Here is a list of books I've recently read:
Reasonable Faith (William Lane Craig)
Great book to show that there is no reason WHY a person cannot be a Christian, has nothing to do with faith or science, there is just no reason. Our faith is perfectly reasonable with no objections. This is a very popular book amongst apologists, and comes highly recommended to people new to defending Christianity, or wanting to show that the faith is, well, reasonable.
In Defense of Miracles (Geivett & Habermas)
As the title says, this defends the possibility that miracles happen, can happen, and likely have happened. Especially defending the miracles which are the foundations of the Christian faith. Such as the resurrection. This book shows that there is no reason to hand-wave off miracles as impossible. So it is mainly geared toward naturalists of course.
What Have They Done With Jesus (Ben Witherington III)
A great book expounding all the myths regarding Jesus, defending the Biblical account of Jesus, and debunking popular opinion, for example, that Jesus never existed at all, as well as all the crazy skeptic objections to the resurrection. Such as why the "swoon" theory is no good, or theft of Jesus' body, etc...
The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Greg Bloomberg)
As it says, it is a defense of the gospels as accurate history. That they do not contain signs of plagiarism, or myth, but are are explained best as being accurate historical recordings. It talks about in what order they were written, who the authors likely were, their sources, years of completion, and deals with contradictions and other complaints.
Who Made God (Ravi Zacharias & Geisler)
This is your basic "questions answered" book. It's not very big, but it tackles the types of questions you might be asked while defending the faith. A good book for beginner apologetics or just as a primer. But advanced skeptics may be harder to deal with.
The Case for Christ and also The Case for Faith (Lee Strobel)
Both books are very popular for beginner apologetics and come highly recommended. Strobel acts as a reporter in these books, traveling the country and talking to the top minds when it comes to tough subjects like the reliability of the gospels, miracles, resurrection, age of NT books, and many other subjects. I like these books because you read the opinions of dozens of great writers and apologists who are all alive and defending the faith today. And of course are highly trained scholars in each related field of research.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics (Peter Kreeft & Ronald K. Tacelli)
I'm just finishing this one, it is another sort of primer on apologetics, seeking to answer a lot of questions and objections to the faith. It has a very straightforward outline format that makes it easy to read. They lay out a claim of Christianity, defend it and explain it, and then list objections to it, with refutations to those objections. This book could be used almost like a reference book. It was very good and Kreeft has a lot of good insights into the faith. It is more philosophical then Who Made God and it gets a bit deeper into the faith. This book spends more time on debunking objections then making positive claims, so it is a good book for defense but not as good for making positive claims. All in all it handles all the subject matter very well. I recommend it.
Beyond these, I've gone through in a few novels just for a reading break. So I've got this one called Ride to Glory which is an older novel that defends creationism while debunking evolution. I'm quite sure it is out of date on their scientific claims and language. For example saying "mega evolution" instead of "macro evolution". The book is based on a mock courtroom trial which is supposed to be a re-enactment of the 1925 Scopes "monkey trial". Warren LeRoi Johns does a decent job of pulling out some of the crazy claims of molecules-to-man evolution and its problems. But hardcore evolution apologists would not be impressed I imagine.
I also read The Fourth Reich which is an "end times" novel covering the apocalyptic events as per Revelation. Some people would have problems with timing of events, and exactly what the events "mean" and are. But regardless, it is a novel, and a very good one I think. This is the 2nd time I've read it.
I also re-read the Lord of the Rings books and Narnia.
So moving on, I've also picked up some reference books along the way. Such as The New Strongs Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Everybody knows what that is about. And The Baker Encyclopedia of Bible People. This is a book giving references and details about any person in the bible, what verses their in, who they are related to, major events and so forth.
I've got Thayers Greek/English Lexicon of the New Testament for those Greek word studies, it goes hand in hand with Strong's numbers.
Let's see, I've got a new Nave's Topical Bible, for doing those ever-so-important topic studies. And finally a six-volume Mathew Henry's Commentary using the KJV.
