Moral Apologetics

By Douglas Groothuis, PhD

James K. Dew, Jr. and Jordan Steffaniak, Moral Apologetics: A Short Companion (B&H Academic, 2026). 208 pages. Reviewed by Douglas Groothuis, Cornerstone University and Cornerstone Theological Seminary.

Apologetics is a broad, deep, and necessary discipline that defends Christianity as objectively true, reasonable, and pertinent to life. It also attempts to refute opposing worldviews through reason and evidence. Apologetics can be divided into various methods (such as classical, evidentialist, presuppositionalist, cumulative case, and Reformed epistemology) and various topics (such as the existence of God, the reliability of the Bible, and the identity of Jesus Christ). Apologetics must also explain and defend the moral stance taken by the Bible on matters of perennial and contemporary concern. Someone might object, “If the Bible is against same-sex marriage, then I reject the Bible and Christianity.”

This unbeliever who has moral objections to Christianity probably does not need a theistic argument or evidence for the resurrection of Jesus as much as she needs to see the truth and wisdom of the Christian position on the moral issue. Perhaps if she sees the wisdom of the Christian view, she would then be open to those constructive arguments for God and for Christ as Savior. Or perhaps she would be ready to take the gospel seriously, since her main intellectual obstacle was gone.

Moral Apologetics: A Short Companion combines the disciplines of ethics and apologetics in an installment of a series called Essentials in Christian Ethics, edited by C. Ben Mitchell and Jason Thacker. The authors rightly claim that anthropology and moral questions dominate the apologetic landscape today. They are in good company, since Carl Trueman’s The Desecration of Man (Sentinel, 2026) makes a strong case for it. Many reject Christianity for its stand on the meaning of person related to moral issues such as race, sex, marriage, the value of human life, and technology (transhumanism and AI). The Christian position on these matters needs to be clarified and defended as an apologetic “before the watching world” (as Francis Schaeffer put it).

Part I, Moral Apologetic Foundations, is comprised of five chapters on atheism and theism on moral concepts, a defense of human nature against anti-essentialist views of being human, the question of body and soul, and the meaning of the image of God. This section establishes the coherence and explanatory power of Christian theism and thus serves as a strong foundation for what follows, even without employing natural theology per se.

Part II is Moral Apologetics Applied. Dew and Steffaniak’s arguments on race, sex, marriage, abortion, sanctity of life, transhumanism and AI are generally strong. Yet it seems odd to me that they fail to take seriously the evangelical egalitarian objection to female submission to men (132). If women and men are ontologically equal (which they hold), then why should women be permanently submitted to men? A few other individual mistakes should be noted as well as a broader problem.

First, when referring Kant’s epistemology, they claim that Kant believed in “innate” mental principles for organizing experience. Kant rejected the doctrine of innate ideas, held by the likes of Plato and Descartes and did not use that language of the innate, given the association. Rather, Kant posited a priori faculties that required sensory input to generate knowledge. Thus, the authors are wrong when they claim that Kant believed that reality was determined by the mind (45). As he insisted, “Concepts without percepts are empty, percepts without concepts are blind.” The authors are correct, however, that Kant assigned an active power to the mind, a power that from that point onward increasingly detaches people from the objective world.

Second, on page 47, the book refers to Carl Trueman’s book, To Change All Worlds, for a point about Freud, but provides no page number. Since the book is not entirely about Freud, this is an error of imprecision. A few other footnotes are too vague as well, such as the omission of the edition for Scott Rae’s book, Moral Choices.

Third, on page 184, the book says that “creation is finished after seven days.” It was finished after six days, and on the seventh day, God rested (Genesis 1-2:1-3). God blessed the creation on the seventh day, but that is not part of its creation.

The broader problem is the authors’ defense of hylomorphism on the mind/body problem. They are right to reject materialism, but think that a hylomorphic view is superior to substance dualism. Broadly speaking, hylomorphism—originated by Aristotle and developed by Thomas Aquinas—claims that mind and body are not two different substances but that the soul is the form or organizing principle of the body. So, teleology is maintained, since the soul gives purpose to the body.

The authors reject substance dualism, claiming that it requires that the person be essentially a soul, leaving the body without ontological anchorage. They write that dualism entails that “our personal identity has nothing to do with our biology” (70), which doesn’t follow if God coordinates body and soul as an interactive whole. The soul only separates from the body at death because of the fall, and Paul refers to this pre-resurrection state (before the resurrection) as being “unclothed” (2 Corinthians 5:4). In fact, the authors never address how hylomorphism can be coupled with disembodied and intermediate existence after physical death and before the resurrection—no small theological omission (Philippians 1:23-24; Revelation 6:6-11). Perhaps the case can be made, but the need for it is not even addressed in the book.

Despite my criticisms, this work makes a substantial contribution to the discipline of moral apologetics. May it spark other such efforts.