This book is third in a trilogy dealing with Christian apologetics since the Enlightenment. It does not require familiarity with the author’s companion volumes in order to follow the argument. Central to Sell’s concern is finding an adequate starting point for Christian apologetics. After attempting to define what lies at the heart of the Christian claim, he deals with various historic attempts to provide a basis for persuasive evangelism among non-believers. This includes responding to non-realist and post-Wittgenstein objections to Christian language claims. Some readers may be familiar with the classic work of Avery Dulles on this subject, A History of Apologetics. If that work tended to place more weight on the Catholic thinkers, Sell is much more engaged with the Reformed perspective. A wide range of theologians and pastors are considered though Sell’s particular interest in British dissenting thought is evident throughout and P.T. Forsyth is obviously an important influence.

The work is detailed though never dull. Quotations are copious and there are over one hundred pages of endnotes. Even with such a mass of scholarly material Sell never describes the book as more than a ‘prolegomena’ to the apologetic enterprise. His concern is more with the method of apologetics than its content. There is little discussion of apologetic arguments themselves—the resurrection, historicity of the gospels, teleological argument and so forth. Instead he deals with the apologetic methods of, among others, Aquinas, Locke and Barth alongside the evangelicals Warfield, Van Til and Kuyper.

Sell stresses the important point that the heart of the gospel is not so much a problem of epistemology but a moral problem; ‘the Gospel on the early Christians’ lips was not about the cradle, but the Cross’ (33). It was not so much the incarnation but the atonement that fired their preaching. For this reason, a great deal of apologetic methodology has been faulty in starting out from the wrong place. By starting with the epistemological question ‘What can I know?’, some apologetics have been dangerously detached from the gospel itself. Locke, for one, limited the content of proper Christian belief by this epistemological starting point. In many of these matters Sell’s guidance is sure-footed.

In his account of biblical language Sell presents a rather unconvincing dismissal of inerrancy. He tries to distinguish between a special revelation from God and fallible Scripture; ‘we have the biblical treasure in earthen vessels’ (245). Given revelation through history and sinful authors, Sell assumes a fallible Bible. He does not deal with the analogy often drawn between inerrancy and incarnation. Just as God can be both incarnate as a person and without sin so the Bible can be both the written by normally fallible human authors and yet entirely without error. Furthermore, his case that our recognition of the Bible’s authority depends upon a work of the Holy Spirit rather than mere historical evidence has never been alien to an evangelical view of Scripture.

Sell establishes that there are three basic foundations for apologetics: the imago dei, the extra-ecclesial work of the Spirit and general revelation. He provides good evidence that the Calvinist doctrine of ‘total depravity’ was never intended to exclude common grace and the continuing function of the image of God in man. This explains his dismissal of Barth, Van Til and others who do not pay sufficient heed to these marks of common grace. This common grace provides a basic starting point for evangelism. Though not from a conservative perspective there is much that is readily useful for apologetics and this prolific author merits attention from evangelical readers.