The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

“My thesis is that if you come to recognize the beliefs on which your doubts about Christianity are based, and if you seek as much proof for those beliefs as you seek from Christians for theirs—you will discover that your doubts are not as solid as they first appeared.”

Keller asserts that doubt is not a threat—in fact, he regards it as a healthy aspect of intellectual life, even for Christians—but as this quote shows, he insists that we interrogate our doubts to discern where they are coming from and whether their assumptions can bear the light of close scrutiny. This is his primary tactic in Part 1 for Addressing Objections to Christianity.

“Religion is not just a temporary thing that helped us adapt to our environment. Rather it is a permanent and central aspect of the human condition. This is a bitter pill for secular, nonreligious people to swallow. Everyone wants to think that they are in the mainstream, that they are not extremists. But robust religious beliefs dominate the world. There is no reason to expect that to change.”

In contrast to the widespread notion in the secular West that society is following a smooth trendline away from religious belief and toward nonbelief, Keller suggests that the evidence does not support that view. Not only are religious beliefs surprisingly resilient in Western nations, but the global trendline in the early 21st century also appeared to be moving in the direction of greater religious affiliation, not less. This is an important point in Keller’s argument against skepticism because it removes the assumption that nonbelief’s rise is inevitable as technological progress continues.

“Skeptics believe that any exclusive claims to a superior knowledge of spiritual reality cannot be true. But this objection is itself a religious belief. It assumes God is unknowable, or that God is loving but not wrathful, or that God is an impersonal force rather than a person who speaks in Scripture. All of these are unprovable faith assumptions […] Therefore, their view is also an ‘exclusive’ claim about the nature of spiritual reality.”

Here, Keller argues for The Insufficiency of Relativism. In objecting to Christianity’s exclusive truth-claim, critics might not realize that they are also implicitly asserting an exclusive truth-claim simply by favoring their own view on the matter. Each position carries its own assumptions about the nature of God, and Keller wants to present the Christian view of God as at least as rational (in regard to the assumptions it bears) as the skeptical positions.

“[M]odern objections to God are based on a sense of fair play and justice. People, we believe, ought not to suffer, be excluded, die of hunger or oppression. But the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection depends on death, destruction, and violence of the strong against the weak—these things are all perfectly natural. On what basis, then, does the atheist judge the natural world to be horribly wrong, unfair, and unjust?”

This quote illustrates one of Keller’s common tactics in his mode of argumentation: claiming that our own innate sensibilities appear to point in God’s direction. In this way, he can take even objections that are made against Christianity and turn them in Christianity’s favor by noting that the underlying concerns of the objection make more sense in a universe designed with clear moral values than in a random universe in which morality is meaningless.

“At first sight, then, a relationship with God seems inherently dehumanizing. Surely it will have to be ‘one way,’ God’s way. God, the divine being, has all the power. I must adjust to God […] While this may be true in other forms of religion and belief in God, it is not true in Christianity. In the most radical way, God has adjusted to us—in his incarnation and atonement.”

Another of Keller’s aims in The Reason for God is to clear up misconceptions that nonbelievers might have about Christianity. In this quote, he addresses the sense that one would have to give up one’s independence in order to follow God, restricting one’s liberty and behavior in order to fit Christianity’s expectations. Keller notes that Christianity actually believes that God is the one who has bent in our direction, accommodating himself to our condition through the life and death of Jesus.

“Belief that you are accepted by God by sheer grace is profoundly humbling. The people who are fanatics, then, are so not because they are too committed to the gospel, but because they’re not committed to it enough […] They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, empathetic, forgiving or understanding—as Christ was.”

Here, Keller addresses another misconception, namely that Christianity is to be avoided because of the judgmental and puritanical fanaticism exhibited by some of its adherents. Keller suggests, however, that such adherents are not representative of the heart of the Christian tradition. Rather than perceiving such people as examples of what an all-out acceptance of Christianity might look like, Keller portrays them as examples of a shallow, poorly implemented version of Christianity.

“For the sake of argument, let’s imagine that Christianity is not the product of any one culture but is actually the transcultural truth of God. If that were the case we would expect that it would contradict and offend every human culture at some point, because human cultures are ever-changing and imperfect. If Christianity were the truth it would have to be offending and correcting your thinking at some place.”

Keller’s “for the sake of argument” proposition is stated as a hypothetical for the benefit of his skeptical readers, but it is actually the position Keller holds to be true. Keller uses this hypothetical construction to point out that any offense they might feel is probably to be expected: If God exists, we would not expect God to conform to the particularities of our own personal whims and cultural context. The mere fact of feeling offense at certain precepts of Christianity is not evidence that its claims are untrue.

