Review: The Ultimate Proof of Creation: Resolving the Origins Debate

Finally a review of this book!

Jason Lisle. The Ultimate Proof of Creation: Resolving the Origins Debate.  Green Forest, AK: Master Books, September 15th 2009. 254 pp.

5 out of 5

Purchase: Amazon

This book was very helpful in terms of learning Presuppositional apologetics.  The author Jason Lisle is an astrophysicist who have over the years written and taught a lot on Christian apologetics and creation.  He has done the church a great service writing this book.  How good is this book?  Before when people ask me for a recommended book on Presuppositional apologetics I recommended Greg Bahnsen’s book Always Ready.  I still recommend Greg Bahnsen’s work but now I feel I want to recommend this book by Dr. Lisle first since the author has done a good job breaking it down as simple and organized as possible.

This book consists of ten chapters and three appendices.  After a foreword by Ken Ham from Answers in Genesis and an introduction by the author chapter one looks at the nature of evidence while chapter two discusses resolving the origin debate.  Chapter three gives illustrations of the ultimate proof, chapter four on reasoning with the critics and chapter five on the procedure of defending the faith.  The book presents us Presuppositional apologetics as taught by Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bahnsen.  I appreciated the author using Scripture and sound theology to shape one’s apologetic methodology.  Sometimes people think Presuppositional apologetics is against evidence in of itself but that is not true.  Chapter six is helpful since it talks about the place of evidence in Christian apologetics.  Chapters seven and eight looks at logical fallacies and chapter nine “closes the loopholes” with putting it altogether while chapter ten looks at apologetics in the Bible.  After a brief conclusion the book has three appendices with the first one on hermeneutics of how to read the Bible and the final two appendixes are examples of how to answer the critics.

I really enjoyed how Dr. Lisle laid out the book.  I also thought the illustration was very helpful throughout the book especially during moments when it helps makes things more concrete since some of principles discussed can be quite abstract.  The content of the book is solid and the author lays things out in an organized and clear manner.  Having the examples of responses in the appendices was very helpful for readers to see it in action.

As a constructive criticism I wonder if chapter ten on “Apologetics in the Bible” might have been better as the first chapter in the book instead of towards the end.  Also I wished the book had discussion questions for the end of each chapter; but you can find a discussion guide on the blog Veritas Domain.

Overall a good book and one that I used for discipling guys in apologetics with my church.  I recommend it and I have also brought this book for others to learn about the subject of Presuppositional apologetics and how to refute things at the level of worldviews.  I give this a 5 out of 5.