the reason for god: timothy keller | a review

I recently finished reading Tim Keller’s recent book, The Reason for God. Though I had certain misgivings with his some of his particular arguments, on the whole I think that he does a good job making the case for the viability of belief in God.

He is an intelligent man, pastoring in New York City, so you can tell that he has had to wrestle with all of the questions he addresses many times over through his work.

I’m not sure what my initially attraction to this book was, but I had been wanting to read it for some time. I finally borrowed a copy from a friend and began.

He divides the book into two parts, the 1st part he answers common arguments against belief in God, whereas in the 2nd part he gives a collection of reasons for belief in God.

I think one of the strongest aspects of the book, is his recognition that no one is going to be able to give an air-tight argument for or against God’s existence. What he does instead is to show how Christianity, when examined, gives the best possible explanation of how things are.

Most often he shows how the positions of those in opposition to Christianity have poor foundations from which they argue. He shows the internal contradictions, unearths the unseen & ungrounded assumptions. Much of what he writes isn’t new. I had heard most of it before, though he is a gifted writer so he enjoyable to read nonetheless. There was one argument was new to me. He uses a move that is commonly used against relativitists which he turned against non-believing evolutionary biologist. I goes like this for the relativist:

Everything is relative. So then is that statement relative? If so, then why should I believe you? If not, you have contradicted yourself.

This same move is done against the evolutionary biologist:

Everything is a product of evolution. Even our rational thought? If so, then why should I trust science, since it is only working for certain ends of natural selection, not something like “truth”. If not then what produced it, and isn’t that a contradiction of your first principle?

I like the move, in that it is clever. It is good at dismissing bad poorly thought out philosophy. But on the whole I think this argument is weak (but so is the original argument, strawman?). Though not exactly the same, similar to one’s idea of scripture. All scripture is divine. How do you know that? Because scripture says so. Well you have this nice circular argument which only works if you believe the argument to begin with.

Having a philosophy background, I was less than pleased with his philosophically oriented arguments. Where he really shined was in relation to more socially oriented (existential) issues. He is really good about drawing out that which has been written on our heart, though has been covered over by sin. This is really strengthened in his 2nd part where he argues for God.

{apropos I have this tendency to get Tim Keller & Tim Keel mixed up. Both pastors and writers but pretty different besides that.}