Through Book Sneeze, Thomas Nelson gave me a copy of Beyond Opinion to review. With Ravi Zacharias as general editor, this apologetics book is a compilation from members of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), claiming to be "intended to encourage and challenge the nonexpert to feel comfortable talking about the gospel without feeling the burden of needing a high level of philosophical training" (page xix). I found the book disappointing.

The writing style varied from chapter to chapter, but despite being intended for "the nonexpert," it was frequently stuffy and academic with sentences such as "So in conclusion, it is significant to note that the councils of the church that met to confirm the canon and counteract the increasing number of fourth century forgeries and heresies were a representative group of the geographical breadth of the church" (page 12) and "We can also legitimately surmise that in the coming together of the apparent determinism of classical macrophysics and the uncertainty at the quantum level, even inanimate nature reflects the complementarity in the being of God" (page 243).

Some formating changes could have improved the book. Endnotes and the short biographies for the contributers were all at the end of the book; putting them with the chapters instead would have reduced the need to flip from the chapter to the back of the book. Some of the endnotes contained links to dynamic web forms instead of the permanent links to the articles.

Statistics were misused. At least three times comparisons were made between the violence in the last century compared to earlier history without mentioning factors such as an increased population and technology (pages 14, 53, and 249).

Although the book is meant to encourage "the nonexpert," experts were often presented as the solutions. In the chapter Challenges from Youth, Alison Thomas claims "We cannot provide children with a ‘brain religion’ unless youth ministers are required to undergo formal training in theology." The chapter The Church’s Role in Apologetics and the Development of the Mind focused on pastors and leaders with little reference to members.

There may be some benefit to reading this book, but in general, I saw little to recommend it.