Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith

I really enjoyed the book, and I've read and re-read it and the others by J. Warner Wallace. The way he writes is brilliant, intriguing and easy to follow. Highly recommend.Please keep them coming!

I started out with Cold Case Christianity, which was excellent, but Forensic Faith is even better. Are you a Christian? How do you know you're a Christian? If you come up against atheist attacks, can you stand your ground? Can you defend your faith? If most Christians are honest with themselves, there answers to these questions should be alarming. Even if they aren't and you have good answeres for these questions, what about your kids and the other kids in your church? Can they make the same claim? Point by point Mr. Wallace teaches us have to have a faith we can discuss anywhere, a forensic faith.

Great book to examine all the evidence for the historical account of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The book goes into detail of analyzing all the Gospels as well as other New Testament books to prove that Jesus was a real person who died and came back to life. It is well worth the time to read the book because it strengthens your faith in the Biblical account of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

I wanted to pace myself and not try to read too much at one time. I usually read chapter to chapter but realized that the chapters are long and chock full of information. So, I would read a couple of pages a day and do my best to take notes. I found that my wanting to pace myself was a good thing because I didn’t want to put the book down.Mr. Wallace writes with enthusiasm that shines through the pages. He uses his knowledge as a cold-case detective to investigate the writings of the Gospels. He understands that various eyewitness accounts will never agree on all points. What matters is that the events captured in the Gospels are recorded and not necessarily all the minute details be 100% correct. You know that if the Gospels did get all details to agree with each other, then skeptics would say that they agree because they copied word for word and not by Divine inspiration.Mr. Wallace provides step-by-step instructions on how to take and keep notes, diagrams to provide visual stimulation to accompany the reading, and various insights into past cases where he shows how his case making works.In this book, Mr. Wallace expounds on the need for churches and people to focus on training people to defend their beliefs instead of just teaching the Bible. On pages 73-74, Jim tells the story of his son (also named Jim) and his learning self-defense. As the younger Jim continues to train, it takes his teacher longer and longer to get him into submission. As Christians, we should train for the inevitable time we are asked about our faith. We should be ready at all times to give a reasonable defense for the reason why we believe. (1 Peter 3:15)On page 187, Jim mentions Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Greg Koukl, as being “the finest instruction manual for good Christian conversations available today.” I also have this book in Audible form and can attest that it is a very fine book with great information. However, I believe that this book (Forensic Faith) is just as fine a book on Christian Apologetics as any by Koukl, Craig, McDowell, and Sproul. I have learned quite a bit from within its pages and I pray that it continues to reach people from around the world.

This book is a great tool to learn how to understand and share your faith from an evidence based perspective. The author has written it from an approach that is easy to understand without having a degree in apologetics. J. Warren Wallace uses his years as a police detective to help us look at the evidence the eyewitnesses to Jesus's ministry recorded and become better able to share our faith based on that evidence.

Helped me to deepen my relationship with God and to build a stronger foundation.

Forensic FaithBy J.Warner WallaceA Review J.Warner Wallace is a retired cold case homicide detective who has applied his unique experience to Christianity in his books Cold Case Christianity and God’s Crime Scene. In Forensic Faith, Wallace makes the case for case-making. We are not all called to be detectives, but Wallace notes we are called to be case-makers, and offers his insights as to how we can effectively make the case for Christianity. While apologetics has been making a comeback in recent years, there is still a lot of resistance to the idea within the church. As noted here, there are still leaders in the church who think faith that is not grounded in reasons and evidence is somehow more “pure.” Wallace’s book is part of a growing effort to correct this misconception.Synopsis The book is only 224 pages, but there is a lot of insight and information in a small package. In his preface, Wallace distinguishes between belief that happens to be right and knowledge grounded in reasons. He notes that many, if not most Christians hold a true belief, but are not prepared to defend that belief. In chapter 1, Wallace lays out an argument for why Christians ought to be able to defend the faith, giving five examples. In chapter 2, training is emphasized over teaching, noting that training is what prepares you for action. Five steps for training are laid out. In chapter 3, Wallace explains the necessity for research and continuing preparation and offers five things we can do to apply this. Chapter 4 then offers five ways you can make you case like a good prosecutor. These chapters are followed by notes for further study and links to more resources.Analysis Forensic Faith is yet another example of Wallace’s gift for communication. He supplements the text with useful illustrations (which he draws himself) and examples from his extensive experience as a detective. What I found especially helpful was his response to those who claim “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. For one, he notes how extraordinary the claim is when he accuses someone of murder, and how they are convicted by ordinary evidence. Moreover, the alternative claims skeptics offer are no less “extraordinary” yet they do not offer extraordinary evidence for them. One issue I would approach a little differently than Wallace is in his description of the answers he gets when he asks Christians why they believe what they do. I agree with him that they are unable to defend what they believe. However, I would not characterize this as belief without evidence or reasons. As Wallace himself points out, almost anything counts as evidence. When someone comes to faith, typically it is (on a human level) after they have heard the Gospel from someone they trust. If their parents, or their pastor tell them Christianity is true, and they have reasons to trust their parents and/or their pastor, then this trustworthiness counts and evidence. I realize that if this is all they have, it is of very limited value when it comes to defending their beliefs, but it is still evidence. As such, I would offer this to those skeptics who claim such people have no evidence. I would also offer it to those who think they need no evidence.RecommendationThe structure of the book, each with an alliterated title (and the Baptists rejoiced) and five points of application (and all the apologists rejoiced) is easy to follow. This book is accessible for readers from middle school through graduate school. It is a must-read for all Christians. Did I mention it’s a good book?

