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Apologetics Beyond Reason: Why Seeing Really Is Believing
"Look carefully. Listen closely. Do you see? Do you hear? There are a million signposts pointing toward the specific truth of God in Christ. I've seen many of them. But God is speaking to you too. Look and see. Listen and hear."
In this accessible and engaging work, veteran apologist Jim Sire gives us eyes to see the myriad "signals of transcendence" all around us that point to the specific truth of God in Christ. Focusing on the power of good literature—even from those who deny the existence of God—enables us to perceive and testify to God's reality in ways that rational argument alone cannot.
"While reason can be very helpful in pointing us to God and helping us in our apologetics, what compels and convinces people is more multidimensional," says Sire. "What is needed is a more holistic apologetic that not only includes truth but also goodness and beauty."
All inspiration is rooted in God the Creator, and some of God's truth lies buried until an artist exposes it. Good literature, written from a Christian standpoint or not, displays multiple examples of our human understandings of God, the universe and ourselves. It testifies to the existence of a transcendent realm and often, in fact, to the truth of the Christian faith.
In this accessible and engaging work, veteran apologist Jim Sire gives us eyes to see the myriad "signals of transcendence" all around us that point to the specific truth of God in Christ. Focusing on the power of good literature—even from those who deny the existence of God—enables us to perceive and testify to God's reality in ways that rational argument alone cannot.
"While reason can be very helpful in pointing us to God and helping us in our apologetics, what compels and convinces people is more multidimensional," says Sire. "What is needed is a more holistic apologetic that not only includes truth but also goodness and beauty."
All inspiration is rooted in God the Creator, and some of God's truth lies buried until an artist exposes it. Good literature, written from a Christian standpoint or not, displays multiple examples of our human understandings of God, the universe and ourselves. It testifies to the existence of a transcendent realm and often, in fact, to the truth of the Christian faith.
- GenresTheology
161 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 14, 2014
12 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
James W. Sire
37 books72 followersJames W. Sire was a Christian author, speaker, and former editor for InterVarsity Press.
Sire was an officer in the Army, a college professor of English literature, philosophy and theology, the chief editor of InterVarsity Press, a lecturer at over two hundred universities around the world and the author of twenty books on literature, philosophy and the Christian faith. His book The Universe Next Door, published in 1976 has sold over 350,000 copies. He held a B.A. in chemistry and English from the University of Nebraska, an M.A. in English from Washington State and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Missouri.
Sire was an officer in the Army, a college professor of English literature, philosophy and theology, the chief editor of InterVarsity Press, a lecturer at over two hundred universities around the world and the author of twenty books on literature, philosophy and the Christian faith. His book The Universe Next Door, published in 1976 has sold over 350,000 copies. He held a B.A. in chemistry and English from the University of Nebraska, an M.A. in English from Washington State and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Missouri.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 22, 2014
There is everything.
Therefore there is a God.
Either you see this or you don't.
This epigraph at the beginning of James W. Sire's latest book captures the "apologetic" for the Christian faith that Sire proposes. In the course of the book, he rings the changes on this syllogism, substituting for "everything" the terms "literature" and "the music of Johann Sebastian Bach" among others.
What he addresses here are the limits of reason to "prove" the existence of God or indeed to convince someone of the truth of the Christian faith. Using his own life story as an illustration, he contends for a "messy" approach to apologetics that is neither deductive or inductive but rooted in the idea that there are "signals of transcendence" that we might encounter wherever we look that point us to God and which are made sense of by the narrative of creation, fall and redemption we find in the story of scripture.
He begins with his encounters with Cartesian philosophy and the autonomy of human reason and the ultimate futility and implicit nihilism that results when human reason is pursued to its logical conclusions illustrated in the works of science fiction writer Stanislas Lem. There is a conundrum is using autonomous reason to articulate the futility of autonomous reason that in itself is a signal of transcendence. But where does one start?
