The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Subtitled "Belief in an Age of Skepticism," this very important book is a welcome antidote to the many atheist titles which have appeared lately. It very admirably fulfils the twin tasks of apologetics: dealing with objections to, and misunderstandings of, the Christian faith, and presenting the attractiveness of it. The first seven chapters deal with the most common objections and criticisms of Christianity that Keller, a New York City pastor, has encountered, while the last seven chapters very nicely lay out the case for the Christian worldview. Ministering to secular, sceptical New Yorkers has meant Keller has had to answer thousands of questions about the faith. He is very well read, quite intelligent, and has a heart to reach out to the seeker and the sceptic. Thus this book is a great blend of dealing with matters of both head and heart. Consider how he deals with some of the objections. The problem of suffering and evil is always near the top of such a list, and Keller does a good job in providing biblical responses to this issue. And he reminds us that unbelievers also have to deal with the problem. Modern "objections to God are based on a sense of fair play and justice," says Keller. People strongly believe we ought not to suffer, die of oppression and hunger, and so on. Yet in the evolutionary worldview, death, destruction and suffering are fully natural - they are part of the mechanism of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Crap just happens, in other words, in a secular scheme of things. Indeed, where does the sense of justice and fair play even come from, in such a dog-eat-dog world, where only matter matters? The believer, on the other hand, can account for both evil (we live in a fallen world) and goodness (we are made in the image of a good God). Moreover, our God is not aloof from suffering, but has entered into the very heart of the human condition, experiencing to the full our pain and suffering. God does not abandon us in our suffering, but is in a very real sense present with us. Related to this is the objection of how a loving God could send people to hell. But hell is ultimately a destination that people choose for themselves. Says Keller, "hell is simply one's freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity". People who seek to be free of God, - who is the only source of love, goodness, beauty and kindness - can follow that path. And that path does lead to hell, which is the place where God is not. As C.S. Lewis said, hell is the "greatest monument to human freedom". And love and judgement are not opposites, but two sides of the same coin. If you really love someone, you get angry at whatever hurts and destroys him or her. One can rightly hate cancer for what it does to people. And sin is a spiritual cancer that destroys people. God's love for us must entail hating our sin which separates us from his love. Keller also offers some positives of the Christian faith. Probably the most basic and fundamental good is the cross of Christ. It is here that justice and mercy fully meet. The demands of justice are fully met at Calvary, but in a way in which the grace of God can be freely extended to us, undeserving as we are. Sin demands a payment. Letting criminals go scot-free is not justice. God did not let sin go unpunished, but allowed his own son to take our punishment, so that he might offer us forgiveness and hope. God himself absorbed the debt, so that we might be freely forgiven. But a huge cost was still paid. God becomes human in order to "honor moral justice and merciful love," says Keller, "so that someday he can destroy all evil without destroying us". That last phrase is a tremendously profound Christian truth. As Solzhenitsyn reminded us, good and evil runs through every human heart. So how can a just and holy God eradicate evil without eradicating us? The glorious exchange that took place at Calvary is the answer. "All real life-changing love involves some form of this kind of exchange". There can be no God of love, Keller reminds us, if we take away the cross. This is indeed the good news of the Christian worldview. Keller also deals with the issue of human relationships, and the alienation and selfishness that destroys such relationships because of sin. God is above all a relational God. The three persons of the Godhead are involved in a free, loving relationship. We were created to be part of that love relationship. The joy and love found in the Godhead has been extended to us. But that can only be received as we have relationship with God. But sin and selfishness destroy that joy and love, and trap us in alienation and despair. God wants that love relationship restored, not just in the sweet by and by, but here and now. In this, Christianity is unique among all the world religions in offering hope and wholeness in this material world. Biblical salvation lies not in escape from the world, but in its transformation. The Christian story is bigger than just having our individual sins forgiven. It is about putting "the whole world right, to renew and restore the creation, not to escape it". A short review like this cannot do justice to the riches found in this volume. In 250 pages a very articulate, rational and compassionate case is made for Christian truth claims. This is a book to both strengthen the faith of believers, and help answer many of the nagging questions of sceptics and seekers. I heartily recommend it.

