From the classroom to mainstream media, Christians regularly find their fundamental beliefs discounted by opponents who consider faith to be incompatible with reason. But in this apologetics primer, the late R. C. Sproul sets forth the core claims of faith to reveal just how rational Christianity truly is. Surveying the history and fundamentals of apologetics, this book demonstrates how reason and scientific inquiry actually support Christianity’s claims—thus equipping believers to defend the existence of God and the Bible’s authority.
Introduction
Section 1: The Apologetic Task
1. The Task of Apologetics
2. Apologetics and Saving Faith
Section 2: The Four Essential Principles of Knowledge
3. Introducing the Four Principles
4. The Law of Noncontradiction
5. Contradiction, Paradox, and Mystery
6. The Law of Causality
7. Hume’s Critique of Causality and the Basic Reliability of Sense Perception
8 Logical Positivism and Its Ghosts Today: Analogical Use of Language
Section 3: Natural Reason and Faith
9. Natural Theology and Science
10. Aquinas and Kant
Section 4: The Case for God’s Existence: Four Possibilities
11. Illusion
12. Self-Creation
13. Creation by Chance
14. A Self-Existent Being
15. A Self-Existent Universe
Section 5: God and the Philosophers
16. The God of the Philosophers and the God of the Bible
17. Kant’s Moral Argument
18. The Nihilists
19. The Psychology of Atheism
Section 6: The Case for Biblical Authority
20. The Authority of the Bible
21. Jesus’ Teaching About Scripture
22. The Trustworthiness of the Teaching of Jesus
23. The Testimony of the Holy Spirit
Conclusion
Notes
General Index
Scripture Index
