Apologetics: New York Style
“I find your lack of faith – disturbing.”
The moment you open a book on apologetics and find the initial quote to be from none other than Darth Vader, you know you’re in for something a little different...
Timothy Keller is the senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, a church that gathers nearly 6,000 attendees at their five services. The Reason for God represents, in many ways, the culmination of nearly two decades of ministry to New York sceptics.
A few years ago, Keller conducted a survey to ascertain the biggest doubts that stopped people from believing in Christianity. Here he addresses each of those doubts, sensitively but firmly, providing us with a wonderful model for interacting with seekers and sceptics.
He encourages both believers and unbelievers to rethink the way they handle their doubts. To the Christian he warns that ‘a person’s faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.’ (xvii) To the unbeliever, ‘doubts’, he states ‘are really an alternative set of beliefs […] the only way to doubt Christianity rightly and fairly is to discern the alternate belief under each of your doubts and then to ask yourself what reasons you have for believing it.’ (xvii-xviii)
With this in mind he then progresses through seven of the most powerful ‘alternate beliefs’, systematically showing why each fails as a reason for rejecting Christianity. There can’t be just one true religion. How could a good God allow suffering? How can a loving God send people to hell?
Far from providing us with a pocket-guide to apologetics, crammed with pre-packaged, cold and heartless answers, Keller presents a well-thought out, well-articulated case for Christianity that goes far beyond an exercise in persuasive rhetoric. This is the writing of a man who has clearly immersed himself in the concerns of his New York audience.
Keller’s critique takes doubt seriously and handles the questions with sincere grace and compassionate reasoning. In an age where atheistic apologists write vitriolic attacks on their believing counterparts, Keller refuses to respond in kind, and comes across as a loving, but firm spokesman for the Christian faith.
Having made his defence, he then maps a way forward, before launching into an argument for why faith in Christianity is both reasonable and plausible. He considers the many clues of God that come together to form a compelling picture of a coherent faith; the problem of sin, the story of the cross, the reality of the resurrection.
This is no dense, inaccessible textbook, but an engaging read full of examples and quotes from many areas of popular culture. Never have I read a book that can so seamlessly quote Foucault, C.S. Lewis and Neitzsche alongside Bono, hobbits and Darth Vader. But he does it. His wide repertoire of illustrations provides an incredibly fresh and modern way of looking at age-old questions. This will give you a wealth of material for presenting the gospel to your sceptical friends in a relevant way.
What impresses me most about Keller is his ability to see the questions behind the questions. He is not content with providing a clinical, intellectual rebuttal, but he engages with the real issues of hurt and doubt creatively and sensitively, with the heart of a pastor.
Whether you want to learn to evangelise better, or to strengthen your own faith, I would highly recommend Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God as an enormously significant and challenging book.
Liam Thatcher
The City Church Canterbury
