Christian apologetics is the logical defense of the Christian faith and Why Christian Faith Still Makes Sense by C. Stephen Evans is one of the best apologetics books I’ve read.
In the first half of the book, Evans focuses on explaining the proper role of natural theology. Natural theology seeks to answer the question, “What can we know about God apart from the special revelation of Scripture?” Evans argues that, “The key is to see natural theology not as providing us with an adequate, positive knowledge of God but as supporting what I like to call ‘anti-naturalism.’” While natural theology cannot give us specific content about God, it can show us problems with a merely naturalistic worldview. In addition, natural theology can help us see the elements in nature that point beyond this world, which Evans calls “natural signs.” So natural theology uses signs in nature to set us on a quest.
Before identifying five natural signs, Evans asks, “What kind of evidence should we expect to find if God exists?” He arrives at two answers that serve as constraints on the natural signs:
1.) “Wide Accessibility Principle” – the evidence should be pervasive and easy to recognize to people around the world,
2.) “Easy Resistibility Principle” – if God is love and God desires a relationship of love with us, the evidence must be the kind of evidence that we can “dismiss or reject.”
Evans then identifies five natural signs, which he believes meet those two constraints and correlate with the Christian faith. I won’t summarize his explanation for each, but here they are:
1.) our experience of cosmic wonder,
2.) our experience of purposive order,
3.) our sense of being morally accountable,
4.) our sense of human dignity and worth, and
5.) our longing for transcendent joy.
In the second half of the book, Evans transitions from the general revelation of nature to the idea of a special revelation from God. He lists three criteria for recognizing a genuine revelation from God, but he gives the most attention to the second because he believes it is often neglected.
1.) Miraculous signs – serve to verify an authentic revelation. Evans believes we have good reasons to trust the defining miracle of the Christian faith—Christ’s resurrection.
2.) Paradoxical – Evans is an expert on the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and he relies heavily on Kierkegaard’s insights in this section. He writes, “the content of the revelation should be something that humans could never have discovered on their own, yet something that when revealed makes sense of the human condition in a way that no human philosophy could.” While the revelation should seem paradoxical or surprising at first, upon further reflection it will make sense. The key idea is that if the content of the revelation is something we could have arrived at through purely human reasoning, then the revelation would not be needed. In fact, in that case it would not even be a revelation. This is a subtle yet vital point for Christian apologetics because it means that it is possible to intellectually defend the Christian faith, which at its core is revelation, in such a way that the nature of the revelation is undermined. The paradox at the heart of the Christian faith—“the Word became flesh,” the Messiah was crucified, Jesus was raised from the dead, and “we are saved by faith not by works”—must be preserved in order for the revelation to remain revelation. We couldn’t have even imagined those things on our own, but if “God is love” they actually make sense.
So if the heart of the Christian faith is a paradox, what is the role of evidence in defending this faith? Evans writes, “I believe that Reformed epistemologists are, in an important way, profoundly right; genuine Christian faith is a gift of God and not a direct or immediate product of the consideration of evidence. However, to say that faith is a divine gift is not to say that one of the means whereby the Spirit of God produces faith might not involve or even require evidence. We can even go further and say that the testimony of the Spirit is itself a kind of evidence.”
3.) Existential power – encountering the revelation should be personally transformative. If God reveals something it should make a difference in the lives of those who receive the revelation.
If you’re interested in contemplating divine revelation, this book will give you much to think about.
After graduating from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I served as a high school Bible teacher in Asia. I enjoy traveling, writing, and playing the drums. My latest book focuses on Paul’s work as a tentmaker and what it means for today.