What's So Great About Christianity: by Dinesh D'Souza

       New York Times Bestseller, What's So Great about Christianity, makes my top ten best books I've read this year.  Written by Dinesh D'Souza, an immigrant from India, it should remain a standard apologetic for Christian theism for years to come.

When D'Souza came from India to the United States at age 17 as a High School exchange student, he had no plans of staying.  By his 26th birthday, he was in the White House giving President Ronald Reagan policy advice on civil rights, constitutional questions, and AIDS.  D'Souza is a graduate of Dartmouth and is Catholic by faith.

In the present volume, D'Souza dissects the pop atheism being peddled today by best selling authors Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Carl Sagan, and Christopher Hitchens. D'Souza leaves no stone unturned.  With surgical precision, he slices through the non-theistic nonsense of scientism gone wild.  He deals with Christianity's past, including the Crusades and the Inquisition, both chapters of which I would have paid the cover price alone.  Tackling Christianity and Science, the darlings of atheistic evolution, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, and Stephen Gould have little room to wiggle away from the daunting logic of D'Souza's argument.

D'Souza offers three chapters on Christianity and Philosophy.  I found his interpretation of Immanuel Kant stimulating, allowing Kant more positive contribution to the limits of reason and mind than many Christian philosophers usually do. 

If you are a college student, a parent with kids in college, or minister in an environment that demands pre-evangelism apologetics, you cannot go wrong with this book.  There is a cautionary note, however. 

As I mentioned earlier, D'Souza is Roman Catholic, not Protestant evangelical.  The value this volume brings to the discussion, however, is not at all jepordized.  D'Souza argues brilliantly a case for Christian theism.  Besides, some of our greatest apologists for historic Christianity have not been evangelicals.  Need we mention C.S. Lewis?

With that, I am...

Peter

Comments

[selahV]

I think this is too deep for me. selahV

[Byron]

Peter, with all due respect, I believe this work at best will simply preach to the choir of the already persuaded. More often than not, I suspect his arguments may simply serve as positive ammunition for debates in the specific area of Christian theism, perhaps scoring points intellectually but leaving the mind and the heart fundamentally unmoved.

Within orthodox Christianity, both synergists and monergists affirm the necessity and priority of the action of the Holy Spirit. That's not to say that the Holy Spirit cannot and would not use such a work as this, though. But I believe any Christian would affirm the superiority of Scripture to any collection of reasoned, philosophical arguments for Christian theism, and I believe this is what 1 Corinthians 1:17-30 says as well.

I honestly believe that the best testimony to the Christian faith is not the finely-tuned, intellectually flawless arguments for Christian theism, but the power of a life radically changed by Christ who delivers from the bondage of sin. Perhaps that seems a bit anti-intellectual, but I really don't think that God is first and foremost concerned with how intelligent we Christians are, or how well thought-out and honed our arguments are.

Having said all that, this looks like a good book!