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Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't: The Beauty of Christian Theism
It has never been more important to articulate the wonder and enchantment of the Christian message. Yet the traditional approaches of apologetics are often outmoded in an age of profound disenchantment and distraction, unable to meet this pressing need. This winsome apologetics book for a new generation makes the case that Christianity offers a compelling explanatory framework for making sense of our world. Pastor and writer Gavin Ortlund believes it is essential to appeal not only to the mind but also to the heart and the imagination as we articulate the beauty of the gospel. Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't reimagines four classical theistic arguments--cosmological, teleological, moral, and Christological--making a cumulative case for God as the best framework for understanding the storied nature of reality. The book suggests that Christian theism can explain such things as the elegance of math, the beauty of music, and the value of love. It is suitable for use in classes yet accessibly written, making it a perfect resource for churches and small groups.
240 pages, Paperback
Published October 26, 2021
63 people are currently reading
1606 people want to read
About the author
Gavin Ortlund
24 books343 followersGavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is senior pastor at First Baptist Church of Ojai in Ojai, California. He was previously a research fellow for the Creation Project at the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is the author of Finding the Right Hills to Die On, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals, and Anselm's Pursuit of Joy.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 142 reviews
December 3, 2021
Fantastic. A more academic *Reason for God* that should serve well in beginning gospel conversations with atheist/agnostic friends of the very well read and more intellectual variety.
November 1, 2021
One of the most important books I have read in a long time.
November 7, 2021
Outstanding. My only objection is stylistic. Gavin is a bit too nice. Take the gloves off, I say! Let us hear you laugh at multiverse theory, I say!
January 18, 2025
This is one of the best Christian apologetics books I’ve read, and I’ve read quite a few. Much of it is conceptually similar to another favorite of mine, Tim Keller’s Making Sense of God.
Like Keller, Ortlund relies on abductive reasoning rather than deductive or inductive logic. Suppose that a loving God created us and our universe. If so, what kind of world do we suppose this would be? Or conversely, what kind of world would we expect if there is nothing beyond naturalistic causes? Which setup better explains the existence of our longings for meaning and justice and love? Or our appreciation for beauty and art? Or our deep-seated feeling that there really is a fundamental difference between good and evil? And why is there an underlying order to the universe that can be revealed through the language of mathematics? Why should laws of physics be universal? Or even exist at all?
All of these make sense if there is a God that created the universe, but are very difficult to account for if we are simply a cosmic accident.
Here’s a summarizing passage from the final chapter:
“According to the way of thinking we have pursued throughout this book, the Christian story is not only a more plausible story than its naturalistic counterpart but more interesting, more elegant, more dignifying to humanity, and more hopeful.
“In the Christian story, our physical universe is just one tiny contribution to reality, like an island in an immense ocean; therefore the beauty we observe around us does not enclose us but merely whispers of this vast beyond. In the Christian story, music and poetry tug our hearts for a reason: they are the ancient language by which the world was written. In the Christian story, ideas and math and logic have a kind of stable energy to them; learning them is like discovering an encoded message from someone highly intelligent. In the Christian story, love is at the core of reality; it is what spawned the world, and it will have the final word. In the Christian story, you have every right to be furious with injustice; goodness is real, and your life can be nobly spent in its service. In the Christian story, evil will one day be defeated; happiness will reign forever; every movie you ever watch is whispering to you about this.
“Above all, the Christian story makes sense of the fact that the world does not make sense…[it] explains our intuitive sense that the world is both valuable and broken—that it is good, and yet something has gone deeply wrong with it. The Christian story thereby gives us ground to both love and hate the world—or, as GK Chesterton put it, to be both astonished at it and at home in it. In this way Christianity ultimately entails neither despair nor relaxed indifference but hope.”
Like Keller, Ortlund relies on abductive reasoning rather than deductive or inductive logic. Suppose that a loving God created us and our universe. If so, what kind of world do we suppose this would be? Or conversely, what kind of world would we expect if there is nothing beyond naturalistic causes? Which setup better explains the existence of our longings for meaning and justice and love? Or our appreciation for beauty and art? Or our deep-seated feeling that there really is a fundamental difference between good and evil? And why is there an underlying order to the universe that can be revealed through the language of mathematics? Why should laws of physics be universal? Or even exist at all?
All of these make sense if there is a God that created the universe, but are very difficult to account for if we are simply a cosmic accident.
Here’s a summarizing passage from the final chapter:
“According to the way of thinking we have pursued throughout this book, the Christian story is not only a more plausible story than its naturalistic counterpart but more interesting, more elegant, more dignifying to humanity, and more hopeful.
“In the Christian story, our physical universe is just one tiny contribution to reality, like an island in an immense ocean; therefore the beauty we observe around us does not enclose us but merely whispers of this vast beyond. In the Christian story, music and poetry tug our hearts for a reason: they are the ancient language by which the world was written. In the Christian story, ideas and math and logic have a kind of stable energy to them; learning them is like discovering an encoded message from someone highly intelligent. In the Christian story, love is at the core of reality; it is what spawned the world, and it will have the final word. In the Christian story, you have every right to be furious with injustice; goodness is real, and your life can be nobly spent in its service. In the Christian story, evil will one day be defeated; happiness will reign forever; every movie you ever watch is whispering to you about this.
“Above all, the Christian story makes sense of the fact that the world does not make sense…[it] explains our intuitive sense that the world is both valuable and broken—that it is good, and yet something has gone deeply wrong with it. The Christian story thereby gives us ground to both love and hate the world—or, as GK Chesterton put it, to be both astonished at it and at home in it. In this way Christianity ultimately entails neither despair nor relaxed indifference but hope.”
July 10, 2023
Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't was an encouraging apologetic work by Gavin Ortlund, who takes on apologetics by trying to meet the modern population where they are at, making the teleological argument that morals, emotions, arts, social-justice, and more point to the existence of an intelligent design. Ortlund synthesizes a few famous works and ideas here, combining Tim Keller's apologetic work and C.S. Lewis' arguments with ideas found in G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit, and I left it feeling encouraged about the truths that I hold close to my heart.
May 26, 2024
If you are curious about how to communicate arguments for the existence of God and Christian notions about the identity of Jesus, this is a must-read!
I know that’s a big claim, especially in light of how many books on apologetics are published each year. So, how does it stand out?
Last year I took a class with JP Moreland in which he explained how to make arguments in the context of apologetics that were inferences to the best explanation. I was convinced. In my background, popular apologetic approaches that I was normally exposed to seemed to value certainty over confidence, stumping over conversing, and one-liners over dialogue, making your opponent sense his wrongness more than inviting him to curiosity. I realize this is not how everyone practices apologetics, these were simply my influences, and my own approach. The frustration lay in the reality that to construct arguments that lead to absolute certainty, or seemed to, I felt the approach required me to perfect my talking points. If someone did not buy the argument, it felt like failure. And arguments designed to elicit certainty in a single conversation usually do not. Back to the lecture with Moreland. After hearing him explain inferences to the best explanation, I realized I wanted to start doing this - but who models this? Moreland certainly does. I also began to appreciate what I had previously saw as a flaw in Tim Keller’s popular books - the gentle tone and often inconclusive posture when writing to skeptics.
Gavin Ortlund’s book is what I have been looking for all along. Written by a pastor/academic, he is both up to date on the state of the arguments and insightful about how ordinary people in our culture think. His tone is gentle, humble, and genuinely conversational. And if you want to share the good news with those who have doubts about the structure of beliefs underlying Christianity, you will want to be as well.
Read this book and learn from this approach.
I know that’s a big claim, especially in light of how many books on apologetics are published each year. So, how does it stand out?
