InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network
I recommend Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles? An MIT Professor Answers Questions on God and Science by Ian Hutchinson (and related videos) as a resource for personal questions, conversation, an interactive discussion group, and / or presentation preparation.Read more…
Ever wish you had a quick and thoughtful reply ready when you get a hard question about faith? Rick Mattson explores some ways to be prepared. Read more…
Does God have to prove himself? Read more…
One evening after doing an outreach event at a large campus in the Midwest, I was packing up my gear and a student approached me and said, “I can do good in society without God’s help. I don’t need God in order to be a good person and serve others.”Read more…
Let’s consider a common skeptic’s objection: “Religion is nothing more than superstition and ignorance.”Read more…
Sometimes in apologetic dialogue (making a case for Christian faith) we don’t have the luxury of extended conversation where we can explain our points thoroughly.Read more…
In Os Guiness’s recent apologetics book Fool’s Talk, what role does rhetoric play? Literary scholar David Parry draws on his knowledge of classical and Christian rhetorical traditions to unpack one strand of Guinness’s ideas about apologetics. Read more…
The book should be called, “Why we think it is ok for evangelicals to like Lewis.”Read more…
Summary: Guinness argues for the recovery of the lost art of persuasion that combines good apologetic work with evangelism and is aware of the many people Christians address who are not open to their message.Read more…
This collection of essays provides thoughtfully reasoned responses to the leading challenges to Christianity posed by the New Atheism.Read more…
How should Christians approach conversations about faith with atheists? At the Urbana Student Missions Conference, Rick Mattson examined common atheist arguments and argued for a holistic Christian response that includes intellect, care-giving, and friendship.Read more…
Summary: This book comes out of the world of academic research and proposes that the process of questioning our doubts as well as our faith builds bridges of understanding deepening both our exercise of reason and confidence in our faith.Read more…
Everything we say about the faith is potentially dismissible. At first this may seem a liability, but I think just the opposite. Read more…
The next question that needs to be addressed, then, is How does one find God? This moves us into positive case-making for Christian faith.Read more…
“Science is rational and based on reason. Faith is just the opposite. It’s basically irrational. So unless God proves himself to me scientifically, I’ll never believe in him.” How would you respond?Read more…
At the upcoming Urbana Mission Convention, I will be presenting a seminar called “Love Your Atheist Neighbor.” But who is my atheist neighbor? you ask.Read more…
Christians in university settings can all too often find in the church and in academe two cultures that lead us to discouragement. The most uptight Pharisees can miss Christ just as easily as the most ardent skeptics by failing to see the God that they have misdefined in the first place. Read more…
Summary: David Skeel argues that far from being a problem for Christians, the complexity of the world is in fact something best explained by the Christian faith. This book is helpful both for the person considering whether it makes senseRead more…
Apologetics Beyond Reason, by James W. Sire. This book maps a different apologetic approach from most rational apologetics, arguing for “signals of transcendence” throughout creation and in literature that point us to God, if we will see this.Read more…
In reviewing the science news sites, it was hard to get away from Eric Metaxas’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on fine-tuning and what it says about the likelihood of God, and from the host of responses to it. I don’t have anythingRead more…
In the incarnation, God is doing something which mankind could not do for himself – surrender, suffer and die in a perfect way. Read more…
How do you understand and invite others to interact with an argument which has become “classic” Lewis?Read more…
Introduction This is the second of a two-part series addressing the question of whether nature can be used as a Christian apologetic. Natural theology is a discipline that systematically explores the proposed link between God and nature. The traditional approachRead more…
Many books on apologetics do well with the arguments, but have little on how to present them. Faith Is Like Skydiving combines reason with rhetoric, clarity with intellectual depth. It provides a vast array of arguments and a host of imagesRead more…