Instead of reason as a starting point, Sire argues that the only place to begin is with God. That is, we don't begin with what we can know, or epistemology, but rather with being itself, or ontology. We begin with God to know everything else (and either we see this or we don't!). Sire proposes a threefold argument from this starting point:
1. An argument from God, not to God.
2. An argument from everything to God.
3, An argument from our personal experience -- direct perception of God.
The remainder of the book is an unpacking of this argument from the world of literature and the arts interwoven with his personal experience. He begins with a literary theory of the work of authors in creating a "secondary world" that, when done well, points us back to the "primary world" in which we live. Thus, whether the writer believes in a God or not, Sire argues, he or she cannot help but signal the transcendent in their work. He illustrates this with both the works of a Christian, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the work of Virginia Woolf. If there is indeed a God, we cannot create a world that is reflective of Primary reality without also pointing back to God and opening oneself to the possibility of directly perceive the reality of God. He then illustrates this with the fictional account of a bereaved professor from a fictional college in Ohio that seemed to me reminiscent of A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Auken.
The concluding chapter moves from our perception, our seeing of God, to the story Sire believes makes the most sense of what we perceive of God and the rest of Primary Reality. He invites the reader to move beyond the signals to the One signaled,narrated in the Christian scriptures and centering in on Jesus Christ, who incarnated the reality of God.
I should confess at this point that I am at least a casual friend of the author. He has spoken on several occasions at collegiate ministry functions I have hosted. We have teamed up as program staff at student conferences. So there is no question of me being a sympathetic reader of his work. The argument he makes is one with which I would concur. But a couple of comments are probably in order.
As I've interacted with questioners about the Christian faith, I often find myself asking, "do you want there to be a God?" and "if I were to give reasonable responses to your questions, would you consider becoming a Christian?" I'm well aware that others see the same reality I do and just "don't see" or don't want to. Sire really doesn't address the question of "what about those who don't see?" And perhaps there is nothing to be said but to commend them to God in our prayers.
The other comment is that Sire argues from literature throughout the central part of this book. This is beloved ground for him and there will be others who appreciate the subtleties in the literature he cites. It is a world I am increasingly coming to enjoy. Yet I realized a great many do not know this world or are even put off by it. I don't think there is a good response for this except to say to follow the thread of the argument, which connects to everything, and not simply everything in literature.
Sire's book comes out of a career of teaching, writing, and serving as a traveling apologist. It reflects great wisdom in understanding both the messiness of apologetics and the reality that it will often be those signals of transcendence and our perception of them that will lead to faith. But as he has written, either his readers will see this, or they won't.
Therefore there is a God.
Either you see this or you don't.
This epigraph at the beginning of James W. Sire's latest book captures the "apologetic" for the Christian faith that Sire proposes. In the course of the book, he rings the changes on this syllogism, substituting for "everything" the terms "literature" and "the music of Johann Sebastian Bach" among others.
What he addresses here are the limits of reason to "prove" the existence of God or indeed to convince someone of the truth of the Christian faith. Using his own life story as an illustration, he contends for a "messy" approach to apologetics that is neither deductive or inductive but rooted in the idea that there are "signals of transcendence" that we might encounter wherever we look that point us to God and which are made sense of by the narrative of creation, fall and redemption we find in the story of scripture.
He begins with his encounters with Cartesian philosophy and the autonomy of human reason and the ultimate futility and implicit nihilism that results when human reason is pursued to its logical conclusions illustrated in the works of science fiction writer Stanislas Lem. There is a conundrum is using autonomous reason to articulate the futility of autonomous reason that in itself is a signal of transcendence. But where does one start?
Instead of reason as a starting point, Sire argues that the only place to begin is with God. That is, we don't begin with what we can know, or epistemology, but rather with being itself, or ontology. We begin with God to know everything else (and either we see this or we don't!). Sire proposes a threefold argument from this starting point:
1. An argument from God, not to God.
2. An argument from everything to God.
3, An argument from our personal experience -- direct perception of God.
