A Shattered Visage

A Shattered Visage
By Ravi Zacharias
Hodder & Stoughton.203 pages. £7.99
ISBN 0 340 67133 5

Ravi Zacharias is based in Atlanta, Georgia, and is the rising star of Christian apologetics in the USA. This absorbing paperback is his full-scale assault on atheism at a popular level.

This book begins with a review of atheistic thinkers which focuses particularly on the Germany prophet of atheism, Frederich Nietzsche, who in the last years of his life succumbed to insanity. Zacharias then goes on to explore the inconsistencies and failures of atheism in the areas of science, ethics, personal fulfilment and facing death.
The chapter on ethics finds the author at his most scathing, as he makes the obvious link between Darwinian theory and Nazism. He quotes Hitler's Mein Kampf: 'If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with stronger, she wishes even less than a superior race (like the German race) should intermingle with an inferior. Why? Because in such a case, her efforts throughout the hundreds and thousands of years to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.'
Some might say that atheism is rather passe in our post-modern world of New Age consumer religion. But one gets the feeling that for many people these days, their involvement with religion or spirituality is actually at the level of self-imposed psychological therapy to dull the hopelessness of existence, while their underlying ideas about reality are still fundamentally atheistic. Without God, like Nietzsche himself, human life tends towards emptiness and insanity.
Following these chapters of pulling down the edifice of godless philosophy, Zacharias then goes on to point the way towards faith in God and why it is reasonable. He comes at this task along a number of complementary routes. He explains: 'Man is unquestionably multi-sensory, or multi-faceted, and intimations of reality come to us from a diversity of sources. Therefore, it stands to reason that no one test will capture all of reality.'
The book is full of wonderful quotations from all kinds of authors, and these add to the treat of reading this well thought out polemic. If you are feeling bamboozled by the logic-leaping theories of Professor Dawkins and his ilk, this book will bring you back to common sense.

JEB

Dr John Benton

© Evangelicals Now - January 1997
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Main Articles

• A rejoinder to Paul Gardner
  Further discussion on the nature of Scripture (see December 1996) (Bulldog forJanuary)
• A marriage back from the brink
  A wife looks back over the years of her marriage which at one point almost broke down
• Evangelists in the team
  Luis Palau and Stephen Gaukroger talk about re-orientating church life towards evangelising those outside
• Sinners welcome!
  Message on Luke 15.1 preached by Brian Edwards at the FIEC Caister Family Week Back to the Future
• Suicide revisited
  Some Scriptural consideration concerning severe depression and the temptation to suicide
• Bondage in Egypt?
  A Coptic Christian leader gives an account of the persecution suffered by Christians in Egypt
• The Deep Sea Canoe Movement
  Some reflections on the history of mission outreach in the Pacific islands and the current situation in that area

Other articles

• Preaching through the Bible - 2 Samuel
• The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses - A critique of prisons - extract from Professor Poythress book The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses
• Authority - The Imperative for Christian Leaders
• Surprised by the Voice of God - How God Speaks to Us Today
• The American President
• David Livingstone - Trailblazer
• The Message of 1 Timothy and Titus (Bible Speaks Today Series)
• Belief in Politics - People, Policies and Personal Faith
• A Task Unfinished - How to recruit, support and pray for missionaries and Christian workers in a constantly changing world
• A Shattered Visage