Last year I took a class with JP Moreland in which he explained how to make arguments in the context of apologetics that were inferences to the best explanation. I was convinced. In my background, popular apologetic approaches that I was normally exposed to seemed to value certainty over confidence, stumping over conversing, and one-liners over dialogue, making your opponent sense his wrongness more than inviting him to curiosity. I realize this is not how everyone practices apologetics, these were simply my influences, and my own approach. The frustration lay in the reality that to construct arguments that lead to absolute certainty, or seemed to, I felt the approach required me to perfect my talking points. If someone did not buy the argument, it felt like failure. And arguments designed to elicit certainty in a single conversation usually do not. Back to the lecture with Moreland. After hearing him explain inferences to the best explanation, I realized I wanted to start doing this - but who models this? Moreland certainly does. I also began to appreciate what I had previously saw as a flaw in Tim Keller’s popular books - the gentle tone and often inconclusive posture when writing to skeptics.
Gavin Ortlund’s book is what I have been looking for all along. Written by a pastor/academic, he is both up to date on the state of the arguments and insightful about how ordinary people in our culture think. His tone is gentle, humble, and genuinely conversational. And if you want to share the good news with those who have doubts about the structure of beliefs underlying Christianity, you will want to be as well.
Read this book and learn from this approach.
February 21, 2025
If there was one book I would give to someone unconvinced of theism, it would be this. This was, without question, the most spectacular Christian apologetic I have ever come across: albeit for reasons one might not expect.
Most content relating to the theism-atheism debate is often underwhelming and unsatisfying. I think this is largely because both sides tend toss arguments over a wall like grenades without ever actually facing the opposition. Worse yet, both sides have a tendency to straw-man the other side, leading to a dysfunctional and effectively useless polemic. However, in this book Ortlund looks the opposition in the eye and faces it directly. He does not straw-man the opposition, but honestly and compassionately faces the strongest arguments head on. For that reason, I imagine that many Christians will be offended by this book. Ortlund does not seek to play argumentative "wack-a-mole", attempting to give the "Christian" answer to every objection. Rather, Ortlund expertly focuses on only the primary issues and suggests a better answer. Ortlund does not declare what he believes to be correct in this book, he merely points towards what is the most probable and most compelling answer.
I personally found this book to be outstanding and satisfying. It left me with greater assurance, joy, and hope than any other apologetics book has. I recommend this book to everyone. For some Christians it will challenge us towards greater humility and compassion, for others it will lead to greater gospel assurance. Either way, I believe everyone will be better off with this book on their shelf.
Most content relating to the theism-atheism debate is often underwhelming and unsatisfying. I think this is largely because both sides tend toss arguments over a wall like grenades without ever actually facing the opposition. Worse yet, both sides have a tendency to straw-man the other side, leading to a dysfunctional and effectively useless polemic. However, in this book Ortlund looks the opposition in the eye and faces it directly. He does not straw-man the opposition, but honestly and compassionately faces the strongest arguments head on. For that reason, I imagine that many Christians will be offended by this book. Ortlund does not seek to play argumentative "wack-a-mole", attempting to give the "Christian" answer to every objection. Rather, Ortlund expertly focuses on only the primary issues and suggests a better answer. Ortlund does not declare what he believes to be correct in this book, he merely points towards what is the most probable and most compelling answer.
I personally found this book to be outstanding and satisfying. It left me with greater assurance, joy, and hope than any other apologetics book has. I recommend this book to everyone. For some Christians it will challenge us towards greater humility and compassion, for others it will lead to greater gospel assurance. Either way, I believe everyone will be better off with this book on their shelf.
February 6, 2023
Masterful
July 5, 2022
“The fact that we desire something to be true does not make it true. At the same time, desire is not irrelevant to truth either… For example, hunger might not prove you have food, but it might suggest to you that there is such a thing as food out there, somewhere.”
This is, perhaps, a more academic version of Tim Keller’s The Reason for God book. However, this book has its own twist.
Instead of merely trying to convince readers that Christianity is true, Gavin Ortlund has written this book to look at the beauty and goodness of Christian Theism.
He is not looking at all religions but focusing on Christianity versus Naturalism:
“Which is telling us a better story— a story that better accounts for the strangeness, the incompleteness, the brokenness, and the beauty of our world?”
I was intrigued when I saw this book but also a little hesitant. I’m a truth seeker so my first reaction is just- focus on the truth! Show the evidence! Share the good news!
But I admire what Ortlund has accomplished in this book and I think it is a very valuable endeavor. Because as he states,
“The greatest impediment to the hearing of the gospel is usually not opposition but indifference… Beauty is a powerful tool for cutting through disenchantment and apathy because it has a kind of persuasive power that reaches down to the heart.”
People today aren’t really asking if Christianity is true. They’re more commonly asking- is it good?
Ortlund is applying Blaise Pascal’s threefold strategy for commending God by showing religion to be “respectable, desirable, and true.”
Knowing that people make sense of the world through narratives— stories— he formats his book accordingly.
A good story has four essential pieces: a beginning, a meaning, a conflict, and a hope.
These are the four chapters/arguments in his book.
He does not begin with Christian Theism but rather comes to the story by looking at the pieces and gradually showing how supernaturalism, rather than naturalism, makes sense, then theism and eventually how Christian Theism is the best story to explain the world as we see it.
Disclaimer
I feel it necessary to let you know that this book is not an easy read. The Reason for God is a pretty approachable and non-intimidating read. Ortlund’s book will appear intimidating to broad readership.
However, I would encourage you to still try it. Even if you don’t grasp every sentence, you will understand his main points and will be able to follow his logic.
I had to look up several words. There were parts that he talked about that required more brain power than I was ready to give, but to his credit, he usually follows up those segments with a ‘In short…’ or ‘This means that…’ to help us follow along.
I think if you know what to expect coming in to the book and decide that it’s okay if you can’t re-explain the entire book to a friend, then you will be ready to hear what Ortlund presents and find its value.
Plus, I am reading this book with several friends and we plan to get together to discuss it. Allow a variety of minds help you parse out the truths of the book. I’m sure the conversations will be lively!
A Taste of Each Chapter
The Cause of the World: Why Something is More Plausible (and much more interesting) than Nothing
The Big Bang Theory right? God spoke and bang the earth was created?
You can’t create something out of nothing. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. Unless you’re God.
One of the first things Ortlund says is this:
“You start off wanting to say, innocently enough, that the universe didn’t go “Poof!” from nothing, but to defend the point you find yourself talking about oscillating universes, quantum mechanics, eternal inflation theories, various definitions of the word “nothing,” “no-boundary” conceptions of time, and so forth.”
And I was like… I do?! The only word I understand from that sentence is ‘and so forth.’
Ortlund has done such a comprehensive job researching all of the theories and analyzing not only opposing explanations but the Christian ones as well. What are the weak points and what questions do each theory beg?
I don’t share that quote to scare you away from this book but to show you that he’s not just flippantly giving ‘answers’ to the hard questions. He is digging deep to consider all the options and figure out which one is the best explanation!
Some of the main points in this chapter:
- Who created the Creator? (and why this is not a helpful question)
- God as the ‘Uncaused Cause’
- The world expanding from a singularity, collapses, and repeats the process
- Is God necessary?
- Is there supernature?
- Can the world explain itself?
The Meaning of the World: Why Things Like Math, Music, and Love Make More Sense if There is a God
“A book has transcendent meaning because there is an author. The book has a meaning because the author has intentions for writing it; and that meaning is transcendent because the author is outside the book (rather than a character within it).”
