Voted one of Christianity Today's 1995 Books of the Year! Reasonable, concise, witty and wise, Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli have written an informative and valuable guidebook for anyone looking for answers to questions of faith and reason. Topics include:

• faith and reason
• the existence of God
• God's nature
• how we know God
• creation and evolution
• providence and free will
• miracles
• the problem of evil
• the Bible's historical reliability
• the divinity of Christ
• the resurrection
• life after death
• heaven and hell
• salvation
• Christianity and other religions
• objective truth

Whether you are asking the questions yourself or want to respond to others who are, here is the resource you have been waiting for.

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Kreeft and Tacelli write in a lively and intelligent manner. Their train of thought is fairly easy to follow, althought it wouldn't hurt if the reader has a bit of knowledge of philosophical terms under her belt. The authors begin with a look at faith and reason. They note how both are vital, and that faith and reason can never contradict each other.

In the following chapters they tackle topics such as, Does God Exist? (they offer 20 arguments for the existence of God), The Problem of Evil, The Divinity of Christ, Life after Death, Objective Truth, just to name a few. Each chapter is followed by a number of discussion questions to help the reader digest and cogitate on what was just read. A bibliography is provided for those who wish to delve more deeply into each of the subjects presented. The authors confine themselves to the core beliefs common to all orthodox Christians. As a result, this is a book that can be read and used by all orthodox denominations and traditions.

One section I found particularly interesting was where they discuss how a person receives salvation by asking if a good pagan like Socrates could have been saved. Another good section (there's so many of them) is where they discuss free will in the chapter on evil. For example, they write, "the simplest argument for the existence of free will is observation of how we use words. We praise, blame, command, counsel, exhort, and moralize to each other. Doing these things to robots is absurd. We do not hold machines morally responsible for what they do, no matter how complicated the machines are. If there is no free will, all moral meaning disappears from language - and from life."

I highly recommend Handbook of Christian Apologetics for all who have ever yearned for answers to life's most important questions.

31 of 32 found the following review helpful:

Best Single Apologetics book - must for Christian libraryOct 28, 1999

I think the two books that best speak to a modern audience regarding the truth of Christianity are Lewis' Mere Christianity and Kreeft and Tacelli's Handbook of Christian Apologetics. They compliment each other well. If you know a hardened skeptic, Mere Christianity can get the camel's nose under the tent, and then Handbook can mop up any remaining questions. I had developed a curiousity regarding Catholic apologetics several years ago and an interest in Kreeft's work. I was excited when Handbook was released. I was not disappointed. Lucid, accessible and comprehensive. I read and re-read sections constantly. I have used the arguments for the existence of God many times and refer to The Handbook to answer questions of skeptics in real life and in on-line correspondence. A must for any Christian library. Can't praise it enough. If you like this but want more depth, you might want to read his Summa of the Summa. Very difficult but worthwhile. It's used to train priests in many seminaries.

104 of 119 found the following review helpful:

Excellent discussion book, but weak in certain areasAug 10, 2000
By Gromit Wallaby
This is an excellent book for discussion groups (includes great, thought-provoking discussion questions at the end of each chapter) and an excellent overview of Christian apologetics with a good list of recommended reading in the appendix. Also, the chapters on Hell and Heaven are perhaps the best I've read (even though the information in these chapters is based mostly on quotes from C.S. Lewis) On the downside, being that the authors are both professors of philosophy, I would have expected more information about reasoning, logical fallacies and the nature and limitations of proof. I think the majority of apologetic problems can be dealt with if people understood what consistutes a valid argument to begin with as well as the common fallacies BOTH believers and skeptics fall for. Also, some of the objections they grapple with in the book are dismissed a little too easily --- especially with the arguments for God's existence. While many of their replies may be effective for someone with little philsophical knowledge, they are often too simplistic for answering more sophisticated and philosophically-informed objections. This is a great introductory book, but readers seriously interested in apologetics and in answering intellegent objections to the Christian faith, will need to dig much deeper into these issues.

46 of 51 found the following review helpful:

A thinking book that is worth the readJul 28, 2000
By E. Johnson
Although I am not Catholic and did not agree with every one of the authors' conclusions, I must say that this book is a good overall defense of the historic Christian church. I appreciate that these men were Christian first and Catholic second, and so there were no real noticeable diatribes on the issues that could separate Catholics and Protestants. Their reasoning was extremely sound, in the vast majority of cases, and I have even used some of their information (i.e. 20 reasons for the existence of God) in lecture notes in a Christian apologetics class that I teach. A book like this and When Skeptics Ask by Geisler work well side by side on the old bookshelf, and it's a wonderful experience to compare the two books on a number of parallel issues. It's well worth the read, for both the Christian and the skeptic who has never challenged himself to compare his beliefs with the teachings of Christianity.

30 of 32 found the following review helpful:

Informative and engagingNov 28, 2006
By CDS "C"
This book is fairly comprehensive in scope, and yet detailed in presentation. The topics covered range from the nature of God to Salvation. Each topic is presented and then disected, and rational explanations, often step by step, are given as to why Christians believe it, and why it must be so.

The writing is very clear and engaging, and I found the book not only extremely informative but also enjoyable to read. I suppose you can read it straight through as I did or use it as a reference when questions arise.

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