Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspirations
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
As human beings, we are created with desires.
We all long for meaningful relationships, lives that reflect goodness, engagements with beauty, and the freedom to pursue our lives with integrity. But where can our restless hearts find fulfillment for these universal longings?
Philosopher and apologist Greg Ganssle argues that our widely shared human aspirations are best understood and explained in light of the Christian story. With grace and insight, Ganssle explains how the good news of Jesus Christ makes sense of―and fulfills―our deepest desires. It is only in the particular claims of the Christian faith, he argues, that our universal human aspirations can find fulfillment and our restless hearts will be at peace.
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- Argues that our widely shared human aspirations are explained in light of the Christian story.
- Explains how the good news of Jesus Christ makes sense.
- Shows that our universal human aspirations can find fulfillment.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Making Sense of Our Desires
Part I: Persons
1. Persons and Happiness
2. People Matter Most
3. We Flourish in Relationships
Part II: Goodness
4. Looking for Goodness
5. Goodness Is Primary
6. Goodness Is Good for Us
Part III: Beauty
7. The Startling Presence of Beauty
8. The Artist
9. Beauty Points the Way Home
Part IV: Freedom
10. Personal Freedom
11. Freedom and Truth
12. Freedom and Hope
Epilogue: Human Aspiration and the Christian Story
General Index
Scripture Index
Who I truly am—what Gregory Ganssle calls my ’core identity’—is a function of who and what I love the most. In this engaging and accessible book, Ganssle offers a compelling account of our deepest desires—the ones we cannot escape and would not if we could. Ganssle finds in the wisdom of the Christian tradition compelling support for his vision of how to get and stay on the right track in life. Believers and nonbelievers alike have much to gain from his warm and wise engagement with the question. Only a great teacher could have written a book like this.
-Anthony Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law, Yale University
Our Deepest Desires is a little gem of a book, written with the clarity and wisdom of a seasoned teacher. Learned yet accessible, Ganssle takes his readers on a fresh tour of life’s big questions by tracking ways the claims of Christianity connect up with fundamental human longings. This may be our new Mere Christianity, and it will surely inspire conversations worth having.
-Eric Gregory, professor of religion and chair of the council of the humanities, Princeton University
Christian philosophers and apologists have spilled much ink defending the truth of Christianity—rightly so, given the rise of New Atheism and other movements that call into question Christianity’s plausibility. What has been widely neglected, however, is showing the desirability of Jesus and the gospel. In this brilliantly written book, Gregory Ganssle shows how the Christian story makes sense of our deepest longings—for love, beauty, truth, goodness, and freedom. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in finding a story that is both true to the way things are and true to the way things ought to be.
-Paul M. Gould, assistant professor of philosophy and Christian apologetics, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas
- Title: Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspirations
- Author: Gregory E. Ganssle
- Publisher: IVP Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2017
- Logos Release Date: 2018
- Pages: 160
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9780830890958, 9780830851829, 0830890955, 0830851828
- Resource ID: LLS:9780830890958
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-12-19T18:14:01Z