Faith, Work, and Economics
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 59, No. 2 - Spring 2017
Managing Editor: W. Madison Grace II
Why Christian Faith Still Makes Sense: A Response to Contemporary Challenges. By C. Stephen Evans. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015. 145 + ix pages. Paperback, $20.00.
In keeping with the aim of the Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology series, Why Christian Faith Still Makes Sense provides readers a helpful, concise treatment of the challenge presented to Christian faith by the “New Atheists.” Rather than systematically addressing their arguments, which author C. Stephen Evans, University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Baylor University, understandably does “not find…worthy of serious refutation” (vii), the book focuses on the charge that faith is intellectually baseless.
The opening chapter introduces the “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheism— Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett—as well as their claims against Christian faith. Noting their lack of “any real competence in the philosophy of religion” (6), Evans observes that beyond deriding Christian faith as baseless and harmful to society the New Atheism really has no new claim; their newness, rather, is the “brash confidence” and “shrillness” (8–9) characteristic of their writings. In view of this, Evans sets out to “clearly articulate why reasonable people can believe that Christian faith is true” (11).
Although a defender of “Reformed epistemology,” beginning in chapter two Evans turns to natural theology as a source of reasons for theistic belief. On Evans’s view natural theology is best taken “not as providing us with an adequate, positive knowledge of God but as supporting…‘anti-naturalism’ ” (20). This construal tasks natural theology with pointing out “aspects of the natural world that naturalism cannot fully explain,” that is, with identifying “natural signs” (20). The chapter rounds out with a discussion of the kind of evidence one ought to expect if, indeed, God exists. In considering the plausibility of Christianity’s claim that God desires a genuine relationship with human persons, Evans offers two principles regarding such evidence: the “Wide Accessibility Principle,” according to which evidence for God will be “fairly pervasive and easy to recognize” (24) and the “Easy Resistibility Principle,” according to which the evidence is such that “a person who wished to do so could dismiss or reject” it (25).
The third and shortest chapter of the book develops the notion of a “natural sign” of God. Appealing to both Blaise Pascal and Thomas Reid, Evans explains that to qualify as a “sign” evidence must satisfy both principles laid out in chapter two. More specifically, signs pointing to God—“theistic natural signs”—require three conditions: “a connection between the sign and what the sign signifies,” the sign “must have the purpose or function of being a sign,” and “there must be a native tendency on the part of those who receive the signs to respond appropriately by ‘reading’ the sign correctly” (32). There are, Evans maintains, numerous ways God might meet these conditions leading to propositional evidence of Himself.
Chapter four surveys five natural signs for God: the experience of cosmic wonder, the experience of purposive order, the sense of being morally accountable, the sense of human dignity and worth, and the longing for transcendent joy. Throughout, Evans emphasizes that although an argument for God developed on the basis of a sign may be rejected, the sign itself is nonetheless detected. Even before developing any such argument, Evans observes that, “contrary to what the New Atheists say, there is evidence for God’s existence, evidence that is precisely the sort we should expect to find” (56).
In chapter five Evans turns to evaluate the quality of this evidence, beginning with a consideration (in terms of contemporary epistemology) of how knowledge is conceived. What becomes clear is that, skeptic or no, belief in God is anything but a “blind leap of faith” lacking supporting evidence (64). Be that as it may, evidence for God is subject to potential “defeaters” (i.e., countervailing evidence). Two commonly suggested defeaters to belief in God are the claim that science (somehow) is incompatible with theistic belief and that the presence of evil in the world is incompatible with theistic belief. Evans carefully discusses each in turn, concluding neither tarnishes the evidence for God. At most, this evidence yields “uncertain” knowledge. What is needed, says Evans, is knowledge of “what God is really like and how we should develop a relationship with him” (73).
Given the multiplicity of disparate revelation claims, “how could we recognize a revelation from God if God gave us one” (81)? This is the central question addressed in chapters six and seven. Christians, of course, recognize the Bible as God’s self-revelation, and so Evans briefly discusses how correctly to interpret the Bible. Beyond believing the content of a genuine divine revelation, says Evans, is “the process by which a person comes to believe what God has revealed” (83) because “the contents of a divine revelation should be believed because they have been revealed” by God (85). After considering the shortcomings of several attempts to handle revelation apart from this principle, Evans addresses the possibility of recognizing a genuine revelation apart from the contents of that revelation (93). The seventh and longest chapter develops three criteria for such recognition: miracles, paradoxicality, and existential power.
The concluding chapter helpfully reviews the book’s argument thus far, before arguing the Bible fulfills all three criteria thus solidifying the reasonableness of believing it to be God’s revelation. Why Christian Faith Still Makes Sense makes an accessible, valuable contribution to a growing literature responding to the New Atheism.
