Brief Update

I fig­ure an update is in order.

1) I’ve fin­ished read­ing Dr. Dou­glas Groothuis Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics: A Com­pre­hen­sive Case for Bib­li­cal Faith (see my really brief blurb review here: http://books.google.com/ebooks?id=rQ_SdH1PWyMC&sitesec=reviews). I’ve also asked — and Dr. Groothuis has answered — five (5) inter­view ques­tions. So, both the inter­view and the review will be up in the next week or two, I just have to decide when, and which first — are inter­views used for hype, or should it fol­low the review?

2) I’m neck-deep in read­ing, and it’s the mid-summer(?) rush, which means I’ve had lit­tle time for writ­ing. By the end of August / first week of Sep­tem­ber I will have reviews of And He Dwelt Among Us, Is God a Moral Mon­ster, Doing Phi­los­o­phy as a Chris­t­ian, Every Leader’s Ever­est (Jim C. Mol­loy, http://leaderscripts.wordpress.com/) and The End of Chris­tian­ity pub­lished (not in that order). … (Read more)

Just Arrived: Is God a Moral Monster, by Paul Copan

Last year I linked to an arti­cle writ­ten by philoso­pher Paul Copan, titled “Is YHWH a Moral Mon­ster”? Less than a year later we now have a book, Is God a Moral Mon­ster? Mak­ing sense of the Old Tes­ta­ment. My think­ing is that one can­not read too many books on this subject.

So any­way, this effort is an attempt to explain (near as I can tell) why the God of the Old Tes­ta­ment is the way he is. It’s no secret that the God of the Old Tes­ta­ment appears so dif­fer­ent from the Jesus of the New Tes­ta­ment — unlov­ing, unkind, wrath­ful, venge­ful, etc. -  that some have gone so far as to rid them­selves of the Old Tes­ta­ment entirely (begin­ning with Mar­cion and the heresy of Marcionism).

In his highly praised and crit­i­cized book The God Delu­sion, ethol­o­gist and evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins had the … (Read more)

Gossip

To most peo­ple I’m not an easy per­son to get to know, because I expect an invest­ment or com­mit­ment of some sort from the per­son try­ing to get to know me (e.g. to demon­strate why they want to know what they want to know). This puts enough peo­ple off that they will set­tle for what they think of me, and once they have decided what they think of me, they will promptly tell my wife while avoid­ing me altogether.

There is the art of con­ver­sa­tion, and then there is get­ting to truly know some­one. Don’t con­fuse the two; the first uses peo­ple for the sake of con­ver­sa­tion, the lat­ter uses con­ver­sa­tion for the sake of peo­ple.… (Read more)

A Pastor’s Education

John Wes­ley once said the following:

Ought not a Min­is­ter to have, First, a good under­stand­ing, a clear appre­hen­sion, a sound judg­ment, and a capac­ity of rea­son­ing with some close­ness?¹

Have you ever encoun­tered a ‘self­ish’ church? A church which tries to keep ‘their’ pas­tor to them­selves? I have. I’ve encoun­tered churches that cringed at the thought of let­ting their pas­tor go to some con­fer­ence, because it meant their pas­tor couldn’t preach that par­tic­u­lar Sun­day. I’ve encoun­tered churches that cringed at the idea of allow­ing oth­ers to preach, or give a mes­sage, in addi­tion to the pas­tor. I’ve encoun­tered churches whose mem­bers first thought, when their pas­tor makes a request, is “But that will mess up my…” Pastor’s aren’t owned by churches, or at least they shouldn’t be. Any church which goes to such a degree as described above, is a church that needs a good shake. Any con­gre­ga­tion … (Read more)

Facebook Christianity

Some times I get in a mood where all I want to do is write. The prob­lem is I don’t think I have any­thing to write about…
…So I’m going to say a few things about ‘Face­book Chris­tian­ity’, and maybe find myself in trouble.

What do I mean about Face­book Chris­tian­ity? A few things, actu­ally. I mean the con­tra­dic­tion that may exist between a per­sons reli­gious views and the con­tent of their wall, pho­tos, notes, etc. I mean the con­tra­dic­tion between a per­sons non-online actions and their inces­sant sta­tus updates about what God has done, is doing, or will do. I mean the false sense of com­mu­nity Face­book imbibes into its users.

Why then do Chris­tians on Face­book adver­tize their faith in ways they oth­er­wise wouldn’t?

Do you remem­ber when peo­ple would incor­rectly attribute “preach the gospel and if nec­es­sary use words” to St. Fran­cis of Assisi, and then go … (Read more)

Upcoming Reviews

As things go, I am read­ing a num­ber of books for review in the upcom­ing weeks. Here is some infor­ma­tion on those books:

“Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics: A Com­pre­hen­sive Case for Bib­li­cal Faith” by Dou­glas Groothuis

This first book, pub­lished by IVP Aca­d­e­mic, is due to be released Sept. 2011. As the title makes plain, this is a rather large attempt (720 pages) at an argu­ment for bib­li­cal faith. Divided into three parts — Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics, The Case for Chris­t­ian The­ism and Objec­tions to Chris­t­ian the­ism — it pur­ports to answer such ques­tions as what the Bib­li­cal foun­da­tion for apolo­get­ics is (Part one), what the argu­ments for the exis­tence of God are (Part two), and pro­vides answers to some of the most com­mon objec­tions to Chris­t­ian the­ism (Part three). These and the other top­ics Groothuis engages — such as a defense of truth and expla­na­tion of the Chris­t­ian world view — con­sist of … (Read more)

Editor of Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” Talks About the Book

In a recent blog post, edi­tor (?) of Love Wins, Mickey Maudlin, dis­cusses what he per­ceives to be an overly hos­tile and sec­tar­ian response to Bell’s lat­est effort. Read here: http://www.newsandpews.com/2011/07/rob-bells-hell-by-mickey-maudlin-harperone-senior-v-p-executive-editor/… (Read more)

John Wilkinson: No Argument for God

To the left is a book I just received, John Wilkinson’s No Argu­ment for God: Going Beyond Rea­son in Con­ver­sa­tions About Faith (Inter­var­sity Press). I have to say that look­ing at the book, I’m a lit­tle ner­vous. It just so hap­pens that I’m read­ing a rather sub­stan­tial apolo­get­ics text at the moment, so to receive this book, which describes itself as a ‘Post-Apologetics Apolo­getic’ (I’m quite hon­estly get­ting tired of ‘post-’ what­ever ter­mi­nol­ogy), is quite ironic (or, at least, I think so).

I’m ner­vous when­ever any book claims to ‘go beyond rea­son’. It’s one of those odd things, one must gen­er­ally use rea­son and logic and argu­men­ta­tion to ‘go beyond’ rea­son and logic and argu­men­ta­tion. I also won­der what the sig­nif­i­cance of the dead bird is?

In any case, the back-cover reads as follows:   

New athe­ists trum­pet the claim loudly, so much so that it’s become a sort of con­ven­tional wis­dom. Pro­fess­ing … (Read more)