Top 30 Apologetics Books (#24): Gordon R. Lewis, Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims

By Rob Bowman

Note: Dr. Rob Bowman continues his series on the 30 most important apologetics books in church history. See his earlier posts in the series in our archive.

#24 Gordon R. Lewis, Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims (1976)

The rise of differing apologetic methods and theories in the first half of the twentieth century was bound to result in the publication of textbooks surveying these competing views. The earliest seems to have been Bernard Ramm’s Types of Apologetic Systems (1953), drastically rewritten later as Varieties of Christian Apologetics (1962). The most successful such textbook in the twentieth century, however, was Gordon Lewis’s Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims: Approaches to Christian Apologetics. Lewis (1926–2016) taught philosophy, theology, and apologetics at Denver Seminary from 1958 to 1993. In 1984, Lewis founded Evangelical Ministries to New Religions (EMNR), a fellowship of such individuals and organizations.

Lewis’s book not only surveyed the apologetic methods of noteworthy modern apologists but also advocated integrating those methods. His integrative approach was consciously modeled on that developed by Edward John Carnell, whom we profiled earlier. After an introductory chapter, Lewis offered one chapter each on five apologists followed by four chapters on Carnell. The purpose of the book was to show that what Lewis called Carnell’s “verificational approach” brings together the valid elements of the other approaches. They are, Lewis said, “like separate pieces of a stained glass window” that Carnell “sought to put…back together” (176).

Lewis’s first apologist is J. Oliver Buswell Jr., whom he described as advocating “pure empiricism.” His approach, according to Lewis, uses “the test of objective evidence” (45). Next, Lewis examined “rational empiricism” as a system that employs “the test of objective evidence and logical thought-forms” (76). Lewis divided his attention in this chapter equally between [Stuart] Hackett and Floyd E. Hamilton.

In the following two chapters Lewis considered the “rationalism” of Gordon H. Clark, who used “the test of logical consistency” (100), and the “biblical authoritarianism” of Cornelius Van Til, who used “the test of scriptural authority” (125). Clark made logic primary and argues that the Bible provides the only logically consistent system of knowledge, while Van Til made the Bible primary and argues that our use of logic must be subordinated to the Bible. Lewis emphasized the differences between their two methods, which are indeed quite significant. Of course, Clark’s system is just as much one of “biblical authoritarianism” as Van Til’s.

Lewis turned next to the “mysticism” of Earl E. Barrett as an example of a system utilizing “the test of personal experience” (151). Warren C. Young is also cited at length as an advocate of this approach. These two apologists are not well known today, but they were evangelical professors at Midwest schools in the mid-twentieth century who emphasized personal encounter with God in their apologetics.

In the remainder of the book, Lewis expounded on Carnell’s approach and argued that it combined the strengths of the other approaches. In the appendix, Lewis profiled Francis Schaeffer, Bernard Ramm, C. S. Lewis, and several other apologists, showing that they took approaches similar to Carnell’s. Gordon Lewis’s irenic analysis has encouraged numerous Christians to learn from the contributions of apologists of varying methods.

Note: This series originally appeared in the Apologetics Book Club group on Facebook and was revised for publication as a book, Faith Thinkers: 30 Christian Apologists You Should Know (Tampa, FL: DeWard, 2019). The book includes an introduction, additional quotes from each of the 30 books, readings for each author, and a list of other recommended readings. For a free excerpt from the published book, please visit https://faiththinkers.org.

— Rob Bowman Jr. is an evangelical Christian apologist, biblical scholar, author, editor, and lecturer. He is the author of over sixty articles and author or co-author of thirteen books, including Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ, co-authored with J. Ed Komoszewski. He leads the Apologetics Book Club on Facebook.

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Helpful Resources

A Beginner’s Guide to Apologetics (a helpful overview of about a dozen apologetics arguments written by leading thinkers. Our own Paul Gould writes on cultural apologetics).

Did Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible.

Master Class: Can We Trust the Gospels? Evidence for the Gospels' Historical Reliability by Peter J. Williams (a five-part video series on the reliability of the Gospels).

If you’re looking for good reading recommendations, David Dockery has published his annual roundup of the best books of 2020.

For a nice list of free lectures in theology and biblical studies, check out How to Get an Advanced Bible Degree for Free.

Receive a free 30-day trial subscription to Zondervan’s MasterLectures. They have lots of great lectures available from leading evangelical scholars. You can listen to or watch the videos on your computer or phone, or on your TV through Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV.

Save 25% on an annual streaming subscription to Seminary Now. Use code FRESHSTART at checkout. There’s also a 7-day free trial.

From Peter S. Williams on Twitter: “Here's the first open access issue of the Nordic Journal 'Theofilos', a special Supplement issue on "Science, Natural Theology, and Christian Apologetics", to which I contributed several pieces and which I was privileged to guest edit.” https://theofilos.no/issues/theofilos-supplement-2020-1/.

See the trailer for Against the Tide, featuring John Lennox and Kevin Sorbo. “Against the Tide is a travelogue, an examination of modern science, an excursion into history, an autobiography, and more. But at heart, it is the story of Prof. John Lennox’s stand against the tide of contemporary atheism and its drive to relegate belief in God to society’s catalogue of dead ideas.”

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