Book Review – Beyond Opinion

Title: Beyond Opinion
Author: Ravi Zacharias

“The best book of its kind in print”
Norman Geisler, Apologist, Southern Evangelical Seminary, Charlotte

Apologetics is often viewed as an academic discipline that is only for those capable of grasping complex intellectual argument. In Beyond Opinion, Ravi Zacharias shatters this illusion, by reminding readers that all Christians are required to give an answer for the hope that they have. Quoting C.S. Lewis, he points out that it is not a question of whether you use an apologetic in answering someone’s question, but whether the apologetic you use is a good one.

With this in mind, Beyond Opinion is designed to provide the average believer with practical and grounded advice in how to respond to many of the most important challenges faced by Christians today. Individual chapters are written by members of the RZIM global team (including Michael Ramsden, Amy Orr-Ewing, John Lennox and Alister McGrath), who lend their considerable expertise to a whole range of issues, from postmodern attacks on the Bible and the claim that science is incompatible with faith, to the challenges posed by a resurgent Islam or militant atheism.

Yet perhaps the book’s main strength is that Zacharias stresses that all intellectual knowledge is meaningless if it is not accompanied by an authentic spiritual transformation. He argues that evangelism is relational and that others will not be convinced of the message if there is no discernible difference in the life of the messenger. In this sense, Beyond Opinion acts as a trumpet call for all Christians, as it shows that apologetics is about winning people rather than arguments and that this can only happen when we fully engage both heart and mind for Christ.

© Simon Wenham for RZIM Europe, 2008. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us
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