Apologetics

Review: The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God

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The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, Justin Brierly. Carol Stream: Tyndale Elevate, 2023.

Summary: A journalist and podcast host makes the case that we may be seeing a new wave of people coming to faith in God and why this is so.

This book opens with Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” which describes the ebbing of the “Sea of Faith” hearing “Its meloncholy, long, withdrawing roar.” It has seemed that we are in the midst of such a time. We have witnessed the rise of the New Atheism, a self-confident attack that ridiculed the irrationality, and indeed, the immorality of the God of Christianity. Various scandals of money, sex, and power in the churches, combined with the intertwining of church and extreme political positions sent many to the exits. We witnessed the rise of the “Nones” and a series of confessional blogs of people “deconstructing” their faith, often de-converting in the process.

Justin Brierly observes that tides that ebb also flow back, and he contends that he is also seeing a return to belief in God, with an embrace of Christianity by many but not all who do. He’s in a unique position to do so, hosting the Unbelieveable podcast, bringing together believing and secular thinkers in conversation, and being surprised at what is happening in the lives of some of his “secular” guests.

He begins with a chronicle of the rise and fall of the New Atheism movement, chronicling its self-destruction amid sexist and racist pronouncements, and its inability to come forward with meaningful proposals to replace what it was tearing down. Meanwhile, its challenge energized a new generation of Christian apologists who discovered that faith is often strongest under attack.

He describes the turn toward Christianity of figures like Jordan Peterson and Peter Boghassian, once an atheist firebrand who increasingly found himself siding with Christians. He recounts interviewing Douglas Murray, a gay, agnostic journalist haunted by the faith he once scorned. Ancient historian Tom Holland is another he discusses, who came to the realization that the Western view of the world, even in its secular humanist version, that stood in such sharp contrast with the ancients, was fundamentally Christian at its roots.

Brierly chronicles a crisis of meaning for which atheism did not have an answer. He recounts how actor David Suchet found that meaning in reading the Bible and goes on to discuss how various skeptics have rediscovered the Bible and the reasons for its reliability. Likewise, science, far from disproving faith raises intriguing questions of order and the fine-tuning of the universe and the unique conditions that produced and sustained life on earth. The war is not between science and faith but between scientists who do not believe and those who do, a matter of the heart and not the science. He singles out Francis Collins and Rosalind Picard as ones who changed their minds and have believed. He observes the self-defeating arguments of determinist materialists.

He concludes with the story of Paul Kingsnorth, a naturalist and one-time Wiccan and now Orthodox Christian, who believed because it was a story that made sense of his life. He argues that there are three things the church needs to do to prepare for a returning wave of people coming to faith:

  1. Embrace both reason and imagination
  2. Keep Christianity weird–that is, distinctively Christian
  3. Create a community that counters cancel culture

This last is striking both for the idea of physical community amid increasing isolation, and the ability of the gospel to transcend difference–that allows difference without cancelling.

Brierly is careful throughout to distinguish genuine converts and those who simply have moved toward God. His ability to bring people who differ into conversation means he doesn’t expect neat packages. He also offers the challenge that this time, far from one about which Christians ought be depressed, can be a time of reinvigorated and intellectually stimulated faith. The stories also evidence the work of God as skeptics have dreams, read scripture, or simply take a hard look at the evidence around them.

It might be argued that Brierly is putting forward an overly optimistic case. Time will tell. I suspect that what he does is offer a counter-story to the pessimistic, doom and gloom stories filling much of evangelical publishing and press accounts. Brierly acknowledges the problems but also draws on the evidence of history that these never defeat God and that God is often at work amid these, birthing new life. His stories of real people suggest that what happened with them is possible for others. If you are wondering if there is any basis to hold out hope in a time of apparent decline, this is an account worth reading.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Humble Confidence

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Humble Confidence, Benno van den Toren and Kang-San Tan. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: A model of dialogical apologetics for a multi-faith world committed to accountable and embodied witness that is culturally sensitive, holistic, and yet centered in Christ.

The world in which Christian witness and the work of the apologist has changed. Once it could be assumed that both the apologist and the person or people he or she was engaged with shared a common, Western outlook. Today, even in the West, let alone other contexts, that assumption no longer holds. The Christian witness finds oneself in a multi-faith, pluralistic context of Eastern religions, primal religions, Islam, secularism, and cobbled-together spiritualities.

