Unapologetic by Francis Spufford: review In both he seems to discover some intuition of the existence of God, but the more original approach is the one from a position of unhappiness and guilt. For this, Spufford invents a label, HPtFtU, which stands for the Human Propensity to Mess things Up, except that "Mess" is replaced by another four-letter word. There is a high four-letter quotient throughout Unapologetic, a symptom of the prose being pitched to sound young. Spufford knows how to write, but he also teaches writing for a living, and it shows. The first chapter is a relentless, high-volume monologue, but (thanks be to Mozart), the tone varies in the subsequent chapters. Spufford there takes a very interesting line. Instead of seeing God in bunny rabbits and sunsets, he prosecutes God for the presence of pain in the world. This "problem of pain" could be formulated, though he doesn't do so, in the inconsistency of these three propositions: "God is good. God is all-powerful. Creatures suffer pain. Refusing to be convinced by any of the usual defences of God, he points instead to an answer in an account of the life of Jesus. It is not easy to pull off yet another retelling of the Gospel story. Spufford does a pretty good job: making it not too long, not too pious, nudging its over-familiarity by calling Jesus "Yeshua," but not robbing the narrative of emotion. His argument is that God cannot intervene in the pain and HPtFtU of creation, except through the person of Jesus, who makes him present in the world. Spufford's presentation of Jesus may not quite clinch things, but perhaps one wouldn't expect a knock-down argument for all time in one short book. Worse, he undermines his whole approach by going further than defending the emotional maturity of Christianity, his declared aim. He goes as far as saying that "the feelings are primary, I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings." Nor will he honour the content of faith with the name of "knowledge." He only "thinks" God exists. Even on an emotional level that is too much like "thinking" you love your wife. If feeling is the decider, what, to adopt his analogy, happens if you suddenly hear Mozart without responding? A lot of musical people suffer such an occlusion when they are depressed, so psychiatrists report. Feelings, even when things are going well, are unreliable and evanescent. A less subjective account of faith would site it in believing the testimony of someone else. Spufford has the great virtue of making you want to argue with him all the time. Some of his mistakes annoy, but that's just me. His anatomy of the modern meaning given to "sin" is entertaining. The reader is left wanting to hear more from Spufford, even while disagreeing with him. Unapologetic by Francis Spufford 224pp, Faber, t £11.99, (PLUS £1.35 p&p) Buy now from Telegraph Books (RRP £12.99, ebook £7.55)