Short Answers to Big Questions about God, the Bible, and Christianity
by Clinton E. Arnold (Baker Books, 2015)
Good questions deserve good answers. They’re even better answers if they’re short ones. Clinton E. Arnold and Jeff Arnold have given us the best of both—short and good.
Their volume, Short Answers to Big Questions about God, the Bible, and Christianity, begins where it must if we are to answer questions related to God, Christianity, and the Christian life. Questions about the Bible must first find good answers. Otherwise, we have no basis of authority for answering other questions.
Each of the 50 chapters in this excellent volume uses a question as its title—and a subject as it subtitle by way of a topical overview. After answering the question, each chapter concludes by turning the tables and asking questions of the reader—all designed to drive home the chapter’s reasonable solutions. Related Bible passages are also listed for further study.
Even at 360 pages, the book feels brief. The authors explain the dilemma:
Each of these questions deserves a book of its own. It would be, in some ways, much easier to do that, because then we wouldn’t find ourselves having to leave out really good information for the sake of brevity. . . . Thus, Short Answers is not meant to be the end of your study; rather, it’s the beginning.
The book offers a solution to its own problem by providing the reader a list of excellent resources for further study.
Short Answers to Big Questions about God, the Bible, and Christianity reveals that we needn’t check our brain at the door in order to be a Christian. We can be intellectually honest—as well as compassionate and articulate—in offering good answers to good questions.