The remainder of the book is an unpacking of this argument from the world of literature and the arts interwoven with his personal experience. He begins with a literary theory of the work of authors in creating a "secondary world" that, when done well, points us back to the "primary world" in which we live. Thus, whether the writer believes in a God or not, Sire argues, he or she cannot help but signal the transcendent in their work. He illustrates this with both the works of a Christian, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the work of Virginia Woolf. If there is indeed a God, we cannot create a world that is reflective of Primary reality without also pointing back to God and opening oneself to the possibility of directly perceive the reality of God. He then illustrates this with the fictional account of a bereaved professor from a fictional college in Ohio that seemed to me reminiscent of A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Auken.
The concluding chapter moves from our perception, our seeing of God, to the story Sire believes makes the most sense of what we perceive of God and the rest of Primary Reality. He invites the reader to move beyond the signals to the One signaled,narrated in the Christian scriptures and centering in on Jesus Christ, who incarnated the reality of God.
I should confess at this point that I am at least a casual friend of the author. He has spoken on several occasions at collegiate ministry functions I have hosted. We have teamed up as program staff at student conferences. So there is no question of me being a sympathetic reader of his work. The argument he makes is one with which I would concur. But a couple of comments are probably in order.
As I've interacted with questioners about the Christian faith, I often find myself asking, "do you want there to be a God?" and "if I were to give reasonable responses to your questions, would you consider becoming a Christian?" I'm well aware that others see the same reality I do and just "don't see" or don't want to. Sire really doesn't address the question of "what about those who don't see?" And perhaps there is nothing to be said but to commend them to God in our prayers.
The other comment is that Sire argues from literature throughout the central part of this book. This is beloved ground for him and there will be others who appreciate the subtleties in the literature he cites. It is a world I am increasingly coming to enjoy. Yet I realized a great many do not know this world or are even put off by it. I don't think there is a good response for this except to say to follow the thread of the argument, which connects to everything, and not simply everything in literature.
Sire's book comes out of a career of teaching, writing, and serving as a traveling apologist. It reflects great wisdom in understanding both the messiness of apologetics and the reality that it will often be those signals of transcendence and our perception of them that will lead to faith. But as he has written, either his readers will see this, or they won't.
March 24, 2017
Apologetics Beyond Reason was one of a handful of books that I received as a gift concluding my time as a full-time staff worker with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. It's title is similar to a book that I've been milling about with in the back of my hand - one that I'm tentatively calling The Apologetic of Beauty, or something like that - and it represented, in many ways, a fundamental claim that we take to be true in Humanities scholarship: that is, that Cartesian Rationalism is a poor foundation and bad epistemology.
It was one of my secret joys to see James W. Sire call out Descartes very early on in this book. In American evangelicalism, Descartes - and through his philosophy, Rationalism - holds an incredible amount of ideological-theological sway. Sire, on the other hand, puts Reason in its appropriate place: not entirely rejected or ignored [as, perhaps, agnosticism would like], but submitted to Truth that is only found in a Man, Jesus Christ.
It is in the evangelistic mode that Sire's book most shines. The final chapter, for instance, is an almost-doxological confession of the Beauty of Christ, how His Beauty transforms our world, how the enigmas of life are solved in His death, resurrection, and ascension. The confession is nearly a devotional!
My one downside to the book, however, is that as a scholar of the Humanities myself, I found some of Sire's literary work to be lacking, or, at the very least, dated. This book, from an academic point of view, effectively sums up the modes of literary criticism and critical scholarship in the American academy from the time that Sire himself was a professor of literature. But his quick evasion of Critical Theory and of Structuralism / Post-Structuralism does not fly in light of modern standards of scholarship. Part of my literary-scholastic heart was longing for a professional Christian author to acknowledge the values of literary theory and the ways they can be used as apologetics for the Gospel.
But if that is my one disappointment, then all is well. IVP isn't targeting my personal demographic, and, in some sense, maybe they shouldn't just yet. Literary criticism is a complicated subject, fraught with lines of ontology and epistemology that are incredibly difficult to trace. Often it requires specialized language. That doesn't quite fit within IVP's stated mission and goals.