In place of the foundationalist apologetics once assumed, the authors propose a model of apologetic dialogue that takes the multi-faith, multi-cultural realities of mission in today’s world seriously, exercising a posture both of humility as learners understanding the outlook of those with whom they engage and confidence centered around the person and work of Christ and its universal relevance to the human condition.

The co-authors, who have lived and worked in missional contexts in various parts of the world contend that such apologetic witness must be embodied in the witnessing community. Theoretical discussions must reflect the lived realities of the witnessing community. This witness also must reflect awareness that truth is embedded in cultural contexts, both of the witness and the listener, but that we are not imprisoned by those cultural realities.

They grapple with how we ought see other religions, refusing to see them merely as idolatrous falsehoods on the one hand, nor their adherents as simply fellow pilgrims on the other. Rather, they employ multiple perspectives undergirded by seeking to discern the work of the triune God in the particular context. This also leads to an understanding of apologetic dialogue as a witness to the God who came to us in the person of the Son and remains present in the world through his Spirit. Apologetics cannot be separated from our witness to the work of the Triune God.

At the same time, just as this entry of God into the world was culturally embedded in Israel and the Greco-Roman empire, apologetic dialogue respectfully listens and learns about the cultural embeddedness of other beliefs while gesturing to a reality beyond both partners in the dialogue against which we reckon our understanding. This includes both tensions between beliefs and realities and also with the desires and will of our dialogue partners.

Along the way the authors address issues such as the trustworthiness of the biblical witness to Christ, the uniqueness of Christ amid cultural relativism, and the critique against the use of Christianity as a cloak for Western imperialism.

The second half of the book applies this framework to case studies of apologetic dialogue with a variety of faith perspectives: primal religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, secularism, and what they call “late-modern spiritualities.” We explore ways Christ may subvert some forms of the Hindu quest, tensions in Buddhism between the oneness of all things and the significance of persons, and the dismissal of evil and suffering as illusion that inadequately address lived experience. and the integrity of Christian faith, including the idea of the Trinity in dialogue with Islam.

The case studies are helpful in seeing how they apply their ideas of apologetic dialogue. In particular, I appreciate the focus on attentive listening and understanding of cultures, of embodied and accountable witness, centered in scripture’s witness to the work of the Triune God in the person of his Son and the continuing ministry of the Spirit. Rather than a “we’re right/you’re wrong approach” on one hand and a “let’s all just walk in pilgrimage together” approach on the other, this assumes that while we witness to Christ from within our cultural contexts and others similarly live and believe from theirs, there is truth beyond to which we witness yet do not own, but to which we, and all, must give account.

The book also includes a study guide with recommendations for further reading. It answers a significant need for a resource speaking to how we engage in witness and even apologetic persuasion, yet with humility rather than arrogance, with cultural sensitivity and respect rather than imperialistic blindness to the other.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Eyes to See

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Eyes to See, Tim Muehlhoff (Foreword by J. P. Moreland). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021.

Summary: An exploration of how God acts in the ordinary elements of everyday life, the idea of common grace, and how we may be encouraged as we recognize these ways of God at work.

When we think of the idea of God at work, we often look for the extraordinary, and we may wonder why we do not see more of that. Tim Muehlhoff believes in this extraordinary work, but he also wants to help us recognize the ordinary, yet beautiful ways God is at work in everyday life. Classically, this is the idea of common grace, the goodness God pours out on all creation: “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).

Muehlhoff goes beyond the sun and the rain in exploring God’s everyday goodness. He begins with inventions and the instances when human beings arrived at similar solutions to problems, for example the stethoscope. He considers a number of human inventions, and while not arguing this as a proof for God, proposes that there are many instances of this hidden goodness meeting the needs of the world.

In subsequent chapters he turns to different realms in which we see this goodness. In science, we understand the incredible fine-tuning of the universe and our particular location on earth that makes life possible, and also the wonderful breakthroughs to sustain life, such as the accidental discovery of penicillin and the developments of antibiotics and vaccines to complement our amazing immune systems. He calls our attention to the power of art to help us recognize both providence and fallenness in our world when we are otherwise oblivious to it. He weighs the power of words and communication not only to hurt but to heal and illumine with quotes from Hinduism, Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, Luther Standing Bear, and even atheist Sam Harris. He does not shrink from addressing the horror of war and even discusses Israel’s war against the Canaanites, drawing on the work of Paul Copan. He observes strong tradition of just war, the Geneva Conventions, and the beginnings of the Red Cross. Amid evil, goodness remains and eventually triumphs.

Throughout the book, he addresses objections and comes back to this in the final chapter, preceding his epilogue. He addresses:

  • Is everything common grace?
  • How can we know for sure?
  • Why doesn’t God act sooner?
  • Does common grace limit God’s activity?

