Announcing My New Book on Apologetics! A Book for Those of Us Who Believe the Resurrection Happened but Occasionally Need to Double-Check How to Spell “Apologetics"

Announcing my new book with B&H Academic, due early 2027

A Book Announcement: [Unqualified] Apologetics (B&H Academic)

Over the last few decades, apologetics has become increasingly specialized.

Walk into your local Barnes & Noble or pull up Amazon and you’ll see books on Classical Apologetics, Evidential Apologetics, Cultural Apologetics, Narrative Apologetics, Cumulative Case Apologetics, Presuppositional Apologetics, and more. At times a single book might include several of these side by side, comparing their strengths and weaknesses.

I think these books are thoughtful and helpful. Yet somewhere in the midst of all the labeling, some questions began forming in my mind: Why has the simple act of Christian witness come to feel so qualified? Do I need to have a Ph.D. to defend the faith effectively? Must I be up to date with all of the latest archaeological discoveries and philosophical arguments to do apologetics?

As I considered these questions, I returned to 1 Peter 3:15, the verse that’s guided Christian apologetics for centuries. There, Peter tells believers to be ready to give a defense for the hope within them and, curiously, he doesn’t attach an adjective to the word “defense” (Grk. apologia). He merely calls Christians to give a reason for the hope within them, and, what’s more, says that this hope is the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:3).

That observation eventually became the starting point for a book my substackless friend Travis and I have been working on for the past few years, which we’ve come to call [Unqualified] Apologetics.

The argument of the book is fairly simple: Scripture has a lot to say about apologetics. It shows us what we defend, why we defend it, and especially how that defense is carried out in the life of the believer, which we believe isn’t necessarily so philosophical, cultural, or evidential. This is to say, it isn’t qualified except by Scripture itself.

When we began to look at apologetics through what we understand as a “biblical-theological” lens, a type of “Lordship rationale” as we call it in the book, something encouraging appears, especially for what might be called the “everyday believer.” We began to see that apologetics doesn’t belong only to those who study ancient manuscripts or enjoy public debates (though it belongs to them, too!). Indeed, Peter seems to have something much more ordinary in mind. After all, Peter was writing to Christians who were living under pressure in their local neighborhoods. His instruction was that they live in such a way that people would notice their hope and ask about it. Their answer would then be a reason for that hope, which is that Jesus is alive.

It seemed that the original idea of apologetics was less about proving that Jesus is alive and more about assuming that He is alive.

This doesn’t mean that careful arguments (like the teleological argument for God’s existence) or historical evidence (like the Dead Sea Scrolls, which helps verify what is already true about the veracity of God’s Word) suddenly lose their value. Christians have always loved God with their minds, and the world is full of the witness to God’s power and nature (Rom 1:19–20). Many faithful scholars have served the church by exploring these matters with great care. It’s just that such things might not be “apologetics” in a 1 Peter 3:15 sense.

What’s more, a difficulty arises when the conversation about methods unintentionally creates the impression that defending the faith belongs mainly to specialists who have studied philosophy and science and anthropology and archaeology and whatnot. After more than two decades of pastoral ministry, I’ve seen up close how easily everyday believers can begin to feel that apologetics requires credentials they don’t possess. When that happens, Christians may never attempt to give the reason for their hope.

[Unqualified] Apologetics is our attempt to clear away some of that confusion. Our goal is to show that apologetics belongs just as much to the homeschool mom speaking with her children at the dinner table as it does to the astrophysicist discussing the heavens with a skeptical colleague, because both are called to give the same simple, message that Jesus is alive.

So, rather than beginning with modern schools of apologetics and comparing their strategies, we move in the opposite direction. We begin with the sufficiency of the ancient Scriptures, trace the defense of the faith through the storyline of the Bible, and then consider how those patterns might help re-center our understanding of apologetics here in the twenty-first century.

Our hope is that the book serves as a kind of reset. Insofar as we see it, we don’t think we need another apologetic method. What we need is renewed confidence that God’s Word is sufficient, and that everyday believers, filled with the hope of the resurrection, are already equipped through Scripture and salvation to give a reason for that hope.

The book is due in early 2027.

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