Book Reviews -- By: Matthew S. DeMoss

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 165:660 (Oct 2008)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Matthew S. DeMoss


Book Reviews

By The Faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary

Matthew S. DeMoss

Editor

God’s Rivals: Why Has God Allowed Different Religions? Insights from the Bible and the Early Church. By Gerald R. McDermott. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007. 181 pp. $18.00.

McDermott, professor of religion at Roanoke College, is a respected scholar on the relationship of world religions and Christian faith. His previous works include Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) and Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000).

This latest work, God’s Rivals, asks, Why has the true and sovereign God of the Bible allowed other religions (defined to include philosophies)? The author seeks to answer this question through studies in the Old and New Testaments as well as in the writings of four early church fathers—Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. These patristic fathers explicitly sought to defend Christian faith against pagan accusations of historical newness and about its insistence that there is no salvation outside of faith in Jesus Christ, what is often termed “the scandal of particularity.”

McDermott suggests three answers. First, the earliest divine truth (the prisca theologia) is both echoed and distorted through the centuries of religion. Second, supernatural rulers rebelled against the true God and have distorted His truth in the diversity of religions in the world. These “gods” enslave their adherents by counterfeit ritual laws, religious works, and sacrifices. The non-Christian religions are therefore not merely of human and cultural making but are empowered by fallen principalities and powers. McDermott notes that the Bible and the church fathers warn repeatedly of the seductive dangers of other religions. Third, God nevertheless loves the world and continues to attract seekers—Plato and Aristotle, as various patristic fathers argued—to the truth. By reason and moral sense some do indeed approach God’s truth. Nevertheless such knowledge only points the way; it is not the saving knowledge available only through the gospel of Jesus Christ. In short, God has permitted the religions to develop (dark and twisted as they are) so that the elements of truth in them might point toward Christ.

God’s Rivals presents in engaging, lucid style considerable biblical and historical information unfamiliar to most evangelicals. While the perversion of original divine revelation and of the law of conscience placed in

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