Chronology of Apologetics in Historical Context

Robert M. Bowman Jr.

This chronology lists 80 landmark writings in the history of Christian apologetics, with over 250
additional events involving other publications of importance (including anti-Christian books) and
notable events in church history, general world history, and in the history of science, technology,
and culture, giving some sense of the context in which these apologetic texts appeared. A few
dates are approximate. Page numbers in parentheses reference discussions in Kenneth D. Boa
and Robert M. Bowman Jr., Faith Has Its Reasons: Integrative Approaches to Defending the
Christian Faith (2nd ed., Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006).

APOLOGETICS IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

539 BC End of the Babylonian Exile

432 BC Approximate end of the Old Testament era with the prophetic ministry of Malachi
399 BC Socrates tried and executed in Athens, events recounted by his student Plato in Apology
323 BC Alexander the Great, who had been tutored by Plato’s student Aristotle, conquers lands
east as far as India, resulting in the Hellenization of the Middle East (including Israel)
27 BC Beginning of the Roman Empire, which lasted just over 500 years and for a period ruled
about one-fifth of the world’s 350-400 million people
5 BC Birth of Jesus Christ
30 Philo, Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, flourishes
33 Death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (possible alternate date AD 30)
49 Earliest likely date of Paul’s first epistle (Galatians)
60 Luke, Acts of the Apostles (pp. 9-11)
64-66 Nero’s persecution of Christians, evidently including the deaths of Peter and Paul
66 Beginning of the Jewish-Roman war
70 Destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans
90s Traditional date of the Johannine writings, the likely last books of the New Testament
93 Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, a monumental history that provides a wealth of
background information on the Bible, especially the New Testament
125 Aristides of Athens, Apology, earliest extant noncanonical work of Christian
apologetics
150 Ptolemy’s Almagest, the classic Hellenistic work on the geocentric model of the world
157 Justin Martyr, First Apology (p. 14)
177 Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians
197 Tertullian, Apologeticum (pp. 339-40)
248 Origen, Against Celsus (p. 15)
270 The Enneads, writings of the Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus, published by Porphyry,
important for understanding late patristic and medieval theology and philosophy
270 Anthony the Great begins his ascetic lifestyle as the first of the “Desert Fathers” and the
“father of monasticism”
312 Constantine converts to Christianity, issues the Edict of Milan the following year
325 Council of Nicaea
330 Constantine establishes Byzantium as Constantinople, an eastern Rome
Bowman: Chronology of Apologetics in Historical Context 2

367 Athanasius’s 39th Festal Letter lists the 27 books of the New Testament (and a list of the
Old Testament books very similar but not identical to the modern 39 books)
400 Augustine, Confessions
405 Jerome completes the Vulgate, the standard Latin version of the Bible
410 Visigoth king Alaric sacks Rome, spelling the imminent end of Rome’s empire
425 Augustine, The City of God (pp. 16-17)
432 Patrick, first missionary to Ireland, begins his mission there
451 Council of Chalcedon issues statement defining the doctrine of the Incarnation
476 Germanic invasions bring to an end the Western Roman Empire; Eastern Europe
continues under the Byzantine Empire ruled from Constantinople for nearly a millennium
492 Gelasius I becomes bishop of Rome, lays the foundation for the medieval papacy
524 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
529 Benedict establishes the first of a dozen monasteries, beginning what became known as
the Order of Saint Benedict (OSB)
541 Bubonic plague lasts about two centuries and kills perhaps half of Europe
550 John Philoponus, On the Creation of the World
590 Gregory I becomes pope, produces influential writings, liturgy, and the Gregorian chant
597 Augustine (of Canterbury), first Christian missionary to England, begins his work there

