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In this episode, Trent shares nearly 50 book recommendations that will help anyone better defend the Catholic Faith.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host Catholic Apologist and Speaker, Trent Horn. And today on my desk you can see I have stacks of books, because I want to share with you my recommended reading for growing as an apologist. If you want to learn how to better defend the Catholic faith, or better defend the Christian fundamentals of our faith, like the existence of God, the reliability of scripture, these are the books I want to share with you. In fact, I wrote out a list that’s going to be published soon on the Catholic Answers Online magazine. It’s actually a revision of an older list that I wrote in 2016. I made an Ultimate Apologetics Reading List in 2016, and what’s cool is if you Googled “Ultimate Apologetics Reading List”, it would come up even without adding “Catholic” in it. So I’m sure there were a lot of non-Catholic Christians looking for these kind of reading lists and came across the list at Catholic.com.
So this is a revision of that. I’m including books and titles that were released after that. I’m also changing it up, because I’m taking down that list and replacing it with multiple lists. Today, I’m just focusing on specific books written on apologetic subjects that are more recent, so these are books probably written in the last 30, 40 years at the latest. So this list I’m going to share with you today does not include classics. I don’t have stuff from Chesterton or Frank Sheed or St. Francis De Sales, Catholic Controversy. There’s a lot of great Catholics… I’m sorry, a lot of great classics in Catholic apologetics that you can read and learn a lot from. So I’m not covering the classics in this episode. I want to cover more contemporary apologetics and specific books written on that.
So from that list, though, I’m also not including books written on the opposing side of these issues. Now I do think if you want to learn how to defend and share our faith, there may come a point where you feel equipped enough and called to read works by those who criticize their faith, whether it’s atheists or Protestants. And there are books that I would say represent the best of those criticisms. I’ll save that for a future episode.
So just about Catholic apologetics books that were composed recently, like past 30, 40 years, I’m not including reference or standard work, so I don’t include the Bible or the catechism, but I do think if you want to be a really good apologist, just read a chapter of the New Testament and 10 paragraphs of the catechism every night. In less than a year, you’ll go through both and you’ll be really well-equipped, actually.
Or things like Ludwig Ott’s “Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma”, Denzinger… I don’t have those standard works. This is just specialty works on apologetic topics. So that’s what we are going to focus on today.
And I feel like I have to give a bunch of caveats because people will say, “Well, why was that book there? Because I don’t agree with… This author said this.” Just because I reference a book does not mean I endorse every single thing the author said. I found the book helpful, that is it. So just because the book is on this list does not mean I recommend everything in it.
Likewise, if there’s a book that I have left off today’s episode or my final list, it’s not because I think the book is bad or I hate it or something like that. There’s just limited amounts of space. There’s books that I think are really good; I just didn’t include them on the list. So don’t read into anything if there’s a book that you enjoy and I don’t mention it today. So let’s get started and blast through these wonderful titles.
First section I want to talk about are books on atheism. First one that I really like… And by the way, when I list these books, it’s in no particular order, and I’ve got about 50 of them here. So I’m not going to dwell a ton on each one. This isn’t a book report. But I just want to list them for you and briefly explain why I like them. So under atheism, I have “Five Proofs of the Existence of God” by Edward Feser, Catholic philosopher. A really great contemporary defense of classical theism. So he defends arguments that not a lot of Christian apologists defend, like the argument for emotion or based on St. Thomas of Aquinas or the argument from Universals based on Augustine, so I like that. Dr. Feser also has really good replies to classic objections like the problem of evil, divine hiddenness, and he engages both the new atheists and more critical atheists. So there’s one book on that subject I definitely recommend. I like “Five Proofs of the Existence of God”.
Next one, though, is, I will say this, it is a bit of a heavy read. It’s not super heavy. I will say which of these books on my list are advanced or not, so I’ll make you aware of that. But if you want a light, nice introduction to dealing with typical internet atheist slogans, I like “One Less God Than You” by John DeRosa. John does the Classical Theism podcast, very smart guy, but he’s written a book that’s very accessible to get you on the ground floor of answering these atheist slogans you’ll hear on the internet. So you might want to start with “One Less God Than You”, then move on to Five Proofs by Ed Feser.
The next three books deal with specific arguments that I found to be really helpful, and these are more recent books. I think they were all written after my 2016 list came out. First is “A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos” by Geraint Lewis and Luke Barnes. This is neat. This is a defense of the universe being fine-tuned, and it has a little bit on the fine-tuning argument for God, but it’s a defense the universe is fine-tuned for life. And one of the co-authors, Lewis, he’s actually an atheist. I talked about that in my fine-tuning video. I find the book to be very readable and very funny in parts, and it helps really break down complex physics, so I like “A Fortunate Universe” when it comes to fine-tuning. There is a more advanced book by Jason Waller out of Routledge on the fine-tuning argument if you want to go even deeper than that.
