A Reason to Question this 'Reason for God' by Tim Keller

Posted on Amazon from Jonathan. This is a fair, honest book review of Tim Keller's book, 'A Reason for God,' posted by a Christian in NYC:

This book is filled with excellent arguments and - persuasions - for the existence of God. If you don't believe there's a God, I challenge you to read it with an open mind. If you do believe in God, this book will increase your faith in that proposition and your ability to persuade others of it.

I believe this book is a net positive to the world of Christian thought and I would easily recommend it (and have) to my secular friends who are wrestling with the issues surrounding the question of the existence of God.

However, there are a few caveats that my traditional, orthodox and evangelical Christian friends may want to note.

First, Keller quotes extensively from N.T. Wright. Wright however, does not believe in the doctrine of "justification", i.e. the traditional Christian belief that sinners are redeemed by faith in Christ and that the justification of our sins is brought about through Christ's death and resurrection.

Wright said in his book "What St. Paul Really Said":

"Many Christians, both in the Reformation and in the counter-Reformation traditions, have done themselves and the church a great disservice by treating the doctrine of "justification" as central to their debates, and by supposing that it described the system by which people attained salvation." pp. 158-59

I don't think Keller agrees with Wright on this point, but he references him so frequently in this book and in his sermons that I wanted to bring Wright's position on this most central doctrine of Christianity to your attention.

Also, Keller has some interesting things to say about heaven. On pages 31-32 he says, "In Revelation 21, we do not see human beings being taken out of this world into heaven, but rather heaven coming down and cleaning, renewing, and perfecting this material world."

However, Revelation 21 doesn't say anything about renewing and perfecting THIS world. It in fact says this world will pass away - referring to it as the "first earth" or the "old earth" - indicating that this earth will no longer exist. It will be replaced by a new earth.

Revelation: 21:1 - Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had passed away. And the sea was also gone.

This may not seem like an important divergence from Biblical teaching, but it actually ends up in a place quite different than most Christians would expect.

For more insight into just where Keller goes with this -- in a talk to the church's Entrepreneurs Initiative a few years ago, Keller said this:

"I'm trying to overcome a typical, wrong, unbiblical attitude on the part of Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, toward this material world. ... An awful lot of Christians say, 'this world is going to die, it's going to burn up, and while we're here basically the only thing that's important is to get people saved, and if they get saved eventually they'll be able to leave this world. So it's a temporary theater for salvation. ...

THE WHOLE PURPOSE OF SALVATION IS TO MAKE THIS WORLD A GREAT PLACE. ... God sees this world as not a temporary means to an end of salvation, but actually salvation is a temporary means to an end - to the renewal of creation. ...

SAVING SOULS IS A MEANS TO AN END OF CULTURAL RENEWAL. Does the Christian church understand that? I'm not sure."

There are a lot of deep theological issues here - I'll be the first to admit. But I seem to remember something about the saving of our souls also having something to do with glorifying God and sparing each individual person from an eternity in hell -- separated from God.

Cultural renewal is well and good and certainly a by-product of saved souls, but is it really the "whole purpose" of salvation?