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Product Description A definitive master work from the world's leading Christian apologist.
Respected apologist Ravi Zacharias was once sharing his faith with a Hindu when the man asked: "If the Christian faith is truly supernatural, why is it not more evident in the lives of so many Christians I know?" The question hit hard, and this book is an answer. Its purpose is to equip Christians everywhere to simultaneously defend the faith and be transformed by it into people of compassion.
In addition to writing several chapters himself, Ravi Zacharias brings together many of today's leading apologists and Christian teachers, including Alister McGrath and John Lennox, to address topics present in the very future of worldwide Christianity-from the process of spiritual transformation to the challenges posed by militant atheism and a resurgent Islam. Destined to become a classic, Beyond Opinion is a touchstone that will affect Christians around the world.
Item Specifications...
ISBN 0849946530 EAN 9780849946530
Pages 384
Dimensions: Length: 8.3" Width: 5.4" Height: 1.1" Weight: 0.75 lbs.
Release Date Jan 12, 2010
PublisherNelson Word / Nelson Books
Availability 55 units. Availability accurate as of Mar 21, 2010 07:46.
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Books > Subjects > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Christian Living > General [31520 similar products]
This book was written by a team of apologists and it has some sections better than others. Such is the case with any work of art compiled by a team rather than a single person. The book's grand editor was none other than Ravi Zacharias. So even though it was worked on by an array of different talents, it was all under the grand vision of Zacharias himself.
I recommend this book to anyone who seeks to gain a better understanding on different worldviews. As many of the apologists in this book come from vastly different backgrounds, they are well versed to write on many disparate and diverse subjects. Apologetics is not about winning arguments. It is about leading people to Christ. Ravi states that the most powerful apologetic defense is understanding different worldviews and leading people to Christ through understanding.
Apostle Paul said "I am all things to all people". He was a man who understood the worldviews of his time and fearlessly brought people to Christ. The world today with all of it's cultures and ideas needs to be addressed. Beyond Opinion is not meant to give the reader an exhaustive worldview on every idea or religion in the world today. Rather, it is written tread the waters of our society today. Each of the apologists writing in the chapters focus on a particular intellectual/spiritual/emotion objection and presents the answer interwoven in the worldview that corresponds to what people experience today.
Sloppy Arguments and Faulty Logic Nov 28, 2008
Every time I pick up a book like this, I do it wondering if I will be convinced. Clearly the author (or, in this case, authors, though the front cover misleadingly tells you there is only one) is so convinced of the beliefs in the book that he was compelled to write about them and to try to spread the ideas. You have to be pretty sure of where you stand to be willing to air your opinions so publicly, I figure.
But I was disappointed in this book, which claims to be an intellectual response to the attacks on Christianity (all of the authors are heavily trained in theology, and teach at places like Oxford, etc.). But from the opening chapter I began to run into intellectual lapses. Amy Orr Ewing, in her appraisal of postmodernism, does a terrible job of discussing the vastly different portrayals of God in the Old and New Testaments (she simply states that there is a "discontinuity," but makes no attempt to explain it or justify how Christians reconcile this discontinuity). Things only got worse from there. By the time I got to Ravi Zacharias' chapter on evil, wherein he presents an overly simplified (and therefore inaccurate) version of the problem of evil so that he can easily strike it down (this is known as a straw-man technique, because you're defeating something that isn't really there. The problem of evil is more profound than what Zacharias presents, and is indeed a real problem for theologians; Zacharias' proposed solutions for the Christian apologist would not pass as sound arguments in a university classroom, let alone among learned scholars and philosophers), I was pretty much ready to dismiss this book. Add to the above the fact that the chapter on science seems weirdly unaware of what science actually teaches (the author of that chapter is an Oxford mathematician--at one point he claims that belief in intelligent design is ancient and therefore respectable; but the ancients also believed in slavery and that the world was flat--does the ancient origin of those ideas make them respectable?), and you might begin to understand my frustration.
Maybe the problem here is that the book is meant to be a kind of quick but comprehensive guide to all of the different arguments against Christianity, and in its quickness it lost a lot of intellectual thoroughness and heft (the index pointing readers to other books is long). But I'm inclined to think the opposite, which is that these authors knew that they would have a limited amount of space to present their arguments, and so whatever they presented would have to be their best, most persuasive stuff, written in their easiest-to-understand style. It's all the more bizarre and disappointing, then, that they managed to fail. If there is a convincing reason to believe as the authors here believe, I'm still waiting to hear it.
A great read. Nov 24, 2008
This book is a great book. It answers a lot of questions for christian believers and more so for those who do not believe God and do not believe in the God of the Holy Bible. This book is written by multiple great renown authors and edited by one of the current great international christian apologists.
3 1/2 stars - Good, but inconsistent. Nov 5, 2008
There were parts of this book that were really top rate stuff, and great chapters. But as is prone to be the case with a work like this quilted together from the work of others, there are those chapters also which really are not well done or offer little of value.
The result is a finished product that sines in places but drags terrible and fails wonderfully in others. Overall it is still a good and worthy book, but it could have been so much more.
Beyond Opinion Oct 2, 2008
An excellent source of knowledge about how different cultures view Christianity. It also provides the foundation for someone looking to logically defend his or her faith in Christ.
