Christian Apologetics in a World Community

Book excerpt: Christians have always felt a duty to explain and defend their faith, but in today's global village that duty can easily become a burden. What can Christians say to Hindus? to third-world Communists? to agnostic social or natural sciences? No creed or catechism can adequately deal with all the challenges to Christianity. What we need is a comprehensive model of the Christian faith, one that can meet widely varied challenges without compromising the gospel. After describing how Christians have done apologetics in the past, William Dyrness sketches a model for effective apologetics in the twenty-first century. He shows how his model relates to various non-Christian philosophies as well as how it speaks to many Christian concerns, including the problem of suffering.