Why Christian? for Those on the Edge of Faith

I truly loved this book, it's challenging, simple (but not easy), and I would credit it with deepening my own understanding of my relationship with God. The author is a thinking man, and this book is for thinking people. No easy answers, no pretend understandings of the Mystery, but a deep looking that is essential for a real relationship with God.

I found this book to be very well written with a rather unique approach of using a "composite character" with whom the author has first a dialogue on a question and then for whom he provides a more thorough essay answer. The reader is caught up in this give and take between professor and student, and the questions are the hard ones! Why Christian? Why Jesus? Saved from What and for What? Why Church? Is there Hope?There are many selected biblical quotations with a clear explanation written in such a way as to leave room for the reader to differ. In almost all cases, respect for other faith systems is maintained, reserving the most direct criticism for the author's own beloved Christianity. Professor Hall recognizes many of the atrocities committed in the name of religions, including Christianity, and explains why such actions are inconsistent with the precepts of those religions. He discusses how birthright so often is a reason for starting out in a religion but how today especially, birthright alone is not enough to keep someone in a given faith system.Appropriately, some of the more fundamental questions are left to the reader to answer. For example, " 'So what precisely (as we may ask with Wendell Berry and others) are human beings for?' If we are not just accidents of nature, what is our place in the scheme of things? What is our purpose and how could we attain it, or reclaim it?" This question is never really answered directly, but is diverted to a related "sense of anxiety" angle.My belief is that this book will be a bit of a disappointment for those looking to find a dogmatic statement of why Christian today. Instead, one finds a respectful questioning of today's Christianity with a deep routed love of what Christianity can be. This is indeed a wonderful resource "for those on the edge of faith."

As any reader of Douglas John Hall's massive three-volume systematic theology--Thinking the Faith, Confessing the Faith, and Professing the Faith--will know, Hall is a sensitive and thoughtful Christian who is convinced of both the reality of God and the decisiveness of Jesus. He does not seek in this book simply to repeat in detail the content of his earlier work but to explain to contemporary audiences why he believes Christianity still makes sense. Some Christians will regard him as too liberal, others as too conservative; all can, I hope, agree that his heart beats with a passion for making God's love real in our world and for acknowledging the gap between God's goodness and the state of contemporary North American culture. I wish Hall had been somewhat more systematic; I wish he had explicated his own position in a somewhat less impressionistic fashion. But this is certainly among the books I'd place in the hands of someone interested in exploring the Christian gospel.

This book represents Hall's dialogues with a hypothetical student--someone drawn to Christianity by cultural contact and/or past association, but not willing to jump unthinkingly into blind belief. Hall engages the student, giving "reasons", but not proofs, for "the hope that is in" him.As one who has encountered Hall's theology before (_Thinking the Faith_), I am struck by this application of his "contextuality": rather than trying to transcend its historical context (like C.S. Lewis's _Mere Chrisianity_), Hall's apologetic speaks to North Americans of the 20th century. Moving beyond (but not discarding) theologies of the past, Hall re-interprets the gospel to address the crisis of modernity and the challenge of post-establishment Christianity, as well as the student's very personal questions: "What's so important about Jesus?" "Why go to church?" "Is there any hope for the world?"That said, the book is a trifle simplistic for anyone interested in serious theology--though this does not seem to be the target audience. Those interested in hearing more of what Hall has to say are encouraged to pick up _Thinking the Faith_, and the rest of Hall's contextual theology triology.This book is not only for doubting Christians, but for those whose faith seems a bit too secure. Those of the latter group would do well to sit on Hall's side and wrestle with the questions the student poses--faith unchallenged is not faith, after all.