MEDIEVAL APOLOGETICS

622 Muhammad flees Mecca for Medina; his “flight” (hijra) marks the beginning of Islam’s
calendar
632 Muhammad dies; Qur’an compiled afterward
731 “The Venerable” Bede, “father of English history,” finishes his landmark Ecclesiastical
History of the English Nation
732 Frankish ruler Charles Martel defeats the Moors at the Battle of Tours (near Poitier), halts
the expansion of Islam in Western Europe
740 Peak of the Umayyad Caliphate, ruling over a quarter of the world’s 200 million people
750 Rise of the Abbasid Caliphate, lasting for over 500 years and at its peak ca. 850 ruling
about a fifth of the world’s 250 million people
800 Charles Martel’s grandson Charlemagne crowned emperor on Christmas by Pope Leo III;
earliest date for the origin of the Holy Roman Empire, which dominated Central Europe
for about a thousand years
871 Alfred the Great becomes the first king of a united England
933 Saadia Gaon, Book of Beliefs and Opinions, pioneering work of Jewish-Arabic thought
integrating Aristotelian philosophy with Jewish theology
1054 Great Schism (East-West Schism) divides Catholicism from Orthodoxy
1066 William the Conqueror invades England from Normandy, fights the Battle of Hastings,
and becomes the first Norman king of England
1078 Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion (pp. 17-18)
1095 Pope Urban II launches the Crusades
1096 Earliest teaching conducted at what became known as the University of Oxford, marking
the approximate rise of scholasticism
1098 Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo (p. 18)
1150 Approximate founding of the University of Paris
Bowman: Chronology of Apologetics in Historical Context 3

1190 Moses Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, one of the great medieval works of Jewish
philosophy
1206 Genghis Khan creates the Mongol Empire, which brought down the Abbasid Empire in
1259 and at its peak in 1279 ruled a quarter of the world’s 400+ million people
1209 Founding of the University of Cambridge
1210 Francis of Assisi founds the Franciscan Order
1215 Fourth Lateran Council formally establishes the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation
1216 Dominic founds the Order of Preachers (O.P.), better known as the Dominican Order
1263 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (pp. 19-20)
1271 Venetian merchant Marco Polo begins his travels to Central Asia and China
1273 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (pp. 19-20)
1291 End of the Crusades
1298 Approximate date of the writing of The Travels of Marco Polo
1299 Ottoman Empire is founded by Turks, and will last over 600 years
1309 Avignon Papacy begins 68-year period of seven popes based in France
1320 Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, the climactic work of medieval literature
1324 William of Ockham completes extensive works in philosophy and logic

RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION ERA APOLOGETICS

1345 Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), “father of humanism,” discovers lost letters of Cicero (an
event commonly associated with the beginning of the Renaissance)
1346 The Black Death, lasting over a century, decimates Europe (about 75-200 million dead)
1377 Papacy returns to Rome, resulting in the “Western Schism” that lasts nearly 40 years
1384 John Wycliffe’s English Bible completed
1400 Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales depicts corruption in late medieval Catholicism
1415 Council of Constance ends the Western Schism; orders John Hus burned at the stake
1427 Thomas à Kempis finishes The Imitation of Christ, likely the most influential Christian
devotional book (other than the Bible), teaching a strongly sacramental piety
1453 Byzantine Empire falls when the Ottoman Empire conquers Constantinople, renamed
Istanbul
1455 Johannes Gutenberg publishes the first printed Bible
1478 Ferdinand and Isabella establish the Spanish Inquisition (disbanded 1834)
1490 Leonardo da Vinci paints The Last Supper in a Milan convent
1492 Ferdinand and Isabella commission Christopher Columbus, who reaches the Western
Hemisphere later that year
1512 Michelangelo completes his painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
1516 Thomas More’s classic Utopia published by Erasmus in Latin
1516 Erasmus publishes his edition of the Greek New Testament
1517 Martin Luther, 95 Theses launches the Protestant Reformation
1521 Hernán Cortés conquers the Aztec Empire, renames Tenochtitlan as Mexico City
1525 Luther’s On the Bondage of the Will refutes Erasmus’s On the Freedom of the Will
(1524)
1526 William Tyndale publishes his English translation of the New Testament
Bowman: Chronology of Apologetics in Historical Context 4

1527 Michael Sattler leads a meeting of Swiss Anabaptists, producing the Schleitheim
Confession affirming believer’s baptism, church discipline, pacifism, and non-
involvement in politics
1534 Parliament passes the Acts of Supremacy, recognizing the recently remarried Henry VIII
as the head of the Church of England
1534 Ignatius of Loyola founds the Society of Jesus (S.J.), the Jesuits
1535 Thomas More executed for not acknowledging Henry VIII as head of the Church in
England
1536 First edition of John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (pp. 221-26)
1536 William Tyndale is executed by strangling and burned at the stake

