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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What Happened When Christians Stopped Allegorizing Canaan?

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During the Reformation, Protestants widely rejected the allegorized interpretations of the Canaanite genocide that had become de rigueur since Origen. With that safeguard gone, it was not long before they were appealing to Joshua to justify their own genocides. To illustrate, here is a passage from Philip Jenkins, Laying Down the Sword: And don’t think […]

Methodological Naturalism as a Wet Firecracker: A Response to Ian N. Mills

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Ian N. Mills of the New Testament Review Podcast offered a critique of my critique of methodological naturalism. Here’s the video with a few points of critique below: First, a quick observation: if Mills can play clips from my video at 1.5x speed (or whatever it is) then why doesn’t he record himself at 1.5x […]

Dogma Debated: A Conversation with David C. Smalley

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Yesterday, I appeared on the David C. Smalley Podcast (formerly known as “Dogma Debate”). The conversation goes for 2.5 hours (!) and the first hour and a bit is available to everyone. The longer version is available to Patreon supporters. In the first part of the conversation, we talked about rationality, plausibility frameworks, and the […]

Methodological Naturalism is BAD Historical Method

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Methodological naturalism — the idea that all causes to which one appeals must be “natural” — is bad historical method. It’s pure dogmatism, that’s all. Here is a simple illustration: in his famous book Chariots of the Gods, Erich Von Daniken visited ancient human civilizations. It’s a bad theory but note that it is, nonetheless, […]

Reasonable Belief, Reasonable Doubt, and the Resurrection of Jesus

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Two days ago, I posted two Twitter surveys directed at two different groups and asking a similar question about an event which is purported to have occurred two thousand years ago. One would think it is possible for people reasonably to disagree about a topic this far removed in time and based on documentary evidence […]

Does the religious status of New Testament documents undermine their historical veracity?

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In his classic 1943 book The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?, F.F. Bruce makes the following observation: “Somehow or other, there are people who regard a ‘sacred book’ as ipso facto under suspicion, and demand much more corroborative evidence for such a work than they would for an ordinary secular or pagan writing.” This […]

29. Craig Keener on miracles

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From the crossing of the Red Sea to the virgin birth, miracles occupy a central role in the biblical narratives. Alas, their role in modern life has been decidedly more ambiguous. That ambiguity owes much to the skeptical eighteenth century philosopher David Hume who famously defined a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature. […]

25. Do the gospels have errors? Michael Licona’s new insights on ancient history

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Christians have always been aware of the apparent contradictions in the Gospel accounts. For example, how does one reconcile the genealogies of Matthew (1:2-17) and Luke (3:23-38)? Did Jesus cleanse the temple at the beginning of his ministry (John 2:13-17) or the end (Mark 11:15-19)? Who appeared at the empty tomb? Was it a young man […]

The Resurrection of Jesus, 52 Pickup, and Prior Probabilities

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In my rebuttal to John Loftus’ essay that the cumulative claims of Christianity are “wildly improbable” I pointed out that this argument has no force for those who already accept the cumulative claims of Christianity. To make the point I gave an illustration which I’ll streamline slightly here. Imagine that you tell me your new […]