There are many words and concepts in theology that suffer from misunderstanding, mis-characterization, and misinformation. “Predestination,” “Calvinism,” “Total Depravity,” “Inerrancy,” and “Complementarianism”, just to name a few that I personally have to deal with. Proponents are more often than not on the defensive, having to explain again and again why it is they don’t mean what people think they mean. 

The concept of “free will” suffers no less with regard to this misunderstanding. Does a person have free will? Well, what do you mean by “free will”? This must always be asked.

Do you mean:

1. That a person is not forced from the outside to make a choice?
2. That a person is responsible for his or her choices?
3. That a person is the active agent in a choice made?
4. That a person is free to do whatever they desire?
5. That a person has the ability to choose contrary to their nature (who they are)?

Calvinists, such as myself, do believe in free will and we don’t believe in free will. It just depends on what you mean. Continue Reading »

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Believing in the sovereignty of God is not an option of yes, no, or maybe within the Christian context. If the Bible is our authoritative guide, one must believe that God is sovereign. It is not unlike the issue of predestination. That God predestines people to salvation is not up for debate, what is up for debate is what it means that God predestines.

Both Calvinists and Arminians agree that God is sovereign, but they will often disagree as to what this means.

Here are the four primary options:

1. Meticulous sovereignty: God is the instrumental cause behind every action and reaction there has ever been. In other words, you chose white socks instead of the black socks because God caused it to happen. You have an itch on your eyebrow right now because God is actively causing it. In other words, every molecule that bounces into another is a result of God active agency in being the first and instrumental cause to the action.

This position holds little or no tension with regards to the human will and the divine will.

God is actively controlling everything.

Adherents: Hyper-Calvinists and some Calvinists

2. Providential sovereignty: While God is bringing about his will in everything (Eph 1:11), his will is not the instrumental cause of all that happens.  Continue Reading »

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As I’ve been blogging on the new atheists and Old Testament ethics of late, I thought you might be interested in my interview with the journal Philosophia Christi on my forthcoming article, “Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics.” The article itself should be out next month, but this will give you further idea of what it includes.

http://www.epsociety.org/blog

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In his book The God Delusion, the new atheist Richard Dawkins asserts that Yahweh is truly a moral monster: “What makes my jaw drop is that people today should base their lives on such an appalling role model as Yahweh—and even worse, that they should bossily try to force the same evil monster (whether fact or fiction) on the rest of us.”

In this particular blog, I would like to address a glaring inconsistency, which I mentioned in passing in an earlier blog. How can Dawkins launch any moral accusation at all? This is utterly inconsistent with his total denial of evil and goodness elsewhere: Continue Reading »

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Here is one of the most comprehensive and well done sessions on the problem of evil that I have ever heard. Rob distinquishes between how different worldviews handle the “problem” and then gives the Christian options. Very balanced and well handled. Nice job Rob!

 

 Apologetics 1 - Rob Bowman - Session 2 - Deciding on Worldviews [91:55m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (670)

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Following my sister Angie’s first attempt at her life four years ago, she felt great shame. The shame itself seemed to be enough motivation for her to try again. “I tried to kill myself, Michael,” she said when I tried to encourage her. ”Everyone is always going to think I am crazy. I am crazy!” ”You are not crazy Angie,” I responded, not really knowing what to say. She quickly answered, “Yes, but you have never tried to kill yourself.” I was not sure what this meant, but it was obvious that her definition of “crazy” was based upon a comparison of herself to those who, in her mind, were sane. “You are right,” I said, “I have not ever tried to kill myself. But there are circumstances where I might.”

Hang with me as I change the page for a moment.

I doubt there is anyone who has ever escaped the subject of divine hiddenness. Maybe you have not termed it as such, but you have often wondered why God does not reveal himself in a way that is more satisfactory to our longings for experiential intimacy with him. “With him” may not be the right way to put it. A better way would be to say that we long for experiential intimacy with “the other side.” As someone has once said, one out of every one people die. This is pretty good odds. We know that one day we will die and experience that which awaits us beyond death. Yet this life is virtually void of signs from the other side. In a way, all we have to work from is what Phillip Yancey terms “rumors” of another world.

Of course, as Christians, we do have faith that this “other world” is real, that heaven is an actual place where God awaits us. We also have faith that God, from this “other world,” has spoken to us through Scripture. Yet we long for an experiential intimacy that parallels the norms of our lives today. We want to hear the voice of God. We have questions for him. We desire sense experience. We want to see vivid signs of the other side that will solidify our faith and alleviate any residue of doubt that might does exist. Continue Reading »

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New atheist Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation makes the claim that the Law of Moses purports to be an expression of “God’s timeless wisdom.” While a fringe minority (Christian Reconstructionists) believe that the Old Testament (OT) laws for national Israel are ideal and normative for all nations, the Scriptures themselves take another view on the matter. For one thing, the OT anticipates a “new covenant,” which is fulfilled in Christ. Thus Hebrews talks about something “greater” and “better.” This covenant is not nationalistically-oriented but encompasses the new Israel—the inter-ethnic church as the people of God. Continue Reading »

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I am a Calvinist, others are Arminian. I believe in a premillenial eschatology, others are amillinial. I am a traducianist with regards to the creation of the soul, others are creationists. I believe in reasoned inerrancy, others believe that this is an archaic naive doctrine. There are many points of doctrinal division that I am going to have with people, some of which are much more important than others.