I believe it was in 1988 when I attended a weekend conference in New Jersey where Tim Keller was the speaker. He was then telling people about his plans to move to New York City, to Manhattan, to start a conservative Presbyterian church there. He felt called to minister to a large city population at a time when many churches were fleeing to the suburbs. Dr. Boice, the then senior pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in downtown Philadelphia, had a similar commitment to large city ministry and I have often wondered if he had influenced Keller in his decision. I don't know the answer to that question. On the other hand, many wondered at Keller's decision. Probably not because of any lack of perceived need but rather because of the magnitude of the task. He wasn't proposing to join an already established conservative, evangelical ministry (there probably wasn't one, all of the old ones had already left), but rather to start one in downtown Manhattan! I moved to Wichita in 1990 and have heard very little of Keller since then. This book, Reason for God, is the first book of Keller's that I have read. I was delighted to read it not only because of the content (more below - this is a review!) but also because it has filled in the details of his Manhattan ministry. He has apparently been wildly successful in his endeavors! I learned about this book from Lauren Green on the Fox News channel, Green being a member of Keller's congregation. This book is based on Keller's ministry and experiences with the skeptical residents of Manhattan. What are the real questions that people are asking? What answers does the Christian faith have to offer to those questions? Just how relevant is Christianity to this modern world? How best can Christianity be presented to skeptical enquirers? Is this the Apostle Paul in Athens or in Corinth? No, it is Keller in Manhattan! According to New York magazine: "With intellectual, brimstone-free sermons that mange to cite Woody Allen alongside Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Keller draws some five thousand young followers every Sunday. Church leaders see him as a model of how to evangelize urban centers across the country, and Keller has helped 'plant' fifty gospel-based Christian churches around New York plus another fifty from San Francisco to London." Keller encourages his readers to doubt, Christians as well as unbelievers. In the Introduction he writes: "People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic." "Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts - not only their own but their friends' and neighbors'." "My thesis is that if you come to recognize the beliefs on which your doubts about Christianity are based, and if you seek as much proof for those beliefs as you seek from Christians for theirs - you will discover that your doubts are not as solid as they first appeared." And with this he sets the stage for dialogue about serious questions. Throughout the book he uses this approach. Have you really understood the Christian message? If you doubt it, upon what are your doubts based? Are those doubts justified? For example, in Chapter 1 he discusses doctrine and how many think that doctrine is harmful and that what really matters are the teachings of major religions that seem similar. He responds as follows: "Ironically, the insistence that doctrines do not matter is really a doctrine itself. It holds a specific view of God, which is touted as superior and more enlightened than the beliefs of most major religions. So the proponents of this view do the very thing they forbid in others." Granted that at least some evil in the world does pose a problem, but I think Keller's take on it is a good one. He writes in Chapter 2: "Tucked away within the assertion that the world is filled with pointless evil is a hidden premise, namely, that if evil appears pointless to me, then it must be pointless. Again the reasoning is, of course, fallacious. Just because you can't see or imagine a good reason why God might allow something to happen doesn't mean there can't be one. [Remember Job.] Again we see lurking within supposedly hard-nosed skepticism an enormous faith in one's own cognitive faculties. If our minds can't plumb the depths of the universe for good answers to suffering, well, then, there can't be any! This is blind faith of a high order." Later in the same chapter he displays the fallacious logic of the atheist concerned with justice: "On what basis, then, does the atheist judge the natural world to be horribly wrong, unfair, and unjust? The nonbeliever in God doesn't have a good basis for being outraged at injustice, which, as Lewis [C.S. Lewis] points out, was the reason for objecting to God in the first place. If you are sure that this natural world is unjust and filled with evil, you are assuming the reality of some extra-natural (or supernatural) standard by which to make your judgment." Reminiscent of Phillip Johnson's lecture at Princeton University "Can Science Know the Mind of God?", Keller writes in Chapter 8: "if we can't trust our belief-forming faculties to tell us the truth about God, why should we trust them to tell us the truth about anything, including evolutionary science? If our cognitive faculties only tell us what we need to survive, not what is true, why trust them about anything at all? . . . If we believe God exists, then our view of the universe gives us a basis for believing that cognitive faculties work . . . I want to demonstrate that you already know that God does exist . . . belief that we cannot prove but can't not know." This is a good read, not only for Christians who want a better understanding themselves of basic issues of faith and to be able to give better answers to those who ask, but it is also a good read for non-Christians who are asking questions.

Thoughtful reading. All the points and explanations , once you read , will help and make you believe why there are so many reasons to believe in God. The book is helpful for both the non believers to believe in and for the believers to increase there faith and trust in God. A definite must read and worth/ value for your money and time. The message given by the author is so straight forward and direct to the point , that will force the reader to think on it. Loved the author and the points made in the book.

Book is really nice in perfect condition. Customer service is really great.

