Book Review – Against All Opposition – Defending The Christian Worldview by Greg Bahnsen

A Needed Presuppositional Primer By Greg Bahnsen Himself!

Against All Opposition – Defending The Christian Worldview by Greg Bahnsen

Synopsis:

This book is a game-changer. It is THE apologetics manual from THE master apologist.

“We must not be satisfied to present Christianity as the most reliable position to hold among the competing options available. Rather, the Christian faith is the only reasonable outlook available to men.” — Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen

Based on lectures that Dr. Bahnsen gave to students in 1991, this book clearly and simply shows how to defend the Christian faith.

An apologetic methodology that claims Christians should be “open,” “objective,” and “tolerant” of all opinions when they defend the Christian faith is like a person who plans to stop a man from committing suicide by taking the hundred-story plunge with him, hoping to convince the lost soul on the way down.

No one in his right mind would make such a concession to foolishness. But Christians do it all the time when they adopt the operating presuppositions of unbelievers. There are no “neutral” assumptions about reality.

The starting point is the God of the Bible. The Bible begins with this foundational presupposition: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).

Against All Opposition lays out the definitive apologetic model to help believers understand the biblical method of defending the Christian faith. (Taken from American Vision page)

Review

This is a primer for those wishing to check out presuppositional methodology apologetics from one of the most well-known apologists, Greg Bahnsen. This review is coming from someone who has read and identified as a presuppositionalist for several years now so this review will be skewed in that direction.

To give a meta-overview, this is coming from lectures that Bahsen gave to students so the structure might not seem as full-fledged and complete as a primer would be. Gary Demar gives an introduction into the contents as well as the man. However, the book needed an Epilogue where it summed up the contents or encouraged the reader to check out more or something about the change in apologetics from 1991 to book publish. However the book just – ends. A discussion on other religious worldviews and then end. Even just a “thanks for checking it out” post-script would have been something.

So since the book is lectures the critique of flow and content might be a bit off. Still, the first part of this book (chapters 1 to 7) give an overview of presuppositionalism and the second part (chapters 8 to 11) are looking at competing worldviews. I would have liked to seem a bit more and a deeper dive into concepts of the first half. There is some very Bahsen takes on epistemology (how we know what we know) but it would have been even better to have a deeper dive into faith as an epistemology. There is also some lack of answering critiques against the method.

However, Bahnsen, per usual, establishes the point that a non-neutral start on both sides take place and to believe otherwise either gives up too much ground to the other person or is just plain wrong. The encouragement for the Christian to reason from his/her basic worldview in the theonomist understanding of the Bible being the necessary starting point is honed in.

The second part of the book is fine where the comparison between the Christian worldview and others is done – along with an internal critique on Islam, Mormonism, Hare Krishnas, etc. I can understand the help that it is and why it was done but it does seem to be a different book or could have been worked into the other chapters. Again, with this being lectures originally that may not mean a lot. And the critique of atheism (chapter 8) gives a lot of great points like the problem of induction, deductive inferences, and materialism critiques make a lot of great points.

I would put this up there with others for getting people interested and used to the presuppositional method. Others including:

Overall, a well-rounded orientation from a man who did amazing work and needed to write more but inspired many to fill the spot.