Next one is “God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning” by David Baggett and Jerry Walls. So David Baggett has a really neat moral argument for the existence of God, that is an inference to the best explanation, saying not necessarily that morality proves God exists, but that when we look at unique features of morality, the intrinsic worth of human beings, the fact that we have moral knowledge, moral responsibility, the best explanation of these unique moral features of the universe is a God who is perfect goodness itself. So I like Baggett’s approach, and he and Walls wrote another book called “Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality”. But I’m going to put in my recommendation the more recent book “God and Cosmos”. I’m actually working on some of their material to develop my own version, a human exceptionalism argument for the existence of God.
The next one is “How Reason Can Lead to God” by Joshua Rasmussen. Josh Rasmussen, he is a Protestant philosopher of religion, and he’s a super nice guy. I got to talk with him at Capturing Christianity’s conference last year, two years ago, and we had a great philosophy geek-out session. I really enjoy him. I interviewed him for the podcast while I was there. We talked about consciousness and the existence of God. “How Reason Can Lead to God”, a great book that explains his arguments. He has a really good contingency argument for the existence of God that I’m going to be developing more in a future book. More on that in a second.
The last two I want to offer are… They’re kind of more advanced. They’re not super advanced. They’re about the level of “Five Proofs” or Feser. But put on your thinking cap, though. Two very different approaches, by the way. So one of them is… Well, we’ll start with one more people have probably heard of if you’re on the internet a bunch, “Reasonable Faith” by William Lane Craig. This is originally a textbook for undergraduates to study philosophy or apologetics. So it’s kind of thick. I’m going to rank it as an advanced treatment. But this is a good treatment of William Lane Craig’s arguments for God, like his Kalam argument, his version of fine-tuning, his moral argument. If you want to study all of that and get it down, well, this is a good book to do it through there.
Probably the best defense of Craig’s version of the Kalam argument is in this book, “The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology”. I almost listed it, but the one I think is most helpful is the Kalam essay in here, though I think there are other works on Kalam that are up and coming that might be more helpful, like Andrew Loke’s work on the argument. I didn’t include his book in here yet, but I’ve liked what I’ve read so far, and it’s definitely going to show up in my new book on theism I’m working on. So I like Craig, “Reasonable Faith”.
However, I also probably would more recommend Brian Davies’ book, “Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion”. This is the textbook I use in my class on atheism at Holy Apostles College. I’d recommend the most recent edition. This is the fourth edition, most recent edition, and it’s a good defense and really uses classical theism. It’s different than how Craig approaches it, because Craig will have things like, “Well, God is timeless until he makes the universe, and then he becomes temporal. He’s in time.” And Davies defends the classical view, “God is simple, timeless, infinite being itself.” So his treatment of these arguments, I think, is very good. So I definitely recommend this if you want to learn apologetics, but also philosophy of religion from a Catholic perspective. So I’m just going to put these down here because I got a lot of other books up here.
All right, moving on. So you show that God exists. What else do we have to show, then? Not just any God, though. Well, which God do I believe in? Well, the Christian God. Why? Because Jesus is God incarnate. How do we show that? Well, here’s some books that I would recommend on the topic of Christ, and in particular, his resurrection from the dead. So if you want a nice intro to the topic, I would recommend, for the resurrection, “The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus”, Gary Habermas and Mike Licona. So this is a good standard beginner introduction to do an apologetic to explain why we believe that Jesus rose from the dead. So like I said, it’s a good introduction to that, to get you used to the historical argument. They use something called the “minimal facts approach”. I think I’ve talked about this a little bit on the channel previously. I think it’s helpful to defend the resurrection, but you also have to offer some arguments for the reliability of the resurrection narratives in the gospels, as well. So you want to be able to do that. I have some books on the reliability of the gospels I’ll share here shortly.
So actually, if you’re going to do that, along the case of the resurrection, I would recommend “The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ” by Brant Pitre. Now, this book was interesting. When I picked it up, I thought it’d be more about Jesus’s divinity and the resurrection. If I had to title it, I’d really call it “The Case for the Gospels,” that Petri does really good work showing we can trust the authorship, the dating, but also issues related to the divinity of Christ and his resurrection. It’s a good read with the Habermas-Licona book, “The Case for Jesus”.
