Book Review: The Reason for God

The Reason for God by Timothy Keller

The Reason for God is a book by Christian Theologian, Timothy Keller. It's a book that looks to continue making and defending the case for the rational belief and practice of Christianity, and explaining and defending the aspects of the faith that have been subject to criticism presently and in the past. The book joins the ranks of other prestigious books who look to argue that Christianity is not a mere personal fiction, but rationally and empirically real, and as such, worthy of serious attention and consideration.

While I won't go into deep detail of the entire book, I hope to give my thoughts on at least four key sections of his book and also comment on the prevailing sentiment and tone presence throughout. The four sections I would like to cover include:

1. Christianity as the true and most desirable religion.
2. The problem of evil.
3. Hell and eternal damnation.
4. Theistic arguments and other areas of interest.

Christianity as the True and Most Desirable Religion

Keller begins with a detailed look at his upbringing and tertiary education, which allowed him the opportunity to question his core beliefs and investigate other ways of thinking and various other faith traditions. It is this that strengthened his faith all the more, leading him to start his very own church, a church which he plugs throughout most of the book. Keller proceeds by offering up metrics of both the growth in Christian belief alongside the choice of a more secular worldview, showing that the two appear to be growing in a neck and neck fashion and as such demands a new middle way spiritualism to adapt to modern times. I agreed with this first prescription made in the book, but it is a prescription that seems to disappear and be replaced by Keller's subjective preference for his Christian beliefs as the book moves along.

Keller's first challenge is arguing for Christianity as the true and best religion. He tries to answer the question of whether or not a proof or proofs and effective argumentation can be given for Christianity being the true religion among the several others presently existing religions, and those that came before it. To my mind, he provides no such satisfying proof or argument, rather preferring to argue that Christianity is more desirable than other religions in certain respects. I can agree with this, as there do exist religions that openly suppress its members and offer up very harsh punishments for disobedience and for leaving the faith. However, some of these are considered Christian traditions too, and there is not, as far as I can see, a consensus on which practice of Christianity is the truest, best or most legitimate. Keller instead uses this section to honestly shed light on the horrors that Christianity is responsible for both past and in the present day, but also points the finger at a few other traditions, claiming they are just as bad, something he seems to do a lot of throughout the book. Keller also assumes that Christianity is more desirable based on the promise of salvation and the idea of a personal God who is directly involved in our lives. I think this is very subjective, and Keller cannot assume that what he finds desirable is universal. In the end, it is far from definite that Christianity is the true or best/most desirable religion.

The Problem of Evil

Next, Keller attempts to tackle one of the most classic criticisms of the faith, how can a perfectly good God permit evil to exist in the world and how can He subject his creation to so much suffering and pain in various degrees? Many Christians have grappled with this problem for years, and have employed what is known as theodicies, which is to say, justifications for the existence of evil and how it can be reconciled with a perfectly good God.

The approach that Keller takes is to argue that evil is necessary to create the parameters in which we can develop various virtues. That within the creator's divine plan for the world and the individuals, the perceived evils function to strengthen us and bring upon goods at the appropriate times according to his plan for us. I find this a satisfactory argument to a degree, in so far as I agree with the necessary existence of evil/strife for the above-stated reasons. It is this that makes the good worth achieving and fighting for and affords many with purpose. Without these, life would be little more than a routine bore with very little to offer and few opportunities to truly do good. However, as Pierre-Simon LaPlace claimed that the universe did not require the hypotheses of a divine creator, one could argue that the existence of evil does not need it either, due to natural causes and processes that allow for life to move forward.

A second point to make would be the degree of suffering that exists. While fortunate individuals such as ourselves and Keller have faced certain challenges in life, and a few individuals have beaten the odds to escape poverty or other grim-looking childhoods and circumstances, the majority of people in the world experience a level of suffering that we will never be able to comprehend. For every one success story, there are ninety-nine failures and deaths, and a host of individuals who will never think that prayer or faith in a Deity will make their situation any better, considering they live in a country where Christianity is the main religion.

Others may counter by claiming that suffering in the secular world is a drop in the ocean compared to the divine realm. That the people who suffered will be richly rewarded in the next life. But this raises further problems regarding the reasons for creation in the first place, the satisfying of clearly stated parameters in the bible for entering heaven and the problem of sending people to hell, which leads me to the next section.

Hell and Eternal Damnation

One troubling aspect of the Christian faith that doesn't seem to get as much attention within the realm of moral philosophy, is the problem of sending individuals to Hell to be punished for eternity. I'm happy to see that Keller stood up to the challenge and gave attention to this aspect of the faith. Now it should be understood that Hell is not only designated for the worst among us, such as murderers, rapists, etc. but even for good people that found no reason for a Theistic interpretation of the human experience to live good and satisfying lives, and do good works for their fellow human beings. What's troubling is that Keller admits to the fact that Christians will sometimes not be as good as those who do not believe, but this does not matter as much as merely believing and having a relationship with Christ and God.