“Today many of the skeptics I talk to say, as I once did, they can’t believe in the God of the Bible, who punishes and judges people, because they ‘believe in a God of Love.’ I now ask, what makes them think God is Love? […] By no means is that the dominant, ruling attribute of God as understood in any of the major faiths. I must conclude that the source of the idea that God is Love is the Bible itself. And the Bible tells us that the God of love is also a God of judgment who will put all things in the world to rights in the end.”

Keller points out that many of the popular notions about God in society are actually derived from Christianity, even sometimes despite their adherents’ objections to Christianity. This quote comes in the context of Keller’s retelling of his own spiritual journey, in which he looked into various other religions to discern their views about the nature of the universe. Only in Christianity, he claims, is there a robust belief in a God whose fundamental attribute is love.

“If there is a Creator God, there is nothing illogical at all about the possibility of miracles.”

Here, Keller pushes back on the assumption that miracles are logically impossible. He considers the position untenable because it begins with an assumption that God either does not exist or does not intervene in the universe. On the other hand, if God does exist, then there is no reason to assume that miracles could not happen and thus no incoherency in the Christian view of miracles.

“We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken.”

In this quote, Keller continues Addressing Objections to Christianity—in this case, the idea that miracles are some kind of magic trick out of harmony with the natural state of things. To the contrary, Keller suggests that miracles in fact represent God’s intent to restore the natural order as it was meant to be.

“[S]omeday others will think of us and our culture’s dominant views as primitive. How can we use our time’s standard of ‘progressive’ as the plumbline by which we decide which parts of the Bible are valid and which are not? […] Wouldn’t it be tragic if we threw the Bible away over a belief that will soon look pretty weak or wrong? To stay away from Christianity because part of the Bible’s teaching is offensive to you assumes that if there is a God he wouldn’t have any views that upset you.”

Here, Keller turns his thematic focus back to The Insufficiency of Relativism. He points out that the objectors’ own perspectives are relativized by their historical and cultural positions and that the assumptions they currently hold to be true might not always be held to be so. As such, Keller argues that relativism’s own precepts should make one hesitant to throw away views with which one might not currently agree (such as Christianity).

“The view that there is a God, [Richard Swinburne] says, leads us to expect the things we observe—that there is a universe at all, that scientific laws operate within it, that it contains human beings with consciousness and with an indelible moral sense. The theory that there is no God, he argues, does not lead us to expect any of these things. Therefore, belief in God offers a better empirical fit.”

Keller makes regular use of quotations from leading philosophers and scientists, and in this quote, he draws on the work of Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne. Keller wants to draw his readers’ attention to the question of expectations—namely, what one might expect the universe to look like given a certain premise, such as the existence or nonexistence of God. Swinburne (as well as Keller) believes that the nature of our universe better reflects one’s expectations if God were to exist.

“Which account of the world has the most ‘explanatory power’ to make sense of what we see in the world and in ourselves? We have a sense that the world is not the way it ought to be. We have a sense that we are very flawed and yet very great. We have a longing for love and beauty that nothing in this world can fulfill. We have a deep need to know meaning and purpose. Which worldview best accounts for these things?”

Here, we again see Keller’s insistence on the importance of making sense of the universe in which we find ourselves. He argues not only that the physical structure of the universe points to God, as Richard Swinburne argued (see previous quote), but also that our own innate desires and sensibilities point in that direction as well.

“It comes down to this: If, as the evolutionary scientists say, what our brains tell us about morality, love, and beauty is not real—if it is merely a set of chemical reactions designed to pass on our genetic code—then so is what their brains tell them about the world. Then why should we trust them?”

This quote represents a common Christian response to proponents of unguided evolution, who insist that all life is the result of purely natural processes. Keller presents a skeptical view that asserts humanity’s innate sensibilities regarding morality and beauty are not to be trusted because they refer themselves not to matters of ultimate truth, but to evolutionary advantage. By the same measure, Keller asserts, Christians can then say that the skeptics’ sensibilities about the world are likewise not to be trusted.

“It is common to hear people say, ‘No one should impose their moral views on others, because everyone has the right to find truth inside him or herself.’ This belief leaves the speaker open to a series of very uncomfortable questions. Aren’t there people in the world who are doing things you believe are wrong—things that they should stop doing no matter what they personally believe about the correctness of their behavior? If you do […] doesn’t that mean you do believe that there is some kind of moral standard that people should abide by regardless of their individual convictions?”

Keller points out that relativism, while usually proposed as a way to respect the feelings and beliefs of others, falls short when it comes to logical coherence. Relativists will usually agree that certain actions simply ought not to be done—examples Keller uses include Nazi acts of genocide during the Holocaust and acts of child abuse—and Keller argues that moral conviction does not hold if there is no transcendent grounding for it. Keller claims that by admitting that certain actions properly fall under universal moral condemnation, relativists are admitting that they believe in a universal moral structure, not a relativistic one.

