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A Faith Study Series at Aiken's First Baptist Church

Introduction

The Reason for God is a book study course that chapter-by-chapter analyzes this 2009 bestseller by Tim Keller. Keller has gone on to publish other books since to include Making Sense of God (2016), Jesus the King (2013) and Encounters with Jesus (2013) to name but a few of Keller's many books.

According to Keller's official biograhical text insert he "was born and raised in Pennsylvania, and educated at Bucknell University, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Westminster Theological Seminary. He was first a pastor in Hopewell, Virginia. In 1989 he started Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan with his wife, Kathy, and their three sons. Today, Redeemer Church has more than five thousand regular attendees at five services, a host of daughter churches, and is planting churches in large cities throughout the world."

The text for this course, The Reason for God can also be from Amazon as a Kindle e-book or through Barnes & Noble. According to Publisher's Weekly, The Reason for God "mines material from literary classics, philosophy, anthropology and a multitude of other disciplines to make an intellectually compelling case for God. Written for skeptics and the believers who love them, the book draws on the author's encounters as founding pastor of New York's booming Redeemer Presbyterian Church. One of Keller's most provocative arguments is that all doubts, however skeptical and cynical they may seem, are really a set of alternate beliefs. Drawing on sources as diverse as 19th-century author Robert Louis Stevenson and contemporary New Testament theologian N.T. Wright, Keller attempts to deconstruct everyone he finds in his way, from the evolutionary psychologist Richard Dawkins to popular author Dan Brown. The first, shorter part of the book looks at popular arguments against God's existence, while the second builds on general arguments for God to culminate in a sharp focus on the redemptive work of God in Christ. Keller's condensed summaries of arguments for and against theism make the scope of the book overwhelming at times. Nonetheless, it should serve both as testimony to the author's encyclopedic learning and as a compelling overview of the current debate on faith for those who doubt and for those who want to re-evaluate what they believe, and why.

This course is organized over 16 sessions. When taught online students will go through the book and accompanying videos of Keller's lectures at their own pace and respond to each session's study questions as they will. When taught in the classroom or at church the course will be taught in one hour sessions over sixteen weeks and participants are encouraged to read the assigned chapters and consider the study questions before coming to class.

Course Enrollment & Participation

You can register for this class by contacting Terry Wimberley at etwimber@yahoo.com. Terry's phone number is 239.405.4164.

 Course Schedule