Beyond Opinion: Living the Faith We Defend

By Ravi Zacharias, Thomas Nelson Publisher, 360 pages.

The various evangelical Protestant authors of Beyond Opinion demonstrate their deep commitment to converting the secular culture that surrounds them. They boldly wade into the most contentious issues facing all of society, including pornography, loneliness, and lack of community.

Common to all writers is the commitment to respecting the person, atheist or Muslim, Buddhist or secularist, with whom they discuss the gospel. Rather than winning intellectual arguments, winning a soul for Christ is the primary task.

As Zacharias and other writers note, apologists must challenge faulty worldviews. Often behind a question, such as why a good God permits evil and suffering, is a deeper assumption about life. Zacharias notes that Jesus' technique when being challenged by doubters was to "question the questioner." In other words, speak to the underlying assumptions, rather than to the first question.

Beyond Opinion is refreshing because the writers do not fear secularists or ornery atheists. They demonstrate how their own arguments have advanced beyond the childishly simplistic reasoning of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and others who angrily denounce religion and believers. Examining the underlying issues, they wonder: if God does not exist, why are atheists so angry at Him?

Christian apologists must keep fixed on the real goals of their ministry: "The apologetic task is first and foremost a spiritual conflict that sometimes shows itself through competing worldviews that seek to undermine faith in Jesus Christ." This demands knowing the errors of secular or atheistic thinking, and responding with clarity, with the simple truth of the Nicene Creed.

One major spiritual struggle is with modern society's loss of the sense of sin. Salvation cannot be offered to people who don't think they need to be saved. Perhaps a chapter on how Christians can encourage a sense of sin without overemphasizing guilt would have rounded out the argument.

Repeatedly, Beyond Opinion reveals the wealth of experience from countless dinner-time arguments with aggressive anti-Christians. On one occasion, in a formerly-communist Eastern European country, after hours of fruitless argument, the Christians offered to pray with the nonbelievers, who hesitantly accepted. The prayer changed the mood deeply. The atheists were affected, and stayed up until morning arguing amongst themselves about God. One gave his life to Jesus that night.

Avoiding complication, some apologetic techniques are simplistic but effective. Just as God's existence cannot be proved, neither can His non-existence. Atheists and agnostics are only fooling themselves if they think they have found some truth. They too have a faith - in their atheism or agnosticism.

Thus Richard Dawkins' claim that belief in God is similar to belief in the Easter Bunny fails to stand to scrutiny. No one comes to belief in the Easter Bunny in their adulthood, but countless people come to Christ in these years. Dawkins' faith in his atheism is immature and incomplete, in contrast to the faith held by the Christian.

The authors' reverence for the Bible is also refreshing for readers who have become used to deep disrespect of the sacred. Beyond Opinion offers an antidote to the troubled, rude secularism of our age.

Benedict XVI: Essays and Reflections on His Papacy

Edited by Mary Ann Walsh, 224 pages, Rowman Littlefield.

This collection of short essays on the character, teaching, and work of Pope Benedict XVI by American Catholics gives readers an excellent sense of the close relationship between the pontiff and the United States.

Much to the surprise of many, especially the secular, liberal media, Benedict has left a profound, lasting impression on American life. The oldline media, such as Time Magazine, continually claimed (and still does) that he was out of touch with people, Americans in particular, and would fail to capture the public's imagination. Nothing could be further from this, it turns out.

Rather than cold and indoctrinating, he has come off as a fatherly, caring, wise pastor. His trip to the US, at a low time in the sex-abuse scandal, brought about great healing and testified to his deep care for people.

Rather than foremost a scholar pope, people have begun to regard him as a pastor pope. Many writers in the book testify to his brilliant preaching on the love of God, and what it means to them not only intellectually, but spiritually.

Yet rather than sentimental, Benedict proclaims a God who reaches out through history in the person of Jesus Christ. One writer notes that for the pope charity without truth is "mere sentimentalism." In other words, the pastor-pope does also demand the traditional Catholic practice of intellectual engagement.

