Right out of the gate, Christopher Hitchens', God is not Great is at once colorful and poignant, a great pleasure to read. It's also clear that the book benefits from the accounts and extravagant details of Hitchens' many assignments as a journalist in exotic ports of call. Before I read any further, I'm recording how I now see the problem Hitchens addresses: the pervasive ugliness and evil in the name of God and religion. As I read, I want to consider how well my current take on this undeniable reality can bear the weight of Hitchens' experiences, insights, and arguments. The title (God is not Great) and subtitle (How Religion Poisons Everything) of Hitchens' volume are immediately provocative. If, in the end, I'm going to be persuaded that religion ruins everything it touches, is it then rational to conclude that God is not Great? Or, just that religious people suck? Is there a non-sequitur here? And, is all religion malignant? Or, might there be some rare strains of benign or even benignant religion? As it stands, if I had tackled the subject in book form, I'd have titled it: Humanity is not Great. How People Poison Everything. Considering the evident fact that human evil, both the trivial and the atrocious, is found in all places and at all times, I'm inclined to think that the blame should be pinned first and foremost on me, myself, and I... and on you as well. The problem with people manifests itself in every human context, whether religious or irreligious. I believe that any judgment on the impact of religion, for well-being and ill, hinges crucially on one's appraisal of the human condition more generally. So, let's begin there...

A number of recent books making the case against God have hit the best-seller list, most notably Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. If you follow the argument closely, you'll notice that the gravamen of the case against God is their judgment that God, and specifically the Christian God, as he is commonly understood, is not good after all. Whatever its status as a logical proof against theism, the argument is existentially forceful because we meet a God in their arguments that is deserving of their unmistakable disdain. The argument against the goodness of God usually advances on three fronts:

1. God cannot be good because the world is rife with evil and suffering;
2. The God we meet in the Bible, especially in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, is repugnant to our moral sensibilities; and,
3. Those who claim to follow this God are responsible for epic evils like the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the "troubles" in Northern Ireland as well as for more quotidian evils like intolerance, anti-intellectualism, and being bores.

While it's almost impossible not to relish Hitchens' and Dawkins' turns of phrase, it is hard to get past their exceedingly strident tones. Nonetheless, the basic thrust of their arguments should be, and is in fact, troubling to believers. LeaderU.com has collected a number of articles wrestling with the first question. Marilyn McCord Adams' well regarded, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God also deals honestly and poignantly with this difficult question at greater length. The second concern about the biblical God is largely a theological question. The attributes of God, including the Goodness of God, are enumerated without much in the way of soul-searching at Grace's Online Library and at The Christian Courier. As for the third contention, Robert Royal's, The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West and James Kennedy's What if Jesus Had Never Been Born consider the impact of Christianity on history. Finally, Christianity Today is featuring a conversation between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson regarding Hitchens' accusations against God and religion. It is truly a clash of the Titans.

The recent release of Ron Howard's movie "The Davinci Code" has provoked a renaissance in the controversy that surrounded the publication of Dan Brown's best-selling novel. It is tempting to be dismissive of all the handwringing. Dan Brown's claims are really just a knock-off of parts of the seemingly perpetual parade of novel theories about the life of Christ that make their debut each Christmas and Easter on the covers of Time and Newsweek. One might be surprised that Christians are so easily scandalized by unorthodox claims about the object of their faith when similar claims are such standard fare. And, after all, it's just a novel. On the other hand, in a historically and biblically illiterate culture, Brown's claims do have purchase on the hearts and minds of believers and non-believers alike. To boot, Brown has refused to let his book be dismissed as mere fiction, insisting instead that, "all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies — all of that is historical fact". Brown's novel wouldn't be the first to leave an indellible imprint on the course of history. So, I, for one, welcome the cottage industry of critical analysis that has accompanied the release of the film. As usual, LeaderU.com is featuring a roundup of essays and interviews including Ron Rhodes' "Crash the Da Vinci Code", Ben Witherington III's "Mary, Mary, Extraordinary", and Sandra Miesel's merciless "Dismantling the Da Vinci Code." Envoy Magazine offers Carl E. Olsen's critique from a Catholic perspective. J.P. Holding at Tektonics.org offers yet another comically titled "review and critique", "Not InDavincible". The New Age Center reprints an article from the New York Times by Bruce Boucher quibbling with Brown's art history, ending with this fabulous quote from Voltaire: "If it's too silly to be said, it can always be sung." There are many more for the Googling. Additionally, Amazon.com is hawking a multitude of books piggy-backing on the success of the Davinci Code. Here are some critical ones.

The scribes were treated with excessive deference in Jewish society because of their education and learning. Everyone honored them because of their wisdom and intelligence. The "mere children"(napioi in Greek, really meaning babes) were Jesus' image for the uneducated and ignorant. He is saying that the gospel of grace has been disclose to and grasped by the uneducated and ignorant instead of the learned and wise. For this Jesus thanks God... The babes (napioi) are in the same state as the children (paidia). God's grace falls on them because they are negligible creatures, not because of their good qualities. They may be aware of their worthlessness, but this is not the reason revelations are given to them. Jesus expressly attributes their good fortune to the Father's good pleasure, the divine eudokia. The gifts are not determined by the slightest personal quality or virtue. They were pure liberality. Once and for all, Jesus deals the death blow to any distinction between the elite and the ordinary in the Christian community.

Anyone who is not a continual student of Jesus, and who nevertheless reads the great promises of the Bible as if they were for him or her, is like someone trying to cash a check on another person's account. At best, it succeeds only sporadically.

