Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan offer extensive critiques of my views in their book Did God Really Command Genocide? In turn, I devoted most of a chapter on what I called “The Just War Interpreters” to an extensive critique of their ‘kinder, gentler’ interpretation of the Canaanite genocide by demonstrating that it collapses into ethnic cleansing […]
Matthew Flannagan
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 […]
John Loftus bizarrely rants against me on Unbelievable. Sadly, all too believable.
This week Justin Brierley’s popular UK radio show “Unbelievable” featured part 1 of a debate between John Loftus and David Marshall on Marshall’s new book How Jesus Passes the Outsider Test: The Inside Story which provides a critical response to Loftus’s own “Outsider Test for Faith.” (You can listen to the show here.) After some […]
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 […]
39. Matthew Flannagan on God, ethics, and divine commands
Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” Genesis 22:1-2. People of faith have wrestled with the ethics of the […]
On William Lane Craig’s defense of the Canaanite genocide (Part 5)
In the fourth installment of my critique of William Lane Craig’s podcast defending the Canaanite genocide, Matthew Flannagan reiterated an objection he had posted in response to an earlier installment of the series, namely that Craig does not understand himself to be defending genocide. Matt writes: “Craig has repeatedly explicitly denied that the command was to […]
Committing moral horrors in God’s name revisited (yet again)
In “The mutilation of Isaac” I argued that it would have been wrong for Abraham to kill and mutilate his son as a burnt offering. This was in response to Matthew Flannagan’s argument that there is nothing inherently wrong with God commanding a father to kill his child if the father does so knowing that God […]
The mutilation of Isaac
Matthew Flannagan, respected analytic theologian, Christian apologist and faithful blogger, has taken issue with my argument that God would not ask a parent to sacrifice their child. Matt asks us to consider why it is that killing a human being is wrong. It is wrong, he avers, because it deprives one of their future life. […]
An update in the wake of Atlanta (plus a bit on rape and child killing)
Well I’m back (as if anybody cares). Wait a minute. I care, so I’ll keep talking to myself if nobody else. It was a good time at the annual ETS conference (with a day at SBL thrown in). Let me say the weather was fine. It has been seven or eight years since I was in […]
