It is too bad that Mark Jenkins ruins his otherwise intelligent, thoughtful review of Bruce Bawer’s Stealing Jesus (Books, 12/12) with one of his trademark smug assumptions. At the very end, Jenkins asks, “If Bower’s so smart, why is he a Christian?” and insists in the next sentence that if Bower were really smart, he would be “a secular humanist who admires the moral teachings of a nondivine Jesus.”

It is useless to answer Jenkins’ obviously rhetorical question by naming the legions of great philosophers, authors, musicians, and artists who had—and have—no trouble reconciling the life of the mind with belief in the divinity of Jesus. All I can do is quote Louis Armstrong’s answer to a society matron who demanded to know his definition of jazz. “Lady,” he said, “if you have to ask, you’ll never know.”

Alexandria, Va.