But if you want to up your game, go to some more of the advanced stuff, I would recommend… I really liked this book. It’s definitely an advanced treatment. It’s a thicker, more academic work, but it’s well worth it if you go through it. It’s called “The Jesus Legend”. Maybe I should hold books here so that camera can focus in on it. Here we go. So “he Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition”. That’s how you can tell it’s a more academic-y book. And this is by Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd. And this is a good book, one of the few more academic treatments that deals with mythicism claims that Jesus never existed or that we can trust the reliability of the claims that are given to us in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Wonderful, well-researched book. I really enjoyed this. So “The Jesus Legend”, that would be advanced on the reliability of the gospels.
When it comes to the resurrection, though, if you want a higher level treatment beyond Habermas and Licona, I used to recommend Licona’s dissertation. It’s this big, thick, 500-page book based on his dissertation on the resurrection. It’s a good book, but now I think what I recommend is Andrew Loke, he is a philosopher, I want to say Hong Kong Baptist University, maybe? People call him the William Lane Craig of Asia. He does great cosmological arguments and great stuff on the resurrection and other theological… He’s Protestant, but has good stuff on a lot of these topics. And Loke has a book on the resurrection called “Investigating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ: A New Transdisciplinary Approach”. And what I like about it is it really draws from the critics: a lot of the new atheists, but also more of the atheist bloggers that do a lot of resurrection polemics. He does a really good job of engaging them systematically with really good research. So I definitely recommend that.
Oh, I forgot to mention something before, you might have had a thought. “Trent said the atheism stuff; why didn’t he mention ‘Answering Atheism’, his own book on atheism?” Because the next book I’m going to recommend is one that I wrote. So I’m not just ignoring the books that I’ve written. Some of them I think, “Oh, I think you should have all of them,” but if I had to compare them to others, there’s some I definitely think have filled a void that no one else had really written on, at least from a Catholic perspective. But the atheism issue, subject…
The reason I didn’t put “Answering Atheism” on this list is I still think it’s a good book, but I wrote it 10 years ago. It was my first book, in the process of doing research. Now, I feel like I can strengthen the arguments and make them even better. One of the books I’m working on now that will hopefully come out in about two to three years is called “The New Case for God”. And I’m working on a lot of the classic arguments with some of the newer research in the past 10 or 20 years to really strengthen them. So a lot of this… And I’ve grown in defending these arguments. I’ve modified them in the face of criticism. I’ve had engagements with Ben Watkins, Real Atheology. So I’m excited to do that. I think I’m holding off recommending “Answering Atheism”. This next book may actually replace “Answering Atheism”. I think “Answering Atheism” is a good book, but I think I’ve strengthened the arguments more, and I’m really excited to try that out in a book here in the next year or two.
However, when it comes to the next section I want to talk about, and that would be the Bible. I would definitely recommend if you want a good book on Bible difficulties… Now, I’m not going to toot my own horn. Haha. “Hard Sayings: A Catholic Approach to Answering Bible Difficulties”. I wrote this book because there were a lot of Bible difficulty books out there by Protestants. What about this alleged contradiction? What about this alleged historical inaccuracy? There was no book like that, comprehensive. There were some thinner treatments, more academic treatments, but not one that really comprehensively went through the most common difficulties before I wrote “Hard Sayings”. And in fact, this was not on my original list in 2016, because I think this book had just come out after I wrote that list. So I would definitely recommend that if you want to learn how to answer these Bible difficulties.
Next two would be both written by the same author, Craig Blomberg. He’s Protestant. He has a book on the reliability of the gospels in general, the synoptic gospels, and then a special book just on the reliability of John’s gospel. So that is a good resource that I would recommend there. So those are some good resources for the New Testament. Also, if you want to really be able to explain a lot of things you see in the New Testament, get a good study Bible with commentary. You can get sets, one for each book, but that can get pretty expensive pretty quickly. The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, New Testament, really good. I like the commentary in here. Scott Hahn, Curtis Mitch, so has good theological explanations and apologetic explanations. So I would recommend that for the New Testament.
For the Old Testament, if you want some good material on that, this is “On the Reliability of the Old Testament” by Kenneth Kitchen. Kitchen is an Egyptologist and this book does a great job of surveying the Old Testament, showing its historical reliability, that critics overstate their case when they say the Old Testament got certain things wrong or that it’s unreliable. So another recommend, “On the Reliability of the Old Testament” by Kenneth Kitchen.
