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Curtis Chang’s Engaging Unbelief: A Captivating Strategy from Augustine and Aquinas seeks to answer the challenges of postmodernism by applying the methodology of two giants in church history.

Chang demonstrates the rhetorical effectiveness of Augustine’s City of God (400’s A.D.) and Thomas Aquinas’ Summa contra Gentiles (1260 A.D.) by showing how each theologian confronts the epochal threat of his generation. Chang outlines their apologetic strategy as follows:
1. Enter the challenger’s story.
2. Retell the challenge’s story.
3. Capture the story in the wider story of Christianity by exposing the challenging story’s “tragic flaw” or inadequacy.

Though Augustine and Aquinas faced different threats (Augustine’s was a culture turning hostile to Christianity and Aquinas’ was the rapid expansion of Islam), Chang argues that both utilized this method of apologetics. Of course, Chang does not leave us with history alone; he then shows how Christians can confront the arrival of postmodernism the same way.

Chang’s book is not an easy read. Even as a student who loves church history, I found some of the historical details unnecessary. It would have been more helpful for Chang to intersperse advice for our current challenges within the biographical chapters, instead of simply bookending those chapters with the practical.

Still, there is much to be commended in Chang’s work. He correctly identifies many of the problems of postmodernism, one of the features missing from many in the Emerging Church discussion.

Though he occasionally falls too far into the culture he is trying to reach (Is filmmaking really the key to reaching postmoderns? Is inerrancy a doctrine that can only arise in a modernist context, etc.?), Chang manages to strike a good balance between condemning everything about postmodernism and baptizing postmodernist thought in Christian lingo.

I would love to see a rewrite of this book because the world has changed substantially since it was published in 2000. Our collision with radical Islam on September 11 makes Aquinas’ confrontation with Islam all the more compelling. And as our world continues to slip into a post-Christian state (with evangelicals waking up to the fact that there are two kingdoms that should not be confused) we would be wise to take another look at Augustine’s testimony.

written by Trevin Wax  © 2007 Kingdom People blog

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