Book Review: What's So Great About Christianity

This is arguably the best time of year to ponder what might be called the value proposition for Christianity, and Dinesh D’Souza has risen magnificently to that challenge in What’s So Great About Christianity (Regnery, 2007).

D’Souza writes with confidence. There is no question mark appended to the title of this book, as there might have been had someone else made the same case. Instead, we may count ourselves fortunate – nay, blessed – that neither the pithy evasions of high-profile atheists nor the bass drum thumps of embittered theologians who twist the words of Jesus to their own ends can withstand the suasion of D’Souza’s case for Christianity.

Vincent Carroll, Dave Shiflett, and Philip J. Sampson did yeoman work in this area a few years ago, and the ever-reliable Scott Hahn tangles with a doctrinaire Darwinist in a forthcoming book, but D’Souza bests those worthy fellows in the scope of his effort. D’Souza not only defends Christianity, he also asserts its superiority to all alternatives, often with gentle humor.

“This is not a time for Christians to turn the other cheek,” D’Souza writes mischievously, in words that people like the courageous Zakaria Botros would applaud, “it is a time to drive the money-changers out of the temple.” Consider passages like this one, where D’Souza toys with an argument once advanced by Carl Sagan:

“Carl Sagan writes that there are cultures like the Ik of Uganda, ‘where all Ten Commandments seem to be systematically, institutionally ignored.’ My own anthropological work on the Ik is incomplete, so I cannot say whether he is right. But let’s assume that he is. What does this show? That the Ik are radically different from us? But we too live in a culture where the Ten Commandments are systematically and institutionally ignored. Sagan’s example seems to establish not diversity but unity of practice.”

Can a pundit with a background in the humanities argue successfully with professionals from other disciplines on their home turf? Yes, if he’s done his homework. Sagan, remember, was an astronomer, not a sociologist. But by the time Sagan strayed into social theory, he and his ilk had already lost the scientific argument. If you like astronomy, D’Souza’s explanation for why atheists are discomfited by the Big Bang theory and background radiation is as clear-headed as anyone could wish. Moreover, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, E.O. Wilson, Steven Pinker, and David Hume fare no better than Sagan does. D’Souza has read them all, and takes each of them to the postcolonial woodshed with a switch in his hand.

Some chapters are better than others, but the breadth of his research gives D’Souza all the ammunition he needs to defend the Christian record on historical, philosophical, scientific, and moral grounds. The nuclear family, the idea of limited government, the Western concept of the rule of law, and our culture’s high emphasis on the relief of suffering all derive from “basic Christian understanding of the dignity of fallible human beings,” D’Souza reminds us, before backing each of those claims with a litany of pertinent facts.

When he needs backup singers, D’Souza calls in the A-team. It is Saint Paul who “in a single phrase repudiates an entire tradition of classical philosophy founded in Plato” by what he writes in Romans 7:19, and Saint Augustine whose understanding of the creation of the universe is vindicated by modern physics. A chapter explaining in layman’s terms how philosopher Immanuel Kant unmasked “the intellectual pretension of the Enlightenment: that reason and science are the only routes to reality and truth” is particularly devastating.

Although the bulk of the book is written as an entertaining and informative series of jousts with anti-Christian points of view, D’Souza switches gears near the end, and the elegance of that transition makes “What’s So Great About Christianity” a modern classic of the kind you’d want on a proverbial desert island where you could only take the best parts of your library.

Christians will have seen the switch coming, as the obvious answer to anyone who asks what makes Christianity special is that alone among religions of the world, it looks to Jesus as priest, prophet and king. That, of course, makes all the difference. D’Souza brings the argument home, and it would take a more gifted reviewer than I to craft a better conclusion than the one near the end of this book: “Christianity agrees with Hinduism and Buddhism on the need to extinguish the old self. It disagrees by declaring in advance that this project is impossible. So how can salvation be reconciled with divine holiness and justice? This is posing the question in the right way. The Christian answer is that God decided to pay the price himself for human sin. Not just this sin or that sin but all sin. God did this by becoming man and dying on the cross,” D’Souza writes.

That’s good, but it’s also a boilerplate statement of faith that any literate Christian could write. Where D’Souza rises from good to sublime is in what follows. You want to talk about March Madness and taking it to the hoop? Back to you, Dinesh (and as previously excerpted on this blog): “I want to reflect for a moment on God’s incredible sacrifice. I am not referring to Christ’s crucifixion. I am referring to God’s decision to become man. No other religion can even conceive this. The Greek and Roman gods of antiquity often disguised themselves as mortals, but they would not actually become mortal. Mexican author Carlos Fuentes writes that when Christian missionaries first presented their doctrines to the Aztecs, the Aztecs were totally uncomprehending. Fuentes writes, ‘In a universe accustomed to seeing men sacrificed to the gods, nothing amazed the Indians more than the sight of a god who had sacrificed himself to men.’

In my basketball-addled corner of North Carolina, that means Fuentes set a great pick, D’Souza dished a behind-the-back pass, and Jesus just threw down a rim-rattling dunk. But the book is full of gems like that, and you don’t have to read it in March to enjoy it.