Posts by Louis Markos

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Augustine Against Gnosticism

Louis Markos
Oct 9, 2024
Most American Christians are aware that it is an ancient heresy to say that Jesus was man but not God (Arianism); less are aware that there were just as many heretics who promoted the opposite error: that Jesus was God but not man (Gnosticism). The reason Gnostics denied that God became fully man...

Markos Reviews Truth Changes Everything

Louis Markos
Oct 6, 2023
Truth Changes Everything: How People of Faith Can Transform the World in Times of Crisis by Jeff Myers Baker, 2022 256 pages, paper, $17.99 We have all heard or read the alarming statistics. Children from Christian homes, it seems, are just as likely as their secular peers to believe that...

The Archetype of the Dying and Rising God in World Mythology

Louis Markos
Mar 10, 2023
The Archetype of the Dying and Rising God in World Mythology By Paul R. Rovang Lexington Books, 2023 224 pages, hardcover, $100.00 Although many of the great Christian apologists of the twentieth century—Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, Chuck Colson—converted directly from atheism to Christianity, C. S...

How the Chosen Gets It Right

Louis Markos
Jun 24, 2022
From Cecil B. de Mille’s silent epic King of Kings (1927) to Mel Gibson’s intense and bloody Passion of the Christ (2004), movies about Jesus have always provoked controversy. In the 1940s, when Dorothy Sayers wrote a series of radio plays on the life of Christ for the BBC called The Man Born to Be...

Natural Theology: A Biblical and Historical Introduction and Defense

Louis Markos
May 2, 2022
Natural Theology: A Biblical and Historical Introduction and Defense. By David Haines. Davenant Press, 2021. 195 pages, paper, $14.95 As a classical apologist, C. S. Lewis began his defense of the faith by examining shared human experience. In Book I of Mere Christianity , Lewis argued that we all...

Rediscover Church

Louis Markos
Mar 8, 2022
Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential. By Collin Hansen & Jonathan Leeman. Crossway, 2021. 160 pages, paper, $12.99 I still find it hard to believe. A flu virus succeeded in doing what centuries of persecution by Roman pagans, Ottoman Muslims, Hindu nationalists, Eastern...

Before You Lose Your Faith: Deconstructing Doubt in the Church

Louis Markos
Oct 12, 2021
Before You Lose Your Faith: Deconstructing Doubt in the Church. Edited by Ivan Mesa. The Gospel Coalition, 2021. 139 pp. Paperback. $16.99 What if, C. S. Lewis asks in The Great Divorce , the people in hell could get on a bus and take it to heaven? And what if, when they arrived, they were met by...

Live Not by Lies

Louis Markos
Jun 24, 2021
Rod Dreher , Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (Sentinel, 2020), 256 pp., hardcover, $27.00 Published posthumously in Christian Reflections , “The Funeral of a Great Myth” is one of C. S. Lewis’s most perceptive and provocative essays. The “great myth” of the title is evolution,...

The Good, the True, the Beautiful

Louis Markos
May 7, 2021
The Good, the True, the Beautiful: A Multidisciplinary Tribute to Dr. David K. Naugle. Edited by Mark J. Boone, Rose M. Cothren, Kevin C. Neece, and Jaclyn S. Parrish. Pickwick Publications, 2021. 352 pp, paperback, $41.00. Back in the summer of 2012, I had the privilege of speaking for Summit...

The Good News of the Return of the King

Louis Markos
Nov 12, 2020
Michael T. Jahosky, The Good News of the Return of the King: The Gospel in Middle-Earth (Wipf & Stock, 2020), 238 pp. During the first half of the twentieth century, a brave cadre of poet-critics, most hailing from the American South, rose up to save poetry, and the language of poetry, from the...

Lost and Found

Louis Markos
May 9, 2019
Lost and Found: How Jesus Helped Us Discover our True Selves Edited by Collin Hansen The Gospel Coalition, 2019 160 pages, paper, $12.99 I have always been troubled by those long, weight-loss infomercials that one sees on late night television. I have nothing against hearing the struggles of real-...

Lost and Found

Louis Markos
May 9, 2019
Lost and Found: How Jesus Helped Us Discover our True Selves Edited by Collin Hansen The Gospel Coalition, 2019 160 pages, paper, $12.99 I have always been troubled by those long, weight-loss infomercials that one sees on late night television. I have nothing against hearing the struggles of real-...

Lost and Found

Louis Markos
May 9, 2019
Lost and Found: How Jesus Helped Us Discover our True Selves Edited by Collin Hansen The Gospel Coalition, 2019 160 pages, paper, $12.99 I have always been troubled by those long, weight-loss infomercials that one sees on late night television. I have nothing against hearing the struggles of real-...

Lewis on the Christian Life

Louis Markos
May 11, 2018
Joe Rigney, Lewis on the Christian Life: Becoming Truly Human in the Presence of God Crossway, 2018. 320 pages, paper, $21.99 In addition to teaching literature classes at Houston Baptist University, I have the privilege of conducting our first and second year honors students through a four-...

Lewis on the Christian Life

Louis Markos
May 11, 2018
Joe Rigney, Lewis on the Christian Life: Becoming Truly Human in the Presence of God Crossway, 2018. 320 pages, paper, $21.99 In addition to teaching literature classes at Houston Baptist University, I have the privilege of conducting our first and second year honors students through a four-...