He talks about the realism, durability, and usefulness of math that undermines the arbitrary context of naturalism:
“Mathematical realism turns out to be a rather strange bedfellow to the broader metaphysical assumptions of nature. Specifically, it is difficult to explain why a finite space-time universe that is in constant flux should produce a mental realm characterized by apparently eternal, necessary truths. Where did this distinct realm come from? How did the temporal produce the permanent?”
A Christian theism viewpoint looks at numbers as eternal truths because they came from an eternal mind/Truth— they are something to be discovered, not invented.
Another question that naturalism cannot really explain is how music affects people. Music feels meaningful and important.
“Neuroscientists note that music affects the same part of our brains as sex and food. But unlike sex and food, it has no obvious survival function— so, from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology, why does it affect us so emotionally?”
What if music is not just a dream, an accident of biology that worked out this way, but a window— a glimpse of something beyond?
Without transcendent meaning in our lives, we lose a significant part of our humanity.
Some of the main points in this chapter:
- Can the multiverse theory explain the fine-tuning of our universe?
- Is love permanent? Is love accidental, biological, and functional or essential, spiritual, and purposeful?
- The meaning we find in math, music, and love speak to something transcendent and personal
The Conflict of the World: Why Good and Evil Shape the Plot of Every Story You’ve Ever Heard
“I propose that a worldview that allows for the supernatural provides both a more plausible and a more meaningful explanatory framework for [conscience and a ‘Happy Ending’]. Specifically, such a worldview can 1) ground objective moral reality and 2) offer hope. By contrast, the story that naturalism tells is a dreadful tale in which moral drama is fundamentally illusory, for conscience is deceiving us and no Happy Ending is coming.”
Virtually every movie and book we read has some sort of conflict between good and evil. Where did this idea of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ come from?
Ortlund asks us to consider a crocodile killing and eating a gazelle. This is not an immoral act to us. However, a human murdering another human is. If we are believers in a worldview of naturalism, at what point in the evolutionary process did the moral objection to human murder take place?
Where do we get our idea of human rights and equality? [this is a driving point in Rebecca McLaughlin’s book The Secular Creed]
“We intuitively recognize that it matters whether we exploit or help the poor, whether we love our families or abuse them; to consider that such intuitions are illusory feels not like a minor loss but like something unspeakably horrible. The theistic story, by contrast, infuses nobility into human life and struggle; it has the potential implication that how you live will matter forever.”
Some of the main points in this chapter:
- Why do we all have a sense of moral justice and the ‘rightness’ of what the world should be?
- What outcomes do we see in terms of moral justice when God is removed from the equation?
- Are morality and justice arbitrary illusions?
The Hope of the World: Why Easter Means Happiness Beyond Your Wildest Dreams
“Christ’s incarnation and resurrection are the true Story every other story is searching for.”
If we’ve determined that the Earth and humans were created on purpose, with a purpose, to experience glimpses of a different and better reality, a place where all the injustices in the world will be made right, then this chapter is where we see the object of our hope.
He talks in length about C.S. Lewis’ famous ‘Liar, Lunatic, Lord’ argument. It is not a question of whether Jesus existed, but who he really was. Lewis’ argument goes: Jesus claimed to be God so either he was lying, he was crazy, or he was who he said he was.
Ortlund provides another option: legend. Did Jesus actually claim to be God? This then becomes a discussion on the truthfulness and reliability of Scripture.
He uses Bart Ehrman as his main counter-source for this section. As such, I will insert a plug for you to check out the book ‘Surviving Religion 101’ by Michael Kruger. Kruger had Ehrman as a professor in college and is now a scholarly voice on the canonization and historicity of the Bible.
Ortlund lays out the arguments for believing the Bible is true and that Jesus is who he says he is. And if Jesus is who he said he is, his death on the cross was for us and provided a way for us to have eternal life in Heaven where all is right in the world. That is good news!
Some of the main points in this chapter:
- Does ‘religion’ cause violence? If religion is the problem, why have (atheistic) “Marxist regimes murdered nearly 110 million people from 1917 to 1987. For perspective on this incredible toll, note that all domestic and foreign wars during the 20th century killed around 35 million.” ?
- Is the validity of a belief determined by how it came to be?
- Can we trust the Bible?
- Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
Conclusion
This is a long review and it is by no means exhaustive of the content found in this book.
I hope if you find yourself despairing the broken world, wondering what your purpose is in life, or fearful of what comes next, that you would consider hearing what Ortlund puts forth.
It is a thoughtful and explorative book that is meant to draw you in to think and imagine, not sit you down to sign off on his beliefs.
Naturalism explains things in terms of random illusions as evolution works itself out, but what if our deepest feelings and convictions of meaning and morality are not deceptions but clues to reality?
Ortlund truly does reveal the beauty and the goodness of a Creator God who made us, loves us, and will make all things right.
I like to think that I’m a pretty logical person. Though I already believe in God and the truths of the Bible, this book reiterated to me that what I have is not a blind faith. In a world that doesn’t make sense, God really does. His truth really does.
It gives me confidence, hope, joy, and endurance. To know there is intention, design, purpose, and future really changes how I view the world and the people in it, and how I live each day.
What a relevant and important book today.
“In the Christian story, our physical universe is just one tiny contribution to reality, like an island in an immense ocean; therefore the beauty we observe around us does not enclose us but merely whispers of this vast beyond. In the Christian story, music and poetry tug at our hearts for a reason: they are the ancient language by which the world was written. In the Christian story, ideas and math and logic have a kind of stable energy to them; learning them is like discovering an encoded message from someone highly intelligent. In the Christian story, love is at the core of reality; it is what spawned the world, and it will have the final word. In the Christian story, you have every right to be furious with injustice; goodness is real, and your life can be nobly spent in its service. In the Christian story, evil will one day be defeated; happiness will reign forever; every movie you ever watch is whispering to you about this.”
Some Other Quotes
“What is the difference between arguing in favor of an eternally existing creator versus an eternally existing universe without one?”
“Thinking that scientific advance will remove the need for a meta-cause is likely getting two-thirds of the way through Hamlet and thinking that the final third will somehow replace the need for Shakespeare.”
“Einstein could be very critical of organized religion, and he certainly did not profess belief in a personal God. But he was equally (if not more) critical of aggressive atheism, and he often spoke in almost religious terms of the sense of humility and wonder that the world impresses upon us. For Einstein, the more one penetrates into an understanding of the physical universe, the more one is left with this lingering sense of Something else, Something beyond.”
“[Richard] Dawkins maintains that the multiverse is much simpler than God, because although it posits a vast number of universes, they all share the same basic laws. God, by contrast… is the most complex answer… But this depends upon the criteria by which we determine simplicity. Which is simpler: an infinite number of worlds or an infinite person behind the world?”
“If we think evolution has displaced the need for God, whatever else we have done, we have not transitioned from the mysterious to the non mysterious, from the wild to the prosaic. No, we are in a deeply mysterious world any way we look at it.”
“I think it was Chesterton who said the worst moment for the skeptic is when he feels truly grateful but has no one to thank.”
“Think about it: on a naturalistic account of reality, the feeling of love has a similar status to the enjoyment of music. Love came about in the evolutionary process as a by-product of natural selection. It affects us the way it does because it helped our ancestors survive and pas not their genes. Love is therefore an accidental feature of reality, and the feeling of significance that accompanies it is your brain tricking you.”
“In the modern West, our moral framework is primarily grounded in considerations of harm, whereas virtually all other cultures have developed their moral vision from a variety of other criteria, such as care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity.”
“Johnathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind) argues that conservatives and liberals often talk past one another because they don’t take into account their differing intuitions about the nature of morality. We therefore need to be slower to dismiss others simply because we can refute their arguments and more discerning of the role our moral convictions are playing in us. ‘Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.’”
