A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE: PUTTING CHRISTIAN TRUTH CLAIMS TO THE WORLDVIEW TEST by K.R. Samples. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2007. 312 pages, index. Paperback; $17.99. ISBN: 0801068223.
Kenneth Samples is the senior research fellow at Reasons To Believe, a theological think-tank that seeks to communicate the uniquely factual basis for belief in the Bible as the error-free Word of God and for personal faith in Jesus Christ as Creator and Savior. Moreover, Samples is an adjunct instructor of apologetics at Biola University. He has written this volume with the explicit intention to help modern-day Christians develop a worldview that is in conformity with the Biblical writ. He advocates the notion that a Christian who correctly understands the worldview of Christianity would thereafter be enabled to exhibit an overall lifestyle that is correspondent to traditional Christianity. In so attempting to elucidate a Christian worldview, Samples notes that proper Christian logical reasoning would help expose flawed fallacies that are present within the competing worldviews within the world today. In the first several chapters, Samples gives laudable extension to the necessity of developing a worldview perspective that is inline with the Biblical texts. Moreover, delineates the importance of the Apostle’s Creed for the foundation of a Christian worldview, which alone makes this volume worth its price. In another chapter, Samples expounds the basis of a Christian worldview by engaging its authority in all matters: Scripture. Samples then gives an excellent survey of the Christian view of God and its import to the derivation of a Christian worldview. Samples gives an enlightening discussion of the historic Christian view of mankind, in another chapter as well, similarly correlating it with the development of a truly Christian worldview. In the latter chapters, Samples identifies and interacts with the several opposing worldviews (including naturalism, postmodernism, pantheism, and Islamic).
A notable strength of the volume is Samples’ inclusion of discussion questions at the end of each chapter that more fully explore the implications of the material covered therein. Thus, this book would be well-used, for example, at small-group studies within the local church. A second notable strength of this book is the concise, acute, and accurate coverage of the relatively only distinctive Christian doctrine: the Trinity. Samples cites a plethora of Biblical support for the doctrine of the Trinity, and then makes extrapolations from that evidence to the implications upon a Christian worldview, which, like the coverage of the Apostle’s creed, alone makes this book worth its value. Yet another strength found within this book is the charts that Samples’ employs in order to summarize the argumentation found within each chapter.
Noting these strengths, however, I would urge caution to be exhibited by the readers of this book for the sole reason that Samples is unabashedly Reformed in his theology (not that Reformed theology in itself is errant, however). Rather, consistently throughout the book Samples equates Reformed doctrine with what is largely called either Protestant or Evangelical. Consequently, if the reader is not careful in noticing Samples’ confessional stance, he/she may interpret Samples to advocate the notion that the sole theological disposition that is coherent is the Reformed position. Numerous times Samples book intends to represent and depict “historic” and/or “Evangelical” Christian beliefs when in fact the doctrines that he mentions are Reformed, and not “historic” or “Evangelical” as per se. This equation of Evangelical/historic Christian doctrine with Reformed theology is disturbing to me, as one can veritably be an Evangelical in keeping with historic doctrine, while at the same time choosing to be Arminian or Wesleyan in theology. However, Samples does not, seemingly, advocate such a view, as one finds little reference to scholar’s who write from a non-Reformed position within Samples’ cited materials. In contrast, nearly all of the cited material comes from other Calvinistic/Reformed scholars. Another weakness to be found within this volume is Samples’ lack of invocation of primary source material, choosing to rely instead upon compendium volumes, survey volumes, encyclopedias, and dictionaries as the source material for his argument(s). Yet another weakness is the lack of a full bibliography for the sources that are cited, instead of the “select bibliographies” at the end of each chapter with endnotes including the material cited. Even with these issues, however, I heartily advocate the purchasing and perusal of this book by readers of Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith.
Reviewed by Bradford McCall, Divinity department, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA 23464.