I only own one book by a classic writer, and that is Pink's The Nature of God. Well, I don't know if you'd consider that classic, but you know what I mean, a dead guy. All the other books are from living scholars across the US and elsewhere, and most are professors at various seminaries and colleges. Willaim Craig at Biola and and J.P. Moreland at Talbot, for example. I don't have any books by Moreland, but he has a bunch of lectures from sites I link to later on.
So that about sums up my reading these past months. New books that just arrived which are my next reading are:
The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. This contains Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, A grief Observed, and The Abolition of Man. I hear all these are excellent reads! Peter Kreeft recommends Mere as the very next thing to read after the gospels when learning about Christianity, or studying it. Not to mention, as a 50 year old book or so, it is still in the top 10 of best selling religious (or Christian?) books. All these books in one volume some 738 pages long. I'm looking forward to this, I haven't read Lewis in a long time, if at all, maybe when I was a kid. And Narnia.
After that I also picked up Pilgrim's Progress in modern English because I don't have it yet. I think I've read the the abridged version, and the classic language version, but I wanted the updated version this time. Though I've got nothing against "thee"s and "thou"s!
Um, next comes Josh McDowell's The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict which is updated versions of both his two part series in one volume some 687 pages long. It is also an apologetic book. McDowell is pretty popular, I think it's a good match to go along with Ravi and Geisler and Kreeft.
Lastly I've got a little book also by Ravi Zacharias called Cries of the Heart. I love Ravi as a speaker, he is the most passionate speaker I have ever heard. If you aren't a Christian, he could convince to become one simply with his sincerity and passion for it!
He doesn't have a whole lot of books, but this is highly recommended in that it covers some emotional issues with humans and the heart, guilt, comfort in loneliness and so forth. I expect it will be a great book.
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With all that being said, I think it's safe to mention which Bible version I currently use. It is the ESV (English Standard Version). It is endorsed by the church I'm a part of (Harvest, http://www.harvestbible.org/), and it is also what my pastor uses. It is also endorsed by the likes of Dr. R. C. Sproul, Dr. Joseph F. (Skip) Ryan, John Piper, Joni Eareckson Tada, James MacDonald (from Harvest), Max Lucado, Dr. Ravi Zacharias, Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer, Dr. John F. Walvoord, and Steve Green. Plus many more. You can read their comments on the endoresments page here
You can read all about this version, their translation philosophies and so forth here.
They even call themselves the updated KJV, and really that is one of the markets of theirs, for KJV users to move in to (which I was). They state:
The English Standard Version (ESV) stands in the classic mainstream of English Bible translations over the past half-millennium. The fountainhead of that stream was William Tyndale’s New Testament of 1526; marking its course were the King James Version of 1611 (KJV), the English Revised Version of 1885 (RV), the American Standard Version of 1901 (ASV), and the Revised Standard Version of 1952 and 1971 (RSV). In that stream, faithfulness to the text and vigorous pursuit of accuracy were combined with simplicity, beauty, and dignity of expression. Our goal has been to carry forward this legacy for a new century.
To this end each word and phrase in the ESV has been carefully weighed against the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, to ensure the fullest accuracy and clarity and to avoid under-translating or overlooking any nuance of the original text. The words and phrases themselves grow out of the Tyndale-King James legacy, and most recently out of the RSV, with the 1971 RSV text providing the starting point for our work. Archaic language has been brought to current usage and significant corrections have been made in the translation of key texts. But throughout, our goal has been to retain the depth of meaning and enduring language that have made their indelible mark on the English-speaking world and have defined the life and doctrine of the church over the last four centuries.
Read the rest of the story here.
