Without a doubt Norman Leo Geisler (1932 – 2019) was one of the most influential apologists of the last 100 years. He has played a great role in my journey in apologetics and co-authored with Frank Turek, one of my favorite apologetics books: I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. Below is a brief biography of Norman Geisler from his website.1
“Dr. Norman Geisler, PhD, was a prolific author, veteran professor, speaker, lecturer, traveler, philosopher, apologist, evangelist, and theologian. To those who ask, “Who is Norm Geisler?” some have suggested, “If you can imagine a cross between Thomas Aquinas and Billy Graham, you’re not too far off.” A mentor to countless apologists and theologians, several consider him to be the grandfather of classical, evangelical Christian apologetics–a wide-ranging, holistic apologetic that would encompass foundational matters like knowing truth about reality, to knowing God exists by reasoning from effects to their causes, to the historical trustworthiness of the four gospel accounts, to the fact of the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead, to the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ, to Jesus’s view of the Bible as without error. True to his middle name, Norm was a lion; he was certainly one of the greatest defenders of the reliability, inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of the Bible in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
“Norm authored or co-authored over 100 books and hundreds of articles. He taught theology, philosophy, and classical Christian apologetics on the undergraduate and graduate level for over 50 years and served as a professor at some of the finest seminaries in the United States, including Trinity Evangelical Seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary, Veritas International University, and Southern Evangelical Seminary.”
In addition, I have listed below some of his more memorable quotes.2
“So, I cast my lot with Him-not the one who claimed wisdom, Confucius; or the one who claimed enlightenment, Buddha; or the one who claimed to be a prophet, Muhammad, but with the one who claimed to be God in human flesh. The one who declared, ‘Before Abraham was born, I am’-and proved it.”
“While many have doubted the accuracy of the Bible, time and continued research have consistently demonstrated that the Word of God is better informed than its critics. In fact, while thousands of finds from the ancient world support in broad outline and often in detail the biblical picture, not one incontrovertible find has ever contradicted the Bible.”
“Everyone in heaven will be fully blessed, but not everyone will be equally blessed. Every believer’s cup will be full and running over, but not everyone’s cup will be the same size. We determine in time what our capacity for appreciating God will be in eternity.”
“If the Resurrection had not occurred, why would the apostle Paul give such a list of supposed eyewitnesses? He would immediately lose all credibility with his Corinthian readers by lying so blatantly.”
“It is a category mistake to ask, ‘Who made the Unmade?’ or ‘Who created the Uncreated?’ One may as well ask, ‘Where is the bachelor’s wife?’”
“The Moral Law is not always the standard by which we treat others, but it is nearly always the standard by which we expect others to treat us.”
“In the Old Testament the Rose of Sharon is just budding, but in the New Testament it is in full bloom. The whole Bible is all about Jesus.”
“God overrules the evil intent of humans to accomplish His ultimate good.”
“Truth is discovered, not invented. It exists independent of anyone’s knowledge of it. (Gravity existed prior to Newton.)”
“If the Moral Law doesn’t exist, then there’s no moral difference between the behavior of Mother Teresa and that of Hitler.”
“The incredible specified complexity of life becomes obvious when one considers the message found in the DNA of a one-celled amoeba (a creature so small, several hundred could be lined up in an inch). Staunch Darwinist Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University, admits that the message found in just the cell nucleus of a tiny amoeba is more than all thirty volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica combined, and the entire amoeba has as much information in its DNA as 1,000 complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica! In other words, if you were to spell out all of the A, T, C, and G in the unjustly called primitive amoeba (as Dawkins describes it), the letters would fill 1,000 complete sets of an encyclopedia! Now, we must emphasize that these 1,000 encyclopedias do not consist of random letters but of letters in a very specific order just like real encyclopedias. So, here’s the key question for Darwinists like Dawkins: if simple messages such as Take out the garbage Mom, Mary loves Scott, and Drink Coke require an intelligent being, then why doesn’t a message 1,000 encyclopedias long require one?”
“C. S. Lewis observed, if Christ is not God, then he could not have been an exemplary prophet or a great moral teacher, because he claimed to be God. If he was not who he said he was, then he was either a liar or a lunatic, hardly a great moral teacher or prophet.”
“There are some things even God cannot do. He cannot force anyone to freely accept Him. Forced freedom is a contradiction in terms. This is why Jesus said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. (Matthew 23:37) So the only way God could literally destroy all evil is to destroy all freedom.”
“But the greatest miracle of all—the creation of the universe out of nothing—has already occurred, which means Genesis 1:1 and every other miracle in the Bible is believable.”
“The Old Testament, which even the most ardent critic acknowledges was in existence centuries before Christ, predicted the where (Micah 5:2), the when (Dan. 9:26), and the how (Isa. 7:14) of Christ’s entry into the world. He would be born of a woman (Gen. 3:15) from the line of Adam’s son Seth (Gen. 4:26), through Noah’s son Shem (Gen. 9:26-27), and Abraham (Gen. 12:3; 15:5). He would come through the tribe of Judah (Gen. 49:10) and would be the son of David (2 Sam. 7:12f.). The Old Testament predicted that Christ would die for our sins (Psalm 22; Isaiah 53; Dan. 9:26; Zech. 12:10) and would rise from the dead (Pss. 2:7; 16:10). All of these supernatural prophecies were uniquely fulfilled in Jesus Christ.”
“Natural selection may be able to explain the survival of a species, but it cannot explain the arrival of a species.”
“Ronald Reagan once quipped, “I’ve noticed all those in favor of abortion are already born.” Indeed, all pro-abortionists would become pro-life immediately if they found themselves back in the womb.”
“Evolutionists once claimed there were some one hundred eighty vestigial organs (with no known function) left over from our animal ancestry. Over the last century or so, this list has shrunk to six! And now there are known functions even for these.”
2 All of these quotes are from the following book and websites:
Charlie H. Campbell, Apologetics Quotes (Carlsbad, California: The Always Be Ready Apologetics Ministry, 2020)
The Uniqueness of Christ – JA Show Articles
Norman L. Geisler Quotes (Author of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist) (goodreads.com)