My thoughts on Baggett, "The Morals of the Story"

David Baggett and Marybeth Baggett, The Morals of the Story: Good News About a Good God. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018. 253 pp.  

Last fall I had the privilege of serving on Christianity Today's adjudication panel for the book of the year in the category of Apologetics & Evangelism.  All four finalists were excellent (not perfect, but excellent) works, with different strengths.  I'd like to take a couple of posts to share some of my thoughts on the four finalists:

Sam Chan, Evangelism in a Skeptical World (Zondervan)

David & Marybeth Baggett, The Morals of the Story (IVP Academic)

Alan Noble, Disruptive Witness (IVP)

Joshua Chartraw & Mark Allen, Apologetics at the Cross (Zondervan)

David and Marybeth Baggett have written a winsome and persuasive version of an extended moral argument for the existence and nature of God.  The Morals of the Story (MotS) covers a tremendous amount of ground, surveying the history of moral arguments (Chapters 1, 3, and 4), identifying “recalcitrant” aspects of morality in need of explanation (Chapters 2, 5-9), and arguing that the Christian worldview provides the best explanation for those aspects (Chapters 5-10).

The Baggetts have a witty writing style, which ends up being both a strength and a weakness.  There is considerable humor in MotS, which keeps the reader engaged and entertained along the way.  At the same time, however, a fair amount of the book’s humor seems unrelated (or at best tangentially related) to the content/context, and is thereby distracting.  For example, they jest in regards to Paul Copan’s “pun problem” (89), begin their Intermission (“Answering Euthyphro”) with parodied advertising jingles (93), and share a humorous story of David’s encounter with an “Angel” at his mother’s death (197) – none of which contribute to the story or the argument.

That said, the philosophical argument advanced in MotS is both significant and successful.  The Baggetts are convinced that the moral argument for God’s existence and nature is among the most resonant and persuasive argument available in contemporary society, and they do a masterful job of pooling the relevant resources.  They highlight the inability of secular ethical theories to account for objective good and evil, moral obligations and motivation, moral knowledge, moral hope (transformation), and moral providence.  They also demonstrate the rich explanatory scope and power of the Christian worldview in accounting for those same moral realities.  If humanity’s deep and unshakeable moral intuitions are anything like correct, then, MotS demonstrates that the rational observer should embrace something like Christian theism in response.

In my estimation, the strongest and most ground-breaking work (in contemporary circles, anyway) comes in Chapters 8-9, wherein the Baggetts discuss moral transformation and providence respectively.  Along with our moral knowledge, they argue, humans ubiquitously desire to receive forgiveness and to be renewed—Christianity alone provides the resources for transcendent forgiveness and divinely-enabled change (including the death of the “Dear Self”).

There are two additional minor shortcomings of MotS.  First, the structure of the book may have the unfortunate effect of turning away numerous potential readers.  Chapters 3-4 cover the history of moral arguments for God, and while a professional philosopher like myself might find them absolutely fascinating and informative, I suspect the chapters will be cumbersome for many lay readers.  I think a better approach would have been to move immediately from chapter 2 into chapter 5.  Second, the Baggetts present the book as a Greek drama, taking place in/around Mars Hill.  To that end, they draw upon Socrates’ apology and Paul’s Areopagus address, and present the work in three “Acts” instead of Parts or Sections.  There is a nod at the end that morality may anticipate a “tragic” interpretation, but putting it in the context of a Christian interpretation allows for transformation into a ‘happy-ending’ “comedy” instead.  With those exceptions, however, there is nothing in the content of the book which builds upon or exploits the drama motif.  I think the motif has a lot to commend it, and could have been more fruitfully utilized.