EARLY MODERN APOLOGETICS

1543 Nicolaus Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres

1549 Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, publishes the Book of Common Prayer, the
standard work of Anglican liturgy and piety
1558 Henry VIII’s daughter Elizabeth I begins her 45-year reign as Queen of England
1563 Council of Trent concludes, defining Catholicism over against Protestantism
1572 Appearance of “Tycho’s supernova” overturned Greek notion of the fixity of the heavens
1572 Catholic mobs massacre many Huguenots, French Calvinists, in and around Paris
1588 The Spanish Armada’s invasion of England is defeated
1602 Approximate date of William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet
1610 Galileo Galilei, Starry Messenger, first scientific treatise based on telescope observations
1611 Authorized Version (commonly called the King James Version) published
1611 Thomas Helwys and other English Baptists in Amsterdam issue first Baptist confession
1615 Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina; Galileo put on trial
1615 The second volume of Miguel de Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote, the foundational work
of Spanish literature, is published
1618 Beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, involving Catholic-Protestant conflict and national
political rivalries
1620 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, setting forth an inductive method of science
1620 Pilgrims led by William Bradford anchor the Mayflower at Plymouth, produce the so-
called Mayflower Compact
1624 Herbert of Cherbury, De Veritate, lays the foundation for English deism
1627 Hugo Grotius, De veritate religionis Christianae, first modern Christian apology
1636 Harvard University founded
1637 René Descartes, Discourse on Method
1646 Westminster Confession of Faith, the standard Presbyterian confession, is produced
1648 End of the Thirty Years’ War with the Treaty of Westphalia
1654 James Ussher’s calculation of the date of Adam’s creation
1658 Oliver Cromwell, Puritan “Lord Protector” of the British Commonwealth, dies
1667 John Milton, Paradise Lost, an epic poem on the theme of theodicy
1669 Blaise Pascal, Pensées (pp. 22, 342-45, 400)
1670 Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, beginning of modern biblical criticism
1676 Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, father of microbiology, discovers microorganisms
1678 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress
Bowman: Chronology of Apologetics in Historical Context 5

1687 Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

1689 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
1693 Twenty people, mostly women, executed in the Salem witch trials
1695 John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity: As Delivered in the Scriptures
1697 Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, notable work of early modern
skepticism
1707 The parliaments of England and Scotland enact the Acts of Union, forming Great Britain
1709 Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, one of the earliest popular modern novels
1710 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy
1726 Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, famous satirical novel (contrasting with Defoe’s)
1729 Thomas Sherlock, The Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus (pp. 141-
42)
1730 Matthew Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation; or, the Gospel a Republication of
the Religion of Nature, the so-called “bible” of deism
1734 Alexander Pope, Essay on Man
1736 Joseph Butler, Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, in the Course and
Constitution of Nature (pp. 22-23, 142-45)
1738 John Wesley’s conversion experience at Aldersgate
1738 Approximate beginning of the First Great Awakening
1741 Jonathan Edwards’s famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”
1741 George F. Handel composes the Messiah

THE ENLIGHTENMENT CHALLENGE TO APOLOGETICS

1748 David Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

1755 Lisbon earthquake kills 40,000-50,000, sparks challenges to faith in a benevolent God
1759 Voltaire, Candide, satire that mocks the idea that this is the best of all possible worlds
1764 Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense
1767 Alphonsus de’ Liguori, The Truth of the Faith, a popular Catholic apology
1776 Thomas Paine, Common Sense
1776 First volume of Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
1776 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
1776 Thomas Jefferson (et. al.), Declaration of Independence
1778 James Watt produces a new, more efficient steam engine, one of many developments in
the early Industrial Revolution that began in the United Kingdom
1778 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing publishes Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Wolfenbüttel
Fragments (1774-78), and his own On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power (1777) (pp.
383-84)
1781 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
1783 First manned flight in a hot-air balloon by the Montgolfier brothers in France
1783 The American Revolutionary War comes to an end
1792 William Carey publishes An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for
the Conversion of the Heathens and founds what was later called the Baptist Missionary
Society, marking the beginning of the modern Protestant missionary movement
1792 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
1794 Eli Whitney patents the first modern, mechanical cotton gin
Bowman: Chronology of Apologetics in Historical Context 6

