The Case for Faith

What The Case for Faith is

The Case for Faith is a journalistic apologetic — a book-length investigation in which Lee Strobel, a former atheist reporter, interviews scholars to test the responses to the eight emotional and philosophical objections he calls the "Big Eight." Each chapter functions as a long-form feature: Strobel travels to a specialist, lays out an objection in the voice of a struggling skeptic, and lets the scholar answer at length. The reader follows the back-and-forth rather than receiving a lecture.

Structurally it works through the objections one at a time — the problem of suffering and evil, miracles versus a scientific worldview, whether evolution undercuts the case for God, the doctrine of hell, the question of those who never hear, the church’s history of violence and hypocrisy, the reliability of a faith built on a few "chosen" people, and the role of doubt in a believing life. It is the explicit companion to The Case for Christ (1998), picking up the harder objections that the first book set aside, and the arguments are made from a broadly evangelical vantage.

Why doubting readers actually finish The Case for Faith

Most books on suffering and doubt fail at the same point: they answer the question on paper while ignoring the person asking it. The reader who has just buried a child does not want a syllogism. Strobel’s instinct as a Tribune reporter pulls the other way. He opens the book not with an argument but with a story — a missionary doctor in a refugee camp, the Columbine shootings, his own near-loss of faith — and he keeps the human stakes in front of the reader the whole way. The argument is there, but it arrives inside a narrative about real ache.

The second reason is the question selection. Strobel asks the objections a wavering believer actually voices — If God is good, why is there so much suffering? How can a loving God send anyone to hell? What about everyone who never heard the name of Jesus? Hasn’t the church done as much harm as good? — in roughly the order they tend to surface when someone’s faith is coming apart. The book respects where the reader is standing. That is rarer than it sounds in apologetics, and it is the single biggest practical difference between The Case for Faith and the philosophy-of-religion texts written for the seminar room.

The "Big Eight": one objection, one specialist, per chapter

The organizing idea of the book is a list Strobel calls the "Big Eight" — the eight objections he says were the biggest barriers between him and faith. The problem of suffering and evil. Miracles colliding with a scientific worldview. Evolution as an alternative to a Creator. The doctrine of hell. The fate of those who never heard the gospel. The church’s long record of violence and hypocrisy. The worry that God plays favorites with a "chosen" few. And finally, whether a sincere believer is even allowed to doubt. Each gets its own chapter and its own interview with a scholar chosen for that question.

For readers, the structure does two useful things. First, it lets you go straight to the objection that is actually bothering you — the chapter on suffering, the chapter on hell — without reading the whole book first. Second, it turns the volume into a natural small-group sequence: many churches run it as an eight-week study, one objection per week, with the published study guide. The trade-off is the one the format always carries — eight vast questions in a single book means each is introduced rather than exhausted, and a reader who wants the deepest available treatment of any one of them will need to read further.

The opening chapter on suffering: the Peter Kreeft interview

The chapter most readers remember is the first real one, on the problem of pain, built around an interview with Boston College philosopher Peter Kreeft. Strobel puts the hardest version of the question on the table — not an abstract puzzle but the death of a child, the camp at Auschwitz, the suffering that has no visible purpose — and lets it sit there before Kreeft answers. Kreeft’s response works through the classic moves of the discussion: that the existence of evil presupposes a standard of good, that genuine love requires the freedom that makes evil possible, that a God who entered the suffering himself is a different proposition from a distant one.

This sounds like familiar territory, and the arguments are not new. What the chapter does well is refuse to make them feel cheap. Strobel pushes back, names the cases the argument struggles with, and admits where the answer comforts the head more than the heart. The result is a treatment of suffering that a grieving reader can sit with rather than feel lectured by — and it is the reason this chapter, more than any other, is the one pastors photocopy and hand to someone in the middle of a hard season. It is also the clearest example of what the book is and is not: a serious, accessible introduction to the responses, not the last word on any of them.

