Book Review: "Making The Case For Christianity: Responding to Modern Objections" -- By: Kevin E. Voss

Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 11:3 (Jun 2014)
Article: Book Review: "Making The Case For Christianity: Responding to Modern Objections"
Author: Kevin E. Voss


Book Review:
Making The Case For Christianity: Responding to Modern Objections

Kevin E. Voss

Concordia University Wisconsin

Making The Case For Christianity: Responding to Modern Objections. Edited by Korey D. Maas and Adam S. Francisco. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2014. 206 pages. Paper and ebook. $19.99.

Some accuse the Lutheran church of being guilty of quietism, having the propensity to sit on the sidelines, being content with its theology as it watches the world pass by. This accusation might be termed the “Lake Wobegon effect,” named for the fictitious boyhood home of Garrison Keillor in his popular radio show A Prairie Home Companion. Keillor refers to Lake Wobegon as “the little town that time forgot, and the decades cannot improve.” In contrast, many Christian denominations have been actively engaged in addressing challenges to the church posed by contemporary issues and concerns. Concordia Publishing House (CPH), the official publishing arm of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), has rightly perceived a need for more books in the field of apologetics, the defense of the Christian faith. The book, Making the Case for Christianity, contains seven topical essays authored by members of the LCMS, who “evidence a continuing recognition of the utility of Christian apologetics as both an aid and complement to the church’s evangelistic activities, perhaps not least because the cultural environment in which the church today finds itself differs so dramatically from that of Luther and his immediate theological heirs” (page 6).

The editors are Korey Maas, Hillsdale College, and Adam Francisco of Concordia University, Irvine. Maas notes in the preface that this work “cannot pretend to be a comprehensive defense of the Christian faith; nor, conversely, is it meant to be a general introduction to apologetics, surveying various lines of defense in the absence of any particular context” (page 6). Instead, the aim of the essays is to introduce readers to specific intellectual objections to the Christian faith and demonstrate how they might be answered, not to argue people into the faith (page 7).

Gene Edward Veith writes in the book’s forward that several themes occur throughout: the negative influence of historical-critical approach to Scripture; the perspective that apologetics is a work of the law, not Gospel; and an emphasis on the objective, historic facts of Jesus’ life on earth, his death, and the empty tomb. “This approach to apologetics—which derives from the great apologist John Warwick Montgomery (cited throughout these essays), a Missouri Synod Lutheran—is in accord with the Lutheran emphasis on objectivity. (For example, justification is not merely a subjective experience nor an intellectual conclusi...

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