Review of God, Actually by Roy Williams
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
Williams has written a very enjoyable and thoughtful apologetic work, published by the ABC only in June of this year. This book is not only a solid defence of the Christian faith, but also traverses great distances when it comes to extending our general knowledge and appreciation of the vast corpus of written material on the subject that Williams only gets a chance to skim across.
Some very compelling cases for Christ’s authenticity are made in terms of being who he claimed to be and also that he clearly existed as a historical figure. On pages 175-6 I was waiting for him to make a point which seemed to me would be natural for him as a lawyer to make, namely, that if others wrote about Christ, rather than he himself, this is more trustworthy testimony. To illustrate. If Joe says “Hi everyone, I’m a really great guy!” we would dismiss him as another person who’s just too full of himself to be paid any attention. However, if Jane says “Hi everyone, I’d like to introduce my friend Joe who is a really great guy!” it causes more heads to be raised because not only is her behaviour unusual, but there could be some measure of truth in what she is saying. Williams doesn’t make this point at all, however, all he had to say on the matter of Christ’s divinity and so on I found to be quite valuable and judicious.
A point that was particularly helpful to me is worth quoting at length because of it’s instructiveness (p174):
Also relevant are the claims that Jesus made about his capacities and authority. The most inexplicable claim, if Jesus was not divine, may be that which He made to scoffers before curing a paralytic: ‘So that you may know the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins…’ (Matthew 9:6; see also Mark 2:5-12). This ‘throwaway line’ amounted to an explicit claim that Jesus could forgive sins committed not against him but against other people. Why would a sane man say a thing like that? The same question arises as regards other statements in the Synoptics (see, for example, Matthew 4:5-7, Matthew 10:40, Matthew 11:27, Luke 10:16). (emphasis mine)
Helpful endnotes and an index are included. Furthermore, Williams has a nice way of reminding the reader of certain points that he has written (and points to things he will write in following chapters) by mentioning them occasionally, especially when there is an overlap in material.
A few minor points that I was disappointed about when reading this book:
* Placing the appellation “St” in front of New Testament characters like Paul, John and Peter is alienating both to non-believer and thoughtful Christian alike. If we are to rightly use the language of the apostolic age, all Christians are both saints (hAGIOI - necessarily in the plural here) and priests (hIEREUS). Thus it is an anachronism - and I say anachronism because it sounds positively medieval - to refer to the apostles as saints.
* Williams gives the reader the impression, possibly quite rightly so, that he is well-read. Given this, his commentary and quotations on Spong and others really should be limited to refutations. You may ask “Shouldn’t we make our agreement known on points where we do agree?”, by all means, but not at the expense of using a more apt quote from a biblical scholar worth actually listening to, rather than the rare occasion when Spong or some other liberal give us the rare pearl of wisdom.
* The section on grace misses the mark by a long distance. I was grossly saddened to see this. For Williams to derive any true satisfaction from both his Christian life and also the writing of this book he really needs to reconsider the depths of the beauty of God’s grace and bring out a second edition with appropriate changes. On page 229 (see endnote) he even points to Philip Yancey’s book “What’s so Amazing about Grace?” as a book worth reading on the subject. Come on, we all have limited time - and definitely not enough to spend on such worthless trash. You can see my unfavourable and quite badly written review on Amazon.
* There’s a typo in a Latin quotation on page 92, and on the first line of page 223.