A companion, not a stand-alone: how it completes The Case for Christ

The Case for Faith was written as the direct sequel to The Case for Christ (1998), and the relationship is the point. The first book made the historical case — can we trust what the Gospels say about Jesus, and did the resurrection happen? It deliberately set aside the emotional and philosophical objections, and reviewers flagged that gap from the start. This book is Strobel’s answer to that flag: it takes on exactly the problems — evil, hell, doubt, the church’s failures, science — that the first volume left untouched. Together the two cover both halves of why people resist Christianity, the head and the heart.

For readers, this matters in two ways. First, it means neither book has to do everything. If a friend grants the historical evidence but cannot get past the problem of suffering, The Case for Faith is the precise next step. Second, the two make a coherent small-group sequence — many churches run Christ then Faith back to back, with curriculum to support both, before moving into The Case for a Creator (2004) for the design-and-cosmology arguments. The series is the larger structure, and The Case for Faith is the volume that turns Strobel’s evidential on-ramp into something that also speaks to the reader’s pain.

Pricing

Where The Case for Faith falls behind

Breadth at the expense of depth. Eight of the largest objections in the philosophy of religion share one volume, which means each is introduced rather than exhausted. A reader who wants the deepest available case on suffering, or on hell, will finish a chapter and need a dedicated book to go further. The book is a map of the terrain, not a survey of any one valley.

The answers are only as strong as the chosen experts. The interview format means each objection is handled by the one scholar Strobel selected, and — as in the first book — he selects scholars who broadly share his conclusion. The strongest skeptical versions of each objection reach the reader filtered through Strobel’s questions rather than from their most formidable defenders. That is a fair structural choice for the book Strobel was writing; it is worth knowing going in.

Written for the wavering believer, not the academic. The register is journalistic and pastoral. Readers trained in philosophy of religion will recognize the moves and may want the rigorous versions — works on theodicy, on the logical and evidential problems of evil, on the doctrine of hell across traditions. The Case for Faith is an accessible introduction to those debates, not a contribution to them.

A broadly evangelical vantage on contested ground. The objections about hell, evolution, and the fate of the unevangelized are answered from a particular frame, and traditions differ on each. A Catholic, Orthodox, or Latter-day Saint reader will find the questions worth engaging but the specific responses shaped by Strobel’s evangelical setting rather than offered as a neutral survey of how various churches answer.

Dated in places. The book is from 2000, and a few of its scientific and cultural references — the state of the evolution debate, the contemporary examples — read like their moment. The objections themselves are perennial; some of the surrounding material has moved on.

The Case for Faith vs. The Case for Christ vs. The Reason for God

These three are the books most likely to end up in the same shopping cart, and they do genuinely different jobs. The Case for Christ is the historical brief — does the evidence about Jesus of Nazareth hold up under cross-examination? The Case for Faith is its companion, turning the same interview format on the emotional and philosophical objections the first book set aside — suffering, hell, doubt, the church’s record. The Reason for God is Tim Keller’s answer to the New Atheism’s cultural objections — exclusivism, suffering, hell, science — delivered in the voice of a Manhattan pastor.

Different strengths. Strobel’s first book is best when a reader’s objection is evidential — "How do we even know what Jesus said or did?" The Case for Faith is best when the objection is emotional or moral — "How could a good God allow this?" Keller is broader and more literary, weaving the cultural objections into a single argument rather than handling them one interview at a time. If a reader’s problem is the heartache rather than the history, The Case for Faith is the more direct fit; if it is intellectual respectability in a secular city, Keller is the sharper tool.

They also layer well. Many small-group curricula run The Case for Christ first because it is the easiest on-ramp, then The Case for Faith because it answers the objections the first book leaves on the table, then Keller or a deeper single-topic book for the question that lingers. All three are read across Catholic, Reformed, and other traditions; Strobel writes from a broadly evangelical frame, and The Case for Faith’s answers on the most contested questions reflect that vantage rather than a multi-tradition consensus.

Alternatives to The Case for Faith