Book Review - Introducing God by Dominic Steele

Awhile back the publishers sent me a new book called Introducing God by Dominic Steele that is part of an evangelism course of the same name.  I owe them an apology for taking so long to review this, but finally got around to reading it and wanted to share a few thoughts on the book.

This evangelism course is out of Australia and, as I said, the book is a part of it.  The book is only a resoruce for the course so I haven't reviewed the course and can only speak on the book.

Having said that, if the book is any indication, it must be a very fine course.  And that leads to me to one major frustration - I can't find anywhere that it is available in the U.S.  So, to any of my Aussie and Kiwi readers out there, and other parts of the world that can get it, I'd recommend it highly.

John Chapman at Matthias Media says this:

Introducing God is the latest and, in my opinion, best of the ‘Alpha’ type courses which are available at the present moment to help us evangelize our friends. I use the term ‘Alpha’ because of the format—meeting with friends over a meal, listening to a talk or watching a video, and then discussing this around the table.

The course sets out to present the gospel, over a period of time, in an atmosphere where the Postmodern will feel comfortable with both the presentation of Christian material and the way the discussion groups are conducted.

Regarding Postmoderns, D. A. Carson claims, in The Gagging of God, that our present generation is so far away from a biblical world view that to begin the gospel with the person and work of the Lord Jesus makes it almost impossible for them to understand what we are talking about. Recognizing this, Introducing God begins with creation, moves from there to the fall, from there to God’s judgement, then to the person and work of the Lord Jesus, and finally to the new creation. It follows the Two ways to live format as it sweeps across the Bible from cover to cover. This is done particularly well from the point of view of both the content and the format.

Indeed, the book excels in the areas he talks about and more.  It is written in a conversational tone, and is not particularly deep, a la C. S. Lewis (I am thinking of him as his Mere Christianity is a book often given to those considering the faith) but it is clear and winsome, well illustrated and very theoogically sound.

As Mr. Chapman points out, the book moves along in something close to the creation/fall/redemption/restoration paradigm that many have become familiar with through the writings of the Kuyperians and other worldview scholars.  One of the unique strengths of the book is that it bases much of what it says on the Old Testament.  I think this is a strength as it does begin with creation and it highlights the fact that the whole Bible is gospel.

Another particular strength of the book is it's discussion of sin.  Mr. Steele defines sin in terms of autonomy, a thing which I think gets at the essence of sin better than other approaches.  For some time now I have felt that one of the best verses to describe sin is in Luke 19:14:

“But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.

The Holy Bible : New International Version. electronic ed. Grand Rapids : Zondervan, 1996, c1984, S. Lk 19:14

This gets at the human desire for autonomy, and the reason this is so powerful is that it provides a definition that convicts both the good and the bad.  Our definition of sin needs to be one that can encompass and convict not only lawbreakers but lawyers and lawmakers, enough to convict tax collectors and Pharisees.  Sometimes we express our autonomy by being and irreligious lawbreaker and sometimes we express it by being a religious lawkeeper.  In either case, we may be doing this in rebellion to God.  Steele's definition of sin as autonomy does an especially good job of expressing it and he illustrates it with a funny story of a guy in Australia who has declared his wheat farm to be a sovereign nation.

This sets up the rest of the story and he does a great job with offering Jesus as the remedy for sin and even goes into "what next" as he talks about godly living.  And he concludes with a discussion of heaven and hell.

All in all this is great stuff, I can recommend it highly, I just hope someone picks it up for distribution here in the U.S..

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Tags: Religion, theology, Christian, Christianity, church, evangelism, gospel