The People Behind the Arguments
From C.S. Lewis to Alvin Plantinga — know the thinkers, their key arguments, and their best books. Being able to cite scholars by name gives your apologetics real credibility.
Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. The foremost Christian apologist of the late 20th and early 21st century. Has debated virtually every major atheist philosopher — Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett, Kagan, Atkins, Krauss — and is widely regarded as having won most of them on argumentation.
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Widely regarded as the greatest living Christian philosopher. His work on the modal ontological argument, the free will defence against the problem of evil, and his epistemology of religious belief (Warranted Christian Belief) transformed academic philosophy of religion.
Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Oxford and Cambridge. Former atheist who converted to Christianity after sustained argument with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. The most widely read Christian apologist of the 20th century. His literary training gave him an unusual ability to detect whether texts read like genuine history or like legend — the Gospels, he concluded, read like the former.
Distinguished Research Professor at Liberty University. The world's foremost expert on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Has surveyed over 3,400 scholarly sources — including atheist and agnostic scholars — to develop his Minimal Facts methodology: building the case for the resurrection using only facts accepted by virtually all critical scholars regardless of theological commitments.
Former Bishop of Durham, Research Professor at St Andrews. The foremost New Testament scholar of his generation. His eight-volume series Christian Origins and the Question of God includes The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003) — the most comprehensive historical investigation of the resurrection ever written, at 740 pages. A committed Anglican who takes both historical method and orthodox theology with equal seriousness.
Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University. Three earned doctorates. Has debated Richard Dawkins three times publicly — widely considered among the most effective Christian debaters on science and faith. His key insight: science and Christianity are not in conflict because science describes the mechanisms God uses; it cannot tell us whether God exists or what he is like.
Emeritus Professor of New Testament Studies at St Andrews. His Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006) transformed Gospel scholarship by demonstrating that the Gospels are rooted in specific named eyewitness testimony. His God Crucified (1998) established the "divine identity" framework — showing that the New Testament includes Jesus within the divine identity of the one God of Jewish monotheism without abandoning monotheism.
Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. A leading philosopher of mind and philosopher of science. His Consciousness and the Existence of God (2008) is the most comprehensive argument that the existence of consciousness is the single most powerful evidence for theism currently available. His work on the soul, substance dualism, and the philosophy of mind has been enormously influential.
Co-author (with Norman Geisler) of I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist — one of the best-selling apologetics books of the 2000s. Founder of CrossExamined.org. Known for making complex philosophical arguments accessible to general audiences, particularly on university campuses. His CRIMES acronym (Cosmology, Reason, Information, Morality, Evil, Science) provides a memorable framework for the cumulative case for theism.
Former Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge, then ordained as an Anglican priest. Fellow of the Royal Society. One of the most respected voices on the integration of science and faith in the 20th century. His key insight: the universe is not only rationally intelligible (the foundation of science) but also rationally beautiful — and both features are better explained by theism than naturalism.
Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Western Michigan University. Expert in epistemology, philosophy of science, and historical evidence for Christianity. His entry on "Miracles" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and his Bayesian analysis of the resurrection are among the most rigorous academic treatments of these topics. Known for bringing the tools of formal epistemology to bear on historical questions about the Gospels.
Associate Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University. His The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (2010) — at 718 pages — is the most thorough application of standard historiographical methodology to the resurrection question ever published. Has debated leading sceptics worldwide including Bart Ehrman, John Shelby Spong, and Richard Carrier.
Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College. The leading contemporary expositor of Thomistic-Aristotelian philosophy and natural theology. A former atheist, his conversion was driven by intellectual engagement with Aquinas. His book The Last Superstition is a sustained argument that the New Atheism is philosophically illiterate — it attacks a straw man of theism rather than the God of classical theology.
James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. A former evangelical Christian who lost his faith and became an agnostic. The most prominent popular-level sceptic of New Testament reliability. Know his arguments well — you will encounter them. Importantly, he affirms the historical existence of Jesus, the crucifixion, and the disciples' genuine belief in the resurrection, while denying the resurrection itself.
Former Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford. The most famous popular atheist of the early 21st century. A brilliant biologist and science communicator whose philosophical arguments are generally considered weak by professional philosophers — even atheist ones. His "who designed the designer?" objection and his Boeing 747 gambit are important to understand and respond to. His debates with Lennox and McGrath are worth studying.
Director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge. His Signature in the Cell (2009) makes the case that DNA's specified information is best explained by intelligent design — not Darwinian mechanisms. Darwin's Doubt (2013) addresses the Cambrian explosion. Not a young-earth creationist — he accepts an old universe and old earth.
Director of Alpha and Omega Ministries. Professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary. The most prolific formal Christian debater alive — has participated in over 150 formal public debates with Muslim scholars, Mormon leaders, Jehovah's Witnesses, atheists, and Catholic apologists. His expertise in Greek and Hebrew makes him particularly effective on textual and Trinitarian questions. His debates with Muslim scholars are essential viewing.
Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford. Holds doctorates in both molecular biophysics and theology — a rare combination that gives him unique credibility on science-faith questions. A former atheist who converted to Christianity while studying at Oxford. His three-volume Scientific Theology and his responses to Richard Dawkins (The Dawkins Delusion, written with his wife Joanna) are essential reading.
Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. A Dutch Reformed convert to Catholicism. One of the most prolific and accessible Christian philosophers of his generation — over 80 books. His Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God (with Ronald Tacelli) provides the most comprehensive single-volume catalogue of theistic arguments. Known for making Aquinas intelligible to undergraduates and for his defence of natural law ethics.
Professor of Philosophy at Messiah University. The most rigorous philosophical developer of the fine-tuning argument. His version — using the likelihood principle and Bayesian reasoning — is considered the most sophisticated treatment of fine-tuning in the academic literature. He holds a degree in physics as well as philosophy, giving him the technical credibility to engage with multiverse proposals and quantum cosmology at a serious level.
Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at Edinburgh University. His Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (2003) — at 746 pages — is the most comprehensive scholarly treatment of early Christology ever written. He demonstrated conclusively that the "devotional explosion" giving Jesus divine status happened within the first two decades of Christianity — not centuries later as critics claim.
Director of Biologic Institute. His research on protein function — published in the Journal of Molecular Biology in 2004 — provides the most rigorous empirical estimate of the probability of a functional protein arising by random mutation: approximately 1 in 10^77. This research has become foundational for the design inference in biology. Formerly a researcher at Cambridge University's Medical Research Council Centre.
Director of Acts 17 Apologetics. PhD in Philosophy of Religion. A former atheist who converted to Christianity while in prison. His YouTube channel has over 900,000 subscribers and his Islamic Dilemma video series has been watched millions of times — making him the most watched Christian apologist on Islam in the English-speaking world. Known for his ability to present complex arguments in memorable, accessible ways.
Emeritus Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford. The most systematic and rigorous philosophical theologian of his generation. His trilogy — The Coherence of Theism (1977), The Existence of God (1979), and Faith and Reason (1981) — is the most comprehensive philosophical defence of theism in the analytic tradition. His Bayesian approach applies probability theory formally to the existence of God.
Author and speaker with Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru) for over 60 years. His Evidence That Demands a Verdict (1972) and More Evidence That Demands a Verdict (1975) were the first systematic popular-level compilations of historical and manuscript evidence for the reliability of the Bible and the resurrection. These books have introduced more people to the evidence for Christianity than perhaps any other apologetics works of the 20th century. A former sceptic who set out to disprove Christianity.
Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute. Holds PhDs in both Mathematics and Philosophy, and a ThM in theology. Developer of the concept of "complex specified information" (CSI) as a reliable indicator of intelligent design. His work applies information theory — the science of measuring information — to biological systems, arguing that DNA constitutes exactly the kind of specified complexity that only intelligent agents produce.
Journalist, novelist, and Christian apologist. C.S. Lewis credited Chesterton as one of the most important influences on his own conversion. His Orthodoxy (1908) remains one of the most brilliant and surprising defences of Christianity ever written — beginning from common sense and arriving at the Apostles' Creed. His wit and paradoxical style have influenced every major Christian apologist since. George Bernard Shaw, a lifelong opponent, called him "a man of colossal genius."
Former Director of the National Institutes of Health and former Director of the Human Genome Project — the mapping of the entire human genome. A former atheist who converted to Christianity after reading C.S. Lewis. His conversion story and his approach to the integration of faith and science are among the most credible available — he is not a creationist but an evolutionary theist who believes God created through evolutionary processes.
Mathematician, physicist, and Christian philosopher. Inventor of probability theory and the mechanical calculator. His Pensées (Thoughts) — published posthumously from fragments — constitute one of the most searching explorations of the human condition and the case for Christianity ever written. His famous "wager" is often misunderstood — it is not an argument for belief but a psychological analysis of why intelligent people resist believing what the evidence already supports.
Archbishop of Canterbury and Benedictine monk. Father of scholasticism and one of the most important Christian philosophers of the medieval period. His Proslogion (1077-78) contains the original ontological argument — "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." The argument has been debated for nearly 1,000 years and, in its modal form as developed by Plantinga, is still taken seriously by academic philosophers today.
Dominican friar and the greatest theologian of the medieval period. His synthesis of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian theology — contained in the Summa Theologica — became the official theology of the Catholic Church. His Five Ways remain the most influential arguments for God's existence in history. The Thomistic tradition he founded continues to produce rigorous philosophical theology today — Edward Feser is his foremost contemporary expositor.