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Randal Rauser

Home of progressively evangelical, generously orthodox, rigorously analytic, revolutionary Christian thinking (that's what I'm aiming for anyway)

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biblical ethics

Would Jesus have endorsed gay marriage?

October 25, 2021 by Randal

Jesus never talks about same-sex relationships, but he does talk about marriage (e.g. Matthew 19:1-10, Mark 10:1-12). And when he describes marriage, he always does so within the context of an indissoluble male/female covenantal bond. His understanding of the indissolubility aspect is an important topic in the conversation, But here I want to focus on […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: biblical ethics, ethics, gay marriage, hermeneutics, homosexuality

Is the Christian God Worthy of Worship?

December 10, 2020 by Randal

I will be debating Dan Barker right before Christmas on the topic “Is the Christian God Worthy of Worship?” Barker’s recent book God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction will undoubtedly be a big part of the discussion. 

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: atheism, biblical ethics, biblical hermeneutics, Dan Barker, debate, new atheism

How Christians engage in special pleading when they try to justify bad biblical behavior

September 28, 2020 by Randal

Many conservative Christians believe that men should follow the Billy Graham Rule to never be alone with a woman who is not your life. Unless you’re a king like David: then you can climb into bed with a young virgin girl. In this video, I criticize that kind of painful special pleading.

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: Bible, biblical ethics, ethics, hermeneutics, moral inerrancy principle

Quick Thought on Canaanite Genocide and the Brutalizing Effects of Violence

May 14, 2020 by Randal

You can’t hire a guy to work 9-5 in a slaughterhouse and not expect that to affect how he interacts with animals outside the workplace. The same principle applies in war. People can only sustain the cognitive dissonance introduced by combat situations for so long before it affects their character generally. The history of war […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: biblical ethics, biblical violence, canaanite genocide, Canaanites, ethics

Should Christians defend parental honor killing? Many already do.

May 12, 2020 by Randal

Christians today react with horror and revulsion when they read of parents who kill their children in the name of parental honor. But the Law in the Old Testament also presents cases where parents kill their children in the name of parental honor. So should Christians revisit their principled moral rejection of honor killing or […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: biblical ethics, honor killing, stoning, torah

If God commanded you to sacrifice your child, would you? Here’s my response

April 22, 2020 by Randal

If God commanded you to sacrifice your child, would you? The answer is simple: God wouldn’t command that. And if you still want to consider the scenario as a per impossibile claim, you can do that with any moral system, not just divine command theories of ethics.

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: biblical ethics, biblical violence, divine command ethics, ethics

Don’t Sacrifice Your Conscience to Defend Your Reading of the Bible

March 26, 2020 by Randal

I’ve been talking about biblical violence on Twitter over the last day. So now I’m back to my blog and drawing on several articles I’ve written over the years all to the end of driving home a singular point: don’t sacrifice your conscience in defense of a particular reading/interpretation of the Bible. If you know […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: biblical ethics, biblical violence, ethics, moral intuition, moral perception

Would Jesus want you to stay married to a psychopath?

July 27, 2018 by Randal

This morning, I tweeted the following survey: Clinical psychopaths are manipulative anti-social narcissists who are incapable of experiencing love or empathy. The condition is untreatable. If you came to believe your friend was married to a non-violent psychopath, would you support your friend divorcing that individual? — Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) July 27, 2018 As of […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: biblical ethics, hermeneutics, Jesus, marriage, psychopathy, sexual ethics

Reckoning with the Peaceable Kingdom: A Review of Disarming the Church

July 9, 2018 by Randal

Eric A. Seibert. Disarming the Church: Why Christians Must Forsake Violence to Follow Jesus and Change the World. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018.) Carl Norden was a devout Christian. So when he developed the Norden bombsight, it was with the intent of increasing the accuracy of aerial bombing to the end of decreasing the resulting collateral damage wrought […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: biblical ethics, Christian ethics, Eric Seibert, just war, pacifism, violence

Does the Bible condemn same-sex relationships? A Response to Michael Brown (Part 3)

July 2, 2018 by Randal

In this article, I continue my response to Michael Brown’s response to my review of his book Can You Be Gay and Christian?  For starters, here is the link to the third part of my review of Brown’s book. In this section of my review, I explore the position that I call, for lack of a […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: biblical ethics, homosexuality, Michael Brown, sexual ethics

Are same-sex relations and menstrual intercourse moral abominations? A Response to Michael Brown (Part 2)

June 30, 2018 by Randal

In this article, I continue my response to Michael Brown’s response to my review of Brown’s book Can You Be Gay and Christian? The topic in this installment is Brown’s response to the second part of my review. (You can read that part of my review here.) Let me begin with a quick summary of the claim […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: biblical ethics, homosexuality, Michael Brown, sexual ethics

The Bible depicts God commanding moral atrocities. Should we believe it?

June 22, 2018 by Randal

The Bible includes some descriptions of divine action which are fundamentally at odds with the moral perceptions of properly functioning human beings. In some cases, God is presented as performing actions that appear to be wicked. In other cases, he is presented as commanding humans to perform actions that appear to be wicked. Of the latter, […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: biblical ethics, biblical violence, ethics, hermenutics, moral knowledge, moral perception

The Complementarian Dilemma

April 14, 2018 by Randal

Egalitarianism is the view that all offices of church ministry and leadership should be open to both genders. By contrast, complementarianism insists that some offices of ministry and leadership should be restricted to males. I am an egalitarian and yesterday I posted this tweet expressing my concern that complementarianism is not just wrong, but potentially […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: biblical ethics, complementarianism, egalitarianism, ethics, hermeneutics, sexism

In a Heartbeat: Changing Attitudes among Christians Toward Same Sex Attraction

August 1, 2017 by Randal

For years now attitudes toward homosexuality have been shifting in society generally and among Christians in particular. According to statistics published by Pew Research in 2015, significant majorities of the following Christian groups now accept the morality of homosexuality: Catholic, mainline Protestant, and Orthodox. In addition, a slight majority of “historically Black Protestants” also accept […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: Bible, biblical ethics, ethics, homosexuality, In a Heartbeat

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