The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog

Defined as the intellectual defense of the Christian religion, Christian apologetics is a tradition with a long history. In general, it aims both to persuade nonbelievers of the truth of Christianity and to alleviate doubts in believers. To this end, apologetics relies in particular on rational or philosophical arguments to demonstrate the validity of Christianity.

In the period of early Christianity, theologians such as Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine presented defenses of their beliefs in the face of the older Jewish tradition (portraying Christianity as the fulfillment of that tradition) and against the dominant Greco-Roman culture that often persecuted Christians. In the later Middle Ages, after Christianity had become dominant, thinkers like Thomas Aquinas concentrated on arguing for Christianity’s superiority to the more recently founded religion of Islam as well as to the older religion of Judaism, using (as did the earlier apologists) philosophical reasoning derived from the Greek tradition.

With the rise of skepticism about religion in the early modern period, Christian thinkers like Blaise Pascal, Joseph Butler, and William Paley pitched their arguments to the newly secular intellectual culture, arguing that a supernatural belief system like Christianity remained viable in a scientific age. In the 20th century, the British writer C.