The Reason for God

Timothy Keller’s book is a remarkable, easy read that masterfully explains difficult concepts to people who aren’t all that good at difficult concepts. His book is written, organized, and crafted beautifully. Anyone with a high school level education could easily read this book and understand the complex philosophical arguments he discusses in defense of what we call “God.” It is important however to note that this book is not just his reasoning for God, but as well his reasoning for Christianity. Put simply, it’s a Christian apologist book about Christianity in an Age of Skepticism. There’s nothing wrong about that, but you should know what you’re reading.

Onto his arguments. Keller summarizes the basic arguments for God we love and adore: Aristotle’s First Cause Argument, the Islamic Kalam Cosmological Argument, the Watchmaker Argument, etc. He then attempts to refute the traditional anti-God arguments such as the problem of evil argument. I myself am placed in a difficult situation when it comes to these God arguments: for one, I find all the classical arguments for God (the ones that Keller uses) to be weak and insufficient, and at the same time, I find all the classical arguments against God (the ones that Keller refutes) to be equally weak and insufficient. As a Muslim, my faith requires me to believe that the idea of God is rationally deductible, and I struggle with finding a sure-fire way to philosophically prove God (I haven’t looked too much into it though, but I’ll write more on this later). Most Christians, notably Catholics, do not need to prove God rationally as a principle of their faith, but it certainly helps. They need only to prove Christianity rationally, and the concept of God naturally follows through

Thus he argues his Christian apologist views. These stem from his belief in a “historical record” of the Ressurection of Christ, amongst other things. Now I am not Christian, so I’m obviously disagree with his views for a number of reasons. I won’t delve too much into what these arguments of his are, but he does wonderfully in presenting them and explaining why he feels Christianity is the way to go.

To summarize, Keller wrote a masterful book on the argument for God and Christianity. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, he certainly explains himself thoroughly. He writes simple enough for any audience as well, without sounding unintelligent. If you are interesting in reading about Christian apology or about the philosophy of God, there is no better book to read than this one.