The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism | 
| Author: Timothy Keller
Publisher: Dutton Adult
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  90 reviews
Sales Rank: 99
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0525950494
Dewey Decimal Number: 239
EAN: 9780525950493
ASIN: 0525950494
Publication Date: February 14, 2008
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Product Description
The End of Faith. The God Delusion. God Is Not Great. Letter to a Christian Nation. Bestseller lists are filled with doubters. But what happens when you actually doubt your doubts?
Although a vocal minority continues to attack the Christian faith, for most Americans, faith is a large part of their lives: 86 percent of Americans refer to themselves as religious, and 75 percent of all Americans consider themselves Christians. So how should they respond to these passionate, learned, and persuasive books that promote science and secularism over religion and faith? For years, Tim Keller has compiled a list of the most frequently voiced doubts skeptics bring to his Manhattan church. And in The Reason for God, he single-handedly dismantles each of them. Written with atheists, agnostics, and skeptics in mind, Keller also provides an intelligent platform on which true believers can stand their ground when bombarded by the backlash. The Reason for God challenges such ideology at its core and points to the true path and purpose of Christianity.
Why is there suffering in the world? How could a loving God send people to Hell? Why isnt Christianity more inclusive? Shouldnt the Christian God be a god of love? How can one religion be right and the rest wrong? Why have so many wars been fought in the name of God? These are just a few of the questions even ardent believers wrestle with today. In this book, Tim Keller uses literature, philosophy, real-life conversations and reasoning, and even pop culture to explain how faith in a Christian God is a soundly rational belief, held by thoughtful people of intellectual integrity with a deep compassion for those who truly want to know the truth.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 85 more reviews...
 Makes you think, question and dig deeper July 17, 2008
I truly enjoyed this book, due to the fact that it invites you to think beyond the easy answers and the author invites conversation about very relevant questions. It doesn't sum up all the world's problems and answer every question about God, religion and Christianity. If we are looking for that in a book then why live life? He offers up suggestions that EVERYONE subscribes to some sort of "belief system," even saying you believe in nothing is a way of belief. As a good book should, it asks you to think, seek out deeper roots to why you believe and what you believe. The questions he discusses are the questions he's been asked a thousand times, and he offers up thoughtful and respectful responses. I do not think this is a book to agree or disagree with, but a book to engage and let roll around in your heart and head. An important book in an age of pluralism that is shredding the depth of community.
Thought-provoking and relevant July 13, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Excellent resource for a civil, informed argument for the God of the Bible and Christian world view.
Indispensable read for doubters July 13, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Given the title, it is ironic that I was skeptical about this book at first. I had read so many apologetic works making the same recycled arguments with varying degrees of shrillness that I honestly assumed this would be one more well-intentioned by disappointing book by a well-intentioned by substandard thinker. Was I ever wrong. In The Reason for God, Timothy Keller finally provides what I and many others have been looking for in modern apologetics--reasonableness. Not since C.S. Lewis--and I do not make this comparison lightly--has the case for Christianity been made with such coolness and clear-headed logic.
Keller's book is divided into two broad sections. In the first, "The Leap of Doubt," Keller draws on his experience as a Manhattan pastor to present the most common objections or doubts about Christianity expressed by healthily-skeptical modern people. Keller argues for Christianity with great tact--"argue" is entirely too strong a word--showing not just the flaws in the doubt and its atheist or skeptical roots, but how religion, and Christianity specifically, answer those questions and can fill the voids in the doubter's life. Throughout it is clear that Keller respects and understands the doubts people have about the exclusivity of Christianity, or the Church's history of injustices, or the uncomfortable thoughts of Hell and the supernatural.
The second section, "The Reasons for Faith," builds on the first. If in the first half of the book Keller defends Christianity with his quiet and respectful apologia, here he argues for Christianity with just as much respect, and just as much success. Chapters on the "clues" that point to God and His relationship with human beings--especially in regard to the thought, so terrible to people, of sin--are outstanding. Each section and chapter builds on those that come before, making this book difficult to summarize but a joy to read.
