Josh McDowell

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Josh McDowell : biography

August 17, 1939 –

Joslin "Josh" McDowell (born 17 August 1939) is a Christian apologist, evangelist, and writer. He is within the Evangelical tradition of Protestant Christianity, and is the author or co-author of some 115 books. His best-known book is Evidence That Demands a Verdict, which was ranked 13th in Christianity Today’s list of most influential evangelical books published after World War II., Christianity Today, October 6, 2006 Other well-known titles are More Than a Carpenter, A Ready Defense and Right from Wrong.

Method of apologetics

As a practitioner of Christian apologetics, McDowell’s writings have concentrated on addressing challenges to belief, questions posed by non-Christians, doubts about faith, and non-Christian religions. McDowell tends to present positive arguments to commend belief in Jesus Christ by emphasizing historical and legal proofs to establish the authenticity of the Biblical texts and the divinity of Christ.

In books such as Evidence That Demands a Verdict, The Resurrection Factor, and He Walked Among Us, McDowell has arranged his arguments by laying out a cumulative case of evidences, such as archaeological discoveries, the extant manuscripts of the biblical texts, fulfilled prophecies, and the miracle of the resurrection. In More Than A Carpenter he blended historical argument with legal arguments concerning the direct witness and circumstantial evidences for Jesus’ life and resurrection. He employed a similar line of argument in his debate titled ‘Was Christ crucified?’ with the South African Muslim Ahmed Deedat in Durban during August, 1981. – transcript of debate between Ahmed Deedat and Josh McDowell, 1981 McDowell claims that the "evidence for Christianity in the Scriptures is not exhaustive, but it is sufficient."Tennant, Christy,

Much of his evidentialist work is similar to the views of apologists such as John Warwick Montgomery, Norman Geisler, Gleason Archer, and Gary Habermas.

Other foci of his apologetics have included challenging the methodology, assumptions and conclusions drawn in higher criticism of the Old Testament and form and redaction criticism of the gospels. His work in this area has consisted of a popular summary of scholarly debate, particularly from Evangelical discussions about higher critical theories. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s his apologetic writings interacted with challenges expressed in popular books like The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, The Lost Years of Jesus, and the writings of the humanist George A. Wells.

He has also collated apologetic arguments concerning the doctrine of Christ’s deity as in Jesus: A Biblical Defense of His Deity. In two companion volumes he and his colleague Don Stewart have addressed popular questions and objections to faith concerning biblical inerrancy and Bible discrepancies, Noah’s Flood, and creation versus evolution.

McDowell and Stewart have also popularised the arguments of other apologists in the Christian countercult movement, particularly the work of Walter Martin, in the Handbook of Today’s Religions. In their criticisms of cults and occult beliefs McDowell and Stewart concentrate on doctrinal apologetic questions, especially pertaining to the deity of Christ, and pointing out "heretical" beliefs in the religious groups they profile which they consider to be unorthodox.

McDowell’s approach to apologetics falls under what Protestant theologians classify as "classical" and "evidential." In either of these approaches to Christian apologetics, it is assumed that arguments defending the Christian faith can legitimately be directed to both believers and unbelievers because the human mind is viewed as able to comprehend certain truths about God. Presuppositional apologetics, on the other hand, questions this methodology by noting that since unbelievers partially suppress and resist the truth about God (Romans 1:18), the problem of unbelief is also an ethical choice and not simply a lack of evidence.Frame, John M. Five Views on Apologetics, edited by Steven B. Cowan. Zondervan. ISBN 978-0-310-22476-1, p. 211.