Bridge-building: Effective Christian Apologetics

by Alister E. McGrath

Rethinking apologetics in a changing world, where there are new needs and new opportunities, and where out approach has to be person-centred. A resource for evangelism and mission.

Genres: Christian Living, Christian

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 18, 1992

About the author

Alister Edgar McGrath is a Northern Irish theologian, priest, intellectual historian, scientist, and Christian apologist. He currently holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, and is Professor of Divinity at Gresham College. He was previously Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at King's College London and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford, and was principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, until 2005. He is an Anglican priest and is ordained within the Church of England.

Aside from being a faculty member at Oxford, McGrath has also taught at Cambridge University and is a Teaching Fellow at Regent College. McGrath holds three doctorates from the University of Oxford, a DPhil in Molecular Biophysics, a Doctor of Divinity in Theology and a Doctor of Letters in Intellectual History.

McGrath is noted for his work in historical theology, systematic theology, and the relationship between science and religion, as well as his writings on apologetics. He is also known for his opposition to New Atheism and antireligionism and his advocacy of theological critical realism. Among his best-known books are The Twilight of Atheism, The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine, Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, and A Scientific Theology. He is also the author of a number of popular textbooks on theology.

Reviews

[Laurent Dv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overall. Gives very practical tips for apologetics and witnessing (unfortunately quite unusual). Good criticisms of the major worldview that competes today with CHristianity : marxism, scientific materialism, feminism, relativism ... Good responses to the top objections against christianity (looks quite a lot like Tim Keller's Reasons for God) Bad treatment of Van Til's thought : he misreads him by saying that he told that there wasn't any point of contact for believers and unbelievers, it's just quite wrong ... VT told that there wasn't any point of contact COMMON to BOTH WORLDVIEWS but that it consists in the knowledge of God that every human has (by virtue of general revelation, through nature and man own constitution) but tries to supress, in vain.

[Kingsley Layton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really helpful and resourceful book. Not for the hard of thinking.