This blog’s Matthew Flannagan will be speaking at Massey Presbytarian Church’s Night Church Service on the topic “Is it Narrow-Minded to Think Jesus is the Only Way?“
Details are:
7:00pm (come at 6:30pm to grab a meal from the Night Church cafe)
Sunday 29 September 2013
Massey Presbyterian Church
510 Don Buck Road, Auckland, New Zealand
All welcome.
Tags: Apologetics · Massey Presbyterian Church · Relativism1 Comment
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
Today's New Atheists proclaim themselves our culture's party of reason. It is a claim they cannot sustain. Reason is the New Atheists' weakness, not their strength and in fact, the Christian faith is a far better place to look for True Reason. Making their case accessible to the first-time inquirer as well as the serious student, this top-flight team of writers presents a sound defense and a strong introduction to the true reason uniquely found in Christianity.
The book begins by examining foundational philosophical approaches to the Bible as well as the methodological challenges those philosophies create for interpreting the Bible. It then addresses textual and historical challenges and how to deal with them. Finally it looks at ethical, scientific, and theological challenges demonstrating the Bible's moral integrity in relationship to contemporary moral emphases.
Many philosophers have considered the strengths and weaknesses of a virtue-centered approach to moral theory. Much less attention has been given to how such an approach bears on issues in applied ethics. The essays in this volume apply a virtue-centered perspective to a variety of contemporary moral issues.
The challenge of a seemingly genocidal God who commands ruthless warfare has bewildered Bible readers for generations. A range of expert contributors engage in a multidisciplinary approach that considers this issue from a variety of perspectives: biblical, ethical, philosophical and theological.
The nineteen essays here raise classical philosophical questions in fresh ways, address contemporary challenges for the church, and will deepen the thinking of the next generation of apologists. Packed with dynamic topical discussions and informed by the latest scholarship.
While New Atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others proclaim loudly their rationality, clear thinking, and incontrovertible scientific arguments, others are beginning to wonder how genuinely rational they are. Have they proved anything? Have they argued convincingly? Have they pinpointed any real challenges to the credibility of Christian faith?
I have a question for Matthew which I emailed to him, but I think it may have gotten caught in his spam filter. In his essay on the Canaanite conquest in “Come, Let us Reason” Matthew says that the hyperbolic interpretation of the descriptions of “total destruction” has a precedent in some of the Church Fathers. I couldn’t find any footnote in that essay giving a reference, and so I am wondering if you could refer me to the Fathers which took such an interpretation.
Thanks.
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Time for Jubilee?)