“… the evolutionary process is interested in survival, not truth.”
“What is needed to explain the existence of a book is not a first sentence but an author.”
“The idea of God as the source of morality is not a claim that believers in God are more moral (which is a sociological question), or that religions have produced moral guidelines for society (a historical question), or that religious people know morality more accurately (which is an epistemological question). The issue is where morality itself comes from (an ontological question).”
“To put it simply: if you are looking for God, you will likely succeed; if you are avoiding him, you will also likely succeed.”
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This is, perhaps, a more academic version of Tim Keller’s The Reason for God book. However, this book has its own twist.
Instead of merely trying to convince readers that Christianity is true, Gavin Ortlund has written this book to look at the beauty and goodness of Christian Theism.
He is not looking at all religions but focusing on Christianity versus Naturalism:
“Which is telling us a better story— a story that better accounts for the strangeness, the incompleteness, the brokenness, and the beauty of our world?”
I was intrigued when I saw this book but also a little hesitant. I’m a truth seeker so my first reaction is just- focus on the truth! Show the evidence! Share the good news!
But I admire what Ortlund has accomplished in this book and I think it is a very valuable endeavor. Because as he states,
“The greatest impediment to the hearing of the gospel is usually not opposition but indifference… Beauty is a powerful tool for cutting through disenchantment and apathy because it has a kind of persuasive power that reaches down to the heart.”
People today aren’t really asking if Christianity is true. They’re more commonly asking- is it good?
Ortlund is applying Blaise Pascal’s threefold strategy for commending God by showing religion to be “respectable, desirable, and true.”
Knowing that people make sense of the world through narratives— stories— he formats his book accordingly.
A good story has four essential pieces: a beginning, a meaning, a conflict, and a hope.
These are the four chapters/arguments in his book.
He does not begin with Christian Theism but rather comes to the story by looking at the pieces and gradually showing how supernaturalism, rather than naturalism, makes sense, then theism and eventually how Christian Theism is the best story to explain the world as we see it.
Disclaimer
I feel it necessary to let you know that this book is not an easy read. The Reason for God is a pretty approachable and non-intimidating read. Ortlund’s book will appear intimidating to broad readership.
However, I would encourage you to still try it. Even if you don’t grasp every sentence, you will understand his main points and will be able to follow his logic.
I had to look up several words. There were parts that he talked about that required more brain power than I was ready to give, but to his credit, he usually follows up those segments with a ‘In short…’ or ‘This means that…’ to help us follow along.
I think if you know what to expect coming in to the book and decide that it’s okay if you can’t re-explain the entire book to a friend, then you will be ready to hear what Ortlund presents and find its value.
Plus, I am reading this book with several friends and we plan to get together to discuss it. Allow a variety of minds help you parse out the truths of the book. I’m sure the conversations will be lively!
A Taste of Each Chapter
The Cause of the World: Why Something is More Plausible (and much more interesting) than Nothing
The Big Bang Theory right? God spoke and bang the earth was created?
You can’t create something out of nothing. Matter cannot be created or destroyed. Unless you’re God.
One of the first things Ortlund says is this:
“You start off wanting to say, innocently enough, that the universe didn’t go “Poof!” from nothing, but to defend the point you find yourself talking about oscillating universes, quantum mechanics, eternal inflation theories, various definitions of the word “nothing,” “no-boundary” conceptions of time, and so forth.”
And I was like… I do?! The only word I understand from that sentence is ‘and so forth.’
Ortlund has done such a comprehensive job researching all of the theories and analyzing not only opposing explanations but the Christian ones as well. What are the weak points and what questions do each theory beg?
I don’t share that quote to scare you away from this book but to show you that he’s not just flippantly giving ‘answers’ to the hard questions. He is digging deep to consider all the options and figure out which one is the best explanation!
Some of the main points in this chapter:
- Who created the Creator? (and why this is not a helpful question)
- God as the ‘Uncaused Cause’
- The world expanding from a singularity, collapses, and repeats the process
- Is God necessary?
- Is there supernature?
- Can the world explain itself?
The Meaning of the World: Why Things Like Math, Music, and Love Make More Sense if There is a God
“A book has transcendent meaning because there is an author. The book has a meaning because the author has intentions for writing it; and that meaning is transcendent because the author is outside the book (rather than a character within it).”
He talks about the realism, durability, and usefulness of math that undermines the arbitrary context of naturalism:
“Mathematical realism turns out to be a rather strange bedfellow to the broader metaphysical assumptions of nature. Specifically, it is difficult to explain why a finite space-time universe that is in constant flux should produce a mental realm characterized by apparently eternal, necessary truths. Where did this distinct realm come from? How did the temporal produce the permanent?”
A Christian theism viewpoint looks at numbers as eternal truths because they came from an eternal mind/Truth— they are something to be discovered, not invented.
Another question that naturalism cannot really explain is how music affects people. Music feels meaningful and important.
“Neuroscientists note that music affects the same part of our brains as sex and food. But unlike sex and food, it has no obvious survival function— so, from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology, why does it affect us so emotionally?”
What if music is not just a dream, an accident of biology that worked out this way, but a window— a glimpse of something beyond?
Without transcendent meaning in our lives, we lose a significant part of our humanity.
Some of the main points in this chapter:
- Can the multiverse theory explain the fine-tuning of our universe?
- Is love permanent? Is love accidental, biological, and functional or essential, spiritual, and purposeful?
- The meaning we find in math, music, and love speak to something transcendent and personal
The Conflict of the World: Why Good and Evil Shape the Plot of Every Story You’ve Ever Heard
“I propose that a worldview that allows for the supernatural provides both a more plausible and a more meaningful explanatory framework for [conscience and a ‘Happy Ending’]. Specifically, such a worldview can 1) ground objective moral reality and 2) offer hope. By contrast, the story that naturalism tells is a dreadful tale in which moral drama is fundamentally illusory, for conscience is deceiving us and no Happy Ending is coming.”
Virtually every movie and book we read has some sort of conflict between good and evil. Where did this idea of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ come from?
Ortlund asks us to consider a crocodile killing and eating a gazelle. This is not an immoral act to us. However, a human murdering another human is. If we are believers in a worldview of naturalism, at what point in the evolutionary process did the moral objection to human murder take place?
Where do we get our idea of human rights and equality? [this is a driving point in Rebecca McLaughlin’s book The Secular Creed]
“We intuitively recognize that it matters whether we exploit or help the poor, whether we love our families or abuse them; to consider that such intuitions are illusory feels not like a minor loss but like something unspeakably horrible. The theistic story, by contrast, infuses nobility into human life and struggle; it has the potential implication that how you live will matter forever.”
Some of the main points in this chapter:
- Why do we all have a sense of moral justice and the ‘rightness’ of what the world should be?
- What outcomes do we see in terms of moral justice when God is removed from the equation?
- Are morality and justice arbitrary illusions?
The Hope of the World: Why Easter Means Happiness Beyond Your Wildest Dreams
“Christ’s incarnation and resurrection are the true Story every other story is searching for.”
If we’ve determined that the Earth and humans were created on purpose, with a purpose, to experience glimpses of a different and better reality, a place where all the injustices in the world will be made right, then this chapter is where we see the object of our hope.
He talks in length about C.S. Lewis’ famous ‘Liar, Lunatic, Lord’ argument. It is not a question of whether Jesus existed, but who he really was. Lewis’ argument goes: Jesus claimed to be God so either he was lying, he was crazy, or he was who he said he was.
Ortlund provides another option: legend. Did Jesus actually claim to be God? This then becomes a discussion on the truthfulness and reliability of Scripture.
