book review

last night, i finished reading the case for christ... it's an... interesting read. strobel asks tough questions and seeks answers from people who have spent their entire lives studying what he wants to know about. his lack of fear in tackling the questions he does is to be commended. however, the book is not without fault.

when you spend a day interviewing someone about tough issues, and then summarize the interview into a 10 page chapter (which is what the whole book is composed of), you necessarily lose some of the finer points of the argument, and get a big overview instead. further, often times, the objections and arguments strobel presents from leading athiest writers, while interesting are not necessarily the objections to the Christian faith that i hear from my friends who are rather skeptical about why i believe what i do.

these greater issues recognized, it was an interesting read. strobel brought up points in his discussion i've not necessarily heard or thought of hard before, so it was good food for thought too.

in summary...
* if you are a Christian, and haven't read much in the way of apologetics, strobel presents an interesting collection of interviews with well-credentialled scholars to fuel evidence for why Jesus is who he says he is. if that sounds like interesting leisure time reading, you'll probably enjoy this book.
* if you are a Christian and HAVE read a lot of scholarly new testament material, it depends on your attitude towards the book going in. if you're looking for something deep and scholarly, this is probably too cursory and overviewish, and written for a different audience than you... if you're willing to take it at face value, a book that presents some food for thought for people with the questions he tries to address, and accept in advance that it isn't written in a way to be scholarly gospel truth, then you may enjoy it too.
* finally, if you're not a Christian, you probably will be skeptical to hear that every "authoritative scholar" that strobel interviews is a Christian. then again, when this objection was brought up to me by an agnostic friend i was telling about the book, the answer that first came to me was... you know your arguments against Christ being God... it would seem interesting then to see if any of these scholars, from the other side of the coin address any of the issues you personally have. don't dive in to it expecting it's going to provide a step by step failproof scientific case for what it addresses, because it doesn't, it's a survey type book... however, it can provide food for thought to be the other half of your ongoing debate about the things that Christianity adopts as truth. it would seem that if you're sincere in your wanting to debate the fundamental issues, you really do need a two-sided debate and not just bolstering your arguments for the against side. if you fall into this category, i would encourage you to pick it up as a "food for thought" type book (as i'm encouraging the friend referenced above to do, so that we have some new points to discuss :-P), without the idea that it should or shouldn't convert you to or from anything... books are just supposed to make you think.

dude, that was long...

anyhow, next on the list (besides still reading all the mental floss magazine back issues) is strobel's the case for faith, which seems to have gotten even more controversial reviews on amazon, etc. then the case for christ... we'll see what i have to say about that one when i'm done.

back to homework.

later dudes.