Christian Apologetics
Christian apologetics books — every one written by a convert
The case for Christianity, argued by people who spent years on the other side of it. Some were paid to lecture against the faith. Two agreed to demolish it between them and published the opposite of what they planned. Every book here is in the public domain and free to read.
The English evidentialists
Deists, Chartists, and journalists who set out to demolish Christianity and published the opposite of what they planned.
The Bridge of History over the Gulf of Time
Thomas Cooper
$1.99
Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul
George Lyttelton
$1.99
Observations on the History and Evidences of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Gilbert West
$1.99
A View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion
Soame Jenyns
$1.99
The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
Alfred Edersheim
$1.99
Orthodoxy
G.K. Chesterton
$1.99
The Testimony of the Rocks
Hugh Miller
$1.99
The Everlasting Man
G.K. Chesterton
$1.99
Who Moved the Stone?
Frank Morison
$1.99
The French return
Unbelief learned from the philosophes, then unlearned — the century of conversions that ran from Chateaubriand to Péguy.
The Conversion of Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne
Théodore de Bussières
$1.99
En Route
J.-K. Huysmans
$1.99
Études philosophiques sur le christianisme
Auguste Nicolas
French only
The Genius of Christianity
François-René de Chateaubriand
$1.99
De l'harmonie entre l'Église et la Synagogue
David Drach
French only
Le Salut par les Juifs
Léon Bloy
French only
Le Voyage du centurion
Ernest Psichari
French only
Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne
Charles Péguy
French only
Pensées
Blaise Pascal
$1.99
Rome et Lorette
Louis Veuillot
French only
German
Enlightenment rationalists who turned and argued back against the thing that formed them.
Italian
Voltaireans, futurists, and prisoners — the Italian case, made by men who had made the other one first.
Russian
Faith lost to materialism and socialism, recovered in lecture halls and Siberian prisons.
American
Written from inside the American seeking that produced it.
Dutch
The Jewish convert apologists of the Netherlands, arguing to their own people.
Questions about Christian apologetics books
- What are the best Christian apologetics books?
- The best-known modern ones — Lewis's Mere Christianity, Strobel's The Case for Christ, Keller's The Reason for God — are still in copyright. The books on this shelf are the older layer they were built on: Chesterton's Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, Frank Morison's Who Moved the Stone?, Augustine's City of God, Pascal's Pensées, Lyttelton and West on the resurrection and St. Paul. All of them are in the public domain, so you can read every one free.
- What makes this list different from other apologetics reading lists?
- Every author on it converted as an adult. They are not writing from inside a faith they inherited — each had held the other position, sometimes publicly and for money, before changing sides. Several set out to write against Christianity and produced the opposite book.
- Are these apologetics books free?
- Yes. Every title here is in the US public domain and each book page links a free source — Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, CCEL or New Advent. We also sell clean, corrected editions for those who would rather read a properly typeset copy than a raw scan.
- Where should a beginner start?
- Minucius Felix's Octavius is the shortest and most approachable of the ancient ones — a conversation on a walk by the sea. For modern readers, Frank Morison's Who Moved the Stone? is the most gripping: a journalist sets out to debunk the resurrection and writes the chapter 'The Book That Refused to Be Written.' Chesterton's Orthodoxy is the best written of them all.
- Is apologetics the same as a conversion story?
- No, and we keep them on separate shelves. A conversion narrative tells what happened to a person; apologetics argues that Christianity is true. Our Changed Lives library holds the first-person testimonies; this shelf holds the arguments — written, in every case here, by someone whose own testimony sits on the other shelf's terms.