He uses Bart Ehrman as his main counter-source for this section. As such, I will insert a plug for you to check out the book ‘Surviving Religion 101’ by Michael Kruger. Kruger had Ehrman as a professor in college and is now a scholarly voice on the canonization and historicity of the Bible.
Ortlund lays out the arguments for believing the Bible is true and that Jesus is who he says he is. And if Jesus is who he said he is, his death on the cross was for us and provided a way for us to have eternal life in Heaven where all is right in the world. That is good news!
Some of the main points in this chapter:
- Does ‘religion’ cause violence? If religion is the problem, why have (atheistic) “Marxist regimes murdered nearly 110 million people from 1917 to 1987. For perspective on this incredible toll, note that all domestic and foreign wars during the 20th century killed around 35 million.” ?
- Is the validity of a belief determined by how it came to be?
- Can we trust the Bible?
- Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
Conclusion
This is a long review and it is by no means exhaustive of the content found in this book.
I hope if you find yourself despairing the broken world, wondering what your purpose is in life, or fearful of what comes next, that you would consider hearing what Ortlund puts forth.
It is a thoughtful and explorative book that is meant to draw you in to think and imagine, not sit you down to sign off on his beliefs.
Naturalism explains things in terms of random illusions as evolution works itself out, but what if our deepest feelings and convictions of meaning and morality are not deceptions but clues to reality?
Ortlund truly does reveal the beauty and the goodness of a Creator God who made us, loves us, and will make all things right.
I like to think that I’m a pretty logical person. Though I already believe in God and the truths of the Bible, this book reiterated to me that what I have is not a blind faith. In a world that doesn’t make sense, God really does. His truth really does.
It gives me confidence, hope, joy, and endurance. To know there is intention, design, purpose, and future really changes how I view the world and the people in it, and how I live each day.
What a relevant and important book today.
“In the Christian story, our physical universe is just one tiny contribution to reality, like an island in an immense ocean; therefore the beauty we observe around us does not enclose us but merely whispers of this vast beyond. In the Christian story, music and poetry tug at our hearts for a reason: they are the ancient language by which the world was written. In the Christian story, ideas and math and logic have a kind of stable energy to them; learning them is like discovering an encoded message from someone highly intelligent. In the Christian story, love is at the core of reality; it is what spawned the world, and it will have the final word. In the Christian story, you have every right to be furious with injustice; goodness is real, and your life can be nobly spent in its service. In the Christian story, evil will one day be defeated; happiness will reign forever; every movie you ever watch is whispering to you about this.”
Some Other Quotes
“What is the difference between arguing in favor of an eternally existing creator versus an eternally existing universe without one?”
“Thinking that scientific advance will remove the need for a meta-cause is likely getting two-thirds of the way through Hamlet and thinking that the final third will somehow replace the need for Shakespeare.”
“Einstein could be very critical of organized religion, and he certainly did not profess belief in a personal God. But he was equally (if not more) critical of aggressive atheism, and he often spoke in almost religious terms of the sense of humility and wonder that the world impresses upon us. For Einstein, the more one penetrates into an understanding of the physical universe, the more one is left with this lingering sense of Something else, Something beyond.”
“[Richard] Dawkins maintains that the multiverse is much simpler than God, because although it posits a vast number of universes, they all share the same basic laws. God, by contrast… is the most complex answer… But this depends upon the criteria by which we determine simplicity. Which is simpler: an infinite number of worlds or an infinite person behind the world?”
“If we think evolution has displaced the need for God, whatever else we have done, we have not transitioned from the mysterious to the non mysterious, from the wild to the prosaic. No, we are in a deeply mysterious world any way we look at it.”
“I think it was Chesterton who said the worst moment for the skeptic is when he feels truly grateful but has no one to thank.”
“Think about it: on a naturalistic account of reality, the feeling of love has a similar status to the enjoyment of music. Love came about in the evolutionary process as a by-product of natural selection. It affects us the way it does because it helped our ancestors survive and pas not their genes. Love is therefore an accidental feature of reality, and the feeling of significance that accompanies it is your brain tricking you.”
“In the modern West, our moral framework is primarily grounded in considerations of harm, whereas virtually all other cultures have developed their moral vision from a variety of other criteria, such as care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity.”
“Johnathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind) argues that conservatives and liberals often talk past one another because they don’t take into account their differing intuitions about the nature of morality. We therefore need to be slower to dismiss others simply because we can refute their arguments and more discerning of the role our moral convictions are playing in us. ‘Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.’”
“… the evolutionary process is interested in survival, not truth.”
“What is needed to explain the existence of a book is not a first sentence but an author.”
“The idea of God as the source of morality is not a claim that believers in God are more moral (which is a sociological question), or that religions have produced moral guidelines for society (a historical question), or that religious people know morality more accurately (which is an epistemological question). The issue is where morality itself comes from (an ontological question).”
“To put it simply: if you are looking for God, you will likely succeed; if you are avoiding him, you will also likely succeed.”
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May 5, 2022
It had been a while for me. I had not read an apologetics book cover to cover in a while. And honestly I am not sure I will ever read one as good as this again. This was a unique and creative blend of a lot of apologetics and I think it will be one I will reference again and again. I have heard countless podcasts with the author and it has only made this book more enjoyable. Now I am going to buy copies for my friends as well. Highest recommendation
June 23, 2025
Main thesis: The Christian story is more noble, elegant, coherent, and hopeful than the alternative of Naturalism.
I’m always enriched by Gavin’s writing. I’m leaving this book not simply informed of some good arguments for the faith, but, like Puddleglum, compelled to believe by the sheer beauty of the thought that Jesus really did rise from the dead.
I’m always enriched by Gavin’s writing. I’m leaving this book not simply informed of some good arguments for the faith, but, like Puddleglum, compelled to believe by the sheer beauty of the thought that Jesus really did rise from the dead.
February 5, 2022
Gavin Ortland's book is a beneficial addition to apologetics scholarship of recent years. While not exhaustive, it does present some unique approaches and also some creative retellings of more traditional arguments.
The introduction makes the point that today's generation is not asking the same questions that were being asked in times past. While our generation (speaking as someone over the age of 50) was asking the question, "What is true?", the present generation is asking "What is desirable?" Ortlund's primary goal is to present Christianity as both desirable and also a plausible explanation for what is true using an abductive approach.
The second chapter which focuses on theism as the best answer to the existence of math, music, and love (things which give life meaning) is both compelling and the books most unique offering. While these are not the most traditional apologetic arguments (or perhaps even the strongest), they are perhaps more relatable for a post-modern generation than traditional arguments based on design or cosmology.
The third chapter exploring the moral argument for the existence of God is a more traditional one, but also packaged in a fresh way. The section looking at Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov is particularly compelling and challenging at a heart level.
Ortlund spends relatively little time exploring design in nature, and touches only briefly on arguments for the reliability of Scripture (focusing exclusively on the Gospels). There is also nothing on gender or sexuality, which is a topic that needs to be included in an exhaustive treatment of apologetics for the present generation. However, Ortlund is not trying to be exhaustive but creative and fresh in his approach. In this, he succeeds. Highly recommended as a valuable supplement in a study of Christian apologetics.
The introduction makes the point that today's generation is not asking the same questions that were being asked in times past. While our generation (speaking as someone over the age of 50) was asking the question, "What is true?", the present generation is asking "What is desirable?" Ortlund's primary goal is to present Christianity as both desirable and also a plausible explanation for what is true using an abductive approach.
The second chapter which focuses on theism as the best answer to the existence of math, music, and love (things which give life meaning) is both compelling and the books most unique offering. While these are not the most traditional apologetic arguments (or perhaps even the strongest), they are perhaps more relatable for a post-modern generation than traditional arguments based on design or cosmology.