Instead, Sire's book provides an apologetic manner for taking literature seriously as a Christian, and thoughts on how to use that apologetic with non-believers. That goal is an admirable and Gospel-centered one, and his aim is better served by evading literary theory. That being said, I think that this area - the Gospel through literary theory - is a whole in the Christian book oeuvre, and I do think that the time is coming in Christian publishing where that gap will become as evident as the quality gap between Christian and secular rock became evident in recent decades. That problem - one which I admit only I might care about right now - is one that requires some serious thinking and re-consideration on the part of Christian authors and publishers. At the end of the day, postmodernism points us to remember that our epistemologies ought to be founded on a Man (and we happen to know the most trustworthy Man!), and not on our own understanding.
All that being said, Apologetics Beyond Reason is an effective and quality introduction into another way of doing "apologetics," and I can see it being an invaluable tool for those campus workers sharing the Gospel with postmoderns and finding their old, reason-focused tools ineffective.
It was one of my secret joys to see James W. Sire call out Descartes very early on in this book. In American evangelicalism, Descartes - and through his philosophy, Rationalism - holds an incredible amount of ideological-theological sway. Sire, on the other hand, puts Reason in its appropriate place: not entirely rejected or ignored [as, perhaps, agnosticism would like], but submitted to Truth that is only found in a Man, Jesus Christ.
It is in the evangelistic mode that Sire's book most shines. The final chapter, for instance, is an almost-doxological confession of the Beauty of Christ, how His Beauty transforms our world, how the enigmas of life are solved in His death, resurrection, and ascension. The confession is nearly a devotional!
My one downside to the book, however, is that as a scholar of the Humanities myself, I found some of Sire's literary work to be lacking, or, at the very least, dated. This book, from an academic point of view, effectively sums up the modes of literary criticism and critical scholarship in the American academy from the time that Sire himself was a professor of literature. But his quick evasion of Critical Theory and of Structuralism / Post-Structuralism does not fly in light of modern standards of scholarship. Part of my literary-scholastic heart was longing for a professional Christian author to acknowledge the values of literary theory and the ways they can be used as apologetics for the Gospel.
But if that is my one disappointment, then all is well. IVP isn't targeting my personal demographic, and, in some sense, maybe they shouldn't just yet. Literary criticism is a complicated subject, fraught with lines of ontology and epistemology that are incredibly difficult to trace. Often it requires specialized language. That doesn't quite fit within IVP's stated mission and goals.
Instead, Sire's book provides an apologetic manner for taking literature seriously as a Christian, and thoughts on how to use that apologetic with non-believers. That goal is an admirable and Gospel-centered one, and his aim is better served by evading literary theory. That being said, I think that this area - the Gospel through literary theory - is a whole in the Christian book oeuvre, and I do think that the time is coming in Christian publishing where that gap will become as evident as the quality gap between Christian and secular rock became evident in recent decades. That problem - one which I admit only I might care about right now - is one that requires some serious thinking and re-consideration on the part of Christian authors and publishers. At the end of the day, postmodernism points us to remember that our epistemologies ought to be founded on a Man (and we happen to know the most trustworthy Man!), and not on our own understanding.
All that being said, Apologetics Beyond Reason is an effective and quality introduction into another way of doing "apologetics," and I can see it being an invaluable tool for those campus workers sharing the Gospel with postmoderns and finding their old, reason-focused tools ineffective.
April 30, 2020
Helpful
Sire makes the useful case for transcendence found in intuition, in the arts, and in personal encounter with Jesus Christ.
Sire makes the useful case for transcendence found in intuition, in the arts, and in personal encounter with Jesus Christ.
June 7, 2019
Eschewing the rational apologetics of most books in this vein, Sire argues that 'signals of transcendence' are everywhere & ultimately point us to Christ. Focusing primarily on poetry & literature, he goes through several 'arguments' from Christian, non-Christian, & even anti-Christian sources to demonstrate how each leads one towards God in their own way.
I use quotes around 'arguments' because, as I said, this is not a work of purely rational apologetics. Strict empiricists may not find this book very compelling. But for someone a bit more post-modern such as myself, this approach was quite refreshing, if not entirely unique (he draws heavily on George MacDonald & J. R. R. Tolkien, with influence from Lewis, Chesterton, & others also quite evident). But still, I highly recommend this book to any Christian seeking to connect with our post-modern culture & anyone who senses that there might be more to life. It's fairly short, so it won't take long to test either.