1794 First part of Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794-95, 1807)
1794 William Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity
1796 George Cuvier argues that the mastodon was an animal that became extinct
1796 Pierre Laplace published his nebular theory of the origins of the cosmos
1798 Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, predicts disasters from
overpopulation; the book influences the theory of evolution by natural selection
1799 Friedrich D. E. Scheiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultural Despisers, an early
work of liberal Protestant apologetics
1802 William Paley, Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the
Deity (pp. 140-41)
1802 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a deist, publishes works on geology and evolution
1802 François René de Chateaubriand, The Genius of Christianity; or, Beauties of the
Christian Religion
1804 World population estimated to reach one billion
1805 Henry Ware, a Unitarian, becomes professor of theology at Harvard University
1806 Napoleon Bonaparte defeats the Holy Roman Empire, which is dissolved
1807 Georg W. F. Hegel’s first book, The Phenomenology of Spirit, advances a dialectical
view of history that influenced Communism and other modern movements
1808 Ludwig von Beethoven conducts his Fifth Symphony
1809 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck publishes his Zoological Philosophy
1811 Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, one of the earliest novels by and about women
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte is defeated at Waterloo, the beginning of Britain’s “imperial
century”
1832 Part Two of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s play, Faust, perhaps the greatest work of
German literature, is published
1830 Joseph Smith publishes The Book of Mormon and founds “the Church of Christ” (later
called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
1833 Slavery Abolition Act abolishes slavery throughout the British Empire
1844 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is published anonymously
1844 Baptist preacher William Miller’s failed prediction of the Second Coming, the “Great
Disappointment,” leads to the development of Seventh-day Adventism and related groups
1846 Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments
(pp. 346-51, 380-85)
1846 Simon Greenleaf, The Testimony of the Evangelists (p. 142)
1848 Revolutions take place throughout Europe, including the February French Revolution;
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto
1849 Richard Whately, Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte
1849 American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau publishes Resistance to Civil
Government (later entitled Civil Disobedience), which directly influenced Gandhi and
Martin Luther King Jr.
1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
1857 Neanderthal skull discovered

APOLOGETICS AND THE MODERN WORLD

1859 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

Bowman: Chronology of Apologetics in Historical Context 7

1859 Charles Dickens publishes A Tale of Two Cities, the best-selling English novel of all time
1860 Infamous confrontation between Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce
1865 End of U.S. Civil War; assassination of Abraham Lincoln
1866 Gregor Mendel publishes his findings on dominant and recessive traits
1870 First Vatican Council declares the dogma of papal infallibility
1870 John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, an influential
Catholic work on apologetic method
1871 Charles Darwin publishes his Descent of Man
1873 Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (3 vols., 1871-73) (pp. 229-32)
1874 Charles Hodge, What Is Darwinism?
1875 Helena Blavatsky establishes the Theosophical Society, which becomes a precursor to the
contemporary New Age movement
1875 Mary Baker Eddy publishes Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures, a “bible” of
mind-science reinterpretation of Christianity
1876 Alexander Graham Bell is awarded a patent for the first telephone
1877 William Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief,” articulates a skeptical evidentialist
epistemology
1879 Thomas Edison invents first commercially viable electric light bulb
1879 Charles Taze Russell founds Zion’s Watch Tower and Herald of Christ’s Presence, the
flagship magazine of the “Bible Students” (later called Jehovah’s Witnesses)
1880 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, which includes “The Grand Inquisitor”
1882 Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, establishes the Documentary
(JEPD) Hypothesis of the Pentateuch
1891 Java Man skull discovered
1892 Alexander B. Bruce, Apologetics; or, Christianity Defensively Stated
1893 Vivekananda introduces Hinduism at the First World’s Parliament of Religions in
Chicago
1895 Abraham Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology (pp. 232-37)
1897 James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World (pp. 145-46)
1902 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright’s first successful test of an airplane
1905 Albert Einstein publishes paper advancing theory of special relativity
1906 The Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles sparks the explosive growth of Pentecostalism
1908 G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
1908 B. B. Warfield, “Apologetics” (pp. 51-54, 77-78)
1908 Lyman Stewart, president of Union Oil, founds the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola)
1910 Piltdown Man hailed as the missing link (later found to have been a hoax)
1914 World War I begins
1915 Biola completes publication of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth (1910-
15)
1917 Russian and Bolshevik Revolutions, leading to the formation of the Soviet Union;
1918 World War I ends; some 20-60 million killed
1920 H. G. Wells, The Outline of History, an influential secular history
1922 The British Empire, ruling about a fifth of the world, begins decolonialization
Bowman: Chronology of Apologetics in Historical Context 8