If The Reason for God has any one flaw, it is one of scope. Keller opens up so many deep, complex issues that they cannot possibly be covered in-depth in a single book--any one chapter here could easily justify dozens of books. But Keller's goal is to operate like his "clues for God" and point the reader in the right direction rather than lead them by the hand. This was one book that, for me, could have been twice as long.
I came to this book as a skeptical Christian and found myself not only won over by Keller's calm reasoning but encouraged by his work. The section on sin, in which he presents Soren Kierkegaard's definition of the term as a means to understanding how it breaks man's relationship with God, moved me and helped me understand flaws in my own life. One need not be converted by this book to have one's life changed. And as a believer who has often doubted, it was encouraging to know that those doubts are not only reasonable, but answerable.
Highly recommended.
Why believe? July 11, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Tim Keller's new book is a thoughtful and kindly answer to that question. It shouldn't be confused with a theological treatise on the varieties of the Christian experience, as a recent reviewer seems to expect. Nor can Keller go into much depth in any of the topics he covers -- which include both leading objections to Christian faith (part I) and his own best reasons for believing (part II). What Keller offers is an intelligent, informed, but also simple and personal (you feel engaged in a conversation here) argument for Christian faith in the context of popular dismissals.
It's hard to avoid comparing the book with C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. (Especially since Keller quotes Lewis so often, to some peoples' ire.) Keller is trying to do what Lewis did for an earlier generation: explain the Christian faith in a genial, informed, non-sectarian mode. As a Presbyterian pastor (of the very denomination Dawkins ignorantly vilifies in The God Delusion, BTW), Keller is more tied to a particular form of Christianity. The previous reviewer to the contrary, I think he does a fairly good job of transcending those limits.
One thing Keller does that Lewis did not do, is quote a lot of research. (Lewis' book was informed by deep scholarship, but the study formed a sort of endoskeleton to his argument, whereas Keller's sources are visible on the outside -- good for further study, if you have questions. I especially recommend Lewis himself, Wright, Plantinga, and Stark, all whom he cites frequently -- and plan to look up some of the other books he mentions myself!)
One reviewer complains that Keller tells skeptics that they must doubt their doubts. But isn't that just asking them to be consistent, and to examine life even more thoroughly?
The complaint that Keller thinks Christianity is exclusively right is not entirely fair. Keller expresses respect for other religions. Having written a couple books on Christianity and other religions myself (the most relevant being Jesus and the Religions of Man), I agree that Keller could have addressed this topic more thoughtfully.
Another reviewer makes an even more fundamental objection to Keller's approach: The very premise of the book is flawed, because reason and faith have nothing to do with each other. Faith . . . is, fundamentally, to believe something to be true without having or needing a verifiable reason.
This is entirely mistaken. It's a pity Keller doesn't address this question a bit, because in my experience it's the single most common misconception about the Christian faith. In fact, that has almost NEVER been what Christians have meant by faith. (See the second chapter of my The Truth Behind the New Atheism, Have Christians lost their minds? for an explanation and rebuttal. That might also be a good book for the reviewer who thinks Keller fails to respond to the allegedly scrupulous arguments of Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris well.)
Some critics also seem disappointed that Keller offers clues to God, rather than proof of some sort. But as Pascal said, God gives enough light for those willing to believe, leaving some obscurity for those of contrary disposition. Keller is I think being realistic; between certainty of a positivist kind, and blind faith, there is a vast middle ground of contested facts on which the light of reason and evidence can shine and help us find our way.
 Unpersuasive for a Christian Who Is Skeptical of Conservative Evangelicalism July 9, 2008
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
On July 7th, 2008, 56 five-star reviews of Timothy Keller's The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism could be read at amazon.com. Almost all of these reviews had been written by Christians who had agreed with most of what Keller, pastor of New York City's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, had written. Despite its aim, Keller's book (like many apologetic works before it) seems more likely to reinforce what some Christians already believe than to convert true skeptics to Christianity. Moreover, if the experience of this reviewer is at all indicative, then many Christian readers who occupy a theological house other than that of conservative evangelicalism will be dissatisfied with Keller's work for a number of reasons.
