The Christian Reason
Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition
edited by Andrew Davison
Baker Academic, 2011
(169 pages, $25.00, paperback)
reviewed by J. Daryl Charles
Gathered together in this remarkably accessible volume are ten essays that reconsider the symbiotic relationship between faith and reason and underscore the role of human imagination in the apologetic task, while situating apologetics in the present cultural moment. Edited by Andrew Davison, tutor in doctrine at Wescott House, University of Cambridge, Imaginative Apologetics is an encouraging sign of renewed thinking about the Church's apologetic task. And surely the time is propitious for such renewal, given both the expansive growth of Christianity outside of Western culture and the unprecedented hostility within Western culture toward Christian orthodoxy. The contributors to this volume recognize that a proper exposition of the faith will always include an apologetic dimension. Confessional faith, after all, is a faith that convinces. The Christian apologetic is a reasoned, credible, and compelling narrative that is suffused with imaginative beauty. This narrative, moreover, will be constantly undergoing renewal and reconsideration, since it is ever adapting to the philosophical, political, and social contours of the culture in which it is
placed.
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J. Daryl Charles is the Acton Institute Affiliated Scholar in Theology & Ethics. He is the author or editor of twenty books, including Retrieving the Natural Law (2008), Natural Law and Religious Freedom (2018), and, most recently, Just War and Christian Traditions (forthcoming). He is also co-editor of Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God's Gifts for a Fallen World, Volume 3 (2020). He is a contributing editor to Touchstone.
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