"Look carefully. Listen closely. Do you see? Do you hear? There are a million signposts pointing toward the specific truth of God in Christ. I've seen many of them. But God is speaking to you too. Look and see. Listen and hear. "In this accessible and engaging work, veteran apologist Jim Sire gives us eyes to see the myriad "signals of transcendence" all around us that point to the specific truth of God in Christ. Focusing on the power of good literature-even from those who deny the existence of God-enables us to perceive and testify to God's reality in ways that rational argument alone cannot. "While reason can be very helpful in pointing us to God and helping us in our apologetics, what compels and convinces people is more multidimensional," says Sire. "What is needed is a more holistic apologetic that not only includes truth but also goodness and beauty." All inspiration is rooted in God the Creator, and some of God's truth lies buried until an artist exposes it. Good literature, written from a Christian standpoint or not, displays multiple examples of our human understandings of God, the universe and ourselves. It testifies to the existence of a transcendent realm and often, in fact, to the truth of the Christian faith.
"Too often apologetics is seen as a battle of wits, with a hope that the best, most godly thoughts will vanquish all comers. Sire provides us with a genuinely personal apologetic, moving beyond the old-fashioned testimony and arguing from experience that our shared humanity is an amazing apologetic all its own: in our shared stories, in our shared experiences with beauty, in our shared nature with
Gene C. Fant Jr., provost, Palm Beach Atlantic University, author of The Liberal Arts: A S
"Put on your thinking cap for this one. . . . [Sire's] unique approach includes literature and the arts to demonstrate not only God but also Christ as Savior. His method is abstract, artsy, conceptual, and yet down-to-earth. The included diagrams are helpful to understand his esoteric ideas. . . . Lovers of literary interpretation will enjoy reading this book."
John Bernstein, CBA Retailers + Resources, August 2014
"As informed and informative as it is thoughtful and thought-provoking, Sire writes with a true eloquence and a genuine engagement in the form of six 'arguments' drawn from a variety of sources ranging from Rene Descartes, Stanislaw Lem, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Virginia Woolf, Francisco Goya, literary theory, Jesus, and Jehovah."
James A. Cox, The Midwest Book Review, September 2014
