Wincenty Kwiatkowski

The chapter presents Wincenty Kwiatkowski as the founder of an original system of total apologetics and one of the most important figures of the Warsaw school of apologetics. His project sought to move beyond apologetics understood as a collection of separate arguments towards a comprehensive study of Christianity as a religious phenomenon. The central category is the religious consciousness of Christ and the Church, analysed in both individual and social dimensions. The former leads to Christological questions, while the latter develops into ecclesiology; together they integrate the classical apologetic treatises into a single coherent system. The chapter portrays total apologetics as Kwiatkowski’s most distinctive and original scholarly achievement.