“If the [Cosmic Judge’s] Bench is truly empty, then the whole span of human civilization, even if lasts a few million years, will be just an infinitesimally brief spark in relation to the oceans of dead time that preceded it and will follow it. There will be no one around to remember any of it. Whether we are loving or cruel in the end would make no difference at all.”

This is Keller’s summation of the moral vision of a universe that has no God. He argues that because there is no transcendent moral order, there would be no restrictions on human behavior. Human beings, like all other things, would simply be random, temporary accretions of elemental particles, and the way such accretions are treated bears no ultimate significance. Most people are revolted by that idea, which is Keller’s point: He then claims our own moral sensibilities drive us toward the idea that life is meaningful, but that can only be so if God exists.

“According to Christianity our biggest problem is sin. Yet the concept of ‘sin’ is offensive or ludicrous to many. This is often because we don’t understand what Christians mean by the term.”

One of the main ways that Keller goes about treating his theme of Answering Objections to Christianity is to point out where those objections might be rooted in misunderstanding. Keller believes this to be the case with regard to the doctrine of sin. When skeptics object to the idea of sin, Keller thinks that it is largely because they misunderstand the role the doctrine plays in the Christian gospel, representing not a judgmental and intolerant streak, but an honest assessment of human nature that opens up a path for redemption and healing.

“A life not centered on God leads to emptiness. Building our lives on something besides God not only hurts us if we don’t get the desires of our hearts, but also if we do. Few of us get all our wildest dreams fulfilled in life, and therefore it is easy to live in the illusion that if you were as successful, wealthy, popular, or beautiful as you wished, you’d finally be happy and at peace. That just isn’t so.”

This is part of Keller’s exposition of the doctrine of sin, which he defines as the attempt to put anything other than God at the center of our lives. Within Christianity, human beings are thought to have been created for a relationship with God, and so anything that cuts against or replaces that purpose will ultimately leave a person unfulfilled.

“All other major faiths have founders who are teachers that show the way to salvation. Only Jesus claimed to actually be the way of salvation himself.”

Keller regards Christianity as being unique among world religions, most of which are built upon following a set of teachings, laws, or commandments to follow God’s ways or to reach enlightenment. Only Christianity, he argues, is based not on human actions but on a relationship with God, established by trust in God’s actions through Jesus Christ.

“In religion, we try to obey the divine standards out of fear. We believe that if we don’t obey we are going to lose God’s blessing in this world and the next. In the gospel, the motivation is one of gratitude for the blessing we have already received because of Christ. While the moralist is forced into obedience, motivated by fear of rejection, a Christian rushes into obedience, motivated by a desire to please and resemble the one who gave his life for us.”

In this quote, Keller again contrasts Christianity with other religious approaches. This is part of his attempt to build a persuasive argument in favor of Christianity, and he does it by framing the essence of Christianity as a relationship with God, characterized in this instance by a sense of gratitude and a desire to please God.

“Forgiveness means bearing the cost instead of making the wrongdoer do it, so you can reach out in love to seek your enemy’s renewal and change […] Everyone who forgives great evil goes through a death into resurrection, and experiences nails, blood, sweat, and tears. Should it surprise us, then, that when God determined to forgive us rather than punish us for all the ways we have wronged him and one another, that he went to the Cross in the person of Jesus Christ and died there?”

This is part of Keller’s response to the objection that God should be able to simply forgive sins without requiring a sacrificial death, such as Jesus’s death on the cross. Keller points out that that is not how forgiveness works, even for humans.

“On the Cross Jesus wins through losing, triumphs through defeat, achieves power through weakness and service, comes to wealth via giving all away. Jesus Christ turns the values of the world upside-down. […] In this peaceable kingdom there is a reversal of the values of the world with regard to power, recognition, status, and wealth. Christians look at money as something to give away. They look at power as something to use strictly for service […] Christ creates a whole new order of life.”

Keller here gives expression to an idea that is often noted by Christian apologists: that Jesus’s death on the cross resulted in a transformation of social values that ultimately affected not only Christianity but also all of Western society. Many of the social virtues that even skeptics assume to be universally held in fact derive from the Christian worldview and reflect the enormous influence of Christianity upon moral sensibilities.

“Most people think that, when it comes to Jesus’s resurrection, the burden of proof is on believers to give evidence that it happened. That is not completely the case. The resurrection also puts a burden of proof on nonbelievers. It is not enough to simply believe that Jesus did not rise from the dead. You must then come up with a historically feasible alternate explanation for the birth of the church.”

In providing arguments for belief in the Christian faith, Keller presents the resurrection of Jesus from the dead as one of those arguments. Whereas skeptics might point to the resurrection as a weak link in the Christian argument—a miraculous event that, because of the nature of miracles, cannot be proven historically—many Christian apologists actually hold that the historical argument for the resurrection is among the strongest evidence for belief. Keller argues that the cumulative weight of the circumstantial evidence around the resurrection is most plausibly explained by the resurrection actually happening.