True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World
Overview
Foreword Review's 17th Annual INDIEFAB Book of the Year Finalist (Religion)
How do we explain human consciousness? Where do we get our sense of beauty? Why do we recoil at suffering? Why do we have moral codes that none of us can meet? Why do we yearn for justice, yet seem incapable of establishing it?
Any philosophy or worldview must make sense of the world as we actually experience it. We need to explain how we can discern qualities such as beauty and evil and account for our practices of morality and law.
The complexity of the contemporary world is sometimes seen as an embarrassment for Christianity. But law professor David Skeel makes a fresh case for the plausibility and explanatory power of Christianity. The Christian faith offers plausible explanations for the central puzzles of our existence, such as our capacity for idea-making, our experience of beauty and suffering, and our inability to create a just social order. When compared with materialism or other sets of beliefs, Christianity provides a more comprehensive framework for understanding human life as we actually live it.
We need not deny the complexities of life as we experience it. But the paradoxes of our existence can lead us to the possibility that the existence of God could make sense of it all.
- Explores the theme of Christianity and complexity
- Considers questions that are, in a sense, a prequel to conventional Christian apologetics
- Stretches its study across religions and systems of thought, from Kant to John Stuat Mill to panteist and dualist religions
- Introduction: Arguing about Origins--Great Theater and a Grand Distraction
- Ideas and Idea Making
- Beauty and the Arts
- Suffering and Sensation
- The Justice Paradox
- Life and Afterlife
Top Highlights
“The feature that makes Christianity different from any other religion or system of thought is Christians’ belief that Jesus, the God who became man, suffered, died and was raised from the dead to reconcile humans with God.” (source)
“The second frequently mentioned perspective is materialism. By materialism, I mean the belief that the physical, material world is the ultimate reality—there is no supernatural God, gods or spirit(s). This view, or views somewhat like it, is sometimes referred to as naturalism or by still other names.” (source)
“Consciousness, which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as the ‘critical awareness of one’s own identity and situation,’ is the single most complex and mysterious feature of our existence.” (source)
“Complexity is not an embarrassment for Christianity; it is Christianity’s natural element. Or so I will try to persuade you from this page of True Paradox to the last.” (source)
“Unlike materialism, Christianity insists humans and human society are not perfectible, even in principle.” (source)
Christianity, which is so simple that a child may understand and believe, is also filled with complexity. Those who have sung with Isaac Watts, 'When God the mighty maker died,' know that they live with much that cannot be explained simply. David Skeel's unusually thought-provoking book offers on one level a careful response to literature from the New Atheists. On a deeper level it explains why trying to understand the complexities of Christian faith may leave those who make the effort lost in wonder, love and praise.
--Mark Noll, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame
True Paradox is a truly great book. David Skeel, a brilliant Ivy League scholar who is one of America's most widely respected legal thinkers, illuminates what Christianity does—and does not—teach about beauty, tragedy, justice and eternal life. True Paradox should be read (along with the Bible) and discussed (with no questions off limits) by thinking people of all faiths and of no faith. I will be giving the book as a gift not only to fellow Catholic friends but to friends who are agnostics and atheists.
--John J. DiIulio Jr., first director of the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and Frederic Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion, and Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania
David Skeel is widely respected for his scholarly writing that helps make sense of the laws governing bankruptcy and corporate finance in the United States. Now, stepping beyond his less well-known writing about law and religion, he has written a rich and challenging gem of a book about the meaning and majesty of Christianity in the twenty-first century. As he gracefully makes sense of difficult yet essential questions, you feel the power of his intellect and faith on every page.
--Lincoln Caplan, former editorial board member, New York Times
- Title: True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World
- Author: David Skeel
- Publisher: IVP
- Print Publication Date: 2014
- Logos Release Date: 2014
- Pages: 175
- Era: era:contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- Subject: Christian philosophy
- ISBNs: 9780830896691, 9780830836765, 0830896694, 0830836764
- Resource ID: LLS:9780830896691
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-06T21:01:30Z