I love all of Jim’s books. Brilliant stuff that has helped me to defend my faith in a articulated, robust and easily understood way.I’m actually doing a talk next week all about Forensic Faith. I feel it’s so important that ALL Christians know how to defend their faith. Having a blind faith or a trancendence experience to know that God and Christianity is true doesn’t seperate us from any other worldview as they can all say they same thing. Having the evidence behind those experiences is what separates the truth from the lie and confirms any transendence experience we may have had that brought us to Christ.I can’t recommned these books highly enough! J Warner Wallace is a legend of apologetics! :-)

Good price

An excellent book for thinking christians

J. Warner Wallace, a guy who has mastered the art of being a tent-maker for Christ, has certainly incorporated his vocational experience as a Cold Case investigator for the LAPD and has applied these vocational skills to defending and articulating his faith, which he found while serving in the police force. He has authored other books, which best outline his defence for Biblical Christianity, using his inductive apologetic method, such as "Alive", a case for the resurrection, and more famous, "God's Crime Scene" and "Cold Case Christianity."Wallace's more recent book, "Forensic Faith" is less of an apologetic and more of an apologetic for apologetics. His contention is certainly not "Why are Christians so stupid?", so much as "Why are Christians leaving their brains at the door?" This book is definitely a strong call to take intellectual responsibility for our faith and serves as a primer to epistemology, without being too philosophically technical. He notes valuable instances where he takes exception with police officers he worked with over the years, who were outstanding at their jobs, but compartmentalized their faith from their intellectual lives, and cites these as examples why he rejected Christianity, having been brought up in a home where skepticism was alive and well.This book can be summed up as "We cannot count on happy accidents in forming true beliefs!" In this book he recollects a case where his partner was accidentally correct in his guess that a spouse has committed a murder, and while Wallace disagreed with his partner, who turned out to be correct, his partner's guesswork, or intuition, did not count as genuine knowledge. What counts, in epistemology, as genuine knowledge is not a lucky guess which so happens to be true, but a justified true belief. In order for something to count as knowledge it must be justified, true and it must be believed. One cannot have knowledge without these three components being in place and a perfect track record of lucky guesses still does not ever count as genuine knowledge. Undoubtedly, based on this criteria for truth, alone, Wallace is the last guy to ever consult a psychic investigator.So, is Christianity true, so we believe it, or do we believe something which just so happens to be true? Wallace argues we can do much better than the Mormon's who, with no justification, are agnostic in their belief and find little to no justification for their doctrinal assertions. Christianity has no religious peers and stands far apart from other religions, like Islam and Mormonism, which merely assert ideas which may or may not be true. Wallace notes that while Jesus made truth claims, they were never believed at face value, but were always accompanied by a miracle, authenticating the claim, "So that we may know..." Mark 2:10-11.Wallace's career in police forensics has been a devotion to the use of inductive logic, which is slightly different than deductive logic, in that deductive logic is less about experience and more about what is independent of experience. In inductive logic, one is working from a particular instance, such as a dead body, and reasoning backwards to a general cause, while using deductive principles, and in police forensics one is seeking a sufficient cause to explain a series of events. This may be the case with reconstructing the scene of an accident, or a murder, the material evidence is different in form, but the principles are the same. Wallace employs this type of logic in defending the resurrection and other historical events claimed within Christianity, and cites numerous verses defending the notion that Christianity is founded on good evidence, and indisputable facts and while we are not directly privy to these events, in that particular historical events are not happening over and over again in our midst, we can examine the evidence based on contemporary and eyewitness accounts.Apologetics is a tough sell in the church, because we are preaching to the choir already, and apologetics would still be necessary even if the whole world were Christian, because Christianity never ceases to be an intellectual faith which rests on evidence. Much of this book can be summarized as, "The early church were evidential in their understanding and acceptance of the bodily resurrection of Jesus, so why should we be agnostic about there being real objective truths about Christianity?" We certainly aren't off the hook.This book does much more than call us to apologetics as a church, but follows up with advice for developing apologetic programs within a church or group, and for us to individually grow intellectually as Christians. Wallace certainly takes his occupation and applies it to his ministry, and I am sure he applies his ministry to his vocation, just as much. He has stepped into both his faith and the police force with a very tough mind and we should as well.I would highly suggest this book for young adult, or adult Sunday school groups, and para church apologetic groups. This book does also have a study guide, which can be used for self study, or for any type of group. Wallace's books would undoubtedly be invaluable for any parent seeing their child off to university, where their faith will undoubtedly come under attack. This book, in particular, would serve for developing an apologetics culture within any church, where no belief is taken for granted. Wallace is a guy who does not see apologetics as belonging in ivory tower debates, but something which belongs in lunchroom discussions, as much as a university debate. Undoubtedly, even William Lane Craig would not expect us to all be academics, like himself, and understands that he cannot fight our apologetic fights for us, but expects us to learn what we can from him and apply it to our individual corridor of developing our faith and evangelizing to those around us. I think this accurately sums up the personal ministry of J. Warner Wallace, and I look forward to more of his books being written and becoming available to the church.

In the book Wallace asks; “If thoughtful, evidential verifiability is a Christian distinctive, shouldn’t a thoughtful, evidential approach to the evidence for Christianity be our distinctive Christian duty? Shouldn’t this duty call us to live differently than the adherents of other religious systems? Shouldn’t we, as Christians, be the one group who knows why our beliefs are true and is most willing to defend what we believe? Why, then, are we often uninterested in the evidence?” As the mother of three young adults I have only recently understood how vital it is for me to not only fully embrace my eminently verifiable Christian faith but to be able to defend it robustly also. I’ve read a lot of books in the last year, watched a lot of videos and heard a lots of podcasts. Wallace is my hands down favourite apologist.