For two years now, we have used this book in our school’s Apologetics class, and the students continue to praise its usefulness as an introduction to the topic. If you have little experience with apologetics but want to take it seriously, I do believe this is the place to start.

If my own daughter had not been through an apologetics curriculum with me already, this is the book I would have had her read when heading off to college. While we cannot perfectly prepare our children for what is waiting for them at university, we do need to be faithful in providing resources that will help them think about what is coming their way.

I appreciate the direction and focus of Williams’ book. He asks and answers for the reader a reasonable question: are the four Gospels trustworthy? In his work answering this question, Williams points out incredible details in the text that I certainly had not previously noticed. We use this in my apologetics class. This is a great starting point for someone who is looking for more ways to have their trust in the gospels increased.

Yes, this is a large volume. But if you want to see the wide variety of ways that Christians have defended the faith once delivered, this is an excellent place to turn. Spanning the length and breadth of church history, each chapter is competently written by those who are experts in the subject covered. While the list of surveyed apologists is too lengthy to list here, there are very few highlights that aren’t included.

Many books on apologetics today borrow generously from Bauckham’s important analysis of the gospels themselves. This important book very effectively argues that the four gospels bear the hallmarks of eyewitness testimony.

For over a decade, this book has remained my single favorite on the topic of atheism and its self-defeating nature. I have my differences with Plantinga on issues like evolution and epistemology, but I continue to believe that the argument of this book completely savages a Darwinian materialistic account of life.

This book recommendation comes with a huge caveat: this is super advanced and may only appeal to those who are interested in analytic philosophy. The book is composed of very heady individual chapters, each of which is a creative attempt to argue for God’s existence using modal logic. Such chapters include: “The Argument from Colors and Flavors: The Argument from Consciousness,” “The Argument from (Natural) Numbers),” or “The Argument from Intentionality (or Aboutness): Propositions Supernaturalized.” If those chapter titles really get you going, then this may be the book for you!