His own brilliance has been a great gift to the worldwide Church. "People came to see Pope John Paul II. People come to hear Benedict," one contributor notes. The pontiff's profoundly deep, multifaceted theological writings, so at odds with the superficial gimmickry of much of mainstream pop culture and Church life, can be read again and again.

Many reflections in this book point out the importance of liturgy to the pope. Rather than sentimentality, Benedict regards the liturgy as theological proclamation. He invites people to understand and engage more deeply with the liturgy. Benedict sees the world's true destiny and fulfillment, one writer notes, achieved one day through worship and adoration.

Readers can see glimpses of the multi-faceted nature of Benedict's theology. His opposition to some strains of liberation theology is grounded in his own appreciation of the liturgy and the simple proclamation of Jesus Christ as Savior. We are called to have the same faith that Mary has, which is one dimension of his own devotion to the Blessed Mary Virgin.

Such devotion for the pontiff does not get lost in emotion or piety, but is expressed in the clear theology for which he is renowned.

Completing this picture of the scholarly, pastor pope is a teacher of tradition, which includes the age-old religious practices of his native Bavaria. This has given him an intense appreciation of the understanding of tradition as the deposit of the faith.

One selection thus notes that his papal coat of arms combines papal tradition with Augustinian theology and "papal lore."

God has thus offered a powerful antidote to the world's secularism: a pope who is pastor, scholar, and traditionalist.

Johan Sebastian Bach

Rick Marschall offers readers a glimpse of the society and heritage of Johan Sebastian Bach. The composer came from a long line of musicians, and his sons followed in his footsteps. His whole life was dedicated to music. In fact, one could say that, according to the author, his whole life was dedicated to God through his music.

Lutheran German culture of Bach's day - he died in 1750 - was highly musical and literate. Again and again the author weaves this culture into the storyline, showing how Bach was the crowning achievement, even the personification, of this wonderful culture.

While non-musical readers will not get lost, at times the book can be challenging, with musical terms that classical music lovers will know, and the rest won't. Yet Marschall is careful not to drown us in such technicalities - too much.

Bach was a musical virtuoso, which means that he was a technical virtuoso. With these musical terms, we have glimpse of the challenges, such as with polyphony and counterpoint.

Even readers familiar with Bach might enjoy the discussion that Bach was a real theologian. With an impressive theological library, he had a deep understanding of Luther and Lutheranism. He preached the gospel, through the Lutheran tradition, with his music.

Marschall's book is a success because, after reading it, one wants to dig a bit deeper into Bach and his culture.

Hidden and Triumphant: The Underground Struggle to Save Russian Iconography

By Irina Yazykova, Translated by Paul Grenier, 191 pages, Paraclete Press.

Icons offer Christians a vision of God's grace, much like the gospels themselves do. Part theology, part art, they depict the saint in his timeless, grace-filled state. Physically-correct depictions are not important, as icons (again, like the gospels) are not biography.

Throughout Eastern Christian history, icons have offered beauty to a world that seems ugly and intent on creating violence. Grace leads to beauty. Even during the lowest periods of human history, the icon must be present to the world, ready to appeal to a deep part of the human heart that hungers for more than this world.

"Whatever the age, the senselessness and ugliness that so often scars this world encounters a bulwark of resistance to the icon - in the radiant face of divine wisdom," the author notes.

Yazykova's discussion on the theological meaning of beauty, and on the special work of icons in the proclamation of the gospel, fits well with Catholics. Beauty is part of the proclamation of the gospel. Much of today's kitsch-culture rises from the fact that we have lost our way spiritually. God is not the muse of artists that He once was.

Artists have become intent on shocking and destroying, ready to disrespect religion, especially Catholicism.

The practice of painting and using icons in worship is as far removed from this ugliness as is possible. Because of the almost-unchanging nature of icon production and use in prayer and the liturgy, icons lack the childish sentimentality of much of current spirituality.

