cover image Engaging Unbelief: A Captivating Strategy from Augustine & Aquinas

Engaging Unbelief: A Captivating Strategy from Augustine & Aquinas

Curtis Chang. InterVarsity Press, $12 (187pp) ISBN 978-0-8308-2266-9

Chang, a campus minister for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Tufts, M.I.T. and Harvard universities, presents a well-considered evangelical perspective on how to communicate the Christian message viably. In an age when the church's authority is no longer in harmony with postmodern society's embrace of relativism, Chang sees an ""epochal challenge"" to be overcome. He charges the church to meet it in the same fashion of Augustine's City of God and Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles, which he contends were written as apologetic missionary works--Augustine to the pagan culture and Aquinas to the Islamic world. Both theologians were well versed and comfortable in the larger culture of their audience, able to draw non-Christian readers in to the gospel story by using their own familiar cultural authorities (for example, Augustine quotes Virgil and other pagan sources, while Aquinas appeals to Islamic writers). Once they had engaged their audience, Augustine and Aquinas showed where their readers' cultures fell short, pointing to Christ as the answer. Chang suggests that in order to evangelize this postmodern culture, Christians must be able to creatively communicate and meet society at its current level, taking into consideration the visual culture of cinema, television and the Internet, or speaking to the growing fractures in families and relationships. Chang's reach back into Christian history is a thought provoking read for contemporary evangelical intellectuals who feel that the standard missionary methods have become outdated. (Nov.)