The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Keller addresses this chapter against the recent cultural influence (at the time of The Reason for God’s publication) of the “new atheists,” a group of best-selling atheist writers whose works were at the forefront of the contemporary debate over religion. One of their central claims was that science had disproven Christianity, assuming a conflict between the two fields of science and faith. Keller contends that no such conflict exists and that most of the atheists’ science-based objections to Christianity are rooted in mistaken interpretations and logical fallacies.

He begins by pointing out that the belief that miracles cannot happen is itself unsupported by scientific evidence: “There would be no experimental model for testing the statement: ‘No supernatural cause for any natural phenomenon is possible.’ It is therefore a philosophical presupposition and not a scientific finding” (89). If Christianity is right about the existence of a God who created the universe and controls it, then there is nothing logically impossible about miracles; on the contrary, one should probably expect that they will happen, particularly in those circumstances that align with God’s purposes for the world. Keller points to biblical passages that demonstrate a use of miracles not simply as magic tricks to shock people, but rather in the service of specific goals relating to God’s mission in the world: healing, restoration, and deliverance.

Against the idea that science is in conflict with Christianity, Keller points toward surveys and studies that highlight a robust presence of Christians practicing within the academic fields of natural science: “A majority of scientists consider themselves deeply or moderately religious—and those numbers have increased in recent decades” (95). When it comes to particular questions like evolution, Keller demonstrates that there is a diversity of views regarding the matter in Christianity, including many who accept evolution as the natural process by which God guided the creation of all living things. This diversity of Christian views reflects a correlating breadth of interpretive possibilities when reading the biblical accounts of creation.

In the final chapter of Part 1, Keller contends against the claims of modern historical-critical scholarship of the Bible, which were dominant in the field in the mid-to-late 20th century but have since proven insufficient. Such claims attempted to separate the “historical Jesus” from the traditional portrayal of Jesus as the Son of God in the biblical gospels. The problem with such claims is that they have difficulty making sense of the biblical narrative itself, in which Jesus is executed precisely for his divine claims. Keller asserts that the evidence for the gospels’ composition—their early dating relative to the events they describe, their inclusion of difficult material, and their apparent dependence on eyewitness reports—points in the direction of interpreting the gospels’ claims about Jesus literally.

Keller recounts that while many people held historical objections to the biblical view of Christianity when he first began his ministry, it has now shifted to a point where cultural objections against the Bible predominate. People frequently object to the way the Bible speaks about women or the issue of slavery, claiming that such areas prove the Bible to be an untrustworthy moral guide. Such objections, according to Keller, are usually based on cultural misunderstandings of the historical context in which the Bible was written, such as in conflating the realities of the African slave trade in North America of the 19th century with the far less cruel and restrictive nature of urban slavery in the Greco-Roman world.

Keller further points out that accusing the Bible of being regressive is itself a claim of universal moral superiority over other cultures:

To reject the Bible as regressive is to assume that you have now arrived at the ultimate historic moment, from which all that is regressive and progressive can be discerned. That belief is surely as narrow and exclusive as the views in the Bible you regard as offensive (115).

Keller invites his readers to consider the central claims of Christianity first—such as the identity and mission of Jesus—and then later to reckon with tangential points that may at first glance appear controversial but often resolve themselves when given appropriate time, perspective, and study.