This will be just a quick recap:
www.biblegateway.com (For looking up passages. You can also get the bible toolbar for Firefox which lets you search BibleGateway from your browser, get it here.)
www.studylight.org (This site has everything and the kitchen sink! Look up passages in many bibles and reference books, cross reference everything, look up Greek and Hebrew words with concordances and meanings. They have study resources, commentaries, study outlines, just everything. You can browse for hours!)
www.e-sword.net/bibles.html (A download site for tools you can install in Windows)
Now the fun stuff! I listen to a lot of audio, lectures and apologetics and so forth, here are some of my favorite sites:
http://www.oneplace.com/downloads/ (Sermons you can listen to for free from just about every radio and popular pastor and speaker) James White and John Piper highly recommended.
http://www.sermonaudio.com/main.asp (More audio from sermons and speakers)
http://www.rctr.org/ (Apologetics, debates, lectures) This one is nice, listen to Phil Fernandez, William Lane Craig, Ravi. I pretty much exhausted this resource.
http://jcsm.org/1on1/NTBibleonMP3.htm (Here is the NT in audio. For those times when you need to know how to pronounce a word!)
And http://www.audiotreasure.com/indexKJV.htm for the OT.
That is about it for audio. I haven't exhausted all the audio on all those! So I haven't really looked for much else. But there IS some more audio, in this next section.
Here are some blogs and personal web sites and ministries that I visit on occasion. Some I read for fun, some have pretty good stuff, some have audio. Check it out:
http://www.apologeticspress.org/
http://aomin.org/
http://www.bethinking.org/index.php
http://www.evidenceandanswers.org/index.html (He's a good radio personality)
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/philosophy/virtual_library/
http://atheismsucks.blogspot.com/ (Fun to watch the antics with Atheists)
http://www.desiringgod.org/ (John Piper's page, he is somewhat hard to listen to, you have to really pay attention, if you are distracted, his monotone speaking will get lost in your activities.)
http://www.walkintheword.com/broadcast.aspx (James McDonald from Harvest. Their format changes sometimes, but normally you can always hear the latest sermons. But stuff in the
archive you have to pay for, or be a member I think. Check regularly and get the audio)
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/menus/articles.html (Some William Lane Craig
writings.
http://www.tectonics.org (This guy is a sharp and strait-forward apologist who takes no bull from skeptics. He has been criticized as being harsh to his opponents, but regardless, he debunks a lot of wacky theories and books and ideas floating around the skeptic community these days.
http://www.peterkreeft.com/home.htm (Last but not least, the guy I've been currently listening to a lot (and reading his book I talked about). He is actually Catholic too! But he is really good, I recommend listening to all his audio, and check out the writing as well. Especially his talks about C.S. Lewis (his favorite author), and his talks regarding Christianity in the Lord of the Rings, very interesting stuff. I plan on buying more of his books, especially the one he wrote on Heaven.
And finally, for discussing all things from faith to family, my current forum of choice is http://www.theologyweb.com where I troll around as "vigilante". I highly suggest anybody who wants to discuss your faith to go here. It is a pretty friendly environment, you've got people from most faiths there and most beliefs. They have Christian-only and Theist-only rooms for those times you just want to study with your brothers in Christ. But I like it there. If you are a creationist or YEC (Young Earth Creationist), you are in for some STIFF, and I mean STIFF opposition in trying to defend those views! You are most welcome to try.
You might notice I don't have any skeptic books yet, you know from the likes of Richard Dawkins, Dan Brown, or Sam Harris, etc... Normally when discussing the faith on this forum, I get enough skeptic input without having to read their books as well. But I suppose I will have to read them eventually, because they are so popular right now, such as A Letter to a Christian Nation. Or Dawkins The God Delusion. However I have read rebuttals of those books, so I have a decent idea of what's in them.
Maybe it's worth mentioning that I buy all my books off Amazon. I find their prices just great, shipping is often free, though sometimes the books are not altogether in perfect shape. You can also check out http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/home for resources.So with that, ladies and gents, I hope these resources keep you busy for months, as they have myself. I hope you learn something new and exciting about our Lord Jesus Christ!
