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Engaging UnbeliefOpening closed mindsENGAGING UNBELIEF I was hooked on the book when I read the question on the back cover: 'How can we present the truth about Jesus to a world that rejects all truth claims?' This is a crucial issue as increasingly Christians face stunned silence when daring to say that they believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to God. Curtis Chang works for InterVarsity (UCCF's sister organisation in the US) amongst some of the finest brains in the world at Harvard and MIT and so promised insights mined from the coalface of evangelistic ministry. Chang borrows selectively from the work of theologians like Stanley Hauerwas and Lesslie Newbigin and philosophers such as Jean Francois Lyotard and Alasdair MacIntyre. I approve of his rejection of the apologetic approach of arguing people down to a set of indubitable certainties (like the law of non-contradiction) and then reasoning up from them to the gospel. Following Newbigin and MacIntyre, Chang sees that people find reasonable those things that fit within the story they have been told to explain the way the world is. Chang proposes a three-stage strategy of entering the challenger's story, retelling the challenger's story and capturing the retold tale within the gospel story. Chang illustrates this model by analysing two landmark works in Christian theology: Thomas Aquinas' Summa Contra Gentiles and Augustine's City of God. He deftly puts these works in their historical context and demonstrates their significance as apologetic works. I must confess to not having read these works for myself and found Chang's overviews fascinating and helpful. Finally, Chang offers some signposts for presenting the gospel in our contemporary context, which included encouragement to engage with cinema, to reinterpret post-modern understandings of the self and to beware of both trendiness and traditionalism. Unfortunately these insights seemed somewhat ad hoc. In my opinion Chang spends too much time exploring the historical and descriptive and not enough on contemporary application. His three-fold strategy sounds appealing but it would have been good to see some worked examples for our contemporary culture. My other disappointment was that the apologetic strategy outlined was predominantly rhetorical rather than incarnational. A more holistic approach that took on board the place of the church as the community that embodies the truth of the gospel would have been helpful. This is a complex and fascinating book that will repay careful reading. Krish Kandiah, Harrow© Evangelicals Now - February 2002 |