Book Reviews -- By: Anonymous

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 158:632 (Oct 2001)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous


Book Reviews

By The Faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary

Matthew S. DeMoss, Editor

Reaching for the Invisible God. By Philip Yancey. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000. 301 pp. $21.99.

In an interview with journalists about his newest publication, Philip Yancey observed that evangelical books typically portray an unrealistic view of life and God. “As I try to articulate the theme for my life,” he continued, “I took the worst the church has to offer and still, somehow, ended up in the loving arms of God. I learned very early on that theology matters.” Yancey reported that when he was an infant his twenty-four-year-old father contracted polio and became completely paralyzed. His father had wanted to be a missionary and now survived in an iron lung. Zealous Christians gathered around, and against medical advice they believed that God would heal him if he were taken off artificial life support. As a consequence his father died, and the author grew up enduring the reality of that act of misguided faith. Through adolescence the tensions of faith became even worse in the midst of a “toxic” fundamentalism that for Yancey reduced the good news to bad (M. Kellner, “ ‘Invisible God’ Hard to Grasp, Author Says,” Washington Times, September 22, 2000, at www.washtimes.com).

Reaching for the Invisible God is Yancey’s pilgrimage to answer the question, “How can I have a personal relationship with a being when I’m never quite sure he’s there?” (p. 9). As in his other works the author writes to those who struggle in the dialectic of doubt and faith when the Christian life does not seem to work out the way it is supposed to. This work keynotes the human relationship with God and seeks to answer what one can expect. The book divides into six parts, moving from “Thirst: Our Longing for God” to “Faith: When God Seems Absent, Indifferent, or Even Hostile.” Parts three and four discuss who God is (“God: Contact with the Invisible”) and the nature of our relationship with Him (“Union: A Partnership of Unequals”). While the book begins broadly with quotations from many who are outside classical Christianity, sections five and six draw increasingly from biblical faith and evangelical pietism: “Growth: Stages along the Way” and “Restoration: The Relationship’s End.”

Readers have come to expect a certain literary finesse from Yancey. This book is no disappointment. In typical Yancey style it has nicely honed phrases, hundreds of fresh quotations and illustrations, and crisp copy. In a literary sense the net is cast wide as the author cites dozens of examples outside the Christian faith while he particularly targets those struggl...

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