Last year Timothy McGrew, Professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University (and reader of and occasional commenter on this blog) was kind enough to ship us a hard-drive from the US filled with thousands of old theological works on the historical argument for the truth of Christianity. It is truly a gold-mine of information, which Matt gets himself routinely lost in and for which visitors to our home have been known to arrive carrying their own portable hard drives so as take away a copy.
At the time Tim told us he was aiming to get this material online so that everyone could access it. Along with his advisory board of William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, Craig Hazen, Robert Stewart, it seems he has made some progress as the Library of Historical Apologetics is now live and open for browsing and is really worth checking out.
Paraphrasing and splicing bits together from the Collection page:
The collection contains both one of the world’s largest catalogs of works in historical apologetics, the branch of apologetics dealing with the authenticity and credibility of the scriptures and particularly of the New Testament. The authors come from various denominational and educational backgrounds and would not agree with each other on all points of theology. Some are profound works of research and scholarship; others are brief works addressed to a non-specialist audience. But each makes a distinctive contribution to the literature of historical apologetics.
In addition to the library, the site features:
- Annotated Bibliography: Short descriptions of selected works.
- Spotlight Articles: Published monthly, these two page articles describe an author, book or apologetic theme [Very cool!]
- Quotation of the Week: Significant and pithy excerpts that make a poignant point and illustrate the subject matter of a particular author.
All works available at the library are in English and are part of the public domain.
HT Tim McGrew
Tags: Apologetics · Christian History · Craig Hazen · Gary Habermas · Historical Apologetics · Robert Stewart · Theology · Timothy McGrew · William Lane Craig16 Comments
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
Thanks for the plug, Madeleine! So far it’s all working well and we’re getting a fair amount of traffic. Be sure to check for the “Quotation of the Week,” which is updated (at least by your clocks) every Monday.
Thanks for the links!
I have often said that there are many, many apologetic arguments that have been set down by the Early Fathers of The Church containing great wisdom which are just ignored today; or else, a contemporary writer will “discover” a new truth which the Fathers wrote about hundreds of years ago but has been forgotten.
WORKS of the Early Church Fathers (which is also linked to on the Historical Apologetics site link you gave as well).
Good stuff!
Yes Richard I suppose it is much easier to just dismiss Christianity out of hand without bothering to read anything anyone has written in defence of it.
Oh this sounds so exciting (yawn).
I was not aware of this, so thanks for the pointer! I’m pretty unfamiliar with much of this, so look forward to getting into some of it, yawn or not.
I found this article by Denis Alexander interesting.
Maddy, I take it you have read up on every wordview on this planet? Or have you just dismissed some out of hand?
Not every worldview – the view of the strange guy muttering to himself on the street corner is probably fairly safe to dismiss out of hand but the worldview that large numbers of sane, intelligent, educated people profess they are convinced by – definitely. I want to understand them from the perspective of what their best and brightest have to offer through to their best critics and the responses of each to each other. I have to know how and why something works and whether it stacks up. Further I try, best as I can, to be open to the possibility I might have got something wrong. That way I can do my best to live by truth and evidence alongside my own sense and experiences of what is right.
Richard, by the same argument one could dismiss heliocentricism without examining it. After all we all dismiss some views without studying them so we can dismiss this one, right.
Some of Vox’s demotivators.
Courtier’s reply
Atheist reason
No true atheist
Can I come around to your place next weekend and copy them on to my harddrive?
Sure – email me and we’ll sort it out. Saturday will not work for us but Sunday afternoon would.
Cool, we can have some philosophical talks at the same time and face to face. Shall I bring some snacks?
I’ve just realised it is my son’s birthday on Sunday – I have some distractions going on at the moment. Can we make it another time – the following weekend or a weeknight? (We have something major on on this Saturday too.)
Snacks and discussion sound great though – we should invite some others!
Richard we could do Saturday 3 Sept? Glenn Peoples will be staying with us so it would be cool – anyone else who wants to come drop me an email.
[…] If we have a question on the historicity of the resurrection, Timothy McGrew is our first port of call; there is no one we would turn to before him on the subject. Tim is also highly regarded for his work on probability theory and on miracles – he is the author of “Miracles” for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. We have previously linked to his Library of Historical Apologetics. […]