The Augustine Way: Retrieving a Vision for the Church's Apologetic Witness

Christianity Today 2024 Book Award Finalist (Apologetics/Evangelism)

Outreach 2024 Resource of the Year (Apologetics)

What can we learn from Augustine about apologetics? This book shows how Augustine defended the faith in late antiquity and how his approach to engaging the culture has great significance for the apologetic task today.

The Augustine Way recovers Augustine's mature apologetic voice to address the challenges facing today's church. It offers a compelling argument for Christian witness that is rooted in tradition and engaged with contemporary culture. The book focuses on Augustine's best-known works, Confessions and The City of God, to retrieve his scriptural and ecclesial approach for a holistic apologetic witness.

This book will be useful for students, pastors, church leaders, and practitioners of Christian apologetics. It puts pastors and churches back at the center of apologetics, transcending popular contemporary methods with a view to a more effective witness in post-Christendom.

"This unique work offers an innovative approach to apologetics. . . . The result is a robust analysis of our current cultural moment with a confidence rooted in our past."--Outreach

Joshua D. Chatraw (PhD, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the Billy Graham Chair of Evangelism and Cultural Engagement at Beeson Divinity School. He lives with his wife and two children in Birmingham, Alabama.

Mark D. Allen (PhD, University of Notre Dame; DMin, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) is professor of biblical and theological studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virgina. He has been pastoring for nearly thirty years and currently serves as the pastor of Memorial Methodist Church in Appomattox, Virginia. He is the coauthor (with Joshua D. Chatraw) of two award-winning books, Apologetics at the Cross: An Introduction for Christian Witness and The Augustine Way: Retrieving a Vision for the Church's Apologetic Witness.