Book Review: On Guard by William Lane Craig

Pages: 286
Pub­lisher: David C. Cook
Year: 2010
Author: William Lane Craig

What an unex­pected sur­prise. This is a book I really wish I could have read when I first became inter­ested in apolo­get­ics, as Craig has writ­ten an extremely acces­si­ble and easy to under­stand guide to defend­ing and explain­ing the truth­ful­ness of the Chris­t­ian faith, as well as the rea­sons one might have for believing.

The first apolo­get­ics book that I ever read was Craig’s Rea­son­able Faith, and while it is a very good book on its own mer­its, it isn’t the most acces­si­ble book–it ini­tially had me scratch­ing my head at a few places. On Guard serves as not only an intro­duc­tion to many of the argu­ments found in Rea­son­able Faith, but offers a suf­fi­cient expla­na­tion of these argu­ments such that one could use them pre­sented as they are. This is not the defin­i­tive expla­na­tion of these argu­ments, but as of writ­ing I do believe it is the defin­i­tive intro­duc­tion to these arguments.

The book itself is laid out a lit­tle dif­fer­ently than Craig’s other works. As my fiancée pointed out while I was read­ing, this book would make an excel­lent intro­duc­tory text to a course on the argu­ments for the exis­tence of God (I think it would be espe­cially use­ful in church courses on the sub­ject). Illus­tra­tions abound (often com­i­cal), there are side pan­els which are used to explain terms and names, dia­logue boxes help to raise ques­tions one might ask, and lastly, at the end of each chap­ter there is a dia­logue tree which out­lines how most dis­cus­sions would go (or how they seem to go) when the argu­ments in this book are pre­sented in real life sit­u­a­tions (and seem to be mostly true in my expe­ri­ence, except where dif­fer­ent objec­tions alto­gether are presented).

With­out exam­in­ing the argu­ments in depth, Craig focuses on famil­iar ter­ri­tory, cov­er­ing what he nor­mally cov­ers in his pub­lic debates: such things as Leibniz’s cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment, as well as the Kalam cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment (for which Craig is quite famous). He like­wise cov­ers argu­ments con­cern­ing the fine-tuning of the uni­verse, and the basis of morality–can peo­ple be good with­out God? A chap­ter is devoted to evil and suf­fer­ing, with Craig mak­ing sure to dif­fer­en­ti­ate and address both the intel­lec­tual prob­lem of evil and the emo­tional prob­lem of evil (the prob­a­bilis­tic prob­lem of evil). Craig then con­cludes with a dis­cus­sion over the per­son of Jesus, a defense of the res­ur­rec­tion, and an expla­na­tion of the neces­sity of Jesus in the life of every­one. Between these chap­ters Craig offers us a look into his life’s jour­ney, sec­tions (espe­cially the sec­ond) which I found more inter­est­ing than I thought I would. It read­ily shows how God has blessed Craig and his wife, Jan, as they started their jour­ney to where they are now. The argu­ments are very well pre­sented, and eas­ily understood.

One thing I noticed — and this is my only worry — while read­ing is that the tone of this book is con­fi­dent, really con­fi­dent. This aspect of the book made me stop and think if it will poten­tially  do more harm than good. I find that Craig has very good argu­ments, but I’m not sure what might hap­pen if peo­ple come away from this book (which should be stud­ied, as Craig sug­gests) with con­fi­dence, only to present the argu­ments they’ve learned and encounter an objec­tion that hasn’t been cov­ered (Craig does a good job at cov­er­ing com­mon objec­tions, but they aren’t the only objec­tions). I mainly worry about peo­ple who are look­ing for “irrefutable” argu­ments. And, of course, my only other con­cern is that self-proclaimed apol­o­gists will take this book and hit athe­ists over the head with it, or even other Chris­tians. That is about as wrong a use of this book that could pos­si­bly be imagined.

This is an excel­lent intro­duc­tory text to the major argu­ments for the exis­tence of God. It is acces­si­ble, laid out very well, and the extra side­bars, dia­logue trees and illus­tra­tions are that much more use­ful in under­stand­ing what’s being pre­sented. I couldn’t imag­ine rec­om­mend­ing another book over this one to any­one who is “wet­ting their feet” in the area of apolo­get­ics. A very solid — and very rec­om­mended — effort from William Lane Craig.

Many thanks to the peo­ple at David. C. Cook Pub­lish­ers for pro­vid­ing a copy of this book for review pur­poses.

Related posts:

1. William Lane Craig: Kalam and con­tem­po­rary science
2. Book Review: The Shack by William Young
3. Book Review: God is Great, God is Good
4. Book Review: The Unaborted Socrates by Peter Kreeft
5. Book Review: “Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics” by Dou­glas Groothuis