Requested for Review: The Jesus Inquest
Since I read and reviewed Nora Gallagher’s The Sacred Meal, it is time to request another book from BookSneeze.
I decided to request Charles Foster’s book The Jesus Inquest: The Case for and Against the Resurrection of the Christ. I’ve never read anything by Foster, and I don’t know much about this book.
Here is a blurb about the book:
An unbiased examination and compelling courtroom presentation revealing the undeniable facts of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Intelligent, fair, and remarkably compelling, The Jesus Inquest argues the case both for and against the resurrection of Christ. Point-by-point, Foster, in turn as both barrister X and Y, leaves no theological stone or dissenter’s rock unturned as he digs for answers and the truth. In the end he is more convinced that Jesus is real, that He did rise again, and that He lives to offer forgiveness and hope to all who come to Him.
Now, I’ve read a couple of apologetic type books that seek to prove (and/or disprove) the resurrection of Jesus Christ. To be honest, I’m not convinced that this is a profitable venture. Jesus praised Peter because God the Father had revealed the truth to him, not because he figured it out from the evidence. But, I’m willing to read this book, hoping that there will be some benefit to the church in it.
(By the way, I also don’t believe that “an unbiased examination” is possible.)
I’ll let you know what I find.
I’m not convinced that this is a profitable venture.
Not so much for believers, maybe, but it can be helpful to unbelievers to know that Christianity makes sense. There is a famous case (I forget the details) of an unbeliever who set out to disprove the existence of Jesus in a lawyerly manner, but ended up a believer who wrote an apologetic.
At one time I was an unbeliever who suddenly realized that I was pretty ignorant of the claims of Christianity, and decided to fix that. The only title at the bookstore that looked promising was Mere Christianity. Lewis’s book did not convert me, but it did persuade me that the claims of Christianity were at least consistent and plausible. That laid the foundation for my conversion about a year later.