WHY RUSSELL’S REASONS FAIL A Reflection on “Why I Am Not a Christian” by Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell, in his famous lecture Why I Am Not a Christian, stood tall in the eyes of the world—a man crowned with medals of logic, clothed in the robes of mathematics, and confident that human reason could climb the very heights of heaven. Yet brilliance, without the warmth of divine light, becomes a lantern without fire; and when Russell turned his gaze upon the Christian faith, he judged it not as a seeker of truth, but as a man who believed his own candle brighter than the sun.
He treated Christianity as a mere theorem to be solved, a syllogism to be accepted or rejected, forgetting that the faith is not cold geometry—it is the blazing life of the crucified and risen Christ, the One who loved us and gave Himself for us (Galatians 2:20), and whose truth cannot be measured by instruments forged in human hands.
Russell dismissed the great arguments for God with a confidence so serene it almost sounded like humility. He misunderstood the First Cause, thinking that if everything needs a cause then God must need one too—never realizing that Christians do not worship a created deity, but the eternal I AM who never began and never changes (Exodus 3:14; Malachi 3:6). We do not argue that “everything has a cause”—only that everything that begins to exist has a cause. God is not a created being.
He waved away the Moral Argument without pausing to explain how moral obligation, dignity, justice, or goodness could arise from a universe governed only by atoms and blind forces. He trusted “the laws of physics” to explain existence, not knowing that the universe itself—by all the weight of modern cosmology—bears the fingerprints of a beginning, a moment when time itself leaped into being from nothing, a truth that sits far more comfortably beside Genesis 1:1 than beside the creed of atheistic naturalism. His objections were tidy, well-phrased, and deeply inadequate, like a man attempting to drain the ocean with a teacup.
And when Russell approached Jesus, he admired Him as a teacher but refused Him as Lord. He stumbled at the doctrine of hell, imagining that warning sinners of judgment is cruelty rather than kindness, though every good teacher warns of danger and every good shepherd cries out when wolves draw near (Ezekiel 33:11).
He accused Jesus of predicting the end too soon, misunderstanding the prophetic language of Matthew 24—words that spoke both of the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the final unveiling of all things. He read Scripture with the thin breath of rationalism rather than the living Spirit of revelation, and so the diamond of Christ’s glory appeared to him as mere glass. Russell rejected Jesus not because he found Him unworthy, but because he could not fathom a Lord who commands the conscience, claims the soul, and calls men to repentance.
But the deepest flaw in Russell’s argument is that he reduced Christianity to a list of propositions, never touching its living heart. The gospel is not simply the claim that God exists; it is the declaration that God has entered history in the person of Christ, lived the life we could not live, died the death we deserved, and risen with power to save all who believe.
Russell brushed past the resurrection—a fact rooted in eyewitness testimony, historical veracity, and the unbroken witness of the early church—as though it were a footnote rather than the cornerstone (1 Corinthians 15:3–8). He rejected Christianity without wrestling with the empty tomb; he denied the faith without bending low enough to look inside.
In the end, Russell’s case fails not because he lacked intellect, but because he lacked surrender. He approached God with a checklist, not a contrite heart; he judged the Almighty by human standards, as though the clay could critique the Potter (Isaiah 45:9). His objections sound bold in the lecture hall, but they collapse in the presence of the living Christ, whose voice still breaks the pride of men and whose grace still mends the brokenhearted.
Christianity stands firm—not because it evades scrutiny, but because it is anchored in a Person who walked out of His tomb and into the very fabric of human history. And when all human arguments fade, when the philosophies of the age crumble like sand, the voice of the risen Christ will still ring true, calling weary souls to come and find rest.
BDD