These reasons begin with the book's title, whose promise goes unfulfilled. The book's first part does not give reasons for God at all (much less "The Reason"); instead, it gives defenses of garden-variety evangelicalism in the form of responses to assertions and questions that Keller has commonly heard during his time as a pastor. Reasons for God and defenses of Christianity are not the same thing. The book's second part begins with a chapter titled, "The Clues of God"--which is as close as Keller comes to giving reasons for God.
Keller begins his book with a diagnosis: "There is a gulf today between what is popularly known as liberalism and conservatism. Each side demands that you not only disagree with but disdain the other as (at best) crazy or (at worst) evil." He then suggests a third way--namely, that both skeptics (liberals?) and believers (conservatives?) reconsider doubt. "Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts," he writes. Skeptics "must doubt [their] doubts." While Keller seems to be seeking moderation (he hopes for "civility in a pluralistic society," for example), it is doubtful that many true skeptics will take kindly to him telling them what they "must" do three times in four paragraphs. More disappointing, though, is the fact that--after inviting his readers to doubt--Keller expresses few if any doubts of his own about any traditional doctrines (not even about hell).
Certainly, he does not doubt that Christianity is exclusively "right." In his first chapter, Keller observes: "It is no more narrow to claim that one religion is right than to claim that one way to think about all religions (namely that all are equal) is right. We are all exclusive in our beliefs about religion, but in different ways." Keller does not seek to deny Christianity's exclusivity; rather, he points out the inconsistency--even hypocrisy--of persons who complain about this exclusivity. While this critique is fair, Keller confuses the act of making a claim (which is exclusive) and the content of a claim (which may be more or less exclusive or inclusive).
More importantly, the problem of exclusivity--which Keller concedes often leads to violence--remains (though now it belongs to everyone). Keller's solution? The "exclusive belief system" of Christianity, which promotes peacemaking because it has at its "very heart...a man who died for his enemies, praying for their forgiveness." In this section, Keller boldly lifts up the example of the early church--a church that took the teaching and example of Jesus so seriously that it practiced non-violence even in the face of persecution. Unfortunately, Keller continues: "[W]ho can deny that the force of Christians' most fundamental beliefs can be a powerful impetus for peace-making in our troubled world?"
About which Christians does Keller write? Is a view of Jesus as peacemaker a "fundamental" conviction of most Christians today? It is held by Anabaptists, and by some Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants. Is it held by many conservative evangelicals? Has recent history not shown that many of these Christians are at least as likely to bless their nation's war-making?
These questions point to another reason for dissatisfaction with Keller's book--his tendency to write as if there is only one understanding of the Christian faith (a notable exception to this tendency is found in the book's "Intermission"). For example, Keller asserts, "In the Christian understanding, Jesus does not tell us how to live so we can merit salvation." Though an Anabaptist might write something similar, he would almost certainly stress that Jesus nonetheless does teach us how to live. This emphasis is not offered by Keller. Keller's theological house has not stressed the importance of discipleship as much as Anabaptists have.
Keller's tendency to overlook the fact that pluralism is not only in the world but also in the church surfaces again in the next chapter (whose focus is on the problem of evil--an issue that begs for more than a chapter treatment). Keller points readers who struggle to reconcile belief in God with the existence of great suffering to the cross. On the cross, explains Keller, God in Christ has shown solidarity with us by suffering with us. This pastoral move is perhaps the best response anyone can give to this perennial question. Still, it is in making this move that Keller again fails to recognize the diversity of Christian thought, writing, "Christian theology has always recognized that Jesus bore, as the substitute in our place, the endless exclusion from God that the human race has merited." Besides its sloppy thinking (the suffering of Jesus on the cross was not "endless"), this claim is arguably untrue, as the substitutionary theory of the atonement was not developed until the end of the eleventh century (by Anselm--see Gustaf Aulen's book, Christus Victor).
One other note: C.S. Lewis makes his first appearance here--the first of many appearances. (It would not be unfair to call Lewis Keller's primary source, as he makes more direct use of this writer's work than he does of Scripture.) Lewis, who was a literature professor, has for decades been the favorite theologian of conservative evangelical Christians. By his heavy reliance on Lewis, Keller serves readers little more than warmed-over evangelicalism. Meanwhile, heavyweight theologians are brought into the conversation only rarely.
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