Douglas Groothuis (I confess I’ve never known how to pronounce his surname) has just published a massive textbook on apologetics – Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (Nottingham: Apollos, 2011).
I’m not likely to get to it any time soon, but there’s a brief interview here with Groothuis about the book.
Asked how he approaches apologetics in the contemporary culture, he responds:
‘The savvy apologist needs to understand the basic worldviews and epistemologies, and then get a good read on the approaches taken by individual people. You can only do good apologetics when you have some understanding of the perspective of the person or the group you are addressing.’
He also talks about the difficulty of communicating the deepest things in life over the internet compared with face-to-face conversations.
Asked how the book is different from what he might have written 10 or 20 years ago, he says:
‘One aspect that the years have added is a deeper sensitivity to people’s suffering and the necessity of prayer for all of the Christian life, including apologetics. You need good arguments, but it’s a matter of engaging people, listening to their heart’s cry, being filled with the Spirit, and responding in a Christlike way. I hope that I bring a little more wisdom, a little more maturity, and a bit more awareness of the sufferings and struggles of the world.’
And, the greatest challenge today in Christian apologetics?
According to Groothuis, ‘just doing it’.
4 comments:
As I'm of Dutch background, I can give you a tip on pronunciation. In the first part, the two O's are pronounced the same as words like 'moo' or 'shoot'. As for the whole name, most will say either Groot-house, or Groot-heis. The real pronunciation is somewhere in between there, a sound which I'm told only native Dutch speakers can make.
i will buy this book...
but, for goodness sake, get rid of that erroneus cap 'I' in 'Biblical' :-)
Jake – thanks... that’s very helpful.
Brett – thanks... done. (And, obviously, I’m hanging my head in shame for letting that one slip by.)
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