Why Believe

This is a short but ambitious book.Within the space of 150 pages, the author, a professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, seeks to demonstrate the reasonableness of basic Christian claims, specifically, that God exists and that Jesus Christ is God in a unique and exclusive way.The book is ambitious because Evans's apology is developed in response to virtu ally every conceivable contemporary objection to the truth claims of Christian ity: he tackles everything from the alleged incompatibility of science and relig ion to the proposition that belief in God is an impediment to human liberation.It is, perhaps, not only ambition that prompts Evans to leave no stone unturned in arguing that an educated person who cares about truth can opt for Christian faith today.I shall articulate below what seems to be a crucial as sumption he makes about the nature of reasonableness, and to indicate that it is the logic of this unstated assumption that requires Evans to seek as compre hensive a justification of faith as possible.As if aiming at comprehensiveness were not daunting enough, Evans is also determined to reach a wide audience and to encourage them to accept Christianity, and so he writes in a popular style.His ambition is no less evi dent in the attempt to make controversial and complex issues accessible to a general readership.The first three chapters introduce the issues and set out some methodologi cal considerations.The next four argue for the reasonableness of belief in God on the basis of certain pervasive features of human experience.Chapters 8 and 9 argue that Jesus is the divine Son of God, and that this truth is reliably at tested in the Bible.Chapter 9 also contains a discussion of the possibility of miracles.Chapters 10 and II address various objections to faith, namely, the existence of evil; the pre-scientific character of the biblical world-view; faith as wish-fulfilment; Christianity as patriarchal, fostering the oppression of women; and religion as the "opiate of the people."Chapter 12 discusses the reasonable ness of the mysteries of faith, namely, the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, and Resurrection of the Body and Life everlasting.Finally, chapter 13 addresses the challenge posed by religious pluralism for a person considering commitment to Christianity.Throughout the book, Evans argues for the truth of Christian claims by showing that they are reasonable and, indeed, more reasonable than rival ac counts-particularly skeptical and atheistic accounts.His stance is not foundationalist, that is, he does not assume that reasonable beliefs are those that are either self-evident or derived by inference from more basic evident beliefs.His position on the reasonableness of belief in God is illustrative.In the tradition of Reformed epistemology, Evans suggests that belief in God does not require demonstration in order to be warranted.Belief in God may be acquired

Art · Theology · Philosophy · Theology and Philosophy of Evil