Why doesn’t everyone agree with me? Who is causing this disunity in the body of Christ, them or me?

There are a few different ways that I could answer this. Continue Reading »

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I guess Richard Dawkins didn’t read my book. . . .

Well, not that it would have mattered: Dawkins seems determined never to give religion the benefit of the doubt. In his God Delusion, he considers Yahweh an “evil monster” whose command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is “disgraceful” and tantamount to “child abuse and bullying.” Have Jews and Christians missed something all these millennia? Dawkins’s own hostility toward religion greatly diminishes his charitability quotient.

Not only can we detect hostility in Dawkins, but hypocrisy as well. In his book River out of Eden, he denies that evil exists at all:

If the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies . . . are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention . . . . The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. So we have “no evil and no good” there and Yahweh as an “evil monster” here.

So which is it? If, presumably, Dawkins hasn’t drastically changed his metaphysical outlook, what exactly is his case against an allegedly evil deity? Continue Reading »

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The news has been out since 2004 that the world’s leading atheist, Antony Flew, changed his mind in light of the available evidence. Like waking up from a bad dream, a number of atheists and skeptics reacted in, well, . . . disbelief. Their stance shifted to skepticism and then, as this late-in-life conversion became undeniable, it shifted to outright denunciations of Flew. In his God Delusion book, Richard Dawkins refers scornfully to the “over-publicized tergiversation [apostasy]” of Flew in his “old age,” having been “converted to belief in some sort of deity.” He contrasts Flew with the “great philosopher” Bertrand Russell, who “won the Nobel Prize.”

Flew was of course, the atheist philosopher for decades, and his accomplishments, insight, and creativity can’t be minimized by such cheap shots from within his former “community.” His recently-released book, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (Harper One, 2007) tells a remarkable story of Flew’s pilgrimage. He had been the son of a Methodist minister, but as a teenager he “rejected the thesis that the universe was created by an all-good, all powerful God.” The book recounts an astonishing career of achievements and acquaintances, including his participation in Oxford University’s Socratic Club during C.S. Lewis’s tenure as president (1942-1954). The club’s stated goal was to heed Socrates’ exhortation to “follow the argument wherever it leads.” This is the maxim Flew has sought to follow all his life. But for many of his critics, “free-thinking” is a one-way street: thinking is “free” if you move away from God, not toward God. Continue Reading »

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Having grown up in the north, I have a great appreciation for this time of year—the harvest season. While living in Connecticut, New York, Wisconsin, my family and I greatly enjoyed the crisp evening air, the spectacular fall colors, going on hayrides, drinking fresh apple cider, and picking pumpkins, gourds, and apples. My wife (who’s from the Boston area) and I miss this time of year especially.

Despite the fact that I’m now living in Florida, I’ve experienced a different kind of harvest—of published books. So, I thought I’d diverge from my typical blog discussions to fill you on the fruits of my labor. (What I mention below you can see at a glance by checking my website: www.paulcopan.com.) Continue Reading »

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Is natural revelation God’s word? Or does Scripture only qualify for such a title? In other words, when nature speaks clearly about something can we say that this represents the voice of God to the same degree as Scripture?

Natural revelation is God’s communication through creation. It is seen in the vast expanse of the universe and in the minute details of the human cell. It is found in the very consciousness of humanity and in our capacity for rational and analytic thought. Nature tells us much about the attributes and character of God. While, without the Scriptures we would lack an understanding of God’s ultimate plan of redemption and Christian living, we would still have quite a bit of theological understanding.

  Continue Reading »

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I’ve been reading J.P. Moreland’s superb book Kingdom Triangle, which was recently released by Zondervan. He begins with this true story by the missionary doctor to Zaire, Africa—Helen Roseveare. Though it’s a bit long for a blog, it is very inspiring.

One night, in Central Africa, I had worked hard to help a mother in the labor ward; but in spite of all that we could do, she died leaving us with a tiny, premature baby and a crying, two-year-old daughter.

     

We would have difficulty keeping the baby alive. We had no incubator. We had no electricity to run an incubator, and no special feeding facilities. Although we lived on the equator, nights were often chilly with treacherous drafts.

     Continue Reading »

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This problem is the single greatest apologetic issue that Christians face today. In a postmodern world, people’s questions, objections, and problems with the Christian worldview are usually connected to the reality of evil in the world and their attempts to harmonize this reality with the seemingly contradictory notion of an all-powerful, all-good God. So valid is this issue that Ronald Nash, the late evangelical philosopher, said a few years ago (and I quote him loosely), “It is absurd to reject Christianity for any reason other than the problem of evil.” Continue Reading »

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I received a forwarded email today with a short article by David L. Rattigan with the above title.

He begins with a bit of humor: So there’s these two churches I heard of down in Texas. Outside the Presbyterian Church is a sign: “There ain’t no hell.” And just down the road is the Baptist Church, with the sign outside: “The hell there ain’t!”

He makes a good case that evangelicals really don’t believe in hell. Continue Reading »

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