“Philosophical Foundations For A Christian Worldview” is no doubt William Lane Craig and J.P Moreland’s magnum opus. This book gives a thorough treatment on a variety of different subjects that one can think of and defends philosophically the crucial tenets of Christian theology; Substance Dualism, The Existence of God, the logical coherence of the doctrine of The Trinity, the logical coherence of the incarnation of God in Christ, it refutes the logical and evidential versions of the problem of evil, and even defends the penal substitutionary view of the atonement (which as the authors said in the preface, was not in the first edition of the book but is new to the second edition). The authors do not address all of these in the order that I mentioned, but they do address them.
More than merely another Christian Apologetics book (which this undoubtedly is), I consider it to be a wonderful textbook on philosophy in general. It is by no means an easy read. They get deep into the weeds. I would not recommend this book to someone without already having a rudimentary level knowledge in philosophy. For me personally, some parts of the book were more heavy than others, and I think this can be contributed to how much I had mastered the topics under discussion. In fact, I think the book was more like walking up and down a hill. The first half was walking up and the second half was walking down.
The authors do a wonderful job of not assuming you understand the philosophical jargon, so they explain every single term before using them. In the Kindle version, these terms are always in boldface, alerting the reader that he needs to learn this word and keep it in mind for the rest of the subsection or chapter. This decreases the difficulty of learning the material by leaps and bounds, but it’s still a heady tome just due to the depth of the subject matters. You can’t really expect a philosophical treatment of the nature of time or the Trinity to be bedtime leasure reading, can you?
I do wish that there had been a section on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. I know that’s not really a philosophical subject like Natural Theology, metaphysics, the mind-body problem, etc. but it would have been a nice finishing touch on what looks to be a VERY robust defense of the truth of the Christian Worldview.
I especially loved that an audiobook edition of this was available. It allowed me to “Whispersync” my Kindle version with the audiobook version and listen while I read (something that, in my experience, helps me to learn better and retain information better than reading alone or listening alone accomplishes). I would love to see more academic level books get audio editions like N.T Wright’s “The Resurrection Of The Son Of God”, Michael Licona’s “The Resurrection Of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach”, and “Understanding Scientific Theories Of Origins” by Stephen Moshier, John Walton, Larry Funk, Robert Bishop, and Raymond Lewis. Especially since the Kindle version of that last one doesn’t even have Text To Speech enabled! Perhaps if the audiobook edition of “Philosophical Foundations For A Christian Worldview” does well, we can see more academic works get audiobook adaptations.
I give this book 5 stars without a second thought, and I think it ought to be required reading in every course in philosophy and Christian Apologetics.