Icons help us grow spiritually because they point to the unchanging truth. Yazykova writes of the great respect shown the icons by the Russian people. Until this century, the artist did not sign the work, because the icon was more important than the artist. Iconographers were a kind of priest, whose individuality didn't matter. They served the Church and God. Their artistic career and renown were not important.

Iconography was influenced by Russia's turn to the West in the eighteenth-century. In the nineteenth, a kind of fusion of Western and Eastern art occurred, much to the detriment of the practice and understanding of iconography.

Readers get a sense of the violent troubles of the Soviet period, particularly bad up to the Second World War, when Stalin relented on persecution of the Church because of the war effort. The bare essentials, sometimes an individual or group's bare faith, remained.

The Soviet ransacking and neglect of Russia's Orthodox heritage was a boon, ironically, to the iconographers of the post-communist period. Perhaps too much of a boon - the quality of workmanship on icons has decreased because of the shortage of iconographers.

No matter, things will eventually sort themselves out because of the nature of Orthodox spirituality. Rather than a revolutionary movement, the Russian Church advocates a return to tradition, of which it is the guardian. Discouraging innovation, Russian spirituality relies on the truths of the past. This will serve icons well in the future, and offer the true revolution of the heart.

Galileo

By Mitch Stokes. Thomas Nelson Publisher.

Stokes carefully lays out the historical and scientific setting in which the Galileo drama unfolded. He explains step-by-step the relevant mathematical and philosophical issues related to Aristotelian cosmology. He shows the close connection between scholastic theology, based on Aristotle's philosophy, and Aristotelian science, and how if the science unraveled the Catholic Church would fear that its scholasticism would unwind too.

Stokes reminds readers that the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-centuries were the high point of the Counter Reformation, a time when Pope and Inquisition feared Protestantism and hoped to arrest its development, chiefly through the intellectual work of the Dominicans and Jesuits.

Readers get a strong sense of the great faith of Galileo. He not only believed deeply in Christ, but also in the reasonableness of the Catholic Church. He was confident that if he could explain the heliocentric system, famously described by Copernicus, it would be accepted. Galileo's own faith was untroubled by the unwinding of Aristotelian science, because he had, as Descartes and other scientists and early-modern philosophers, separated philosophy from faith.

Thus in Galileo's mind if the Bible contradicted science, the Biblical passage in question could be regarded as allegorical, something akin to Augustine's understanding of Biblical interpretation.

Stokes shows the various personalities involved, though because it is a short book, we don't get to know many of the characters outside of Galileo. The author provides an excellent introduction to the Galileo case, successfully arguing that science and religion did not turn against each other.

Thomas More, A Lonely Voice Against the Power of the State

By Peter Berglar, 230 pages, Scepter Publishers.

A decent, deeply religious lawyer, Christian, family man, and government servant, Thomas More found himself at the center of a controversy from which he couldn't escape. A humanist scholar and friend of the great Erasmus of Rotterdam, he stayed firmly on the papacy's side when Henry VIII decided to make himself head of the English Church .

While More himself tended to do the right thing, the Church's corruption had led to its eroded position in society and the target of criticism from scholars, churchmen, and the people. Berglar is particularly skilled at portraying the historical roots of the problems, religious and political, faced by More.

The author is also good at portraying the more human side of a saintly man. More could be arrogant, and a people-pleaser who went along with the abuse of power of Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, who preceded More as Chancellor, the head of government.

More opened the Reformation Parliament of 1529-36, during which time, Berglar writes, "medieval England came to an end, [and] More's career was at its peak." More knew in 1529 that his time was up, and that he would be dismissed, allowed to resign, or murdered by the increasingly tyrannical king.

Throughout A Lonely Voice, the author brings out the biographies of those with whom More dealt. Rather than a cold political history, readers get a sense of the personalities involved, above all More's and the king's.