True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World

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How do we explain human consciousness? Where do we get our sense of beauty? Why do we recoil at suffering? Why do we have moral codes that none of us can meet? Why do we yearn for justice, yet seem incapable of establishing it?

Any philosophy or worldview must make sense of the world as we actually experience it. We need to explain how we can discern qualities such as beauty and evil and account for our practices of morality and law.

The complexity of the contemporary world is sometimes seen as an embarrassment for Christianity. But law professor David Skeel makes a fresh case for the plausibility and explanatory power of Christianity. The Christian faith offers plausible explanations for the central puzzles of our existence, such as our capacity for idea-making, our experience of beauty and suffering, and our inability to create a just social order. When compared with materialism or other sets of beliefs, Christianity provides a more comprehensive framework for understanding human life as we actually live it.

We need not deny the complexities of life as we experience it. But the paradoxes of our existence can lead us to the possibility that the existence of God could make sense of it all.

David A. Skeel Jr. is S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He is the author of The New Financial Deal, Icarus in the Boardroom and Debt's Dominion. He has been interviewed on The News Hour, Nightline, Chris Matthews's Hardball (MSNBC), National Public Radio and Marketplace, and has written for such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard and Books Culture. Skeel is a frequent speaker at Veritas Forums and is an elder at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. He blogs at www.trueparadoxblog.com.