A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
Peter Enns argues that Christian faith is better understood as trust in God than as confidence that one's beliefs are correct. Drawing on biblical figures, personal experience, and a broadly evangelical Christian vocabulary, he treats doubt not as an emergency to defeat but as a recurring part of spiritual maturation, and asks readers to loosen the demand that faith provide intellectual control.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
This book directly addresses one of the Library's most common thresholds: the fear that losing certainty means losing faith itself. It offers a retention-oriented Christian route that separates trust from doctrinal mastery and can reduce the shame surrounding doubt. Its role is not to decide that trust must replace every other way of knowing, but to show why uncertainty need not automatically close a Christian path.
Good starting place if…
God-language and Christian faith still matter to you, but the demand to be certain has become spiritually exhausting or intellectually impossible.
Know before you begin…
Enns writes constructively from within Christianity and assumes that relationship with God remains a meaningful destination. Calling certainty a ‘sin’ is rhetorically forceful and may feel shaming to people already punished for questioning. Trust language can also be difficult after spiritual abuse, and the book is not a trauma-informed recovery guide or a philosophical account of epistemology.
