In his 2005 book Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace theologian Miroslav Volf provides a penetrating reflection on the extraordinary challenge and inestimable rewards of acquiring a robust understanding of grace and forgiveness. I first became aware of Volf’s book some years ago when I was critiquing evangelical apologetic readings of […]
genocide
The Oft-Overlooked Sins of Omission
There is an important distinction between sins of commission (the evil action) and sins of omission (the evil failure to act). Note how reference to both is included in this familiar liturgical confession: We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have […]
The Act of Killing: A Review
Pull the annals of the twentieth century off the shelf and you will find them dripping with the blood of countless victims of genocide. While Steven Pinker may be right that world history is progressively becoming less violent and more civil, that is little comfort to the victims of Hitler’s concentration camps, Cambodia’s killing fields, […]
Divine Violence Revisited: My Response to Joshua Ryan Butler on “Unbelievable”
I just listened to the latest episode of “Unbelievable” with Justin Brierley which consisted of an interview with Joshua Ryan Butler and Jeff Cook. (You can listen to it here.) (You might recall that I recently reviewed Butler’s book The Skeletons in God’s Closet in three parts: part 1, part 2, part 3). The episode focused […]
My review of Did God Really Command Genocide?: The Shorter Version
Yesterday I posted my review of Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? as an Amazon review. Alas, Amazon required me to shorten the review since it was a couple thousand words too long to fit on Amazon’s platform. But after some diligent work I managed to pare it down in length. […]
Did God Really Command Genocide? A Review (Part 3)
Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan. Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God. Baker, 2014, 351 pp. Welcome to the third (and final) installment in my review of Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan’s book Did God Really Command Genocide? For part 2 click here. The second installment of this review ended […]
Did God Really Command Genocide? A Review (Part 2)
Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan. Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God. Baker, 2014. 351 pp. This is the second (and penultimate) installment in my review of Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan’s book Did God Really Command Genocide? For part 1 click here. I recommend readers begin with part […]
Did God Really Command Genocide? A Review (Part 1)
Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan. Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God. Baker, 2014. 351 pp. Given the spate of books recently published on the Bible and violence, you might think this is a newly discovered problem. That would be a misreading, however, for theologians have wrestled with this […]
What’s splitting your church redux
A few years ago I wrote an article titled “What’s Splitting Your Church? Worship Music or Genocide?” This month Regent College (my Alma mater) is featuring it in their publication “Regent World.”
58. Matthew Flannagan on God and Genocide
In his bestselling 2006 book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins throws down the gauntlet against the Judeo-Christian God. While much of Dawkins’ book is devilishly quotable polemic, he arguably reaches his rhetorical apex with this oft-quoted passage: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud […]
The Mercy of Hell? A Review of The Skeletons in God’s Closet (Part 1)
Joshua Ryan Butler. The Skeletons in God’s Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War. Thomas Nelson, 2014. The title was the first thing that drew me to this book. One hears a lot about the skeletons in God’s closet, so a book that takes the topic by the proverbial […]
Joshua 6 in Zondervan’s True Images Bible
I have long been interested in the way that Bibles interact with the violent portions of scripture. In “How do you teach God’s genocide to children?” I noted how the Zondervan Adventure Bible for children deals (or doesn’t deal) with the genocidal mandate in Deuteronomy 20. Here below I have another example, this one drawn […]
Outraged at homosexuality, but unaware of genocide, and not angered by poverty?
You have to wonder how World Vision could be so out of touch with their constituency that they would think any policy change regarding homosexuality would be anything less than catastrophic? As soon as they lifted the ban on hiring practicing homosexuals, the response was swift as conservative evangelicals across North America vocally expressed their outrage […]
William Lane Craig on genocide as a sign of purity
This is the tenth installment of my ongoing critique of William Lane Craig’s defense of the Canaanite genocide. For part nine, “The Canaanite genocide as cruel and unusual punishment in extremis,” click here. We rejoin the podcast at (14:16). Just prior to this point Craig had argued that God did not wrong the Canaanite adults […]
