Top Christian Philosophers, Apologists, and Public Intellectuals

The Best of the Best–the Top Christian Philosophers, Apologists, and Public Intellectuals

This quote is tounge and cheek–a bit of sarcasm, but its legitimately saying these are smart people across various disciplines including literature, philosophy, science, and art–listing 52 Christians in total.

“Some of the dullards who have believed in God are the musicians Palestrine and Johann Sebastian Back,; artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Caravaggio; writers such as Dante and J.R.R. Tolkien; philosophers such as Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Rene Descartes, Alfred North Whitehead and Anthony Flew; scientists (I list more of these because antithesis often claim that religion and science are incompatible)  such as Louis Agassiz, Andre-Marie Ampere, Robert Boyle, Tyco Brahe, Nicholaus Copernicus, George Cuvier, John Ambrose Fleming, Galileo, Pierre Gassed, William Harvey, Werner Heisenberg, William Herschel, James Prescott Joule, William Kelvin, Johann Kepler, Carolus Linnaeus, Joseph Lister, Charles Lyell, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel, Issac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Max Planck, Bernhard Riemann and Nicolaus Steno.  The antithesis retort that these people are too old and dead to have been aware that science disproves God.  But here are brilliant people who believe in God today: Stephen M. Barr, Francis S. Collins, Simon Conway Morris, William Lane Craig, Owen Gingrich, Stanley Jaki, John C. Lennox, Alister McGrath, Kenneth Miller, Alvin Platinga, John Polkinghorne, John A. people, Marilynne Robinson, Hugh Ross, Allen R. Sandage, A.N.  Wilson, and N.T. Wright.  And that’s just the portion of Christians is to be found in departments of natural science than in departments of humanities or social science.  Among the leaders of the anti-theist movement today, few are actually professional scientists.”

(Jeffrey Burton Russel, Exposing Myths about Christianity: A Guide to Answering 145 Viral Lies and Legends, p. 131-132)

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Another List of the Best Christian Philosophers, Apologists, and Public Intellectuals

There is a rather dubious misconception that doesn’t fully take into account that Christians have a number of leading writers, intellectuals, and speakers. Simply because these folks don’t make the NYT doesn’t mean they aren’t articulate and incisive in their analysis of social issues.

Here are eight that are positively heavy hitters—and two that are perhaps more debateable—but certainly find themselves on the God side:

1. Anthony Flew (Oxford, Redding, Calagary,
2. Mortimer J Adler (University of Chicago)
3. Alister McGrath (Oxford)
4. William Lane Craig
5. CS Lewis (Oxford)
6. EF Schumacher (Small is Beautiful)
7. Francis Bacon (founder of science)
8. John Locke (founder of liberal social contract that became the basis of the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence)
9. Copelston (wrote multi-volume set on philosophy thats a classic. Debated Russell)
10. Einstein believed in a kind of Deist God, and was certainly anti-atheist. Einstein argued for an integration of thinking in this regard, not the over-simplified and anti-historical conflict thesis.
11. Even Thomas Jefferson believed in God and the value of religion, he just thought the influence of a given denomination (say a particular brand of Calvinists on government was a bad thing, not Christianity).

You can look at the Veritas Forum.

Here is another list: List of converts to Christianity from nontheism – Wikipedia

Update:

Here are nine more to add:

1. Ravi Zacharias (spoken at all the great universities in the Western world, but actually pretty globally as well)
2. Os Guinness
3. Sean McDowell
4. David Bentley Hart
5. Ed Feser
6. John Lennox (Philosopher & mathematician at Oxford)
7. Martin Luther King Jr.
8. Billy Graham
9. Reinhold Niebuhr (public intellectual)

Finally, here are four more, all Catholic that I accidentally left off:

1. Alvin Platinga
2. Alisdair McIntyre
3. Mary Ann Glendon
4. Peter Kreeft
5. Here is a list of all the authors from the Catholic publication First Things: Authors

You could also probably add folks like Tim Keller, Max Lucado, and perhaps Oswald Chambers to the list. And there are a number of Christian writers who fall into this category.

This shouldn’t surprise us because Jesus, Paul, and David were among the key speakers and/or writers of the Bible itself—not to mention the Gospel writers.

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