The third chapter exploring the moral argument for the existence of God is a more traditional one, but also packaged in a fresh way. The section looking at Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov is particularly compelling and challenging at a heart level.
Ortlund spends relatively little time exploring design in nature, and touches only briefly on arguments for the reliability of Scripture (focusing exclusively on the Gospels). There is also nothing on gender or sexuality, which is a topic that needs to be included in an exhaustive treatment of apologetics for the present generation. However, Ortlund is not trying to be exhaustive but creative and fresh in his approach. In this, he succeeds. Highly recommended as a valuable supplement in a study of Christian apologetics.
March 27, 2022
Gavin Ortlund's "Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn't" asks the question: is naturalism or Christianity the more likely option to make sense of the world we live in? Ortlund begins with this question: "Suppose Hamlet is searching for Shakespeare. He cannot find him in the way he might find other characters in the play, like Ophelia or Claudius. So where should he look?" The rest of Ortlund's book tries to answer that question. Ortlund says, "if God is real, he will be both infinitely close and infinitely far."
Ortlund believes that our hearts, our hopes are perhaps the most powerful aspect of making sense of the world theologically. "I hope in some way or another, wish it were true," Ortlund says. It is that desire for life to be about more that Ortlund believes is the most convincing proof of the gospel as opposed to naturalism.
Ortlund navigates the question of how we can best make sense of the world through four meaty chapters: "The Cause of the World," "The Meaning of the World," "The Conflict of the World," and "The Hope of the World." In the first chapter, he seeks to prove that it's more likely that there is a First Mover than not. In the second chapter, he uses math, music, and love to point toward transcendence. In the third chapter, he asserts that naturalism doesn't have an answer for our intuition that there are things that are wrong, even evil, in the world. In his final chapter, Ortlund gives us a taste of what it would mean if Jesus was the Son of God who came, lived, died, and was resurrected for us. Ortlund says, "Just imagine: What if there was a world in which your deepest pain was not simply ended or forgotten but transformed into glory, like the scars on Jesus's resurrected body?"
Ortlund's book does a great job in pressing into the most meaningful questions of faith in our secular age. He is at his best when he asks simple questions like, "Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why Beethoven's Ninth Sympony beautiful." Similarly, Ortlund notes that "the worst moment for the skeptic is when he feels truly grateful but has no one to thank." Later, Ortlund suggests that, "Morality is so deeply hardwired into our nature than an amoral world feels very close to a meaningless world."
Ortlund asks incisive questions and offers hope in a world with God in it. He says, "The Christian story is not only a more plausible story than its naturalistic counterpart but more interesting, more elegant, more signifying to humanity, and more hopeful." Ortlund recognizes that the bridge to faith isn't intellectual and no apologist is able to answer every question. But he has thoughtfully pushed us to consider that there are questions that might be even more challenging for the naturalist than the Christian. He concludes by offering an invitation. "Are you almost convinced? Would you give anything, as would I, for it to be true? Then believe."
The book is weighty and intellectual enough to engage rigorous skeptics without being purely for the academic arena. That said, this isn't for the faint of heart. If you're looking for a light introduction to apologetics, this isn't the book for you. Additionally, if you are looking for a book that compares the hope offered in Christ compared to the religions of the world, this isn't the book for you either. but what Ortlund has promised, he delivers on. I commend "Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't" to you.
For more reviews see thebeehive.live.
Ortlund believes that our hearts, our hopes are perhaps the most powerful aspect of making sense of the world theologically. "I hope in some way or another, wish it were true," Ortlund says. It is that desire for life to be about more that Ortlund believes is the most convincing proof of the gospel as opposed to naturalism.
Ortlund navigates the question of how we can best make sense of the world through four meaty chapters: "The Cause of the World," "The Meaning of the World," "The Conflict of the World," and "The Hope of the World." In the first chapter, he seeks to prove that it's more likely that there is a First Mover than not. In the second chapter, he uses math, music, and love to point toward transcendence. In the third chapter, he asserts that naturalism doesn't have an answer for our intuition that there are things that are wrong, even evil, in the world. In his final chapter, Ortlund gives us a taste of what it would mean if Jesus was the Son of God who came, lived, died, and was resurrected for us. Ortlund says, "Just imagine: What if there was a world in which your deepest pain was not simply ended or forgotten but transformed into glory, like the scars on Jesus's resurrected body?"
Ortlund's book does a great job in pressing into the most meaningful questions of faith in our secular age. He is at his best when he asks simple questions like, "Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why Beethoven's Ninth Sympony beautiful." Similarly, Ortlund notes that "the worst moment for the skeptic is when he feels truly grateful but has no one to thank." Later, Ortlund suggests that, "Morality is so deeply hardwired into our nature than an amoral world feels very close to a meaningless world."
Ortlund asks incisive questions and offers hope in a world with God in it. He says, "The Christian story is not only a more plausible story than its naturalistic counterpart but more interesting, more elegant, more signifying to humanity, and more hopeful." Ortlund recognizes that the bridge to faith isn't intellectual and no apologist is able to answer every question. But he has thoughtfully pushed us to consider that there are questions that might be even more challenging for the naturalist than the Christian. He concludes by offering an invitation. "Are you almost convinced? Would you give anything, as would I, for it to be true? Then believe."
The book is weighty and intellectual enough to engage rigorous skeptics without being purely for the academic arena. That said, this isn't for the faint of heart. If you're looking for a light introduction to apologetics, this isn't the book for you. Additionally, if you are looking for a book that compares the hope offered in Christ compared to the religions of the world, this isn't the book for you either. but what Ortlund has promised, he delivers on. I commend "Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't" to you.
For more reviews see thebeehive.live.
February 1, 2022
Ortlund does not set out to prove the truthfulness of Christianity, but asks a simple question: when comparing Christianity and naturalism (the book does not consider non-Christian religions), which is telling us a story that “better accounts for the strangeness, the incompleteness, the brokenness, and the beauty of our world?” (p.11). This is not a deductive approach but an “abductive” method of reasoning.
Ortlund defends the Christian faith by appealing to the gut level of the reader, assuming that beauty “travels at a wavelength that even the disenchanted can hear.” (p.7). It’s a very effective approach, because it appeals to common human experience — the permanent and “universally binding” nature of mathematics (p.75), or the transcendent beauty of music (which has caused some agnostics to reconsider their view — p.89) — as compelling evidence that nature is not all there is to this world.
In the introduction, Ortlund indicates that he hopes his readers at least will wish the Christian story were true. This is something I’ve often thought about: if a non-believer has no desire for the resurrection of Jesus to be true, that would seem to suggest that the person’s unbelief is not merely intellectual, but rooted in something more emotional and even troubling. But if someone does want the resurrection to be true, then we are tapping into what every person really longs for – a day coming when everything sad will come untrue. That’s what every good movie with a happy ending whispers to us.
Excellent book, not just for unbelievers and skeptics, but also for Christians battling with doubt.
Ortlund defends the Christian faith by appealing to the gut level of the reader, assuming that beauty “travels at a wavelength that even the disenchanted can hear.” (p.7). It’s a very effective approach, because it appeals to common human experience — the permanent and “universally binding” nature of mathematics (p.75), or the transcendent beauty of music (which has caused some agnostics to reconsider their view — p.89) — as compelling evidence that nature is not all there is to this world.
In the introduction, Ortlund indicates that he hopes his readers at least will wish the Christian story were true. This is something I’ve often thought about: if a non-believer has no desire for the resurrection of Jesus to be true, that would seem to suggest that the person’s unbelief is not merely intellectual, but rooted in something more emotional and even troubling. But if someone does want the resurrection to be true, then we are tapping into what every person really longs for – a day coming when everything sad will come untrue. That’s what every good movie with a happy ending whispers to us.
