Thinking Christian

I approach today’s topic in Resources for Thinking Christianly with some trepidation. It’s about reading good books. There is problem with that: there are so many of them!

So let’s cut the topic down to size by talking about good books, not-so-good books, and how to tell the difference. The not-so-good ones far outnumber the worthwhile ones. If thinking Christianly is your objective, you can certainly go wrong, even with books from the Christian bookstore. I’m thinking of a book I was reading just this week that tries rather too hard to count Isaac Newton as an orthodox Christian, and Thomas Jefferson as one who respected the Christ of the Bible. Even more common than factually flawed books like that, however, are books that are fail to engage real thinking. Squishy books, I call them. They’re not just at Borders and Barnes & Noble; they’re also at Family, Berean, and LifeWay.

How then do you know what’s a good book? I could list my ten favorites, but that wouldn’t get you very far. Instead I’m going to suggest how to go about looking for them.

1. Rely on good reviews from good sources—Books and Culture, First Things, and Touchstone, among others. Tim Challies is the one Christian blogger I would most recommend as a book reviewer; in addition to his blog, he edits The Discerning Reader. I’ve done a few reviews myself.

2. Read old books. One of C.S. Lewis’s most famous words of advice was,

“It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”

A further virtue of old books is that time weeds out the weak ones. Old books are likely to be good books.

3. Read challenging books. I have nothing against reading for information or entertainment, and I like a Grisham novel as well as anyone; but I grow most when I work hardest. Read material that stretches you. Don’t be afraid to get help with it; that’s perfectly fine. Cliff’s Notes and SparkNotes were off limits for most of us in high school and college—too many students use them as shortcuts. That’s not what you’re doing now, though. They may be just the thing to get you through some difficult classic material you’re working through.

4. Read all kinds of books. For heaven’s sake, don’t think you must limit yourself to Christian non-fiction. Balance your diet. Dostoyevski and Shakespeare may grow you just as much, both mentally and spiritually, as C.S. Lewis or John Piper. Poetry can put you in touch with beauty as almost no other writing can. Biography, nature, history, leadership studies … I could go on and on.

5. Read other perspectives. Today I finished a book by two gay authors on strategy for the homosexual rights movement. Do you think there was no growth for me in encountering their point of view? They are, first of all, two human beings, with a particular human perspective on life. If I as a Christian cannot listen to their perspective, how can I speak God’s truth to them in love? Or, if I do not try to understand naturalism or atheism, could I pretend know what to think about those topics? If my Christianity cannot stand up to differing opinions, then how can I be confident in it? Paul demonstrated knowledge of secular authors, especially in Acts 17.

There is indeed much to read. I love bookstores and I hate them: I want to read everything, and I’m frustrated knowing how much I will never have time for. Do you see why it’s so important to choose our reading wisely? But be encouraged: you don’t have to do this all at once. It’s a lifetime pursuit.

Be encouraged, too, that not every book must be read deeply. I had a class with the late missiologist Dr. Ralph Winter, who advised us, “Don’t read—ransack!” He was referring to a particular kind of reading: for research or for specific information. It’s great advice, though not for all kinds of material: poetry, say, or an extended philosophical treatise. I’ve even used the ransack technique in the Bible—looking for places where Jesus spoke his purpose, for example.

Speaking of the Bible, have you noticed how uniquely it fits the criteria I’ve listed above? It’s challenging; it’s time-tested (a very good book!); it includes biography, history, poetry, theology, philosophy, and more. And if you think it won’t test and change your perspective on life—even as a Christian—then I would say you haven’t been looking into it deeply enough!

Share This

We spent Christmas with the Gilson side of the family this year. One of many very enjoyable conversations I had with there was about books, with a family member who has a Ph.D. in management, holds a senior leadership position at a state university, and is a follower of Christ. She told me about the difficulty she has had with getting in touch with excellent Christian thinking in church—a difficulty that is admittedly all too common (though that’s improving—see below). I mentioned some good books on Christian thinking, and she asked me to email her with the information on them.

So now I’m getting double use from that work by posting it here on the blog. From my own recent experience, these are some of the books I would recommend to anyone who wants an introduction to high-quality current Christian thinking.

The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God by Dallas Willard (1998). Willard teaches philosophy at the University of Southern California. This book is a unique blend of philosophical thinking and practical application for non-technical readers. As such it’s an outstanding model of how to think well in order to do well: clear without being dumbed-down in the least. It’s the first book I would recommend to any reader on general Christian thinking.

Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics by William Lane Craig. This is a more technical discussion of philosophical foundations for belief in Christ. The third edition came out just this past summer. Craig has a Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham (England) and a D.Theol. from the University of Munich, and is now on the faculty at Talbot Theological Seminary. He is one of a handful of thinkers who are developing a new and, so far at least, quite robust version of the Cosmological Argument for God. The book also covers some reasons for confidence in the historicity of Christ’s resurrection, based on findings that skeptics and atheists actually tend in large part to agree with.

Kingdom Triangle: Recover the Christian Mind, Renovate the Soul, Restore the Spirit’s Power by J.P. Moreland (2007). Moreland studied under Dallas Willard and received his Ph.D. in philosophy at USC. This book cuts a middle ground: he targeted it for lay persons but states explicitly that he intends to push them into more difficult territory than they’re probably accustomed to. He puts this in context of a discussion of the history of Christian anti-intellectualism, and this is one of many things he has written to try to turn that tide. The book also covers other ground besides that, including some fairly surprising information about what God is doing around the world.

By the way, with reference to the intellectual re-maturing (it wasn’t always this way) of the church, Craig had an article in Christianity Today last July that’s fairly encouraging. He credits a book by Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God (1967) as the turning point. I’m reading it now. It may not be the most technical philosophy I’ve worked through, but it’s pretty close. It’s stretching me.

With that book and a later one, God, Freedom, and Evil (which I haven’t read), Plantinga accomplished the impossible: he solved a philosophical question to virtually everyone’s satisfaction. It was an aspect of the problem of evil, about which you can read more here. (I admit: I wrote about it from secondary sources. I’m catching up now.)

Plantinga holds a chair in philosophy at Notre Dame. For a good laugh, I guarantee you’ll enjoy listening to him explaining at the beginning of this lecture what a Dutch Calvinist like him is doing on the faculty there. (He is an uncommonly excellent lecturer, by the way, so I would actually recommend listening to the whole thing.) Another book of his, Warranted Christian Belief (2000), is a favorite of mine, and rather important in showing that believing in Christianity is not irrational as some have said it is.

These are, most of them, relatively recent. Going back before them, I would refer to G.K. Chesterton, who may be the wittiest of all Christian writers and astonishingly prescient: writing 100 years ago, somehow he nailed many of today’s trends of thought. You can find his books online–I would search for The Everlasting Man and Orthodoxy. There’s always C.S. Lewis, of course, who had more widespread influence than any other conservatively-oriented Christian author in the 20th century.

Then there are a few more from a social science perspective:

Rodney Stark is a prolific sociologist and author who has a way of using empirical data to bust up myths and misconceptions. Of his many books the two I would most recommend are For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery, (Princeton University Press, 2004), and the very current What Americans Really Believe (Baylor University Press, 2008) presenting about 200 pages of survey report on religion in America.

Another pair of sociologists, Christian Smith and Melanie Lundquist Denton, wrote Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford University Press, USA, 2005). Among other things it is the best model of sociological methodology I’ve seen–not that I’m a sociologist, but from where I stand it’s still very impressive for the size and thoroughness of their sample and methods. This book received a lot of press when it came out, mostly focusing on its conclusion that a large number of young Americans hold to an indefinite sort of spirituality the authors called “moral therapeutic deism.” What I picked up from it was the difference adherence to religion makes in teenagers’ lives.

There are many more books I could have included, but this ought to suffice for a good start.

Share This

I ended my last post with this:

Agree or disagree with what he has to say–either way, you’ll find a lot to learn in it.

I got to wondering as I wrote that: do you read authors you disagree with? I’m especially interested to know if atheistic/agnostic visitors here read good Christian authors. I commend you for visiting a Christian blog–that certainly indicates your willingness to grapple with opposing views. But this is a short form, and there are better authors than me.

I could not be confident in my own beliefs if I hadn’t read some of the best from atheists or strict evolutionists: Ehrman, Ruse, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Gould, Mayr, Forrest and Gross, Miller, etc.. Atheists and agnostics, have you read Moreland, Craig, Willard, Plantinga, Geisler, or Habermas (more than articles, that is)? Have you looked through MikeGene’s work on Intelligent Design, The Design Matrix? (I haven’t reviewed it yet, but it’s on the list. Here’s a preview: far and away, it’s the one book I would most recommend to ID skeptics.)

It comes down to this: are your convictions against Christian faith directed against the real thing? How do you know?

Share This