Book Review: “No Skin in the Game: The God of the Jehovah’s Witness” by Frank H. Armstrong

Frank Armstrong’s No Skin in the Game is a pithy introduction to defending orthodox Christianity against Jehovah’s Witness beliefs. Central to Armstrong’s book is the notion that we must not focus merely on firing proof-texts back and forth, but rather that we ought to see the meta-narrative of Scripture and keep that in mind as we evaluate claims of how to interpret key texts.

Armstrong focuses on this meta-narrative of God as love and uses it to show that God the Son and the Father must be co-eternal. Moreover, he continues to note the continuity of Scriptures between the Testaments by showing that those things ascribed to the Father (which Jehovah’s Witnesses call Jehovah) are then ascribed to Christ (eg. creation). It is truly remarkable how many applicable examples Armstrong manages to pack into a short work.

The book provides not just a grab-bag of important verses but a guide for how to use the Bible to reason with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Several examples of verses shown with key phrases changed to reflect Jehovah’s Witness theology highlight this. The book is therefore thoroughly practical and will be useful to those hoping to engage with Jehovah’s Witness theology.

If I had one critique it is that the example of conjoined twins alongside the Trinity may cause some confusion. Armstrong argues that conjoined twins show in principle that one being may be the center of multiple persons, and as far as demonstrating that, it may not be objectionable. The problem is that such a comparison begs further comparison, and the example quickly breaks down as one considers whether conjoined twins really are one being or are two that happen to occupy the same space. Other difficulties arise upon further reflection. For what Armstrong was trying to demonstrate, it works alright, but the problem with any analogy of the Trinity is that it breaks down and may cause confusion if pressed.

No Skin in the Game is an exciting, economical introduction to witnessing to Jehovah’s Witnesses. I recommend it.

The Good

+Brief, readable style
+Puts forward many key texts
+Focuses on core ideas

The Bad

-Example of conjoined twins may cause confusion.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of the book from the publisher for review. I was not obligated to provide any specific kind of feedback whatsoever. 

Links

Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

Book Reviews– There are plenty more book reviews to read! Read like crazy! (Scroll down for more, and click at bottom for even more!)

Eclectic Theist– Check out my other blog for my writings on science fiction, history, fantasy movies, and more!

SDG.

——

The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.