Excellent book, not just for unbelievers and skeptics, but also for Christians battling with doubt.
December 29, 2021
This was one of the best books I’ve read this year. Gavin successively radically changed my perception of both reality and apologetics. He also put words to thoughts, longings, and feelings I’ve had pertaining Christian existentialism but had worried were wrong or in a way heretical.
There are some books, no matter how academic they might be, that ease your mind. Well, this one doesn’t quite ease your mind into anything because it ends with an exhortation toward existential uncertainty. However, Ortlund beautifully argues for the existence and better story available in the theistic creation, purpose, and telos of life in the world over any naturalistic contrasting theory.
There are some books, no matter how academic they might be, that ease your mind. Well, this one doesn’t quite ease your mind into anything because it ends with an exhortation toward existential uncertainty. However, Ortlund beautifully argues for the existence and better story available in the theistic creation, purpose, and telos of life in the world over any naturalistic contrasting theory.
February 18, 2022
It’s hard to imagine anyone offering apologetics much sharper than this while remaining at the popular level. Fair, comprehensive, and scholarly—yet remarkably succinct and accessible. Moving forward, this will probably be my top recommendation for entry-level apologetics. Ortlund is primarily concerned with naturalism—and combats it not only intellectually but aesthetically. He employs abductive (as opposed to inductive or deductive) reasoning throughout, and powerfully shows how Christianity is not only reasonable, but beautiful. His analysis of the beauty of resurrection and new creation in the final chapter is alone worth the price of the book.
August 19, 2022
A kind, courageous, and compellingly thorough rebuttal to new atheism. Ortlund does not gloss over difficult questions, nor does he dismiss his opponents' arguments as unworthy of consideration. Instead, he starts with the beginning - the origin of all things - and applies a range of philosophical, historical, theological, and even scientific reasons why belief in the Christian God is not just a possibility but it is in many ways strongly plausible. As always, I'm grateful for Ortlund's personal vulnerability and peaceful, methodical writing style. He clearly seeks not to make enemies of those who disagree but to engage them in serious discussion.
June 17, 2024
4.7 Stars
Gavin Ortlund's "Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't" is a really really good book on apologetics. Ortlund's book is fairly straight-forward in terms of apologetics; his aim is to address many of Western secularism's (especially the new atheisms) reasons for disbelief in God. Ortlund's book though is just so well written, organized, and argued that it's the book I'll be refering to for a long time.
Ortlund structures his book based on a narrative approach. He argues that Christian faith is reasonable because it explains our origins, meaning, morals and hope. Throughout the book Ortlund explains Western secularism's attempt to explain our origins, meaning, morals and hope. Yet he shows how secularism's approach falls woefully short of enabling us to truly life, and the Christian approach allows us to live true, full and hopeful lives. Yet Ortlund still explains that Christianity does not offer us absolute certainty. Christianity is more reliable and more certain than secularism, and yet we still need to take a leap of faith in full trust and hope in our Savior.
I loved this book and I will be recommending it to many friends and family members!
Gavin Ortlund's "Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't" is a really really good book on apologetics. Ortlund's book is fairly straight-forward in terms of apologetics; his aim is to address many of Western secularism's (especially the new atheisms) reasons for disbelief in God. Ortlund's book though is just so well written, organized, and argued that it's the book I'll be refering to for a long time.
Ortlund structures his book based on a narrative approach. He argues that Christian faith is reasonable because it explains our origins, meaning, morals and hope. Throughout the book Ortlund explains Western secularism's attempt to explain our origins, meaning, morals and hope. Yet he shows how secularism's approach falls woefully short of enabling us to truly life, and the Christian approach allows us to live true, full and hopeful lives. Yet Ortlund still explains that Christianity does not offer us absolute certainty. Christianity is more reliable and more certain than secularism, and yet we still need to take a leap of faith in full trust and hope in our Savior.
I loved this book and I will be recommending it to many friends and family members!
February 13, 2022
I’ve followed Dr Ortlund on YouTube for quite a while - he’s one of my favorite Christian YouTubers. He seems genuinely humble and kind.
Although I’ve been a Christian my whole life, I struggle with doubt — sometimes it feels like I have more doubts than faith. My particular doubts are usually intellectual in nature, so this book was extremely helpful for me. I appreciated the chapter on the arguments from math, music, and love, but the real high point for me was Chapter 3, the one about the conflict between good and evil. This argument resonates for me personally.
Although I’ve been a Christian my whole life, I struggle with doubt — sometimes it feels like I have more doubts than faith. My particular doubts are usually intellectual in nature, so this book was extremely helpful for me. I appreciated the chapter on the arguments from math, music, and love, but the real high point for me was Chapter 3, the one about the conflict between good and evil. This argument resonates for me personally.
November 28, 2021
Simply great - what a clear, winsome exposition of why supernaturalism is *just* better in accounting for our and the Universe's existence compared to naturalism. There's a storytelling aspect to his abductive argumentation that is 'baptised' in C.S Lewis's and Tolkien's literary masterpieces (without neglecting serious research behind the claims he makes) making this book engaging for any type of reader. The best of Gavin's irenic spirit!
December 14, 2021
This book is dope. You should read it.
May 16, 2022
Compelling. One of the best apologetics books ever written, in my estimation.
August 22, 2022
This is exactly how apologetics should be done and discussed. Too often we are brought into a stale and stuffy classroom and set before a firehose of propositional truths and philosophical arguments, somehow expected to take these things to our unbelieving neighbors.
Ortlund’s approach is from beauty and wonder. He takes more heady stuff and makes it clear and understandable. Yet, his driving factor is our longing for beauty and love. He takes his arguments through the topics of math, music, and movies. Overall I found this to be in the same note as Keller’s The Reason For God. Beautifully and masterfully done.
Ortlund’s approach is from beauty and wonder. He takes more heady stuff and makes it clear and understandable. Yet, his driving factor is our longing for beauty and love. He takes his arguments through the topics of math, music, and movies. Overall I found this to be in the same note as Keller’s The Reason For God. Beautifully and masterfully done.
July 10, 2023
I’m a big fan of Gavin. His YouTube channel is great and so is this book. I really appreciate his pastoral approach as well as the persuasiveness of his arguments via abduction. This book is both winsome and rational. I already agreed with him, but at multiple points throughout the book I found myself overwhelmed by a strong sense of both the truth and the beauty of the Gospel. Excellent book.
January 18, 2025
Tremendous. Love how Gavin approaches these conversations with creativity, care, and precision. The chapter on meaning through math, music, and love is so compelling.
August 26, 2024
If the goal of this book is to meet contemporary skeptics where they are at in their thinking, engage with the best arguments and philosophies from the naturalistic worldview, and then create a framework of assessing the deep existential ramifications of the conflicting worldviews, this book is nothing short of spectacular.
Gavin does a wonderful job at both digging into the details and presenting the most common (and sometimes even the obscure) arguments for both naturalism and Christianity in four main topics: beginning, meaning, conflict, and hope. Gavin challenges us to grapple with some of the brightest philosophical minds in history, from men like Aristotle, Nietzsche, Pascal, Russell, and many contemporary critics such as Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris. But arguably more important is the weight Gavin places on how both worldviews fair in explaining the very experience of reality and humanity we live every day. He not only presents Christianity as respectable, rational, and true, but also as deeply awe inspiring, fulfilling, and wonderfully desirable.
