Recommended Reading (pt. 4)

The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller

In The Prodigal God, he uses one of the best-known Christian parables to reveal an unexpected message of hope and salvation. Taking his trademark intellectual approach to understanding Christianity, Keller uncovers the essential message of Jesus, locked inside his most familiar parable. Within that parable Jesus reveals God's prodigal grace toward both the irreligious and the moralistic. This book will challenge both the devout and skeptics to see Christianity in a while new way.

While Keller's first book was an apologetic made to convince skeptics, this book was made to give a message of what the Gospel message is all about that can help believers in their faith and help non-believers get a better understanding of Christianity that they may have lacked before. It's an in-depth look at the parable of the Two Lost Sons. It's amazing how much a short parable like that actually has inside it! Tim does a masterful job at explaining the parable and showing what Jesus is talking about with it. I highly recommend this book to all Christian readers.



The Dawkins Delusion? by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath

Alister McGrath, along with his wife Joanna, is ideal to evalute Dawkins's ideas. Once an atheist himself, Alister gained a doctorate in molecular biophysics before going on to become a leading Christian theologian. He wonders how two people, who have reflected at length on substantially the same world, could possibly have come to such different conclusions about God. McGrath subjects Dawkins's critique of faith to rigorous scrutiny. His exhilarating, meticulously argued response deals with questions such as: Is faith intellectual nonsense? Are science and religion locked in a battle to the death? Can the roots of Christianity be explained away scientifically? Is Christianity simply a force for evil? This book will be warmly recieved by those looking for a reliable assessment of The God Delusion and the many questions it raises- including, above all, the relevance of faith and the quest for meaning.

Alister McGrath is no joke. He's a professor over at Oxford (just like Dawkins) and has degrees in science and theology. He already has a more drawn-out, more detailed book on the subject called Dawkin's God. This is pretty much a shorter version of that. Alister goes against the claims that Dawkins makes and answers the questions that many Christians probably had when hearing about this popular book. I recommend it for people who enjoy scientific or historical apologetics and want to be able to provide an answer for people who bring up the issues Dawkins does in his book.