I’ve been away at a writers conference teaching a class on writing apologetics like C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Dorothy Sayers, and the other Christian rock stars of the last century. Some students have asked for recommendations, and I have many, but readers of “First Thoughts” will have more.
I’d be grateful for your recommendations of apologetic works in three categories:
Classic: from the Fathers through the 18th Century;
Modern: the 19th and early 20th century; and
Contemporary: After, say, 1960.
The break between the first and the second is somewhat arbitrary, but you have to draw the line somewhere, and I had dimly in mind the difference in obvious or immediate usefulness between works written in the 18th century and those written afterwards. Assume a serious reader, who will read with an overliner and dictionary if he has to, though you might flag in some way the more difficult works.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
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