If there could be any gripe I have with this book, is that I wish he would have presented the core message of the gospel, forgiveness of sins through Christ's life and death appropriated by faith and repentance. He does well at presenting many of the fruits and effects of the gospel but could have presented the core message in the conclusion along with his recommendation to wager on belief. "Can We Trust the Gospels?" is a great example of a book that does this well.
With that in mind, this book is a wonderful dive into apologetics from a similar spirit to Keller and Lewis' works, but with a notably more academically rigorous feel. I would highly recommend this to any skeptic entertaining Christianity or a Christian who wants to have a more rigorous defense of their faith that they can use to share the great hope of the gospel with skeptics in their lives.
Gavin does a wonderful job at both digging into the details and presenting the most common (and sometimes even the obscure) arguments for both naturalism and Christianity in four main topics: beginning, meaning, conflict, and hope. Gavin challenges us to grapple with some of the brightest philosophical minds in history, from men like Aristotle, Nietzsche, Pascal, Russell, and many contemporary critics such as Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris. But arguably more important is the weight Gavin places on how both worldviews fair in explaining the very experience of reality and humanity we live every day. He not only presents Christianity as respectable, rational, and true, but also as deeply awe inspiring, fulfilling, and wonderfully desirable.
If there could be any gripe I have with this book, is that I wish he would have presented the core message of the gospel, forgiveness of sins through Christ's life and death appropriated by faith and repentance. He does well at presenting many of the fruits and effects of the gospel but could have presented the core message in the conclusion along with his recommendation to wager on belief. "Can We Trust the Gospels?" is a great example of a book that does this well.
With that in mind, this book is a wonderful dive into apologetics from a similar spirit to Keller and Lewis' works, but with a notably more academically rigorous feel. I would highly recommend this to any skeptic entertaining Christianity or a Christian who wants to have a more rigorous defense of their faith that they can use to share the great hope of the gospel with skeptics in their lives.
August 16, 2025
9/10.
Winsome, honest, and enchanting.
While more academic than most popular-level apologetic books, Why God Makes Sense is a work suited for the age. While the deductive and inductive fault lines between Christian theism and naturalism (this book’s focus) have been clearly delineated, Gavin’s abductive appeals to the truth, goodness, and beauty of Christian theism give the winsome, honest, and enchanting answers to the questions being asked today. A retrieval of the Pascalian approach (showing Christianity to be respectable, desirable, and true) for apologetics applied to post-modernity was vividly apparent throughout and Christians will benefit from studying and using it as Ortlund does. While fairly academic, the pastoral distinctives shine throughout and proved good for my soul.
The final sections read like an apotheosis of apologetics:
"Origins, meaning, conflict, and hope are four anchors of any good story. You might regard them as the four building blocks of any story: every story comes from someone, means something, is shaped by conflict, and then ultimately resolves. . . . The Christian story is not only a more plausible story than its naturalistic counterpart but more interesting, more elegant, more dignifying to humanity, and more hopeful." (209)
My only critique is that Ortlund's frequent highlighting of his "modest claims" were too amenable at the expense of more forceful assertions which would be warranted given the strength of his arguments.
Other quotables:
In arguing for God from… math?
"Doing math is less like being an architect who builds from scratch and more like being an archaeologist who excavates what is already there. . . . It is difficult to explain why a finite space-time universe that is in constant flux should produce a mental realm characterized by apparently eternal, necessary truths [e.g., math]. Where did this distinct realm come from? How did the temporal produce the permanent?" (77, 78)
And music!
We can make the contrast between a theistic and a naturalistic account of music as stark as possible by describing them in metaphor. [In] a naturalistic worldview, music is like an opiate for a dying man. It is pleasant in such a way as distracts us from reality. Music is pleasant and beautiful, but reality is ultimately chaotic and dark. Thus, we like music to the degree that it pulls us away from what things are really like. [In] a theistic view, by contrast, music is like a window to an imprisoned man. It is pleasant insofar as it is a portal into ultimate reality. It is a little glimmer that there might be more out there. It is one avenue by which transcendence and ultimacy reach down to us, however drab our prison cell may be. (101)
To put it simply: if you are looking for God, you will likely succeed; if you are avoiding him, you will also likely succeed. What all this amounts to is this: those who feel trapped by uncertainty, as I did in college, must ask themselves if they are quite certain about their need for certainty. For, ultimately, the demand for certainty springs from the assumption that we know what we need and that we know what we want. But do we? Hasn’t most happiness and truth already come to us through experiences that involve surprise, surrender, and risk? Perhaps certainty is overrated. (213–14)
Winsome, honest, and enchanting.
While more academic than most popular-level apologetic books, Why God Makes Sense is a work suited for the age. While the deductive and inductive fault lines between Christian theism and naturalism (this book’s focus) have been clearly delineated, Gavin’s abductive appeals to the truth, goodness, and beauty of Christian theism give the winsome, honest, and enchanting answers to the questions being asked today. A retrieval of the Pascalian approach (showing Christianity to be respectable, desirable, and true) for apologetics applied to post-modernity was vividly apparent throughout and Christians will benefit from studying and using it as Ortlund does. While fairly academic, the pastoral distinctives shine throughout and proved good for my soul.
The final sections read like an apotheosis of apologetics:
"Origins, meaning, conflict, and hope are four anchors of any good story. You might regard them as the four building blocks of any story: every story comes from someone, means something, is shaped by conflict, and then ultimately resolves. . . . The Christian story is not only a more plausible story than its naturalistic counterpart but more interesting, more elegant, more dignifying to humanity, and more hopeful." (209)
My only critique is that Ortlund's frequent highlighting of his "modest claims" were too amenable at the expense of more forceful assertions which would be warranted given the strength of his arguments.
Other quotables:
In arguing for God from… math?
"Doing math is less like being an architect who builds from scratch and more like being an archaeologist who excavates what is already there. . . . It is difficult to explain why a finite space-time universe that is in constant flux should produce a mental realm characterized by apparently eternal, necessary truths [e.g., math]. Where did this distinct realm come from? How did the temporal produce the permanent?" (77, 78)
And music!
We can make the contrast between a theistic and a naturalistic account of music as stark as possible by describing them in metaphor. [In] a naturalistic worldview, music is like an opiate for a dying man. It is pleasant in such a way as distracts us from reality. Music is pleasant and beautiful, but reality is ultimately chaotic and dark. Thus, we like music to the degree that it pulls us away from what things are really like. [In] a theistic view, by contrast, music is like a window to an imprisoned man. It is pleasant insofar as it is a portal into ultimate reality. It is a little glimmer that there might be more out there. It is one avenue by which transcendence and ultimacy reach down to us, however drab our prison cell may be. (101)
To put it simply: if you are looking for God, you will likely succeed; if you are avoiding him, you will also likely succeed. What all this amounts to is this: those who feel trapped by uncertainty, as I did in college, must ask themselves if they are quite certain about their need for certainty. For, ultimately, the demand for certainty springs from the assumption that we know what we need and that we know what we want. But do we? Hasn’t most happiness and truth already come to us through experiences that involve surprise, surrender, and risk? Perhaps certainty is overrated. (213–14)
March 19, 2022
Simply refreshing. I felt as if Gavin was a friend helping me with a hard conversation I was having with another friend. Not only that, he helped me see a side of apologetics I forgot existed... Arguments from beauty and goodness. Pick this up if apologetics exhausts you but you are eager to see it's value again.
February 17, 2022
The new gold standard in accessible apologetics. Well researched, well documented, winsome, and encouraging. A great resource to refer to again and again, but also written in a way that you might not have to.
January 3, 2024
A brilliant case for theism as a whole, and specifically Christian theism. Ortlund is careful, patient, and convincing with his arguments-- he is perhaps the most helpful, thoughtful, and accessible Christian apologist working today.
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