POST PUBLISHED INJanuary, 2010
Home > Blogs > The Tentative Apologist > Archive

  • Hell: Christianity's most burning issue

    January 28th, 201010:25 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    It could be a conspiracy of silence. More likely it is an egregious case of conformity to the wider culture. But whatever the reason, there can be little doubt that the topic of hell, once the mainstay of the fire and brimstone revivalist preacher, has been for some time conspicuously absent from the vast majority of pulpits. Corroboration for the...

  • How Haiti's earthquake has shaken us all

    January 26th, 201001:49 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    The horror of major disasters like the recent Haiti earthquake are best viewed from the air, or through the safe distance of an endless catalogue of mind-numbing statistics. As of today, Tuesday January 26, estimates are perhaps 200,000 dead, 250,000 injured, and 1.5 million homeless. The numbers simply transcend our ability to calculate the m...

  • "The Lovely Bones," and why Roger Ebert will not like a film version of "The Shack"

    January 22nd, 201011:27 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Film critic Roger Ebert clearly did not like the film adaptation of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. While I haven't read the book or seen the movie, I certainly found Ebert's review revealing. Ebert is one of the most interesting film critics to read, especially in reviews like this where he dons his moralistic hat. (As you read the excerpts of th...

  • How dare religious zealots blame Haiti for its misery

    January 18th, 201011:58 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    I took upon myself a most modest task. Critique the monstrous claim of Pat Robertson that the terrible earthquake that has decimated Haiti was a result of God's providential judgment on the nation. Apparently Robertson has more support among conservative Christians than I had wanted to believe. Four of the respondents in the thread came out actuall...

  • Is God behind the earthquake in Haiti?

    January 14th, 201010:50 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    I will not soon forget the image on the news last night. Arms desperately waving for help from between huge chunks of concrete. I thought with a shudder about the people inside, trapped, covered by several tons of rubble. How many would be saved, and how many more would die? Then as the world stood on in shocked horror, along came Pat Robertson an...

  • Does God hate those he does not save?

    January 13th, 201010:56 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Many Christians assume that God loves all people. This is hardly surprising since scripture declares that God loves all creation (John 3:16-17) and desires to see all people saved (1 Tim.2:4; 2 Pe.3:9). Indeed, the notion that God is loving to all, a doctrine known among theologians by the fancy name "omnibenevolence", would qualify for many as a b...

  • Can Jesus make a better Caesar salad than my wife?

    January 12th, 201002:02 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Yesterday I was at the dinner table with my wife and daughter Jamie eating a tasty meal. As I crunched the crispy romaine lettuce dressed with croutons, parmesan cheese, lemon juice and the rest, I exclaimed to Jamie, "Nobody can make a better Caesar salad than your mom!" to which she replied: "Jesus can!" Well I admit, according to Christian...

  • Does Calvinism undermine the sovereignty of God?

    January 09th, 201005:43 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    After some years in the hinterland of North American evangelicalism, Calvinism is once again on the rise. (For a good synopsis of the trend see Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed (Crossway, 2008).) One of the reasons people become Calvinists is because Calvinism, we are told, upholds God's sovereignty. In particular, it upholds God's sovereig...

  • Did fallible human testimony ensure that Jesus would have false beliefs?

    January 07th, 201009:54 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Another reason to think Jesus had false beliefs The debate on whether Jesus had false beliefs usually centers on evidence from scripture. (Hence, my previous token post on the topic.) Here I'm going to shift the ground and offer another reason to think that Jesus probably had some false beliefs. My argument builds on the amply demonstrated fact th...

  • Did Jesus have any false beliefs? A look at the Gospel of Mark

    January 07th, 201009:38 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    A brief recap In this post we return to our exploration of the omniscience of the incarnate Son of God. To recap all too briefly, we saw that a blastocyst cannot be omniscient, and therefore at the point where Jesus was a blastocyst (or fetus, or neonate) he could not be omniscient. Further, our intuitions on deity leave us to conclude that omnisc...

  • Three reasons agnostics shouldn't call themselves atheists

    January 02nd, 201012:32 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    The Problem The line between atheist and agnostic used to be clear. Atheists believed that no God or gods existed. Agnostics didn't have any belief as to whether God or gods existed. But today people have taken to calling themselves atheists simply because, as it is commonly said, they "lack belief in gods". In other words, agnostics now call them...
Advertisement
About this blog
An exploration of faith, knowledge, reason and doubt (with the occasional trite pop culture reference thrown in for good measure).