Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 10:2 (Oct 2012)
Article: Book Review Douglas Groothuis, "Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith". Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2011.
Author: Craig A. Parton

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Book Review
Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2011.

Craig Parton

A book on apologetics that claims it is presenting a “comprehensive case for biblical faith” is certainly swinging for the fences. The work of Denver Seminary professor Douglas Groothuis in this regard, however, does not make it to first base due to having committed two unpardonable sins of apologetical omission. First, the book ignores the field of literary apologetics and the work in that regard of the most important apologists of the 20th century (J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and Dorothy Sayers). Second, Groothuis manages to also ignore legal or juridical apologetics completely and the contribution of lawyers to the defense of the faith over the past 400 years (nary a reference to the important contributions to this field by the likes of Hugo Grotius, Thomas Sherlock, Simon Greenleaf, Sir Norman Anderson, Edmund Bennett, Francis Lamb, Lord Hailsham, and especially John Warwick Montgomery).

As fatal and revealing as these omissions are, the problems go even deeper. The book comes off as a kind of love fest within the faculties of Biola University and Denver Seminary. The author himself, apparently unconscious of his strange obsession with the importance of his writings, cites to his own books and articles more than he does to those of Tolkien, Lewis, Sayers, Chesterton and Montgomery combined. This telling oversight may have been made necessary because this “comprehensive” 752 page case for “biblical faith” includes sections on such critical apologetical topics such as “The Spirituality of the Christian Apologist,” “Prayer and the Apologist,” and the importance of “hospitality and conviviality.” Groothuis reminds us more than once that “humility is the cardinal virtue of the apologist” (the martyred apostles probably wrongly thought the cardinal virtue was love of the truth), being sure to footnote to his own Quakerish writings on the subject (along with that of higher life evangelist, Andrew Murray). This emphasis on the personal life of the apologist has predictable results—Christ and what Luther calls the extra nos or wholly objective nature of the Gospel are hardly to be found in these sections that comprise monastic-type detours into the “deeper life” relating to the true motives of the apologist.

When the author does venture beyond the parapets of Biola or Denver (quoting someone other than J.P. Moreland, Craig Blomberg, and William Lane Craig, who between them are cited over 150 times in the book) his treatment can be disturbingly far off base, displaying little to no depth of familiarity with important apologists and their approaches.

For example, Groothuis prese...

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