Two runner-ups that I don’t know if I’m going to put them on my printed list, but I’ll mention them here briefly. There’s another Egyptologist, James Hoffmeyer. He’s got two books devoted just to passages in the Old Testament critics often say are false or fake history or never happened, “fake news”. One is “Israel and Egypt”, and that’s a defense of the story of the Exodus, but it’s not a fundamentalist work. If you are a more fundamentalist approach to scripture, Hoffmeyer doesn’t take everything… Literally, for example, the description of the numbers that people who left Egypt, he doesn’t hold that there were hundreds of thousands or millions of Israelites who left. He says the Hebrew word ‘eleph probably means a household or a clan. So there were maybe several thousand Hebrew slaves that left, along with other Egyptians. But he’s really good, knows his sources, so I like this book.
And like I said, when I recommend people, I’m recommending them because I think they have the best arguments. I think they have the best case. Not everyone’s going to agree with my assessment of that, that’s fine. But I think that they do. Israel and Egypt and he has a follow-up book to that called “Ancient Israel in Sinai”, which defends the tradition, the wandering tradition of Israel in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt. And if you want something like the New Testament study guide for the Old Testament, it’s not a commentary, but it’s a good explanation for different parts of the Old Testament, this behemoth of a book. Really good. Don’t be freaked out by it. Treat it like an encyclopedia. Go to different parts. When you read the Old Testament, read the corresponding passage here. You don’t have to start beginning to end reading this.
“A Catholic Introduction to the Bible”, John Bergsma, Brant Pitre, solid Catholic scholars. You will not be disappointed. Listen to this when I drop it, that is a, that’s a hefty book there. But obviously, Bible, Get a good commentary on that. And those are some good books to supplement reading the Scripture.
So now we’re going to move from defending the fundamentals of our faith, the existence of God, the resurrection, reliability of the Bible, things we hold in common with Protestants, to my favorite apologetic books that defend Catholic distinctives and elements of Catholic morality. So I’m going to start with books on scripture, tradition and authority.
A good introduction to that is “The Bible is a Catholic Book by Jimmy Akin”. It’s a good historical overview of the development of scripture. It also engages sola scriptura, the canon of scripture, so it provides a nice framework, especially to jump into some of these other more advanced apologetic works. So really like that. “The Bible is a Catholic Book”.
To go along with that, in understanding scripture, we want to understand tradition. This is a good book published by Ignatius Press, by the French theologian, Yves Congar, C-O-N-G-A-R, called “The Meaning of Tradition”. Now, Congar defends specific views that are not required of people about what exactly constitutes tradition, but overall, provides an excellent illustration and explanation of what sacred tradition is, taking some of the mystery out of it, so to speak, because we talk about how we have sacred scripture, sacred tradition, and the magisterium; this is a good book to help you understand tradition. It beats…
Now this is a great book: “Tradition and Traditions” by Congar, but it’s out of print. This’ll set you back probably like 400 bucks if you can find a copy. This one is a good summary and in print, so it’s nice when you can find that. So “Meaning of Tradition” by Congar. When we talk about scripture, also Catholics and Protestants disagree about the deuterocanonical books of scripture, like Tobit, First and Second Maccabees. Best book on that by far, or the best guy on that by far, is Gary Michuta. He is the expert on the deuterocanon; he has actually multiple books on the subject.
So my favorite book of his is a book we publish at Catholic Answers, called “Why Catholic Bibles are Bigger”. It’s a revised second edition. The editors of Catholic Answers did a great job organizing all of Gary’s info. He’s got a lot of it into just one book that methodically covers the whole debate. Because the deuterocanon can become technical to debate. But Gary’s book does a great job covering issues going all the way back to the Old Testament, to up to Bible societies and British Bible societies getting rid of the deuterocanon in the 19th century, so an excellent book in that regard.
So we talked about scripture, tradition… Magisterium. What do we believe about magisterium? One thing that’s helpful as a Catholic apologist is knowing, what does the church teach, and what does the church not teach? How do we interpret ecclesial documents? To help you with that, I would recommend Jimmy Akin’s book “Teaching With Authority”. The book is almost more of a reference book, so it’s not necessarily something you read from front to back, but you can go to different chapters and sections to look up how we understand the weight of theological documents. When are teachings infallible? When are they dogmatic? When are they dogmatic? Infallible, non-dogmatic? When are they teachings that require the ascent of the mind and will? When are they just permitting theological opinion? And this is important, because people who attack the Catholic Church will say the church contradicts itself in its teachings over time. To answer that charge, you have to be able to know how to read church documents. And so this is helpful, “Teaching with Authority” by Jimmy Akin, to help you do that.
An advanced treatment of the subject, then, of sola scriptura, a classic that I like, I think this was published back in the late nineties, “Not by Scripture Alone”, edited by Robert Sungenis, “A Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura”. It actually is an anthology, so it has a lot of different people in it. Robert Fastiggi, Pat Madrid, Joe [inaudible 00:22:32], Father Pacwa. I don’t know if this book is out of print. If it is out of print, it’s not hard to find a PDF copy online. I don’t believe that’s wrong. By the way, if the book is out of print and you just can’t buy it, I don’t consider it stealing to download a PDF copy if there is no other way to access the material. But I think you should be able to get a copy.
