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Title: Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith
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Manufacturer: Doubleday
List Price: $21.95
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| Customer Reviews: |
| Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith by Doubleday Just a few words | | This book is a worthwhile read. It will take your basic apologetics skills one level deeper. The author really envelops the reader in the Old Testement in a way that is refreshing. Instead of looking soley at the teachings of Christ, the author includes how the Church today is a fullfilment of prophesy and in accordance with the whole book. The beginning of the book is helpful in dealing with other than Christian faiths, atheists and agnostics. | | Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith by Doubleday Sound reasoning - broad appeal! | Dr. Hahn has not just "done it again" as this book far exceeds what he's done in the past. As aptly summarized by other reviewers, the book is partitioned into three sections, each forming an eloquently persuasive apologetic appropriate for different groups: first, for unbelievers; second, for non-Catholic Christians; third, for Catholics themselves - though each of the book's sections has broad appeal and would prove beneficial to anyone reading them.
For instance, in one of the most surprising and impressive passages of the first part of the book, Hahn makes readily understandable the traditional proof for God's existence from motion (sic!). Though Aquinas calls this proof "the most evident," lately, various factors militate to render it "most obscure." Using the metaphor of a train with no engine, Hahn deftly shows that, no matter how long - no matter how many cars are added, the train will not move unless there is a "first mover" (namely, the engine or, with regard to motion in the universe, God).
I highly recommend this book for just about anyone - even high schoolers can benefit from it. It is useful for personal enrichment, for a course (in secondary or post-secondary school) on faith and reason, for an intro to Catholicism course, for parish adult-education programs, to give as a gift to friends and family members, and so on.
This is, by far, one of Dr. Hahn's best works - and that's saying much, since his other books are full of profound insights and fresh, helpful explanations of otherwise difficult doctrines. | | Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith by Doubleday For Beginners only | This book is ok if you are either not a Catholic and curious, or a Catholic who is absolutely clueless about why we believe what we do. I bought this book thinking it would help me in the field of apologetics (should I come across a protestant who attacks Catholic doctrine: perpetual virginity, the Eucharist, etc). What I found, about fifty pages in, was that this was really an intro (and a watered-down intro at that) into the beliefs of the Church. One would be much better off with Karl Keating's "Catholicism and Fundamentalism." Or, if you are really hardcore, either Henry Denzinger's "The Sources of Catholic Dogma," or Jurgens' "The Faith of the Early Fathers" in three volumes. Both Denzinger and Jurgens provide excellent, the best I've come across so far, historical content, while Keating will teach you how to argue what you believe (mostly by presenting Protestant arguments and defeating them with the Catholic). This combination of books will prove very helpful for the Catholic who wishes to defend his faith against vicious anti-Catholic Protestanism--not attack the latter. You may also wish to supplement this with "The New Jerome Biblical Commentary" by Raymond Brown et al.
All that being said, if you have never read anything at all about why Catholics believe what they do, this is NOT BAD. However, you can do better. | | Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith by Doubleday Reasons to Believe | | For any Catholic who desires to have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the faith, this is the book for you. | | Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith by Doubleday Great introductory text to apologetics | Dr. Hahn demonstrates his oft-cited debt to Dr. RC Sproul in this little introduction to Christian apologetics. Despite the Catholic/Protestant difference, the influence of Dr. Sproul on Dr. Hahn is evident in this work. Including, I think, a misunderstanding of presuppositional apologetics as a form of fideism. That mild criticism aside, this is a fine work and a solid introduction that could be equally useful for personal or group study.
Dr. Hahn provides the introduction by way of the common ground of natural philosophy and theology that all men share in common. With a basic understanding of the laws of logic, Dr. Hahn provides deep insight into the logic and reasoning tools for apologetics. In the second part, Dr. Hahn focuses on the areas of distinction that separate Catholic and Protestant and in the process provides the biblical tools needed to defend the Catholic faith with scripture. In the final portion of the book, Dr. Hahn returns to a theme familiar to any who have read his other works, the importance of covenant theology in understanding salvation history which reveals God at work in our lives and in the life of his kingdom, the church.
The text is easy to read and well organized as is common for Dr. Hahn's work. Like his mentor, Dr. Sproul, he has a gift for sharing complex issues in a way that makes them seem almost common sense. Always an enjoyable and rewarding study, Dr. Hahn has once again given us much food for thought on how we can more effectively share our faith. | | Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith by Doubleday Product Description | This book unravels mysteries, corrects misunderstandings, and offers thoughtful, straightforward responses to common objections about the Catholic faith.
Bestselling author Scott Hahn, a convert to Catholicism, has experienced the doubts that so often drive discussions about God and the Church. In the years before his conversion, he was first a nonbeliever and then an anti-Catholic clergyman.
In REASONS TO BELIEVE, he explains the "how and why" of the Catholic faith—drawing from Scripture, his own struggles and those of other converts, as well as from everyday life and even natural science. Hahn shows that reason and revelation, nature and the supernatural, are not opposed to one another; rather they offer complementary evidence that God exists. But He doesn't merely exist. He is someone, and He has a personality, a personal style, that is discernible and knowable. Hahn leads readers to see that God created the universe with a purpose and a form—a form that can be found in the Book of Genesis and that is there when we view the natural world through a microscope, through a telescope, or through our contact lenses.
At the heart of the book is Hahn's examination of the ten "keys to the kingdom"—the characteristics of the Church clearly evident in the Scriptures. As the story of creation discloses, the world is a house that has a Father, a palace where the king is really present. God created the cosmos to be a kingdom, and that kingdom is the universal Church, fully revealed by Jesus Christ. |
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