Last night I was part of a discussion panel looking at the Ethics of War; I defended classical just war theory. Speaking in defence of pacifism was one of the Waihope three who offered the argument that you cannot use force against an oppressor because of the Golden Rule, typically stated as: ‘do to others […]
Entries Tagged as 'War Ethics'
Pacifism and The Golden Rule
May 26th, 2011 11 Comments
Tags: Golden Rule · Pacifism · Waihope Three · War Ethics
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part III: Two Implications of the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Account
January 16th, 2011 21 Comments
This three-part blog series is a modified version of what I presented to the Evangelical Philosophical Society meeting in November 2010. In a recent Conference at Notre Dame Alvin Plantinga suggested that the commands to wipe out the Canaanites, recorded in the book of Deuteronomy, might be hyperbolic; they should be understood more like how […]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Canaanites · Christopher J H Wright · Genocide · Gordon Wenham · Hagiography · Hermeneutics · Hyperbole · J McConville · J P U Lilley · Joshua · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Old Testament Ethics · Paul Copan
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation
January 7th, 2011 42 Comments
Around this time last year I wrote two posts Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites I and Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites II. These posts attracted a fair amount of attention and debate. I got offers to publish my ideas in several upcoming books and present them before both the Evangelical Philosophical […]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Canaanites · Genocide · Hagiography · Hermeneutics · Hyperbole · Joshua · Kenneth Kitchen · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Old Testament Ethics · Selection
Commonsense Atheism and the Canaanite Massacre
September 23rd, 2010 25 Comments
Luke Muehlauser at Commonsense Atheism has written a review of my argument on the genocide of the Canaanites (Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I and Part II). Luke’s comments are largely positive (and I appreciate that a critic of Theism and Christianity sees merit in my position) he does, however, raise a few issues […]
Tags: Canaanites · Commonsense Atheism · Genocide · Luke Muehlhauser · Old Testament Ethics · William Lane Craig
Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?
August 1st, 2010 147 Comments
Perhaps the most perplexing issue facing Christan believers is a series of jarring texts in the Old Testament. After liberating Israel from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites arrived on the edge of the promised land. The book of Deuteronomy records that God then commanded Israel to “destroy totally” the people occupying these regions (the Canaanites); […]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Canaanites · Contra Mundum · Investigate Magazine · James K. Hoffmeier · K Lawson Younger · Kenneth Kitchen · Old Testament Ethics
Inter-Continental Developments: Matt to Speak in the US
July 9th, 2010 19 Comments
When Matt wrote his blog series Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I and Part II he had no idea just how far clicking the ‘publish’ button would end up taking him. It turns out that it will be taking him quite far; half-way around the world from Auckland, New Zealand to Atlanta, […]
Tags: Evangelical Philosophical Society · Evangelical Theological Society · Society of Biblical Literature
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.
Internationalism is Dead: Boneparte’s Descendants
March 24th, 2011 13 Comments
OK, so we thought that you would want to hear it here first. Internationalism–the idea that nation states are subject to a higher “sovereignty”– is dead. The corpse is rotting. The Libyan “adventure”, called for by the UN, is growing madder than a March Hare. All the problems and faults of internationalism are now clearly […]
Tags: International Politics · Internationalism · Libya · Muammar Gaddafi · Napoleon Boneparte · United Nations