There have been Protestant books defending sola scriptura written after this that respond to some of the arguments here, so it would be nice to write… I don’t know, maybe I’ll do it, but it would be nice. Maybe we need a thicker apologetic book just on sola scriptura to cover that since this, but this still has really good arguments. There’s tradition, scripture, the canon, sola scriptura. Very, very good.
Last one under authority I’m going to recommend is a book dealing with Sedevacantism. Sedevacantism is basically a kind of Protestantism, especially if it says that there are no valid Masses for you to attend and encourages you to reject the Pope, not receive the Eucharist… Well, if they say there’s no valid Mass or no priest, you’re not able to receive communion because there hasn’t been a Pope since 1958 for whatever the reasoning is… I dealt with this before in talking about it, Sedevacantism looks and acts a lot like Protestantism. It’s an authority question. So a good book that addresses that is the book “True or False Pope? Refuting Sedevacantism and Other Modern Errors” by John Salza and Robert Syscoe. Scripture, tradition, authority.
Next, let’s talk about just general Catholic apologetics, just general books to get you equipped. If you’re stressed out right now, like “How am I going to read all these books?” You don’t have to read all these books, just you might pick one that’s interesting. I’m just putting them out there. But I would recommend starting with the general books. Start with the general books, and you’ll get your feet wet. It’s like you have your little appetizer, then you can choose what entrée you want. So a good one here, a great sampler, is “A Daily Defense” by Jimmy Akin. It’s 365 apologetic arguments, Christian apologetics, Catholic apologetics. They’re each only a page long. So it’s awesome that you could just, at night, read one page, you learn something new. I love those kind of books. So that would be a good source. If you’re really overwhelmed, read one chapter in the New Testament, 10 paragraphs of the Catechism, and one page out of Daily Defense by Jimmy Akin. You could get that done each night in about 15 to 20 minutes, and it’s well worth it. You’ll learn a lot just 15 to 20 minutes a day.
But if you want to go beyond that, I would recommend “The Case for Catholicism” by myself. A Mormon apologist, Robert Boylan, once said that he considered “The Case for Catholicism” to be the best single volume defense of Catholicism. I’m going to talk about books that defend particular Catholic doctrines, but it was really challenging writing “The Case for Catholicism” because I had to defend a ton of major doctrines in one book. And you’ll see here, as you can see on the list, you can write entire books just on some of these doctrines. So it was a challenge, to be sure. But if you want a nice single volume defense of Catholicism, I’d recommend, well, “The Case for Catholicism”. I covered scripture, church history.
Speaking of church history, though, two books. “The Early Church Was the Catholic Church” by Joe Heschmeyer, and “The Fathers Know Best” by Jimmy Akin. The first one’s more of an explanation, the second’s more of a reference book, because it has a lot of the citations from the church fathers showing the antiquity of Catholic belief. Now why am I recommending a lot of books published by Catholic Answers? It’s because I’m contractually obligated and I will have severe repercussions if I don’t. No, I’m just kidding. I love what we do. That’s why I work at Catholic Answers. I love working with the best. I love working with people who really know what they’re doing and I can trust them filling in for me. I trust what they’re offering to people. So if you want to grow in your understanding of the early church, especially the church fathers, those are two books I would definitely recommend is a great start.
Runner-up would also be “The Four Witnesses” by Rod Bennett, is great on the early Apostolic fathers. If you want to go past the church fathers and deal with general Catholic apologetics related to history, like common historical myths about the church… We covered a few of those in a recent episode. I like “The Real Story of Catholic History” by Steve Weidenkopf. He is very knowledgeable in church history. I send him emails often saying, “Hey, here’s this weird thing from the Middle Ages, how should I understand it?” And he gives me a great reply. So “The Real Story of Catholic History”, if you want to be able to respond to the common myths that are made, Inquisition, Crusades… You could write entire books on these things. It’s nice to have just one volume covering the major myths.
And then also, I like the book “Meeting the Protestant Challenge” by my colleague Karlo Broussard. What’s nice about this book is that, let’s say you study apologetics and you talk with your Protestant friend, they may say, “Yeah, I’ve heard that argument before, but what about this?” It’s a counter. So Karlo prepares you for the argument continuing. “Yeah, but what about this?” Okay, let’s talk about that. So definitely recommend that.
