Humble Confidence - by Benno van den Toren & Kang-San Tan (Paperback)

About the Book

Benno van den Toren and Kang-San Tan provide a global, intercultural model of apologetics as crosscultural dialogue and accountable witness. Filled with Scriptural examples and real-world experiences, this is a conversational, patient, holistic, and embodied guide to creating true dialogue in our multicultural, multifaith world.

Book Synopsis

Christianity Today Award of Merit

Today's cosmopolitan, multicultural, and multifaith environments call for new approaches to apologetics. The world still needs the good news of Jesus Christ, but to relate the transcultural gospel to diverse and ever-changing contexts, we must free Christian apologetics from dominant Western habits of mind ill-suited to interreligious dialogue. We must listen and speak with both humility and confidence.

Benno van den Toren and Kang-San Tan provide a global, intercultural introduction to Christian apologetics. They present a model of apologetics as crosscultural dialogue and accountable witness, then explore how it plays out in relation to specific contexts and the major world religions--including primal religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, secularism, and late-modern spiritualities. Building on recent developments in apologetics and missiology, as well as their experience teaching internationally in Europe, Asia, and Africa, Van den Toren and Tan offer an approach that is conversational, patient, holistic, and embodied.

Filled with examples from Scripture and real-world experiences, Humble Confidence gives readers a travel guide to help find the most effective avenues for true dialogue in their own settings.

Review Quotes

"A book like this is long overdue. As a way of giving account of the hope within us, apologetics ought to be closely related to missiology, but it is rarely included. Here it is made relevant again. Both apologetics and mission are changed in the dialogue: apologetics becomes contextual and mission becomes apologetic. The arguments are lucid and substantial. The illuminating case studies show what apologetics contributes to Christian witness in various religious contexts."

About the Author

Benno van den Toren (PhD, Theological University in Kampen) is professor of intercultural theology at the Protestant Theological University in Groningen, the Netherlands. He has taught in French-speaking Africa and at Wycliffe Hall at Oxford University, and his books include Christian Apologetics as Cross-Cultural Dialogue and Reasons for My Hope: Responding to Non-Christian Friends.

Kang-San Tan (PhD, Aberdeen University) is general director of BMS World Mission. He is also chair of the Commission on Mission and provides leadership for the Global Baptist Mission Network of the Baptist World Alliance, and he has previously served as head of mission studies at Redcliffe College and executive director of AsiaCMS.