I use quotes around 'arguments' because, as I said, this is not a work of purely rational apologetics. Strict empiricists may not find this book very compelling. But for someone a bit more post-modern such as myself, this approach was quite refreshing, if not entirely unique (he draws heavily on George MacDonald & J. R. R. Tolkien, with influence from Lewis, Chesterton, & others also quite evident). But still, I highly recommend this book to any Christian seeking to connect with our post-modern culture & anyone who senses that there might be more to life. It's fairly short, so it won't take long to test either.
August 3, 2019
When I came across Apologetics Beyond Reason, I was ecstatic to find Sire was proposing a literary apologetic. Unfortunately, his proposed apologetic seemed to fall flat. Throughout the book, I felt he was grasping at a less formulated theory that was a slapdash of Tolkien and Lewis. At times, Sire's argument felt strained and didactic. Finishing his argument for an apologetic starting from ontology through an aesthetic experience, Sire seems to argue from an epistemological defense through reason. To understand what I believe Sire was trying to attempt, one needs only read C.S. Lewis's Meditations in a Toolshed.
July 11, 2020
Sire begins with a premise of arguing from places that are not the typical apologetic starting points. A person who loves literature and serious art will enjoy this book. His premise was a bit hard for me to follow. However, he beautifully brings it together in a narrative selection near the conclusion.
October 18, 2022
Do not be fooled by the size of this, it is deep. A bit biring in places with some interesting paragraphs here and there.
May 16, 2022
This book was pivotal in pulling me out of a year of doubt and insecurity about my beliefs. I can't name any one point Sire made that proved God's existence to me or single-handedly saved my faith or anything like that - indeed, the book as a whole didn't do anything nearly so dramatic - but after finishing it, I suddenly felt solid again. I still had questions, but I was asking them confidently, not fearfully.
I think this book just fit with how my mind works. Sire's arguments from literature and beauty and his questioning of the autonomy of human reason were things I had been thinking about, but that I hadn't seen other Christians discussing head-on (though they might come at it slantwise). Those were reasons I naturally believed in God, but I thought they were bad reasons. I thought I had to believe in God because of scientific evidence or the superiority of Christian theology or something else hard and measurable, and anything else was a blind "leap of faith" that looked like all those bad mockeries of belief I'd cringed at over the years. Sire, however, showed me in this book that a Christian could intelligently, reasonably, purposefully believe because of beauty and literature and human limitations and all those other apparently vague and mushy things that were drawing me towards God. I'd been subconsciously constructing a false dichotomy, thinking I had to choose between beauty and reason, emotion and logic - even though my conscious self has always thought that was a stupid dichotomy in the first place. And so I could let myself be drawn to God after all. I didn't have to drag my feet because I thought I was becoming a self-delusional "just make yourself believe" mystic.
So I can't really judge this book for how good it is as a work of apologetics or theology or philosophy, or for how valuable it will be to other people, but I can say that it made an impact in my life. And I am very grateful to James Sire for that. Thank you, writer who will never read this review, for being the conduit of God's grace to me.
Reread May 2022 - This book is wackier and more oddly organized than I'd remembered, and mostly framed in somewhat dated modernist/postmodern terms rather than the POST-postmodern concern for social justice and other absolute-ish morality I see among my peers. But it's still full of lovely nuggets. "There is nothing in the universe that does not finally point to the existence of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit....It is no exaggeration to say that every person is created for Christ". What a bold, yearning, bittersweet claim. That's going to haunt me.
