Avery Dulles (son of John Foster) is a distinguished American theologian. A convert to Roman Catholicism, he was the first American priest named a Cardinal on account of his contributions to theology (putting him in the rank of distinguished European theologians such as Henri de Lubac, Jean Danielou and Hans Urs von Balthasar.)
A HISTORY OF APOLOGETICS may be the only work available in English that surveys apologetics (that is the defense of the Christian faith) from the New Testament to contemporary times. Dulles treats both Catholic and Protestant thinkers, although the emphasis is on Catholic ones. For example, Calvin and Luther get a combined total of about five pages, which is the same as the eccentric Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
This emphasis is particularly noticeable when Dulles gets to contemporary Protestantism. Cornelius van Til and Gordon Clark are rather uncritically grouped together in spite of their legendary dustup in the 1940s. Neither gets nearly as much space of liberals such as Bultmann, Tillich and the brothers Neibuhr. For those who have been introduced to apologetics through studying orthodox Protestants, this part of the book will be a disappointment.
I was also surprised that Cardinal Dulles didn't discuss Eastern Orthodox thinkers. What about Berdyaev, or more recent thinkers such as Fr. Seraphim Rose or Nicholas Arseniev?
The above limitations shouldn't detract from the value of this work. The discussion of apologetic controversies in France from 1600-1800 is worth the price of the book.
The Amazon reviews of Cardinal Dulles' A HISTORY OF APOLOGETICS point to what the reviewers regard as a deficiency in the 1971 edition, lack of an adequate treatment of Evangelical Protestant apologists of the second half of the 20th century. The REVISED and UPDATED edition just published by Ignatius Press expands the treatment of 20th century apologists, including Evangelical Protestant apologists, as well as apologetics in the post-Vatican II era and the New Apologetics Movement among Catholics.
