Randal Rauser

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

hermeneutics

Can God Command Anything At All?

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Yesterday, I tweeted some criticisms of Christians who crucify their moral intuitions on the altar of their particular readings of biblical violence. As you can imagine, the effect is like jamming a stick into a hornet’s nest and jerking it around. Within minutes a mixture of dazed and angry hornets come shooting out. Today, I […]

Inspired Imperfection: A Review

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Gregory A. Boyd. Inspired Imperfection: How the Bible’s Problems Enhance Its Authority (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2020). The postscript to Gregory Boyd’s new book Inspired Imperfection tells the story of a woman whose beloved vase was broken into several pieces. Devastated, she initially sought a restorer who might bring the ceramic back to its original, pristine condition. However, even the […]

Christians, you are allowed to wrestle with the problem of biblical violence

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Imagine for a moment that you are in conversation with a person from another religion and you discover that their sacred text describes their deity as commanding genocide on entire peoples. If you’re like most people – including most Christians — then this discovery would provide a significant obstacle to you considering that religion any […]

If you’re going to say it is a sin for a woman to preach, you better be prepared to say more

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This morning, I posted the following on Twitter: Here’s the problem with complementarianism in a nutshell. The historic justification has been that they are less intellectual & more emotionally unstable than men, but that’s clearly sexist. Women are no less well equipped than men to be profound teachers and leaders. So one might then retreat […]

My Monday Morning Rant Against Evangelicals Who Undermine the Bible

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This morning, a tweet from Fuz Rana got under my skin. I should begin by saying that he seems like a nice chap and Reasons to Believe is less bad than Answers in Genesis. However, being nice and less-bad cannot save one from the fundamental error of treating the Bible as a confirmatory textbook for […]

Creating People and Universes: On reading premodern theologians in light of modern science

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If conservative Christian theologians think it makes sense to cite premodern theologians on the scientific creation of the universe, they should also cite premodern theologians on the scientific creation of the human fetus. So you better revise your “life begins at conception” nonsense. Rather, the male body is ensouled forty days after conception, the female […]