The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Review by Wayne Krause

Redeemer Presbyterian Church was planted by Tim Keller, along with his wife Cathy, and their three young sons in Manhatten, New York, in 1989. Told a theologically conservative church aimed at secular young people would never work, Keller has proved his critics wrong. Today, Redeemer has nearly six thousand regular attendees at five services, and a host of daughter churches planted particularly in cities.

A clear, articulate preacher, Keller's church sermons are listed on their church website under titles and the Bible passages he preaches on. He once took over three years to preach through the book of Ephesians.

Keller's book comes out of his experience in a congregation consisting of predominantly of young people in their 20's and early 30's who, in today's postmodern world, want to know why they should believe in God or Christianity.

Frankly, this book ranks as one of the best in terms of modern apologetics. As Publishers Weekly says, "Keller mines material from literary classics, philosophy, anthropology and a multitude of other disciplines to make an intellectually compelling case for God... One of Keller's most provocative arguments is that all doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternate beliefs. Drawing on sources as diverse as 19th-century author Robert Louis Stevenson and contemporary New Testament theologian, N.T. Wright, Keller attempts to deconstruct everyone he finds in his way, from the evolutionary psychologist Richard Dawkins to popular author Dan Brown."

One of the things Keller does best is quote from atheistic authors to argue against writers such as Richard Dawkins, rather than only using Christian authors. The book is packed full of useful quotes all of which are well referenced.

In the first seven chapters, Keller looks at seven of the most common objections and doubts about Christianity and analyzes the alternate beliefs underlying each of them. This section is titled "The Leap of Doubt" and answers these seven common critiques:

  1. There can't be just one true religion
  2. A good God could not allow suffering
  3. Christianity is a straitjacket
  4. The church is responsible for so much injustice
  5. A loving God would not send people to hell
  6. Science has disproved Christianity
  7. You can't take the Bible literally

 

In the second half of the book, titled "The Reasons for Faith," Keller gives seven reasons for believing in the claims of the Christian faith.

  1. The clues of God
  2. The knowledge of God
  3. The problem of sin
  4. Religion and the gospel
  5. The (true) story of the cross
  6. The reality of the resurrection
  7. The Dance of God

 

Take this book, Peter Jensen's book "The Future of Jesus", and NT Wright's "Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense", and you probably have the best of modern Christian apologetics.

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
Timothy Keller
New York: Duttton, 2008
293 pages

This is a review from Planting our future, the newsletter of the Adventist Church in the South Pacific's Centre for Church Planting.

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