Now let’s get into specific Catholic topics. Now I’ve broken it down into two. The first one would be the papacy, right? That’s one of the most distinctive Catholic doctrines attacked by basically everybody who’s not Catholic, is that they don’t agree with the papacy. Even churches that are very close to Catholics theologically, that’s one of the big sticking points is the nature of the papacy. So I have four books on the papacy that I would recommend to you. Three intro books, one advanced book. All right.
First, “The Papacy: What the Pope Does and Why It Matters”, by Steve Ray and Dennis Walters. Excellent overview of the office of the Pope so we know what it is, because a lot of defending the papacy is correcting misunderstandings that people have about it. So this book does a good job with that.
Next up would be defending the biblical foundation of the papacy, and I’d recommend “Pope Peter”, once again by my colleague Joe Heschmeyer. So “Pope Peter” does a great job talking about the biblical evidence for the papacy.
Then moving forward, many people criticize critique the doctrine of the papacy by saying it’s not historical. The early church didn’t know of it or the medieval church contradicted it. And here are two books I’d recommend, one beginner, one more advanced. The beginner book would be by Patrick Madrid. He used to work at Catholic Answers. Now he’s on Relevant Radio. He’s one of the OGs. He is one of the GOATs, man. I’m not cool, am I? He’s great. Pat Madrid is a great Catholic apologist, and “Pope Fiction” is his book. “Pope Fiction: Answers to 30 Myths and Misconceptions about the Papacy”.
Definitely great intro to the history, but if you want the deep dive into the history, like deep, deep, deep dive, like dive that makes this book feel small, there’s an 800-page book written by Eric Ybarra, excellent work on the papacy and orthodoxy. He’s Catholic, obviously. He has a book called “The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholics and Orthodox”. Great. It covers scripture, but also does a ton of the historical debate. And Eric is really good about not overstretching his evidence and arguments. My favorite apologist are those that they only go as far as the evidence will permit them, and they try to be very careful with their reasoning and that’s something I always respect when I see in a person’s argument. So we’ve got those four books for the defending the papacy.
Next on Catholic distinctives would be saints and salvation. So if you want a good book on purgatory, I like “Purgatory Is For Real” by Karlo Broussard. I love the title. It’s for real, y’all. “Purgatory is for Real” by Karlo Broussard, a nice single-volume treatment that covers all the major objections to the doctrine purgatory. I have a chapter on that in “The Case for Catholicism”, but you’ve got whole books on these subjects.
Another one is “Any Friend of God’s Is a Friend of Mine: A Biblical and Historical Explanation of the Catholic Doctrine of the Communion of Saints”. That’s another Patrick Madrid book, and it is a little thin book. I know I have it around here somewhere, I just couldn’t find it. It’s a nice thin book defending the communion of saints. It’s on the list because I don’t know any other book that just focuses on that. Karlo, I think is hopefully going to write one just on the communion of saints. If so, it might replace Patrick’s book. I love Patrick, he’s a great guy, but it’ll just be more comprehensive than the book that Patrick wrote, because that’s what happens. People will write on a subject, and those who come after them will build upon that. Paul says something to that effect, and… Was it First Corinthians Three, he says, “I planted, Apollos watered.” That’s what we do. Someone might take my work and build on that. I hope that they do.
Next one is… So we’re talking about saints. You want a book defending the Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, and I would recommend Tim Staples’ book, “Behold Your Mother”. It’s probably the most comprehensive book out there defending the Marian Dogmas. A runner-up is a book by an Eastern Orthodox priest, Father Lawrence [inaudible 00:31:45], I think it’s called “I Parthenos”. It’s a defense of Mary’s perpetual virginity. So Tim, for example, defends Mary’s virginity using the argument that the brethren of the Lord are the Lord’s cousins, and Clenework defends the view that they are children from Joseph’s previous marriage, but he also goes really in-depth on other arguments related to the perpetual virginity of Mary. Runner-up, I still think that Tim’s book is probably the most comprehensive defense of the Marian Dogmas to date. So good book to read on those subjects.
Next we talk about saints. Now let’s talk about issues related to salvation. I’d recommend “The Drama of Salvation” by Jimmy Akin. A lot of times when people discuss justification when it comes to “Are we saved? Saved by faith or works?”, Jimmy does a really good job of nuancing the terms and getting the meaning just right, because a lot of times, especially on sola fide, justification by faith alone, the debate is really about we’re talking past each other or using words in different ways, and Jimmy does a good job of breaking it down, of understanding that, of understanding what Paul is condemning when he talks about works. Very good book. It’s an update of his older book, “The Salvation Controversy”, and this is “The Drama of Salvation”.