Love Thy Body

Louis Markos
Feb 6, 2018
Nancy Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality , Baker, 2018. 336 pages, hardcover, $22.99 The Fall of 2017 saw a rash of sexual misconduct accusations and lawsuits leveled against such high-profile celebrities as Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and...

Love Thy Body

Louis Markos
Feb 6, 2018
Nancy Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality , Baker, 2018. 336 pages, hardcover, $22.99 The Fall of 2017 saw a rash of sexual misconduct accusations and lawsuits leveled against such high-profile celebrities as Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose and...

Giving the Devil His Due

Louis Markos
May 10, 2017
Giving the Devil His Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky By Jessica Hooten Wilson Cascade Books, 2017 156 pages, paper, $21.00 It is a sad and tragic irony that many private Christian schools do not teach Flannery O'Connor. I say it is sad and tragic...

C.S. Lewis and the Art of Writing

Louis Markos
Jan 24, 2017
Corey Latta. C. S. Lewis and the Art of Writing . Cascade Books, 2016, 250 pages. $30.00. Could there be any two people more different than George Orwell, an atheist and socialist who worked as a policeman in Burma, spent a year living as a hobo in Paris and London, and fought in Spain on the...

Life Under Compulsion

Louis Markos
Dec 8, 2015
Anthony Esolen. Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy the Humanity of Your Child . Delaware: ISI Books, 2015. 224 pages. $27.95 Ever since Edison recorded sound, each new generation of parents has voiced the same complaint: why do my kids listen to that junk! I sympathize strongly with such...

Life Under Compulsion

Louis Markos
Dec 8, 2015
Anthony Esolen. Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy the Humanity of Your Child . Delaware: ISI Books, 2015. 224 pages. $27.95 Ever since Edison recorded sound, each new generation of parents has voiced the same complaint: why do my kids listen to that junk! I sympathize strongly with such...

The Allure of Gentleness

Louis Markos
Oct 11, 2015
Dallas Willard, The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus . Harper One, 2015. 208 pages, hardcover. $26.99 One of the most exciting developments of the last two decades has been the rapid growth--nay, explosion--of top-notch apologists who have flooded the market with...

The Allure of Gentleness

Louis Markos
Oct 11, 2015
Dallas Willard, The Allure of Gentleness: Defending the Faith in the Manner of Jesus . Harper One, 2015. 208 pages, hardcover. $26.99 One of the most exciting developments of the last two decades has been the rapid growth--nay, explosion--of top-notch apologists who have flooded the market with...

Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory

Louis Markos
Jun 29, 2015
Jerry Walls, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory: Rethinking the Things that Matter Most . Michigan: Brazos, 2015. 240 pp. $19.99 Although two and a half centuries of Enlightenment naturalism have eaten away at the western world's faith in the afterlife, the question of our eternal destiny has certainly...

Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory

Louis Markos
Jun 29, 2015
Jerry Walls, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory: Rethinking the Things that Matter Most . Michigan: Brazos, 2015. 240 pp. $19.99 Although two and a half centuries of Enlightenment naturalism have eaten away at the western world's faith in the afterlife, the question of our eternal destiny has certainly...

Mere Believers

Louis Markos
Mar 14, 2015
Marc Baer, Mere Believers: How Eight Faithful Lives Changed the Course of History . Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013. 190 pages. $22.00 Although I double-majored in English and history as an undergraduate, when I moved on to graduate school, I narrowed my focus to English. I did so, not because I...

Mere Believers

Louis Markos
Mar 14, 2015
Marc Baer, Mere Believers: How Eight Faithful Lives Changed the Course of History . Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013. 190 pages. $22.00 Although I double-majored in English and history as an undergraduate, when I moved on to graduate school, I narrowed my focus to English. I did so, not because I...

If I Had Lunch with C.S. Lewis

Louis Markos
May 5, 2014
Alister McGrath, If I Had Lunch with C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Ideas of C. S. Lewis on the Meaning of Life . Tyndale, 2014. 256 pages. Hardcover. $17.99 Back in 2010, C. S. Lewis scholar Michael Ward pulled off a publishing coup that I would like to see imitated more often. Two years after...

The Lion's World

Louis Markos
Aug 12, 2013
Rowan Williams, The Lion's World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia . Oxford :Oxford University Press, 2012, 168 pp. $16.95/£11.00 (hardcover) When the film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe first hit screens in December of 2005, a gaggle of secular movie critics gleefully pilloried...

Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God

Louis Markos
May 20, 2013
Ralph C. Wood, Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God (Baylor University Press, 2011) $34.95, hardcover, 325 pages In Book eight, Chapter twelve of his Nicomachean Ethics , Aristotle asserts a seemingly common-sense truth that has been progressively forgotten, ignored, or repressed over the...

The Devil and Pierre Gernet: Stories

Louis Markos
Apr 3, 2013
The Devil and Pierre Gernet: Stories by David Bentley Hart Eerdmans, 2012 $25.00, paper, 176 pages My Dinner with D. B. Hart Though much has been written, and continues to be written, on the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning, far too few critics have celebrated, or even noticed, the distinctly...