The Work
The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity was published by Zondervan (Grand Rapids) in 2000. It is approximately 267 pages and continues the investigative-journalism format of Strobel's The Case for Christ (1998). Each chapter presents Strobel's interview with a leading apologist or scholar addressing one of eight major objections to Christian faith: the existence of evil and suffering, the cruelty of the Old Testament God, eternal damnation, the exclusivity of Christ, the church's history of violence, the supposed scientific impossibility of miracle, the unreliability of Scripture (handled briefly), and the existence of Christians who are moral hypocrites.
The book has sold over one million copies and has been translated into numerous languages. It is widely used in apologetics curricula at the high school and college level, in church-based Alpha courses, and as a resource for Christians encountering doubt. A companion documentary film was produced in 2008.
Biblical Engagement
Job 1:21 - 'And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD' - is the book's starting point for the problem of evil. The book opens with an account of Charles Templeton, a former Billy Graham colleague turned atheist, whose rejection of faith was triggered by a photograph of a drought-stricken African mother holding her dead child. Strobel addresses the emotional and philosophical dimensions of the problem of suffering through his interviews with Peter Kreeft and Norman Geisler. Job's response - blessing God even in desolation - is presented not as a solution to the theodicy problem but as a model of faith that persists through the problem without having a satisfying theoretical answer.
Habakkuk 1:2-3 - 'O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save! Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? for spoiling and violence are before me: and there is strife, and contention ariseth' - is the biblical model for honest protest against divine silence. Strobel uses the prophetic tradition of lament - Habakkuk, Job, the Psalms of lament - to argue that genuine faith includes the capacity to protest, question, and demand answers from God. The interviewing format enacts this: Strobel is not looking for comfortable affirmations but for honest engagement with the hardest questions.
Romans 9:20 - 'Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?' - is engaged in the chapter on evil and in the chapter on predestination and free will. Strobel's interviewees (particularly Norman Geisler) argue that the incomprehensibility of divine ways does not indicate divine cruelty but human cognitive limitation: we cannot judge God's actions by standards derived from the finite human perspective.
Matthew 25:46 - 'And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal' - is the text at the center of the chapter on hell. Strobel interviews J.P. Moreland on the existence of hell, addressing both the justice objection (how can a loving God sentence anyone to eternal punishment?) and the extent objection (what about those who never heard the gospel?). The interview presents hell as the necessary consequence of freely choosing to reject God, rather than as an arbitrary divine punishment.
John 14:6 ('I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me') is engaged in the chapter on religious pluralism and the exclusivity of Christ. Strobel interviews Ravi Zacharias on whether it is intellectually defensible to claim that Christianity is uniquely true. The argument presented is a version of the law of non-contradiction: all religions cannot be simultaneously true if they make mutually contradictory claims, and the question of which (if any) is true is a matter of evidence and argument rather than mere preference.
Author and Context
Lee Strobel (b. 1952) was born in Chicago and educated at the University of Missouri (journalism) and Yale Law School (Master of Studies in Law). He worked as a legal editor at the Chicago Tribune for thirteen years and was an atheist when his wife became a Christian in 1979. His investigation of the evidence for Christianity led to his own conversion in 1981. He became a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church (South Barrington, Illinois) under Bill Hybels and later at Saddleback Church under Rick Warren.
The Case for Faith was written in the context of the post-Case for Christ success and the ongoing Questions of Faith discussions in evangelical churches. Strobel designed the book to address the questions that typically stop people from taking the next step from intellectual acknowledgment of Christian claims to personal commitment - the objections that function as emotional or intellectual barriers to faith.
The book's format - a journalist interviewing experts - is both Strobel's genuine background (he is a trained investigative journalist) and a rhetorical strategy: it models the kind of investigation that any intellectually serious person can conduct, and it gives expert voices (Peter Kreeft, J.P. Moreland, Ravi Zacharias, Norman Geisler) access to a popular audience that might not read their more academic works.
Structure and Argument
The book addresses eight objections in eight chapters, each organized as an extended interview:
1. Evil and suffering (Peter Kreeft) 2. The cruelty of the Old Testament God (Norman Geisler) 3. Hell (J.P. Moreland) 4. Exclusivity of Christ (Ravi Zacharias) 5. The church's crimes (John D. Woodbridge) 6. Scientific impossibility of miracles (William Lane Craig - though Craig addresses a broader range of questions) 7. The problem of Christian hypocrisy (implicit throughout)
The book does not claim to definitively answer any of the objections; Strobel's format allows him to present the best available apologetic responses while acknowledging that the questions are genuine and that some residual uncertainty remains. His own model is presented in the final chapter: he chose to believe not in spite of the objections but through a process of evaluating the evidence and concluding that Christianity is more credible than its alternatives.
Critical Reception
The book was received enthusiastically in evangelical circles and was widely used as an apologetics resource for young adults and students. The interview format was praised for making complex philosophical and theological arguments accessible without dumbing them down. The book's honesty about the difficulty of the questions - Strobel does not pretend that the problem of evil has a satisfying theoretical solution - was appreciated by readers who had found earlier apologetics too glib.
Academic philosophers and theologians found the book's treatment of the problems superficial by scholarly standards. The problem of evil, for instance, is engaged primarily through pastoral and experiential arguments rather than through the technical literature (Alvin Plantinga's free will defense, John Hick's soul-making theodicy). Defenders argue that this is appropriate for the audience.
Theological Significance
The book's theological significance lies in its popularization of the concept of 'honest doubt' - the acknowledgment that genuine faith is not the absence of questions or struggles but the decision to trust God in the presence of unresolved questions. This model of faith - intellectually honest, questioning, yet committed - represents a significant contribution to popular evangelical theology that has influenced a generation of young Christians dealing with doubt.
The book also models a form of apologetics that begins with the questioner's actual concerns rather than with the apologist's preferred proofs. Each chapter starts from a genuine objection - the kind that stops real people from faith - rather than from a theoretical philosophical question. This pastoral orientation distinguishes it from the classical apologetics tradition (which often feels disconnected from real human experience) while maintaining intellectual rigor.
Legacy
The book, together with the Case for Christ and Case for a Creator, has sold over ten million copies combined and has been the primary popular apologetics resource of the early twenty-first century. It has been used in youth groups, Alpha courses, university fellowships, and individual conversations about faith worldwide. Strobel's format has been widely imitated, spawning a cottage industry of 'case for...' apologetics books.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study the Book of Job (particularly Job 1-3 and 38-42 for the problem of suffering and divine response), Habakkuk (for prophetic lament and faith through unanswered questions), Psalm 22 (the cry of abandonment), Romans 8:18-39 (suffering and hope), John 14:1-14 (Christ as the way, truth, and life), and Matthew 25:31-46 (the final judgment).
Further Reading
- Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (1974) - the technical philosophical defense of free will theodicy that underlies the book's treatment of evil. - C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940) - the most widely read literary engagement with the theodicy question, providing the emotional and narrative intelligence that complements Strobel's journalistic approach. - Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God (2011) - the most thorough treatment of the Old Testament violence question that one of the book's chapters addresses.