But another book on salvation that breaks this down in an easy-to-access way I would recommend is “Salvation: What Every Catholic Should Know” by Michael Barber, he is a theologian at the Augustine Institute, biblical scholar. Very good book, and it’s not very thick. Salvation can seem complicated. Jimmy’s book, Michael Barber’s book, they will really equip you to have good conversations.
Last two are on the Eucharist and the Mass. So of course, our salvation, the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian faith. I recommend “Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist” by Brant Pitre, and then “The Biblical Basis for the Mass” by Tom Nash. Those are good books on that. Hopefully soon my friend Joe Heschmeyer is doing an entire book just on the Eucharist. Super excited about that. His book of Pope Peter is amazing. So that should be forthcoming here in the next year or two. When it comes out, it will be added to the list, but if you want a great book that also has a nice historical theological explanation, especially Brant’s book, “Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist”.
Alrighty, we are covering a lot. We’re going to go through like 50 books. Isn’t this fun? You’re getting a nice… This is like an annotated bibliography. I remember having to write those in college and I hated them as an assignment, but it’s kind of what I’m doing now. I’m doing an annotated bibliography. Oh, it’s come full circle. The thing I hated most in college, now I’m doing for you, and I’m actually enjoying it.
Let’s talk about morality. I’m going to divide this up into life issues and marriage and sexuality. So for life issues, I recommend on abortion, my book, “Persuasive Pro-Life”. Give it a month or two from this broadcast, because the second edition is coming out in about four to eight weeks. It’s going to be reorganized post-Roe vs. Wade, updated facts, new arguments… It’s really good. I like “Persuasive Pro-Life”, but this is… It almost feels like a brand-new book. I’m really excited that this will be my definitive lay pro-life book on how to talk about abortion.
But pro-life issues are more than just abortion. Other beginner books I’d recommend are two by my friend Stephanie Gray Connors. Stephanie is very insightful, empathetic, she’s a good writer. So she has a book on assisted suicide called “Start With What: 10 Principles for Thinking About Assisted Suicide”, and then “Conceived by Science: Thinking Carefully and Compassionately about Infertility and IVF”. So you might feel like, “Hey, I can talk about abortion, but I have a little more trouble with euthanasia or with IVF. How do I explain that?” These are great books by Stephanie that I would recommend so you can have a well-rounded defense of the church’s bioethics.
If you want to go deeper on that, on bioethics, the classic text is William May’s textbook, “Catholic Bioethics and The Gift of Human Life”. More of an advanced read, but you will be able to go in depth on all these different bioethical issues, not just abortion, but contraception, surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, gene editing and therapy, embryo experimentation, all that in that textbook.
Finally, if you want the advanced treatment of the philosophy related to abortion, the one book I recommend is Chris Kaczor’s book, “The Ethics of Abortion”. Right now, it’s actually just come out as the third edition. Did I grab Kaczor’s? I did. I have it down here. Yes. Here we go. I still got my… Okay, I got my last moral books here. Ethics of Abortion by Chris Kaczor. This one, I think this is the second edition. Let’s see… This is… Oh, 2011. No, this is the first edition. First edition. Look at that one. 10 years ago I got this book. The third edition is out now. And so definitely pick, this is my favorite. Don’t tell Frank. I love Frank Beckwith. I like “Defending Life” and Pat Lee. Pat, you’re a great professor. I love “Abortion and Unborn Human Life”. Get those books, too. But if you have to pick one, I really do like this one. “Ethics of Abortion” by Chris Kaczor. So this is a very good book.
Now let’s go through marriage and sexual ethics. So we are rounding it out. We’re almost there, but this is good. And I’ll have the printed list available. I’ll probably put it in the description, and then I will link when I get the list at Catholic.com.
So someone who writes very well on the topics of same-sex marriage and transgender ideology, same person, Ryan Anderson. He’s just so composed. He does really good research, and when I’ve seen him do television interviews, he’s always poised. Even when he is in a hostile combative media environment, he does a great job. So on so-called same-sex marriage, he co-authored with Robert George and Sharif Girgis, the book “What Is Marriage?”, which I think is still classic in the field, but if you want a good book on how to explain the church’s teaching on so-called same-sex marriage, I like his follow-up book, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom”, because this book was written after Obergefell, after the Supreme Court legally redefined marriage. So it has a good summary at the beginning of what marriage is and how we prove that with reason, and then how we should react in a world where so-called same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states and a lot of people support it. So “Truth Overruled”.