I think this book just fit with how my mind works. Sire's arguments from literature and beauty and his questioning of the autonomy of human reason were things I had been thinking about, but that I hadn't seen other Christians discussing head-on (though they might come at it slantwise). Those were reasons I naturally believed in God, but I thought they were bad reasons. I thought I had to believe in God because of scientific evidence or the superiority of Christian theology or something else hard and measurable, and anything else was a blind "leap of faith" that looked like all those bad mockeries of belief I'd cringed at over the years. Sire, however, showed me in this book that a Christian could intelligently, reasonably, purposefully believe because of beauty and literature and human limitations and all those other apparently vague and mushy things that were drawing me towards God. I'd been subconsciously constructing a false dichotomy, thinking I had to choose between beauty and reason, emotion and logic - even though my conscious self has always thought that was a stupid dichotomy in the first place. And so I could let myself be drawn to God after all. I didn't have to drag my feet because I thought I was becoming a self-delusional "just make yourself believe" mystic.
So I can't really judge this book for how good it is as a work of apologetics or theology or philosophy, or for how valuable it will be to other people, but I can say that it made an impact in my life. And I am very grateful to James Sire for that. Thank you, writer who will never read this review, for being the conduit of God's grace to me.
Reread May 2022 - This book is wackier and more oddly organized than I'd remembered, and mostly framed in somewhat dated modernist/postmodern terms rather than the POST-postmodern concern for social justice and other absolute-ish morality I see among my peers. But it's still full of lovely nuggets. "There is nothing in the universe that does not finally point to the existence of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit....It is no exaggeration to say that every person is created for Christ". What a bold, yearning, bittersweet claim. That's going to haunt me.
September 24, 2014
"Signals of transcendence" - this is Sire's term for an apologetic that does not rest upon the typical lines of evidence for God's existence. Cosmological, ontological, and moral arguments yield place to aesthetic experience, specifically as found in art and literature. How literature is an argument for God's existence and the fundamentals of Christianity, especially when penned by deists and atheists, is exactly what Sire aims to show.
He does so in a book that could be called humble, honest, meandering, and somewhat-autobiographical. More than anything, he demonstrates that the creation of secondary worlds by authors and poets points to the reality of something above and beyond the world in which we now live. Epistemology follows this simple acknowledgment of reality.
However, Sire is honest enough to admit that not everyone will see this. If you see it, you will believe the One to whom it is all pointing. If you don't, you won't. In this, Sire is something of a presuppositionalist. So, his aim is not so much to convince as it is to observe.
How helpful this book will be to apologists remains to be seen, and it is not an easy book to read. However, it is a welcome change of pace from both tomes on literary criticism and handbooks on Christian evidence.
He does so in a book that could be called humble, honest, meandering, and somewhat-autobiographical. More than anything, he demonstrates that the creation of secondary worlds by authors and poets points to the reality of something above and beyond the world in which we now live. Epistemology follows this simple acknowledgment of reality.
However, Sire is honest enough to admit that not everyone will see this. If you see it, you will believe the One to whom it is all pointing. If you don't, you won't. In this, Sire is something of a presuppositionalist. So, his aim is not so much to convince as it is to observe.
How helpful this book will be to apologists remains to be seen, and it is not an easy book to read. However, it is a welcome change of pace from both tomes on literary criticism and handbooks on Christian evidence.
October 18, 2014
Gostei muito deste livro. Não por concordar com tudo o que o autor propõe. Afinal, sou um pressupocionalista (do tipo racionalista, diria Sire). Contudo, Sire é um grande apologista e escreve com maestria e beleza. Neste livro, somos convidados a considerar os "sinais de transcendência" que nos cercam.
June 1, 2017
This was a refreshing take on Apologetics. Sire points to "signals of transcendence" within the human experience. These can be found in art, music, and literature. Sire does a good job of clarifying some of the intangible qualities of the process of intuiting God's existence. The book is also deeply personal, containing a number of details about Sire's own development of faith.
I was not persuaded by all of his arguments, nor was I really impressed by some of his theological claims (God's trivialization of evil in the cross, pg 133). Nevertheless, this would be a good read for people looking outside the box of conventional Apologetics material.
I was not persuaded by all of his arguments, nor was I really impressed by some of his theological claims (God's trivialization of evil in the cross, pg 133). Nevertheless, this would be a good read for people looking outside the box of conventional Apologetics material.
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