For those who aren’t aware, there has been something of a “debate”, but what I’d prefer to refer to as an “in house discussion” between Randal Rauser (Professor of Historical Theology at Taylor Seminary) and myself. The discussion so far can be found here: My initial article was Randal Rauser’s Mistake: A Defense of Calvin’s Doctrine […]
Entries from December 3rd, 2011
More Mistakes: A Rejoinder to Randal Rauser
December 3rd, 2011 158 Comments
Tags: Arminianism · Calvinism · Circular Reasoning · Divine Justice · Divine Love · Fallacies · Justice · Limited Atonement · omnibenevolence · Question begging · Randal Rauser · Sin · Soteriology · Systematic theology · Total Depravity · Unlimited Atonement
Another Day, Another Publication
November 17th, 2011 11 Comments
Matt is having a good day. Presently he is in San Francisco where this morning he gave the first of his talks, “Can Traditional Theism Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality? A Reply to Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s Critique of William Lane Craig” to the Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. By all accounts it was well received […]
Randal Rauser’s Mistake: A Defense of Calvin’s Doctrine of Election
November 12th, 2011 77 Comments
Thanks go to Matthew Flannagan for pointing me in the direction of this response to the problem. A while back Professor Randal Rauser issued a blog entitled “Calvinism and the Arbitrary Camp Director” in which he criticised the Calvinist understanding of election. For those of you who are unaware of the Calvinistic understanding of election, […]
Tags: Arminianism · Calvinism · Circular Reasoning · Election · Ethics · Evangelical Christianity · Philosophical Theology · Randal Rauser · Salvation · Soteriology · Supererogation · Systematic theology · Theology
Madeleine Grounded
November 9th, 2011 32 Comments
As regular readers will know we have spent a good chunk of this year focussed on planning and fundraising to get to the USA to speak at conferences in South Bend, Indiana and in San Francisco. Yesterday we should have been on a flight heading to the USA but we had to make the tough […]
Tags:
The Nominations for Evangelical Philosophical Society Executive are in…
November 3rd, 2011 9 Comments
Voting for the 2011 Executive Committee of the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS) has begun today. I am pleased to announce that this blog’s Matthew Flannagan has been nominated as one of the seven candidates for the three vacant executive committee positions. Matt is the only New Zealander to have been nominated – so proud of […]
Tags: EPS · Evangelical Philosophical Society
Comparing the Old & New Teleological Arguments
October 20th, 2011 78 Comments
The “New Teleological Argument” is a theistic argument which attempts to show that theism is more probable than the postulate of an “atheistic single universe”[i]. There are number of reasons why this argument is termed the “New” teleological argument. Chief among these reasons is that its explanandum i.e. the incredible fine tuning of the laws […]
Tags: Apologetics · Design Arguments · Evolution · Fine-Tuning · Natural Theology · Philosophy of Religion · Robin Collins · Teleological Arguments · The Likelihood Principle · William Paley
Contra Mundum: When Scientists Make Bad Ethicists
October 10th, 2011 399 Comments
One thing I find particularly frustrating is reading commentary on theology and philosophy written by scientists. To be fair, some scientists I have read are informed and do offer astute and insightful comments; commonly, however, one finds a person who is undoubtedly brilliant in their own field, writing with confident gusto, articles that fail to […]
Tags: Charles Darwin · Contra Mundum · Divine Command Theory · God and Morality · Investigate Magazine · Jerry Coyne · Robert Adams · Science and Religion
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.
