Book Review: Kenneth D Boa and Rovert M. Bowman, Faith Has Its Reasons

Boa, Kenneth D and Rovert M. Bowman, Faith Has Its Reasons: Integrative Approaches to Defending the Christian Faith, USA: Inter Varsity Press, 2005. Paperback

ISBN: 978-0-8308-5648-0

Pages-658

Price- Rs.990.57/USA$22.73

The book, by Kenneth D. Boa and Rovert M. Bowman Faith Has Its Reasons; the title itself tells that the Christian faith is not unreasonable faith. The book consists 23 chapters divided in to six parts on 658 pages. Part one introduces the subject of apologetics, and includes a review of the thought of leading apologetics in Church history and an overview of the four basic approaches to apologetics. Part two through five present parallel treatments of each of the four approaches. Each part is divided in four chapters. The first chapter of the each part traces the roots of the apologetics approach and introduces the thought of five major apologetics (Chapters 4, 5, 12, and 16). The second chapter analyzes the method and its view of the six questions (1. On what basis do we claim that Christianity is true? 2. What is the relationship between apologetics and theology? 3. Should apologetics engage in a philosophical defense of the Christian faith? 4. Can science be used to defend the Christian faith? 5. Can the Christian faith be supported by historical inquiry? 6. How is our knowledge of Christian truth related to our experience?) (5, 9, 13, and 17). The third chapter examines the method’s answers to the six questions about Scripture, other religions, God, evil, miracles, and Jesus (6, 10, 14, and 18). The fourth chapter of the each part summarizes the methods and illustrates it with a simple dialogue between our two fictional non-Christian one of the four model Christian apologists (7, 11, 15, and 19). Each of these latter chapters also discusses the major strengths and weaknesses of the apologetic approach illustrated in the dialogue. Finally, part six discusses ways to integrate the four basic approaches (20, 21, 22, and 23).

Kenneth D. Boa is the president of Reflections Ministries. He has authored numerous books, and is a contributing editor to The Open Bible and The Leadership Bible, and the consulting editor of the Zondervan NASB Study Bible. Dr. Boa earned a BS from Case Institute of Technology, a ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary, a PhD from New York University, and a DPhil from the University of Oxford. He resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Robert M. Bowman Jr. (M.A., Fuller Theological Seminary; Ph.D. candidate, South African Theological Seminary) is the director of research for the Institute for Religious Research.

Faith has its reason is about much more than developing the intellectual discipline to answer abstract questions. Ultimately its purpose is to help bring people into a relationship with the living and true God. When someone asks to a Christian fellow, what he believes, so he should be ready to defense his faith. As a witness for Christ, Apostles, Church fathers, and several ministers of God from the very first century till present era preaching the same message which Jesus Christ had commissioned in Mt.28:18-20, in different context with different methods. I think that none of them individually might be known that the method individually used just was a precious pearl in their hand or the approach by which they face the challenges and contextualized the context to defend the Christian faith. These pearls grow up in different situations and minds of people, to which Dr. Boa and Dr. Bowman devoted their labor to pickup, these pearls known as classical approach (rational), evidentialist approach (empirical), reformed approach (authoritarian), and fideist approach (intuitive) and then respectively miscellany them together in a thread which exist by the name Faith Has Its Reason. In this reviewer’s assessment, Faith Has Its Reasons  makes an extremely useful apologetics textbook, ideal for students of the discipline. First, Boa and Bowman not only discuss the full landscape of apologetic approaches, but they also introduce the reader to the leading thinkers within each approach. In addition to this, they offer thorough “additional reading” recommendations at the end of each chapter. This book is not a competition between rival approaches; rather, it is a guided tour of a wide panorama by authors who clearly value the contributions of each approach. Finally, it is hard to find a book like this in size, scope, and completeness. The reader will gain a solid working knowledge of apologetic school of thought to reflect upon and possibly incorporate in their own approach to apologetics. At the end of the book, the authors attempt an integration of each method which I found helpful and balanced. The authors properly note that pure integration may not be possible, and might not be desirable either. I felt that the biggest strength of their integration approach was the belief that each apologetic method is useful for reaching certain people who hold certain objections or presuppositions, and that these apologetic approaches can be integrated somewhat with certain methods being more emphasized than others based upon the beliefs and views of the person we are in dialogue with. This is a thoroughly researched book which in my view, presents the best contemporary treatment of apologetic methods in a spirit of Christian love that will hopefully serve as a model for further development of respectful apologetic method in the future. Faith Has Its Reasons  is arguably the best book on apologetic methodology available to date and a must own textbook for serious apologetics students. While this book is not the book that I would recommend as a first apologetics book (unless you have a good theology background) to read, it is a thorough overview to those wishing to understand at a more complete level.