Monday, August 10, 2009

The Reasonableness of Faith

Reason to Believe by R.C. Sproul

Subtitled, A Response to Common Objections to Christianity, R.C. Sproul once again shows himself to be a master teacher and apologist (defender of the faith).
He takes difficult concepts and explains the issues in an understandable way. He doesn't explain away hard questions like the existence of evil or the problem of suffering in a trite, one sentence answer. That would be unfeeling. He's not afraid to admit that some things are unknowable, but they are unknowable to the atheist as well. The difference is that underlying the big questions of life, the believer has hope that the atheist knows nothing of. Suffering has no meaning to an existentialist who has only this life.
Sproul deals with objections to the Bible itself, the fallacy of thinking all religions are the same, what happens to those who have never heard, charges that the church is full of hypocrites or is only for weak people, the idea that we only have to try hard to do the right thing, the existence of God, the case for life after death, and the problem of evil and suffering.
He does an excellent job of demonstrating the reasonableness of faith, while showing the futility and illogical conclusions of Christianity's detractors.
Sproul explains these things in a way that we can retain, so we can "give a reason for the hope that lies within us." (1 Peter 3:15)

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