Muehlhoff offers a discussion that is concise, carefully reasoned and illustrated with numerous examples from contemporary culture. He concludes the book with the hope that knowing God’s abundant work in everyday life will cause us to “see the world with wonder as we encounter good gifts daily” and fill our mouths with telling the deeds of this God.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Do Muslim and Christians Worship the Same God?

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Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?, Andy Bannister. London: Inter-Varsity Press (UK), 2021.

Summary: A comparative study of the worldviews of Christianity and Islam that concludes that the two do not worship the same God.

Years ago, a very thoughtful student, from a country where Christians were a minority in a largely Muslim country, asked me whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God. After all, Allah is the Arabic term for God and Islam traces its roots back to Abraham, one of the three Abrahamic faiths. And in fact, many commentators, promoting good will between the faiths, have proposed this idea. Miroslav Volf, for example, in Allah (Goodreads review) contends that he would say “yes, with different understandings of the God we worship.”

Andy Bannister first began wrestling with this question when he got involved speaking about his faith at the Speakers Corner in Hyde Park in London as he was engaged by a number of Muslim questioners. He eventually pursued a Ph.D in Qur’anic Studies. His careful analysis of the Qur’an and a comparison of the worldviews of Christianity and Islam led him to conclude “no.” He concluded that the differences were so great that the affirmative failed to do justice to either set of beliefs.

First of all, he deals with the obstacle of asserting that is arrogance to assert that one’s faith is true to the exclusion of others. He observes how we want to be reasonably certain of truth in many other areas of life, for example medical treatment, and we don’t consider it arrogant when a doctor prescribes a course of treatment. We want this. We don’t want a tolerant, inclusive doctor who says, “whatever.” The real issue is how we treat those with whom we disagree. Are we gracious and humble in stating our convictions or cocky? Arrogance is a behavior that need not be associated with a belief that something is true.

Bannister then outlines his approach, which is to consider the answers to four basic worldview questions:

Is there a god, and, if so, what is god like? He states that the God of the Bible is relational, knowable, holy, love, and has suffered. He contends that the Qur’an rejects, ignores, or overwrites each of these with a different portrayal of Allah.

Who and what are human beings? Whereas Christianity understands Christians as made in the image of God and made to enjoy relationship with God and to reflect God’s character to all creation, Islam would hold that while humans are elevated, one relates to Allah as servant to master rather than child to father.

What is wrong with the world? Christians believe that our nature is deeply affected by sin, which separates us from relationship with God and each other and the rest of creation. Islam sees us as made, not for relationship, but for obedience to Allah, but we are weak and fallible and often disobey his commands.

What is the solution? The idea of salvation is alien to Islam. Allah guides one in the right way and the obedient are rewarded with a pleasure-filled paradise, although one where Allah’s presence is not mentioned. Christians believe that our situation as alienated rebels is so desperate that self-help or even God-guided self-improvement is not adequate. We need saving or rescuing. God’s rescue plan is the sacrifice that dies in one’s places–sacrifices in the Old Testament that point to the sacrifice of Jesus, God’s once-for-all, perfect sacrifice, restoring us to a relationship with God.

He goes on to discuss Jesus, who is referenced in 90 verses in the Qur’an. He observes the unusual character of Jesus compared to other prophets that makes him something of a misfit in the Qur’an, but not in the Bible, where he is more than a prophet, revealing the character of God as God-with-us.

He concludes by describing Christianity as the most inclusive exclusive faith in the world–an open exclusivism where all who repent and believe are welcome, and only those who refuse are on the outside. He explores the nature of forgiveness–costly for the one who forgives but free to the forgiven, something that cannot be repaid, bought or earned. Bannister proposes that many of the longings for God which Muslims pursue may only be met in Christ–the longing for intimate love and compassion and forgiveness and relationship. His invitation is to come home.

Bannister combines extensive knowledge of the Qur’an, which is quoted in translation throughout with a clear analysis of fundamental differences that is not belligerent but matter of fact, and proven out in many personal interactions with Muslims. He also has a delightfully cheeky sense of humor, illustrated when he talks about playing Cluedo, known in the U.S. as Clue. He writes:

“For example, if you announce, “The killer was Miss Scarlet, using the dagger, in the conservatory’, and I disagree stating it was ‘Professor Putin, with a nerve agent, in the potting shed’, then we can immediately notice a few things. First, we cannot both be correct: our two theories disagree on every key detail and cannot both be right. Second, despite our fundamental differences, we are still both trying to answer the same basic questions; we agree about the questions–we just disagree about the answers. (And third, with theories like mine, I should probably avoid holidaying in Moscow.) (p. 35).

