My Favorite Christian Apologists as I Got Started, and My Favorite “New” Apologists

              I am on summer vacation from teaching, and I was enjoying some time off, but I find myself reminiscing in this free time and realizing that apologetics has been a hobby of mine and a ministry that I feel called to for over 6 years now. I wanted to write a little opinion piece over some of the apologists that I started studying when I was younger, who I found more influential, and comment on some of the “newer” apologists that I have found on the way, When I say “newer” I mean that I stumbled across these apologists after I had started my own ministry, and even though I may quote them, they were not part of my original apologetics study. No disrespect to those on that list, I love all the people on this list and beyond.

              For my first few apologists that I learned from, I have to mention Lee Strobel. His “Case for” series of books are awesome works to introduce people to a litany of apologetic topics that are relevant for many of our students today. I know plenty of people would recommend going to the source and thankfully Lee provides these sources as he works, but plenty of his reports are secondhand, as he is an investigative journalist.

              My next apologist that I want to mention is Dr. Frank Turek, he is another one like Lee Strobel who is very accessible, and probably one of the first Christian debaters that I watched on Youtube (I believe it was the debate with him and Christopher Hitchens). He showed that Christians could be very confident (and in Frank’s case bombastic in my opinion) in our faith and that we have plenty of legs to stand on. He and his CrossExamined ministry take on all sorts of questions, even producing little 2 to 3 minute videos answering individual questions, but I think some of these can be a little hand-wavy in terms of calling the question answered.

              One more apologist that was great for my intro to apologetics, and is still a great source of information now, is J. Warner Wallace, who wrote a series of books that applied his experience as a cold-case homicide detective.

              Next I want to bring up 3 apologists at once, because I’m not sure I can rank these 3 in my mind, even with this arbitrary list. Dr. John Lennox, Dr. William Lane Craig, and Dr. Alvin Plantinga. These 3 academics have been around for decades, and I fell in love with their work, either in written or video form, as soon as I found them. I admit that I focus more on Craig and Lennox as opposed to Plantinga, because Plantinga (at least what I have read) goes into really heavy philosophy and loses me pretty quickly. Dr. Lennox I really enjoy for the accessibility reasons that I mentioned above, and that he pulls from his decades of experience and his learned history of Christianity in his writings and arguments. I have read most everything from Dr. Lennox and watched almost all of his lectures and debates (his AI lecture is on my list for a lecture of my own that I am preparing for this fall semester). He also has a similar testimony to mine. I found my faith challenged in my undergraduate career, and instead of falling into despair, my parents assisted me and provided books to read to help me determine if Christianity was true or not. Obviously I found the evidence to be in the favor of Christianity, otherwise I would not have devoted part of this past 6 years to writing this blog and participating in Christian apologetics online. Not sure what more I can say about Dr. Craig that other apologists haven’t already said. He is arguably one of the best apologists that we have alive today, so much so that atheists were reaching out to Christopher Hitchens to warn him before his debate with Dr. Craig. I would say these 3 apologists present a good standard for a mid to high level apologetics study for those getting into the field.

              Now for my musings over my favorite apologists that I stumbled across after I began Apprentice Owl Apologetics. First, I will be sentimental and give a shout out to the Christian Apologetics Alliance group on Facebook, as this group is where plenty of apologists congregate, and it is where I actually found one of the apologists I am going to mention on this list.

              Probably one of the first apologists that I found after I started Apprentice Owl Apologetics was InspiringPhilosophy, run by Michael Jones. He has a great series where he looks at the philosophical problems posed by atheists to Christians (could’ve guessed that from the title right?). He also takes a look at history of scripture to look at the claim that Jesus was copied from pagan deities, whether or not certain controversial holidays are pagan (Christmas and Halloween), as well as participating in online debates. Michael just had an awesome debate with AronRa about whether or not Christianity is dangerous.

              Next up I will mention these guys in triplicate, as they did an awesome video series of responses to the Friendly Atheist. Cameron Bertuzzi (Capturing Christianity), Jon McCray (Whaddo You Meme?), and Mike Winger. I will say I haven’t watched much of Mike’s work, but what I saw in the playlist was fantastic. Cameron is someone who comes to philosophical Christianity as a layman (he claims to not have a formal education in philosophy) and does a wonderful job bringing the topics of people like Plantinga and the higher levels of Craig down to those who are not formally trained in philosophy (like myself). He does his own videos and interviews academics like Craig as well as atheist academics like Graham Oppy. Jon runs a great channel where he calls out the inconsistencies with popular secular memes, as well as post videos telling about his own testimony and his takes on issues with culture and how Christianity should interact with the pop culture issues of today.

              Dovetailing with Whaddo You Meme, there are plenty of apologetic channels that not only deal with Christian philosophy, but other religions and their relation to Christianity and how those other religions are deficient. Probably the foremost person in my mind is Dr. David Wood of Acts17Apologetics, who takes his time to methodically dismantle the claims that Islam is true and to show how Christianity runs circles around Islam, both religiously, ethically, morally, and academically. I have also found Al Fadi of CIRA International and Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch that do some awesome work showing the problems with Islam and the double standard of media treatment of Christians vs Muslims.

              So I think I will wrap up my list here, but it is something that I thought would be a fun little jog through memory lane for me. If you have an apologist that I haven’t mentioned here that you think I would benefit from learning from, please comment and let me know! I hope that my own work has helped some of you out there and I would love to hear from you if it has. I’ll be back to regular writing soon. May God bless you and have a good rest of your day!