Last month I blogged on the revised and expanded second edition of my book “True for You, But Not for Me”, which was recently released. Well, this month’s blog may seem like déjà vu! Early last week the UPS man hand-delivered a box containing copies of my even more recent book, coedited with philosopher William Lane Craig: Contending with Christianity’s Critics. This is the successor volume to our Passionate Conviction. Both of these books are part of a series that B&H Academic is publishing. Both books are compilations of presentations from the annual Evangelical Philosophical Society apologetics conferences,

The essays in Contending with Christianity’s Critics contain a number of arguments directed mainly at the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris). Another essay critiques Bart Ehrman’s views found in his best-selling Misquoting Jesus, which raises questions about the integrity of the New Testament text. (This essay was written by Parchment and Pen blogger Dan Wallace.) Other chapters cover new angles on arguments for God’s existence and difficulties with naturalism, the historical Jesus, and the coherence of Christian doctrine.

Have a look below at the table of contents and the endorsements (by Craig Hazen and J.P. Moreland). A good number of copies have been pre-ordered, and the book should be officially released any day. I hope you’ll find Contending with Christianity’s Critics to be a new and exciting volume to assist you in thinking through your faith as well as winsomely defending it.

Table of Contents

I. The Existence of God
1. William Craig, “Dawkins’ Delusion”
2. James Sinclair, “At Home in the Multiverse? Critiquing the Atheist Many-Worlds Scenario”
3. Victor Reppert, “The Argument from Reason”
4. Michael Murray, “Is Belief in God Hard-Wired?”
5. Mark Linville, “The Moral Poverty of Evolutionary Naturalism”
6. Greg Ganssle, “Dawkins’ Best Argument Against God’s Existence”

II. The Jesus of History
7. Robert Stein, “Criteria for the Gospels’ Authenticity”
8. Ben Witherington, “Jesus the Seer”
9. Gary Habermas, “The Resurrection of Jesus Timeline”
10. Craig Evans, “How Scholars Fabricate Jesus”
11. Dan Wallace “Misquoting Jesus? Bart Ehrman and the New Testament’s Reliability”
12. Michael J. Wilkins, “Who Did Jesus Think He Was?”

III. The Coherence of Christian Doctrine
13. Charles Taliaferro and Elsa Marty, “The Coherence of Theism”
14. Paul Copan, “Is the Trinity a Logical Blunder? God as Three and One”
15. Paul Copan, “Did God Become a Jew? The Coherence of the Incarnation”
16. Steve Porter, “Dostoyevsky, Woody Allen, and the Doctrine of Penal Substitution”
17. Stewart Goetz, “Hell: Getting What’s Good My Own Way”
18. David Hunt, “What Does God Know? The Problems of Open Theism”

Endorsements:

“What a fantastic idea! Assemble some of the brightest Christian thinkers and scholars and put before them the most difficult questions faced by Christian believers anywhere, and then turn them loose to answer those questions. The result: one of the finest collections of essays answering contemporary challenges to the Christian worldview anywhere in print. I consider this essential reading for anyone who wants to be on the cutting edge of Christian thought and apologetics.”

Craig J. Hazen, Ph.D.
Founder and Director of the Christian Apologetics Program
Biola University
Author of the novel, Five Sacred Crossings

“Contending with Christianity’s Critics is a tour de force. Copan and Craig have brought together an exciting, first-rate group of thinkers, and they have produced an important volume. An important feature of the book is the breadth of its coverage of issues not often addressed in similar works. I am enthusiastic about Contending with Christianity’s Critics.”

JP Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy,
Biola University, and author of The God Question