The Apologetics of Jesus

What would Jesus do if he was alive on the earth now and facing the skeptics of our day? The same thing he did in the first century. And what was that?

This question is answered with great clarity in the new book by Norman Geisler and Patrick Zukeran—The Apologetics of Jesus: A Caring Approach to Dealing with Doubters.

I want to recommend this book for several reasons:

• No other book explains so thoroughly how Jesus interacted with doubters of all kinds.
• No other example of how to relate to doubt and doubters compares with the example of Jesus.
• This book examines the full range of methods Jesus used, including testimonial evidence, miracles, the resurrection, reason, parables, discourse, and prophecy.
• There is a chapter on “what Jesus would have said to those with a nontheistic worldview,” and whether he would have used arguments for the existence of God.
• The authors write with conviction that Jesus truly was a great thinker, and they document Jesus’ use of basic principles of logic and critical thinking.

This is a side of Jesus that many people know nothing about. Reading this book recently was an education to me, and a stimulus to return to the Gospels of the New Testament for a fresh read in light of these lessons.

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Note 1: A couple weeks ago, while meeting with Norm Geisler, I asked about the audience for his books. He said that the best-selling book out of dozens of publications is his textbook Christian Apologetics. This is a book I studied in the 1980s.

Note 2: I discovered while writing this post that Amazon has a Norman L. Geisler author page here.

Note 3: A related book that I read a couple weeks ago is How to Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History’s Greatest Communicator. This is a good supplement to The Apologetics of Jesus.