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Finding God In The Questions: A Personal Journey by Timothy Johnson InterVarsity Press, 216 pages, $19

Timothy Johnson, a familiar face to millions of people as medical editor for ABC-TV, was approaching his 65th birthday. Something huge and mysterious was tugging at him to revisit the theological questions he had examined so intensely as a young seminary student.

There was a catalyst to the urge. Decades of conversations with secular colleagues in both medicine and media—two disciplines rife with skeptics—had challenged him.

"They would always ask me, 'So, Tim, what do you really believe?'" Johnson said in an interview. "'I mean, if you had to write it down, what would you say?' And I thought maybe I should try to write it down."

As someone who had distanced himself from some labels and givens of institutionalized Christianity, Johnson needed to explain, as much to himself as to others, what he believed. The result was a book that quickly found its way into The New York Times top 10 Hardcover Advice Bestseller List.

That's the Advice list, not the religious list; neither Johnson nor IVP aimed the book at the Christian market. Yet Finding God in the Questions amounts to an informal apologetic.

An informal apologetic, sales indicate, is just what the doctor ordered for postmodern masses. Johnson does not pretend to present anything more than his mortal quest—no overweening, absolute truth claims here—an earthy endeavor well-suited to his engaging, self-effacing tone. Something curious happens along the way. The gospel comes ringing through, gently as a bell choir.

Can a gospel without any overweening truth claims be any good? Consider Johnson on his own terms. A would-be clergyman who opted instead for medicine, his concerns go beyond the eternal destiny of hidden tribes who have never heard of Jesus.

First, he takes on the existence of God. His casual voice takes nothing away from the integrity of his inquiry into origins, human nature, and how they point toward a personal Creator. After mentioning the Copernican revolution, for example, he writes that it is no longer significant that the Earth is not considered the astronomical center of the universe, as the cosmos has no spatial center.

"Our apparently insignificant place in the universe turns out to be quite ideal for the development of our species," he adds. "In fact, contemporary science is telling us that it takes a universe as large and as long in the making as ours to allow for the development of the precise conditions necessary for life such as ours."

En route to showing how the makeup of the universe points to an intelligent designer, Johnson touches on physics, quantum and otherwise, with startling ease. "If two electrons interact in a lab and one stays in the lab and the other ends up in outer space somewhere, anything that affects the one in the lab will immediately affect the other in outer space!" he writes. "If you find this impossible to understand or believe, don't feel bad; Einstein couldn't either and said it showed that there was something wrong with quantum theory."

From the argument by design for God's existence, Johnson moves on to describe God's nature—and shows how the Bible and Jesus reliably reflect it.

In this section Johnson, a lifelong member of the Evangelical Covenant Church, distances himself from the historical church and some of its common doctrinal formulas. Taking note of the apostles before the Crucifixion, he concludes that one can follow Jesus (sans salvation) without believing in his resurrection.

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November 2004, Vol. 48, No. 11