the need for this approach today, especially amongst younger adults.

The only thing that stopped me from giving five stars was the sheer amount of CS Lewis quotes: I love Lewis as much as the next person but the book would have benefited from a wider range of voices encapsulating the same points that Lewis makes!

[Rachel Reid · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really didn’t like this book. I am not much of one to sit around and think deeply about philosophy (beauty, renenchantment of a disenchanted world, etc) and this book is definitely more philosophical than practical. I honestly thought the whole thing could have been under 100 pages. I know this is an unpopular opinion but if you aren’t a philosophy major or someone who enjoys philosophy, I’d skip this one.

[Laurent Dv · Rating 5 out of 5]

Show how christians can present Christianity as being attractive because it alone can quench our longing for rationality (making sense of things), beauty and good. As Gould states, he presents what cultural apologetics looks like as opposed to traditionnal apologetics (proofs for the existence of God etc) : it focus on making Christianity both plausible (or reasonable) AND appealing.

[Paul Pompa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cultural Apologetics

It was an enjoyable read. It didn’t feel as cohesive as many books I’ve read. This book helps me appreciate that Christian apologetics in general is more diverse than I appreciated. We have to not only demonstrate that we have the better story, we have to take that story out to others, we have to use that story to shape the things around us.

[Ming Chen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good; I listened to the lecture series version of this work. Gould takes the three classical virtues of truth, goodness, and beauty, and seeks to argue that a Christian apologetic must consider each one. Gould argues that apologetics often involves making Christianity plausible or believable, with the Christian being involved in re-enchantment. This idea is very C. S. Lewis-esque. I should probably read the text of this work.

[Jonathan Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a solid book with several good points. While I am not 100% in agreement with all of Dr. Gould’s ideas it did make me think. I did learn and many other people could learn from this too! Recommended