Because most of my writing is addressed to people who are already Christians, I've not taken much interest in apologetics, which is aimed at sceptics and at those considering Christianity for the first time. Too often apologists assume they can argue people into the faith, whereas in my experience converts have come to Christ for deeply-felt personal reasons and out of a sense of God's leading in their lives. For this reason—along with having to budget my time while I was still teaching—I allowed this book to pass me by when it first appeared in 2008: Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. Apologetics is someone else's business, I implicitly figured. However, only months after the author's passing, I have finally read the book, and I can now affirm that it is beautiful in virtually every way and a most satisfying read.
Admittedly, my motive for looking into it flows from the personal debt I owe the author, the Rev. Timothy Keller, who endorsed my Political Visions and Illusions several times between July 2020 and May 2022. I have been somewhat embarrassed that, until now, Keller had read more of me than I had of him. Although I know many people who either knew Keller or had met him, I myself never had that opportunity. But I could still know him by his work, so I decided to begin with his first book, which deservedly became a New York Times best-seller. I will not here review the book as much as simply recommend it.
The book is divided into two parts, "The Leap of Doubt," in which Keller responds to people's objections to Christianity," and "The Reasons for Faith," in which he beautifully articulates the principal themes of the faith. One of the central observations in his book is that the most basic sin for humanity is to esteem too highly the things that God has created: "according to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things" (168). In this he follows St. Augustine as well as the Danish philosopher Sören Kierkegaard. This is the very approach that I take to the political ideologies in my own book, drawing on the long tradition that flows from Scripture to Augustine, Calvin, Groen van Prinsterer, and Kuyper. There are so many things to love about this book that, if you have not yet read it, I urge you to do so, even if you are a cradle Christian who has never so much as entertained doubts about the faith.
I found the final chapter, "The Dance of God," the most intriguing in that Keller grounds the insight that God is love in his Triune nature. Because love is interpersonal, we would have to conclude that a unitarian God could not love until he created. But, even before the creation, the inner life of the Trinity was already a dance of love among the three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each of which seeks to glorify the others:
The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. . . . Each of the divine persons centers upon the others. None demands that the others revolve around him (224).
Because of this, we too can enter into relationship with the Triune God and experience his love for us, even as we seek to love him as well and to extend that love to our neighbours.
To be sure, I am not altogether comfortable with theological efforts to probe into God's inner nature: "The Trinity means that God is, in essence, relational" (223). I agree with the statement, but I would leave out that little phrase in essence, which comes a bit too close to trying to define God. Yet I think Keller's Trinitarian dance will help those who misconstrue God as a narcissistic deity arbitrarily demanding worship.
In all, I found this a moving book, which I would urge everyone to read.
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