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.
