Christianity Between the Covers

A book review by the editor of Newsweek in the New York Times that discusses three books on Christianity. So far, the introduction has been very interesting. Some intriguing quotes:

[I]t is unsettling to recall that Christianity is a confounding, often paradoxical faith. A father who sacrifices his son? A king who dies a criminal's death? A God whose weakness is his strength?

Christianity is difficult, both in practice and in theory. Following in the Judaic tradition of valuing human reason, Christians treasure the mind as a gift of God, and the faithful are called to use his gifts to the fullest; to fail to do so is a sin. Every believer, says the author of the First Epistle of St. Peter, should "be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you." The admonition is a good one, for it encourages the faithful to ask questions, and in asking questions, one enters the debate about God and man that began with the ancient pagans.

In my view, allowing for the existence of a transcendent order seems sounder than flatly denying the possibility altogether. "Reason itself is a matter of faith," G. K. Chesterton wrote. "It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all." Light can neither enter into nor emanate from a closed mind, and intellectual humility - acknowledging what we do not, and cannot, know - is often the beginning of wisdom.