‘Fluent, robust and often entrancing argument’ for God
God, Actually: Why God probably exists, Why Jesus was probably divine, and Why the ‘rational’ objections to religion are unconvincing, by Roy Williams (ABC Books, 2008. $35)
reviewed by Colin Goodwin
In a recent sermon at Oxford University, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, remarked on “the authority of the literate and educated person to contribute to public reason.” This authority is brilliantly exercised by Roy Williams, a forty-six year old Sydney lawyer, now a writer, in his marvellously challenging book God, Actually.
Roy Williams has written this extended essay in Christian apologetics against the background of his own long journey from religious scepticism to full acceptance of the truth of basic Christian belief. The book reveals a prodi-gious amount of researching, and questioning, within the domains of philosophy, theology, history, and the physical sciences. It also reveals a mind that has engaged explicitly, and successfully, with the anti-religious onslaughts of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Onfray, et al.
Part one sets out “reasons to believe in God”. Williams starts with the physical Universe, arguing at length that the sheer origin of the Universe, its “organised complexity” and “fine tuning”, the origin of life on Earth, and the “or-ganised complexity” of life, point powerfully towards God’s existence: “The Universe is just too extraordinary to be a unique and happy accident.” The Big Bang, physical laws and constants controlling cosmic development, and bio-logical evolution, are mechanisms used by the transcendent and immanent divine Mind to bring about an “exqui-sitely ordered” Universe that includes living beings.
The peak of life’s evolution on Earth is the human person endowed with cognition, conscience, and the capacity to love. Williams contends in a commendably unhurried, and firmly persuasive way that all three features are point-ers to the reality of an intelligent Cause greater than the Universe itself. (Williams can hardly accept Stephen Hawk-ing’s cited assessment that “the human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet.”)
After an extensive consideration (more than a hundred pages) of “reasons to believe in God”, and a rebuttal of “arguments against a Designing God” (a further twenty pages), Williams comes to what is theologically the core of his book: “Part two: Reasons to believe in Christianity”. The author rests his case on (1) evidence for the reality of the historical Jesus; (2) the performance of miracles by Jesus in support of his claims; (3) the sort of man Jesus disclosed himself to be – his conduct, character, and teaching; (4) his Resurrection, to which a long well-structured, soundly argued, chapter is dedicated: “This claim [about the Resurrection] is utterly central to Christianity, to the idea that Jesus was not merely a mortal man, but also was God – and hence that everything He did and said must be understood in that context.”
Following some two hundred pages of fluent, robust, often entrancing, argument aimed at showing the truth of basic Christian beliefs regarding the existence of a creative “Designing God”, and the full human-divine reality of Jesus of Nazareth, the author uses the third (and final) part of his book to provide “answers to some common ob-jections”.
Williams’ chapter on the presence of suffering and evil in our created, material world, and on the obstacle this presence poses (“the problem of evil”) to accepting the existence of a loving God, is a superb piece of theological reflection. His skilful introduction of the themes of grace and divine Providence into the discussion of suffering and evil is most sensitive and convincing.
Williams goes on in his last three chapters to answer with enviably well-informed conviction objections to Christian be-lief based on (1) the apparent association of the Christian religion with ‘right-wing’ politics (not so, says the author, ex-ploring four important issues – war and peace, the distribution of wealth, human rights, the environment – regarding which Christian teaching tends to support a ‘left-wing’ perspective); (2) the competing claims of other religions (for Wil-liams, “no religion is entirely without value, and…God takes into account the local circumstances in which particular relig-ions are practiced”), and splits within Christianity itself (for Williams, these reveal “strength in diversity”, and “differences [between denominations] reflect the ubiquitous uncertainty to which the human mind is wont”); (3) allegedly unfounded Christian claims about human immortality, and heaven and hell (the author responds with four strong reasons for “be-liev[ing] in the afterlife”, and against Hell as eternal punishment).
God, Actually is a sustained “hard-headed discussion of Christian belief”, to use the author’s words. It will have achieved its purpose if “[the reader] is now persuaded that there is at least a tenable case for Christianity”, and that “there are very real problems with the case against Christianity, and religion in general.”
And, for Roy Williams, it is finally faith that in some way takes us beyond the probabilities (beyond, as it were, the “probably” twice occurring in the book’s sub-title) to which argument can take us – but not, of course, in this life to the point where doubt and uncertainty become impossible.
The Revd Dr Colin Goodwin assists sporadically in the parish of St Peter and St Martin, Mornington-Mt Martha.