I recently read that Cardinal Avery Dulles passed away at age 90. While I have not read his book A History of Apologetics, apologist Kenneth Samples has written a helpful review of it posted at Amazon (scroll down to the first review). I used to work with Samples way back when (he's author of Without a Doubt and A World of Difference). Below is an excerpt from the review:What can present day Christian apologists learn from the apologetic masters of the past? The answer is undoubtedly quite a lot, but unfortunately works that carefully catalogue the history of Christian apologetics are quite rare. This rarity is likely due to the fact that the author of such a work must possess substantial scholarly competence in several academic fields, including theology, philosophy, history, culture, and even science ...
Consider the following five positive features of the book.
(1) Dulles does a masterful job of succinctly summarizing the life, key writings, and apologetic concerns and arguments of literally dozens of Christianity's major and minor apologists through the centuries ...
(2) The sheer number of thinkers that Dulles carefully surveys in his book is impressive. The reader will be exposed to virtually all of Christianity's important apologists of the past.
(3) Dulles effectively surveys the various historical eras and in so doing identifies central apologetic themes as well as evaluates apologetic strategy, development, and success ...
(4) Dulles for the most part writes in a quite readable style and often breaths life into some obscure figures of the past, this is especially true of his handling of the ancient church fathers ...
(5) This book is a rich resource in terms of excellent notes, bibliography, and indexes ...
It sounds like a great book, despite shortcomings noted by Samples. Read the rest of the review here.
1 comment:
Yes, this is a very helpful book. I was saddened to hear of his recent death.
My brief review can be found here at apologetics315.com.
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