While it is also stated that faith must work hand in hand with good works, it's still faith that seems to carry more weight. So for secular choices, some are given to eternal punishment, and we need to grasp the weight of eternity to ask ourselves if that is just punishment for secular deeds, some good and some bad. Regarding all of this, Keller can't seem to remain consistent, in this section or throughout the book when it comes to his definition of God's attributes. One moment God is kind, merciful, loving and always forgiving, controlling every aspect of our lives based on his divine plan, and the next he is lifting his hands saying; 'I have nothing to do with your path and/or choices and it your fault that you are sent to Hell for the exercising of the free will that I gave you' .

Keller tries to give a revisionist account of Hell, in an attempt to show it to not to be all fire and torture, but just bad, relative to how good it is to be in God's presence. This is a nice try but falls flat when it comes to what is said in the Bible regarding the matter, but like others, Keller gives his interpretation and picks and chooses what will suit his current argument the best. If Keller is going to use secular examples to appeal to our common-sense intuitions to help understand the divine more, then he must allow this method of thinking to cut both ways. Intuitively speaking, most would likely say that torture is wrong, and torturing people for an eternity, even more so.

Let's use his kind of secular example to demonstrate the reverse sentiment towards theistic belief and the divine. We could ask people whether or not they would like to live their lives as slaves, working to satisfy/not anger their leader, and love him to avoid bad consequences, very much like how life is in North Korea, similar past regimes, and current ones in some places like Africa. It's not a stretch of the imagination to say that people would more than likely find this kind of life unappealing, immoral and unsustainable. It seems difficult to imagine that people would willingly choose a tyrannical sociopolitical mechanism to regulate their experience, so what makes a divine one any better?

Theistic Arguments and Other Areas of Interest

I finish this review off with the theistic arguments and some commentary on other aspects of the book. Keller addresses various arguments that look to prove the existence/possible existence of God. These are from various perspectives, from common sense to arguments from morality, fine-tuning, ontology, etc. Keller is honest in claiming that these arguments cut both ways, which is to say that they can be applied to demonstrate the opposite case as well. A further note I would make is that the arguments do not prove the existence or possible existence of a Christian God, but can easily be applied to any idea of God as understood by various people at different periods.

Again, Keller also uses clever, secular examples throughout his book to demonstrate divine lessons, while these are enjoyable and well developed, it just seems that they cannot possibly work in the sense that they are speaking of two radically different domains of experience. For example, Keller defends Christians for condemning/warning people to/about Hell because, in a secular setting, we would feel a responsibility to warn people of actions due to our knowledge of their consequences. He compares preaching about Hell to a scenario in which a young girl knows that a cookie has been poisoned and must warn her brother not to eat it or else there will be bad consequences for him. The analogy is poor, much like the others, he makes throughout for, unlike Hell, people can know directly the consequences of eating poison by way of empirical experience both of the poison and its effects when ingested. People have no knowledge or experience of Hell whatsoever. Experimentation can also be done on the cookie to test and prove to skeptics that it ought to not be eaten, the same cannot be said for Hell. The example simply doesn't work.

As is quite common, Keller bends over backward to defend and revise Christianity from its deeply problematic aspects, something he does somewhat successfully and in other places not at all. He does not provide this kind of depth or hermeneutic gymnastics to other world views and beliefs, providing shallow and poor interpretations of other faith traditions, sciences, and ideas. Keller, for example, seems to suggest that atheists or more secular thinkers are just confused individuals who went through difficult times in their lives, and condescendingly thinks that they are simply in need of guidance and knowledge of Christ. He enjoys praising himself for silencing these kinds of individuals in his Church. However, he simply doesn't seem capable of keeping his story straight regarding God. Kind and loving and perfect one moment, hateful, petty and surprised by the rise of evil and the actions of his creation the next. For a book trying to prove how rational the Christian narrative and faith is, it is tremendously irrational in most places.

Conclusion

In this event, it may be useful also to appeal to the Wittgensteinian concept of language games and how they apply here to further strengthen my thoughts. What we have is two separate sets of languages used within the book and an attempt to reconcile them, namely, a religious vocabulary stepping in and out of its domain. The attempt to use rational language to defend Christianity and its remarkable claims are tremendously difficult given the fact that Christianity is at times out of place within the secular context of science and logic which use their vocabulary. The results are continuous contradictions and subjective utterances on the part of Keller. I am not saying that the two ought never to mingle or cross, but that we must return to, in my view, is the first prescription in the book, namely, third-way spiritualism to create a new vocabulary that is more consistent, inclusive and moral, a challenging task indeed.

Unfortunately, another disappointment in the book is Keller's preaching towards the end, it would seem that like a Bollywood film requires a dance number at the end with its credits, theist writers usually feel the need to convert their readers towards the end of their books. Despite all of this, Keller's book is still very much worth the read. Its a book that bravely stands up to very difficult challenges to the Christian faith and, despite its many shortcomings, provides a book that is very well researched and refined. I have but only touched the surface of this book, not even going into the very interesting section on evolutionary biology, but I leave it to others to pick up a copy and judge for themselves. Happy reading.