PAGAN ROME AND THE EARLY CHRISTIANS BY STEPHEN BENKO

THE CASE FOR FAITH

BY LEE STROBEL

1999 Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 364 pages

BROOKBANKS LIBRARY 239 STR

A Book Review by Joseph Ng

February 2003

Having written The Case for Christ, his book defending the deity of Jesus, Lee Strobel turns his investigative skills on a topic that perplexes most Christians—is Christianity defensible in this age of scientific progress and moral sophistication? The author himself is described in the blurb as “a former atheist [who] holds a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School and was the award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune. Currently he is a teaching pastor at Saddleback Valley Community Church in Orange County, California, and a board member of Willow Creek Association. He is the author of numerous books, including the Gold Medallion winners The Case for Christ and Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary.”

Faced with various evolutionist or philosophical objections, many Christians take one of two approaches—withdraw into a corner of silence or adopt the existentialist apologetic of a blind leap of faith. This book offers a third alternative, of giving a reasoned and logically defensible position in the face of skepticism. It should be required reading, caveats on Roman Catholic leanings noted in the Critique below, for anyone about to enter arenas of academic or missionary challenge, be they universities or Internet chat rooms.

DESCRIPTION

The Case for Faith addresses eight objections in eight chapters:

1. Since Evil and Suffering Exist, a Loving God Cannot

2. Since Miracles Contradict Science, They Cannot Be True

3. Evolution Explains Life, So God Isn’t Needed

4. God Isn’t Worthy of Worship If He Kills Innocent Children

5. It’s Offensive to Claim Jesus Is the Only Way to God

6. A Loving God Would Never Torture People in Hell

7. Church History Is Littered with Oppression and Violence

8. I Still Have Doubts, So I Can’t Be a Christian

The book opens with the story of a Billy Graham associate, one Charles Templeton of Toronto, who loses his faith and his ministry due to objections about the morality of God—in particular, a Life magazine photo of a mother grieving the death of her child due to drought. Why had God, if indeed there is a God, withheld rain, something presumably easy to provide. The book is organized around Strobel’s hunt for answers to Templeton’s questions, which Strobel cleverly frames through interviews with eight different individuals, corresponding to the chapters in the book. These are: Roman Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, Talbot philosophy professor William Lane Craig, polymer engineer Walter L. Bradley, apologetics guru Norman L. Geisler, polemicist Ravi Zacharias, Talbot philosophy and ethics professor J.P. Moreland, TEDS church history research professor John D. Woodbridge, and retired pastor Lynn Anderson.

Beyond the 364 pages of arguments are an appendix summarizing The Case for Christ, Strobel’s other book; eight pages of citations; endnotes; and an 11-page index.

CRITIQUE

This book lives up to its reputation for contemporary relevance and stands in the apologetic tradition of Josh McDowell. Strobel’s use of the interview—beginning with Templeton and sustained through each of the eight chapters—is ingenious, through which he succeeds in making this an intellectually stimulating, yet hard-to-put-down, volume. Hard questions of faith are tackled head-on, no holds barred yet biased for faith (as evident in Strobel’s selection of interviewees). And it is all compressed into a tight little volume, which would otherwise have been whole volumes on individual topics, e.g. Philip Yancey on evil and suffering in his Disappointment with God (also reviewed at this site). Perhaps an upshot of Strobel is its becoming an appetizer for fuller treatments of each objection.

As for appetizers and objections, Strobel’s generally astute selection of interviewees includes the glaring exception of Peter Kreeft, who left the Reformed faith for Roman Catholicism and is now a strong proponent of the ecumenical movement (in the downward, Romeward ECT[1] tradition of Billy Graham, J.I. Packer, Chuck Colsen, and Bill Bright). Some of Kreeft’s writings have been critiqued by less-ecumenical Christians.[2] Strobel himself appears eager to exonerate the Roman Catholic Church over Pope John Paul II’s apparent apology for sins committed by the Vatican over the past 2,000 years (p. 278). Many non-Christians seem to be less easily taken in, however.[3] How ironic it would be for an eager Christian apologist- or missionary-to-be to stumble as Kreeft did in his or her preparation for service to Christ! So a warning would be necessary, and inoculation should be performed not only against the obvious enemies of the Christian faith but also the insidious workings afoot within Christianity itself.

The real value of The Case for Faith is its aggregation of the most familiar of plausible arguments on a powerful range of objections against the faith. Important information is presented on Michael Behe’s conclusions on an Intelligent Designer (p. 126), Miller and Oparin “creation of life” in the lab (pp. 133-36), and the devastating effect the Big Bang theory has had on the steady state theory of the universe (pp. 196-97)—all in a way that is accessible to the lay reader without resorting to doctrinaire rhetoric. A healthy skepticism is advocated at the end as complementary, and even helpful, to faith (pp. 339-40).

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

Behe, Michael. 1996. Darwin’s Black Box. New York: The Fress Press.

ChristianAnswers.Net Eden Communications.

Hanegraaf, Hank. 1998. The Face that Demonstrates the Farce of Evolution. Nashville: Word.

Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. http://www.gospelcom.net/rzim/publications/resources.php

[1] Evangelicals and Catholics Together, reviewed at http://www.aomin.org/Evangelicals_and_Catholics_Together.html

[3] http://www.religioustolerance.org/pope_apo.htm points out that the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t really apologize for anything at all, only for the sins of her “sons and daughters.”