The most important word in this entire book is the noun in the subtitle; this is a "novel"-a work of fiction. That is important to remember, especially after the statements on page 1, which move the work slightly into the arena of historical fiction, but only slightly. It is true that there are such organizations as the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei. It is true that the author has worked hard to describe accurately the contemporary European locations, including city layouts, buildings, and artwork, in which the plot is set. The statement that "all descriptions of . . . documents. . .in this novel are accurate" is, however, highly inaccurate!

This book is a turning point in the history of Jesus studies. Schweitzer demonstrates how previous research was really an (unwitting) attempt by liberal and rationalist theologians to proof-text a Jesus who would embarrass orthodox Protestantism and serve as a figurehead for liberal ("Fatherhood of God, Brotherhood of Man") Christianity. Schweitzer showed how each historical reconstruction of Jesus uncannily matched the beliefs and agenda of the scholar in question. But Schweitzer knew the Christ of orthodoxy was not the historical Jesus either. One could only discover the latter by being willing to find the unexpected, and Schweitzer thought he found a Jesus who was a prophet of the end of the world, who expected to judge the earth as the Son of Man, and who died tragically mistaken. Even so, he still serves as a beacon of spiritual force for the ages. As does Schweitzer's great book! ~ Robert M. Price

Christianity teaches that something is profoundly wrong with the human person. We are, among other things, corrupted, dysfunctional, sinful, and at times evil. Furthermore, there is ultimately only one remedy for our condition, and that is salvation from ourselves and our condition by faith in Jesus Christ. This central Christian tenet is often unsettling to Christians themselves and is positively insufferable to the culture at large. Religious Tolerance Online, for example, catalogues all manner of religious perspective with delicacy and precision, raising no quibble with their various beliefs. But it judges the Christian belief in the unique salvific efficacy of Jesus as on par with racism and other forms of intolerance. Observe the author's herculean (and commendable) effort to describe Christian exclusivism's view toward other religions without expressing his/her own frustration and sadness with this perspective. Leadership U. is featuring several articles that seek to justify Christian exclusivism. We especially recommend Rick Rood's "The Christian Attitude Toward Non-Christian Religions," Brad Johnson's, "A Three-Pronged Defense of Salvific Exclusivism in a World of Religions" and Paul Johnson's "The Necessity of Christianity".

The Case for Christ records Lee Strobel's attempt to "determine if there's credible evidence that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Son of God." The book consists primarily of interviews between Strobel (a former legal editor at the Chicago Tribune) and biblical scholars such as Bruce Metzger. Each interview is based on a simple question, concerning historical evidence (for example, "Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?"), scientific evidence, ("Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict Jesus' Biographies?"), and "psychiatric evidence" ("Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God?"). Together, these interviews compose a case brief defending Jesus' divinity, and urging readers to reach a verdict of their own. ~ Amazon.com

Can we know anything about Jesus? Are the biblical records of Jesus' activities accurate? Is the supernatural possible in ancient and modern times? If the answer to these questions is 'yes', then believing that Jesus is Messiah becomes reasonable. Determining the answers to these questions requires the proper use of historiography and logical reasoning, not a vague 'faith' that has no basis in reality (after all, if Jesus never existed, believing that he did is simply idiotic). Ten conservative, yet, highly recognized scholars attempt to debunk much of the information coming out of the Jesus Seminar and other liberal critics of the gospels and the life of Christ.

Jesus' good news about the kingdom can be an effective guide for our lives only if we share his view of the world in which we live. To his eyes this is a God-bathed and God-permeated world. It is a world filled with a glorious reality, where every component is within the range of God's direct knowledge and control — though he obviously permits some of it, for good reasons, to be for a while otherwise than as he wishes. It is a world that is inconceivably beautiful and good because of God and because God is always in it. It is a world in which God is continually at play and over which he constantly rejoices. Until our thoughts of God have found every visible thing and event glorious with his presence, the word of Jesus has not yet fully seized us.

The intertestamental and first-century background information alone is worth the price of the book. Blomberg offers a concise treatment of critical methodologies (Historical Criticism and Literary Criticism), and then an eminently readable and interesting intro to the four gospels. Blomberg's survey of the life of Christ is as good or better than anything I have seen. What sets Blomberg's work on Jesus slightly ahead of that of Robert Stein (Jesus the Messiah) is, again, readability. Blomberg offers a chapter on the external evidence for the reliability of the gospels which seems to be basically a summary of his work from 1987 (Historical Reliability of the Gospels). He sums up this great work with a challenging look at the theology of Jesus. ~ Buddy Boone

If the condition in our universe were not what they are, within a very small margin of flexibility, no life of any kind would be found in this universe. Thus, while the present universe is a fit habitat for human and other life form of life, the initial probability of there being such a universe is quite small. The confluence of so-called "cosmic constants" is improbable enough on the assumption that the universe is uncaused and undesigned; it is even more improbable on the supposition that we owe our existence to Creator who has it in for us. If, on the other hand, our lives are special, and if what makes our lives special has anything to do with the physical condition in which we come to have our lives, then the good of human life depends upon the Creator as well. This is cause for considerable comfort, for it offers an important clue concerning the Creator's good intentions for humans. Our bodies locate us in a physical world of astonishing complexity, apparently ordered by its Creator to the goal our physical well-being.

Then comes the real shock. Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He said He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God in their language, meant that Being outside the world Who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simple, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.