1922 Following a second revolution led by Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union (USSR) was
formed; some 20-60 million people died in famines, mass murders, the Gulags, etc. under
Lenin and his succssor Joseph Stalin
1923 End of the Ottoman Empire, which had allied itself with Germany in World War I
1923 George McCready Price publishes The New Geology
1924 Edwin Hubble discovers the existence of multiple galaxies
1925 G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial in Dayton, TN
1927 World population estimated to have reached two billion (doubling in about 123 years)
1929 J. Gresham Machen founds Westminster Theological Seminary following the
liberalization of Princeton
1929 Unitarian minister Charles Francis Potter founds the First Humanist Society of New
York, with Julian Huxley, John Dewey, and Albert Einstein on its advisory board
1932 Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World imagines dystopian society based on pleasure
1933 The original Humanist Manifesto, signed by Potter, Dewey, and 32 others
1934 Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, Natural Theology (published together, 1946)
1936 First volume of Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (passim, pp. 354-406)
1937 Theodosius Dobzhansky publishes Genetics and the Origin of Species
1937 Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, the most popular “prosperity” book, is published
1939 Nazi Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II
1939 Hollywood’s golden year with such films as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz
1944 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1942-44; rev. 1960) (p. 55)
1945 Allies defeat Nazi Germany; U.S. drops atom bombs on Japan, killing 129,000 to
246,000 people; World War II ends; some 40-85 million deaths in all, including about 6
million Jews and 5 million others in the Holocaust

APOLOGETICS AND POSTMODERNISM

1947 The Dead Sea Scrolls are discovered in caves near Qumran
1947 Indian Independence Act formally freed India from British rule and created Pakistan
1947 Truman Doctrine establishes policy of U.S. containment of Communism (the Cold War)
1947 Billy Graham holds his first “crusade” in Grand Rapids, Michigan
1948 Mohandas K. Gandhi, advocate of nonviolent resistance in India, is assassinated
1948 The state of Israel is created
1948 World Council of Churches is formed to promote ecumenism
1948 Edward John Carnell, An Introduction to Christian Apologetics (pp. 427-35)
1949 Evangelical Theological Society formed
1949 Communist Party led by Chairman Mao Zedong establishes the People’s Republic of
China; 45-75 million people (out of roughly 500 million) die in famine, human rights
abuses, mass murders, etc.
1949 Joseph Campbell publishes The Hero with a Thousand Faces
1949 George Orwell, 1984
1950 C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Chronicles of Narnia
1952 Gordon H. Clark, A Christian View of Men and Things (pp. 293-94)
1952 Television emerges as the dominant media technology; I Love Lucy is its first megahit
1953 Francis Crick and James Watson discover the double helix structure of DNA
Bowman: Chronology of Apologetics in Historical Context 9