Throughout, we find this combination of careful, reasoned argument leavened with wit and warmth that makes this an enjoyable read. It is helpful as a resource if you’ve asked or been asked the title question, and particularly if this is in the context of friendships with those who embrace Islam. Bannister sees fundamental differences between Christianity and Islam but does so without demonizing Muslims but rather shows the utmost respect. Such an approach, I believe leads to dialogue that moves beyond the superficial to the substantive, allowing the exploration of each faith on its own terms, rather than those superimposed by the patronizing “let’s all just get along because we really are all on the same journey up the mountain.”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Reimagining Apologetics

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Reimagining Apologetics, Justin Ariel Bailey. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Summary: A case for an apologetics appealing to beauty and to the imagination that points toward a better picture of what life might be.

When most of us hear the term “apologetics,” we think of reasoned argument for why one should believe, indeed, reason that compels belief. Yet in this age of epistemic uncertainty, such argument often elicits suspicion and may turn people ways from faith rather than remove obstacles to it.

Justin Ariel Bailey doesn’t dismiss the value of this traditional approach to apologetics, which he calls “Uppercase apologetics.” What he proposes instead is that some may be drawn to consider Christian faith through the imaginative, the telling of a better story or the painting of a better picture of an authentic Christian life makes better sense of the human condition. He frames it this way:

“By reimagining apologetics, I mean simply an approach that takes the imaginative context of belief seriously. Such an approach prepares the way for Christian faith by provoking desire, exploring possibility, and casting an inhabitable Christian vision. When successful, it enables outsiders to inhabit the Christian faith as if from the inside, feeling their way in before attempting to criticize it by foreign standards. Whether a person ultimately embraces the vision that is being portrayed, imaginative engagement cultivates empathy. It enables a glimpse, even if just for a moment, of the possibilities that Christian faith facilitates for our life in the world.”

Justin Ariel Bailey, p. 4.

The book is broken into two parts. The first is more philosophical in elaborating the relationship of apologetics and the imagination. Bailey begins with the work of Charles Taylor, and the disenchantment of the modern world under secularity. He treats secularity as a crisis of the imagination that reasoned argument alone cannot address. He then turns to Schleiermacher as a pioneer of an imaginative apologetic that sought to “feel our way in,” albeit at the expense of a connection to truth. Bailey argues that such an approach with a thicker theological ground is possible. He then deals more properly with the nature of imagination itself and how it is shaped by creation, fall, and redemption.

The second part then considers two writers, George MacDonald of the Victorian era, and Marilynne Robinson of our own, and how their writing models imaginative approaches to Christian faith in the face of the Victorian “crisis of faith” and the contemporary “new atheism.” MacDonald wrote his works with his friend John Ruskin in mind. Using the Wingfold trilogy, he shows how MacDonald sought to awaken his readers to a vision of virtue leading to a vision of God and his world. Bailey sees Robinson revealing a capacious vision of authentic Christian life in her characters. Then he looks at the Calvinism of both writers that sees the world filled with the presence of God that makes sense of our homesickness for God.

Bailey concludes with identifying three elements of an apologetic of the imagination:

  1. Sensing. Imagination as an aesthetic sense and gives primacy to the aesthetic dimension.
  2. Seeing. Imagination as orienting vision that invites exploration of a more capacious vision of the world
  3. Shaping. Imagination as poetic vision that situates the human project within the larger redemptive project of God.

He points to Makoto Fujimura’s idea of “culture care” as a model for how this apologetic may work in commending the faith through appealing to beauty, for seeing this care for beauty in every aspect of life, and reflective of the creative and redeeming beauty of God.

I believe Bailey is onto something. I think of the power of stories like Narnia Tales, or in the case of C.S. Lewis, the fiction of George MacDonald to capture the imagination and open it up to Christ. What does this mean for the apologist? Here, Bailey’s book is only suggestive and needs a follow up. It doesn’t mean buying everyone copies of MacDonald’s and Robinson’s works. At the very end he points to the work of understanding the stories of others and relating our stories to those. I also think, when people are ready, that the narratives of the gospels are also powerful stories, where we allow people to situate their stories within the Jesus story. I hope Bailey will do further work in this area, offering believing people more help in telling their stories and the story. What this work has done is offer the grounds for that work.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.