Next one by Anderson is… Oh, it spilled. It’s still okay. This is a funny title. “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment”. Now I quickly ordered this book because it was taken down from Amazon for being hate speech. You can still get it at Barnes and Noble for now, so you might want to try to get a copy. One of the best takedowns of transgender ideology that I have seen, so I definitely recommend that. You know what, actually? There’s another Anderson book I got to recommend. It’s on abortion. Ryan Anderson and Alexandra DeSanctis, she writes at National Review. “Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing”. Another very good pro-life book that I highly recommend. You should add that to the list. I’m going to… “Tearing Us Apart”. “You’re tearing me apart, Linda!” Know where that’s from? The Room. Tommy Wiseau. So I still managed to geek out in this. “You’re tearing me apart.” “Oh, hi Mark.” All right, now I’m thinking about bad B-movies.
So Ryan Anderson, very good on that. Here’s a few other books that I would recommend dealing with sexual ethics. If you want a general defense of Catholic sexual ethics, a good book is surprisingly titled “Catholic Sexual Ethics: A Summary Explanation and Defense” by William May and Co-Authors. He also wrote “Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life”, a good natural law defense using principles of reason for the church’s teaching on sexuality. I cover some of this in my book, “Made This Way” co-authored with Laila Miller, like how do you explain the wrongness of pornography, transgender, premarital sex. So I guess I might add that in there. It’s not written as a full apologetic. It was written more to help parents explain this to their kids. But you might find it helpful. So I’m going to add “Made This Way” in there, but I probably need to write more of a moral apologetics book. I have a course on that at the School of Apologetics for Catholic Answers, but maybe a moral sexual ethics book. And I probably have that in the horizon at some point.
Another one on transgender identity you should get before it’s banned is Abigail Shrier’s book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters”. I’d also recommend, if you want to know how to refute pornography and the arguments for it, “The Porn Myth” by Matt Fradd. So Matt Fradd, you made my list. You can’t hear me though. You’re in Central America right now. Maybe you’re watching, who knows. But I’d recommend, if you want to be able to… You can’t just say, “Ew, porn is gross,” or “What are you doing?”, there are arguments you have to be able to put forward and counter myths that people propose about pornography, that it’s good for society, it’s actually healthy for people. Matt does a great job going against that in his book, “The Porn Myth”.
Finally, let’s talk about the advanced books on sexual ethics. One is the book by Alexander Pruss called “One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics”. He is a smart Catholic philosopher at Baylor. I really enjoy Alex Pruss. He has a good book on infinity, but I didn’t recommend it so your head wouldn’t explode, infinity and showing that maybe there’s an ultimate cause. There can’t be infinite causes. Good book on the contingency argument for God. Lots of great stuff, but “One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics”. More advanced treatment though, put on your philosopher hat.
Finally. This book is 20 years old and it still rocks. This is a book by Robert Gagnon called “The Bible and Homosexual Practice”. And this is the definitive takedown of people who claim the Bible does not condemn homosexuality. “Oh, the Bible, it’s only a ritual law” or “Oh, Paul was only condemning unnatural things from his Greco-Roman worldview, he wasn’t thinking of natural law. He was condemning women acting like men, and he was misogynist…” And all you hear, “Jesus never said anything about homosexuality”. And including the sophisticated objections, my goodness, I could fill up an entire bookshelf in this office of pro-LGBT revisionist theology. I really could.
But Gagnon’s book is still the standard bearer of rebutting that. There have been some people who’ve written since then, like James Brownson, critiquing Gagnon, so I might email him and see if he’d ever do a second edition of this book, because it’s 20 years old, but it still holds up. It’s very solid in that regard. This is helpful when I dialogued with Brandon Robertson about homosexuality and scripture, because he’s a liberal Christian. That, among other books, were very helpful. And that was a few years ago when I was still at California, actually.
Oh, we covered a lot, didn’t we? So look, don’t be overwhelmed. You’re like, “I can’t read all that many books!” Look, this gives you an idea of some of my favorite books. Just start with one. Just start with one that sounds interesting to you. Or if you’re really overwhelmed, just do what I said earlier. Chapter in the New Testament, do Catechism in a year with Father Mike, and read a general apologetic book. Read Jimmy Akin’s “A Daily Defense”. It’s got to be the least-intimidating book. 365 pages, but we want you to read only one page a day to pick up a new argument.
So hope this is helpful for you all, and once again, the caveat, I don’t necessarily agree with everything in every book that’s written here. Some of the authors are not Catholic, for example, but I’ve found them helpful. And also, if a book is not on the list doesn’t mean I hate the book or the author. It could be also very helpful. There’s just only so much time in the day to tell you about all the great books that are out there. But yeah, thank you guys so much. Hope this is helpful. I hope you continue to grow in the defense of the faith, and that you have a very blessed day.
Narrator:
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