BOOK REVIEW:
Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living. By Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002. 150 pp. ISBN 0802839819.

“What one prayer do you have for your children?” a wise Presbyterian Elder asked me when I was yet a young pastor. Glad that in reality I was not limited to just one such prayer, I nonetheless replied, “That God may be with them all their days.” “A noble prayer,” she said, “but you really don’t need to pray for what God will do automatically. You give thanks that God's love is constant and unfailing. So, perhaps a prayer for your children could be that they have faith.”

I have thought of her wise counsel and have offered that prayer many times as my children have grown. With one in college, one on his way in the Fall, and another soon to follow, I have come to see how important it is to their mother, me, and the Christian community at large that they have faith. . .that faith is their habit, that faith is not one of many pieces but is integral.

On one level, nothing we say and do as parents can guarantee they have faith. But as our children spread their wings, is there anything we parents and the church can do to help our young people have faith?

Cornelius Plantinga Jr, President of Calvin Theological Seminary, has retrofitted a document he had written for Calvin College students. This rendition, entitled Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living, is intended for a larger Christian audience and is aimed at helping teenagers, college students, and young adults make a stab at pulling off intelligent, articulate, authentic faith.

Plantinga lays out some main themes of the Christian faith in order to show how Christian higher education fits inside a view of the world and of human life that is formed by these themes: creation, fall, redemption, vocation, the kingdom of God, the hope of shalom. Always the educator, he includes an appendix containing useful “talking points” for each of the book’s chapters intended to prompt thoughtful discussions. The overall result is a helpful introduction to Christian faith spoken in what he calls a “Reformed, Augustinian accent.”

In a time when certain world leaders seem determined to draw us into war, Plantinga encourages what I take to be a Reformed imagination. “Imitators of Christ, the incarnate one, struggle to see the world through the eyes of others… This struggle will often begin in the simple attempt to imagine how life must be for others, and particularly how it must be for others whose situation in life differs sharply from our own. One who hopes is one who imagines” (p. 10).

Such an approach to life is almost second nature to people who speak in a Reformed accent. But it is a foreign tongue in a world where it is far more common for people to perceive, understand, and judge the world from the point of view of their own advantage. Forget what others may think or feel. Forget trying to understand another worldview.

Plantinga’s aim is to help young Christians seek a better way—a way thoroughly grounded in the principles and directions of scripture and the confessions. He invites his readers to discover the purposes of God and to make those purposes their own; to discover the ways of the kingdom and to follow in those ways; to uncover the mind of Christ and to strive to become like-minded (p. 94). One discovers the purposes, ways, and mind of God through a cooperative venture with fellow believers in Christ. “In a community of faith, blessed with an abundance of intelligence, devotion, and experience, bound together in mutual respect and accountability, Christians can explore the heights and depths of the contemporary world. Together, faculty, students, and staff can explore the world and its cultures before pretending to understand them; to understand them before presuming to appraise them; and to appraise them with an educated judgment gained from communion with Jesus Christ” (p. 99).

At stake is nothing less than the restoration of the whole earth. “On the third day Jesus rose from the dead, the pledge that one day all things shall be renewed. And God has called people like us (i.e., Christians) to become agents for the restoration project already in progress” (p. 139).

What Plantinga has provided is engaging, accessible, and intelligent—valuable enough for church leaders to work at coaxing our young into taking the time necessary to learn from this book.

William M. Klein
Pastor, Lexington Presbyterian Church
Lexington, VA

PUBLISHED IN THE BULLETIN OF THE INSTITUTE FOR REFORMED THEOLOGY, WINTER 2004, VOL. 4, #1.