1953 Bernard Ramm, Types of Apologetics Systems (rev. 1962, Varieties of Christian
Apologetics) (pp. 527-28)
1955 Cornelius Van Til, Defense of the Faith (pp. 240-43, 259-64, 277-80, 285-89, 301-303)
1955 J. R. R. Tolkein completes The Lord of the Rings trilogy
1957 Sputnik 1 inaugurates the space age
1957 Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (1953-57) (pp. 238-40)
1957 Stuart Hackett, The Resurrection of Theism (p. 28)
1960 Charismatic movement begins with Episcopal priest Dennis Bennett in Van Nuys, CA
1960 Walter Martin establishes the Christian Research Institute, a countercult and apologetics
organization
1961 John C. Whitcomb and Henry Morris, The Genesis Flood (p. 272)
1963 Assassination of John F. Kennedy; death of C. S. Lewis (on the same day)
1964 U.S. Civil Rights Act
1964 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson’s discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation
establishes that the universe had a beginning (the “big bang” hypothesis)
1964 Jerald and Sandra Tanner begin disseminating copies of suppressed Mormon documents
1965 Assassination of Malcolm X
1965 Second Vatican Council (1962-65) concludes
1968 Assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy
1968 Life magazine declares 1968 “The Year of the Guru”
1969 Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village mark the beginning of the gay rights movement
1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon
1969 Woodstock Festival epitomizes the counterculture movement
1970 Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth
1971 John Warwick Montgomery, History and Christianity (pp. 180-82)
1971 Jerusalem and Athens, edited by E. R. Geehan, presents essays on and by Van Til
(pp. 29, 309-311)
1972 Completion of Francis Schaeffer’s trilogy, The God Who Is There (1968), Escape
from Reason (1968), and He Is There and He Is Not Silent (1972) (pp. 438-53)
1972 Josh McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict
1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade results in legalized abortion on demand
1974 World population reaches four billion (doubling in 47 years)
1976 Norman Geisler, Christian Apologetics (pp. 57-61, 84-85)
1976 James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog
1976 Gordon R. Lewis, Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims (pp. 528-30)
1977 George Lucas’s first Star Wars film, the creation of a modern myth, inspired in part by
Joseph Campbell
1978 International Council on Biblical Inerrancy issues the Chicago Statement on Biblical
Inerrancy
1978 Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers
1978 909 people die in Jonestown, the People’s Temple settlement in Guyana, bringing the
issue of cults to international attention
1979 Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (pp. 151-52)
1980 William Lane Craig, The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz (pp. 99-100)
1980 Gary Habermas, The Resurrection of Jesus: An Apologetic
1980 China’s population reaches a billion people
Bowman: Chronology of Apologetics in Historical Context 10

1981 IBM releases its first Personal Computer

1983 Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, 6 vols. (1976-83)
1983 Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds., Faith and Rationality: Reason and
Belief in God, marks the emergence of the New Reformed Epistemology (pp. 248-51,
296-98)
1984 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries is founded in Toronto, Canada
1985 Robert W. Funk founds the Westar Institute and launches the Jesus Seminar
1986 Hugh Ross founds Reasons to Believe, which advocates old-earth creationism
1986 Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
1986 Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker
1987 John M. Frame, Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (pp. 472-81)
1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall, leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991
1989 Beginning of movement seeking to legalize same-sex marriage
1989 Of Pandas and People, edited by Charles Thaxton (1989), marks the beginning of the
“intelligent design” movement
1989 J. P. Moreland, Christianity and the Nature of Science
1993 Hundreds of websites begin appearing on the World Wide Web
1996 Michael Behe’s book Darwin’s Black Box
1997 J. K. Rowling publishes Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, first of a series of books
selling more than 500 million copies
1998 India’s population reaches a billion people
1998 Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ
1998 Pope John Paul II, Fides et ratio (encyclical)
2000 Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (pp. 251-56, 289-90)
2001 Islamic jihadists with the militant group al-Qaeda (founded in 1988 by Osama bin Laden)
on September 11 fly jetliners into buildings in New York City and Washington, DC
2003 Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, an enormously popular novel that makes claims about
Christian origins that elicit numerous rebuttals from scholars
2003 Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
2003 Completion of the Human Genome Project
2004 Tsunami in the Indian Ocean kills about a quarter of a million people
2004 Joel Osteen attains prominence as a prosperity preacher, publishes Your Best Life Now
2005 Dover, PA, intelligent design case
2005 Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, bestseller popularizing his book The Orthodox
Corruption of Scripture (1996)
2005 New Testament scholar D. A. Carson and pastor-author Tim Keller start The Gospel
Coalition, which becomes one of the most influential evangelical organizations
2006 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, and Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation, mark
the emergence of the “new atheism”
2007 Francis Collins founds BioLogos Foundation, advocating evolutionary creationism
2009 William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Natural
Theology
2009 The website WomeninApologetics.com is created; in 2016 it becomes the basis of a new
ministry called Women in Apologetics
2010 Michael Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach
2011 Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book that Made Your World
Bowman: Chronology of Apologetics in Historical Context 11

2011 Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts
2011 Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith
2011 World population reaches seven billion; it is projected to reach 8 billion in 2023
2013 Stephen Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt
2014 al-Qaeda loyalist group captures Mosul in Iraq, declares itself the Islamic State (ISIS or
ISIL), a worldwide capiphate
2014 Nabeel Qureshi, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters
Christianity
2015 Same-sex marriage, already legalized in several countries since 2001, is made legal
throughout the United States in Obergefell v. Hodges U.S. Supreme Court decision