Uno de los mejores libros apologéticos que he leído en recientes tiempos. En partes, al menos para mí --y échole la culpa a mi inglés no tan bueno-- es ligeramente complejo de exprimir y digerir, pero sólo hay que releer y listo. Hasta para regalar uno que otro.

Tim Keller kann man immer empfehlen! Dieses Buch ist nicht sehr detailliert, aber wirklich verständlich und nachvollziehbar geschrieben und eignet sich gut zur Weitergabe an Interessierte und offene Nichtchristen. Sich kritischen Fragen und Ideen auf ehrliche Weise zu stellen macht dieses Buch glaubwürdig und spannend, für Glaubende wie auch für Zweifler.

This book really deserves wide readership. So here are a load of reasons for getting hold of it and, more to the point, reading it! * It is very readable - in fact it is basically a précis of countless conversations Keller has had with various archetypal Manhattan sceptics. The standard format is "X asked me this... and Y asked me that ..."; "and this is how I answered them...". So it is not exposition as such (a small point is that the book could have benefited from more explicit biblical material), but it is fair to say that it is thoroughly `bibline` (to use Spurgeon's great coinage about John Bunyan). * The format is not accidental - because the aim of this book is to tackle all the big ones that people ask - or rather, all the big ones that sophisticated New Yorkers ask. So it may be that these are not necessarily the questions your friends are asking. So for example, the American political context (with its caricatures of `liberal left' and `religious/evangelical right') is such that it is necessary to say more about how the gospel transcends these boundaries - in our more secular European settings, the presenting issues are slightly different. But i would think that there are few questions out there that have not been addressed in some shape or form by this book. * It is full of thought-provoking angles and arguments, and helps to put things on the front foot by exposing the flaws in current thinking. As a small snapshot, here is one example. In a chapter about the problems with taking the Bible as authoritative because of our progressive ways of thinking have outgrown it, there is a very helpful paragraph: Of course, we think of the Anglo-Saxons as primitive, but someday others will think of us and our culture's dominant views as primitive. How can we use our time's standard of `progressive' as the plumbline by which we decide which parts of the Bible are valid and which are not? Many of the beliefs of our grandparents and great-grandparents now seem silly and even embarrassing to us. That process is not going to stop now. our grandchildren will find many of our views outmoded as well. Wouldn't it be tragic if we threw the Bible away over a belief that will look pretty weak or wrong? To stay away from Christianity because part of the Bible's teaching is offensive to you assumes that if there is a God he wouldn't have any views that upset you. Does that belief make sense? (The Reason for God, p112) * Keller has read deeply and widely - and it shows. By that I don't mean that he does this in a showy way - it is all very constructive and handled with a very light touch. So it is not like reading one of those doorstops in which there seems to be footnote for every line or Notes pages taking up more space than the main book. The point is that Keller is constantly tapping into popular culture and secular thinking in order to engage. I am convinced that this is both fundamentally necessary for us all as we seek to communicate to our culture and provides a very strong model. I think this is particularly powerful in his articulation of the problem of sin (a more unpalatable or culturally incorrect subject one could perhaps not find these days!). Check this out: How does this destruction of social relationships flow from the internal effects of sin? If we get our very identity, our sense of worth, from our political position, then politics is not really about politics, it is about us. Through our cause we are getting a self, our worth. That means we must despise and demonize the opposition. If we get our identity from our ethnicity or socioeconomic status, then we have to feel superior to those of other classes and races. If you are profoundly proud of being an open-minded, tolerant soul, you will be extremely indignant toward people you think are bigots. If you are a very moral person, you will feel very superior to people you think are licentious. And so on. There is no way out of this conundrum. The more we love and identify deeply with our family, our class, our race, or our religion, the harder it is to not feel superior or even hostile to other religions, races, etc. So racism, classism, and sexism are not matters of ignorance or a lack of education. Foucault and others in our time have shown that it is far harder than we think to have a self-identity that doesn't lead to exclusion. The real culture war is taking place inside our own disordered hearts, wracked by inordinate desires for things that control us, that lead us to feel superior and exclude those without them, and that fail to satisfy us even when we get them. (The Reason for God, p168-9) * So there is LOTS here to stimulate and encourage Christians. But it is not a book to hide in the ghettos. It is a book to LEND to people who are of a more intellectual bent. And that is thrilling. It doesn't dot every apologetic `i' or cross every `t' - but it is a great springboard for further discussion and inquiry. And there are not many books around pitched at this level that could be said to do all of that. Incidentally, there is a great website to tie-in with the book: [...] and this makes some great resources available - include sermons to download and an excellent guide for study groups.