Can We Still Believe in God? , livre ebook

Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2020 by Craig L. Blomberg
Published by Brazos Press
a division of Baker Publishing Group
PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-2359-0
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
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Dedication
For Alicia Duprée whose faithful loyalty to Jesus Christ despite many personal challenges remains an inspiring model and whose friendship remains a continual encouragement
Contents
Cover i
Half Title Page ii
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Dedication v
Preface ix
Introduction xiii
Abbreviations xv
1. If There Is a God, Why Does He Allow So Much Suffering and Evil? 1
2. Must All the Unevangelized Go to Hell (and What Is Hell)? 17
3. Slavery, Gender Roles, and Same-Sex Sexual Relations 33
4. The Meaning of the Miracles 49
5. Weren’t the Stories of Jesus Made Up from Greco-Roman Myths? 65
6. How Should We Respond to All the Violence in the Bible? 85
7. The Problems of Prayer and Predestination 101
8. What about All the Apparent Contradictions in the Gospels? 115
9. Hasn’t the Church Played Fast and Loose with Copying and Translating the New Testament? 129
10. The Alleged Undesirability of the Christian Life 143
Conclusion 155
Notes 159
Names Index 197
Scripture and Ancient Writings Index 203
Subject Index 211
Back Cover 218
Preface
A significant part of growing up and maturing for many people involves discovering that what they assumed was normal about their childhood was just one of many different kinds of experiences they could have had. The same is true for Christian growth and maturity. I had a lot of wonderful education, discipling, and mentoring, both formally and informally, in my family, in my church, and through two amazing parachurch ministries in my high school and college. All my life I went to public schools, and my college, though private, was in the process of shedding much of its religious heritage when I attended it. I spent a year between college and graduate school teaching in a public high school. By the time I attended my first evangelical Christian institution, then, when I went to seminary, I was aware of all kinds of questions that my friends and acquaintances who did not share my Christian convictions asked. I knew the ways skeptics often countered Christian faith. I had devoured literature, tapes, and live teaching in numerous settings that in most instances gave me what seemed to be compelling answers.
My experience at seminary was therefore not like that of many of my peers. Oh, I learned an amazing amount, and, at times, I realized that what I had thought was “the” evangelical Christian viewpoint on an issue was just one of several. Nevertheless, unlike many who struggled to grasp the reasons we were required to study numerous topics in an academically rigorous fashion, I understood—based on my previous experiences inside and outside of the classroom trying to share my faith and make a credible case for following Jesus—why we needed to be studying all that we were. I had already been introduced to every issue, in one form or another, that I am addressing in this book. I had already discovered convincing answers to most of them, but I realized I had much more to learn. It quickly surprised me, then, how many seminarians seemed uninterested in them and unprepared to address them.
After I moved on from seminary to doctoral study and completed my PhD in New Testament, my first teaching job was at a comparatively young undergraduate Christian liberal arts college where students majoring in religion were eager for all kinds of knowledge. What some of them lacked in sheer smarts they made up for with zeal. But it was not my lot to stay there for a long time; instead, I came to Denver Seminary, where I have now completed thirty-three years of teaching in a wonderfully congenial environment. Over the years, I have experienced some of the same disconnect I had as a seminary student. There is a “mercenary” attitude among more seminarians than college students that insists a topic be demonstrated to be relevant fairly immediately in their ministries, current or projected, or else we shouldn’t foist it on them. Amazingly, even some of these top ten reasons for rejecting God are at times on their list of topics we shouldn’t “bore” them with! If it won’t preach on Sunday, titillate their youth group on Wednesday night, or help their clients in the counseling clinic, then they show little interest. Never mind that most of them will go on to have multiple, fairly distinct ministries throughout their careers, with responsibilities they never anticipated and, if they dare to talk about their faith with people who don’t share it, they will run into these topics again and again. I therefore make no apologies, for example, for spending an entire chapter on the transmission and translation of the text of the New Testament. But I begin with a chapter that deals with the problem of suffering and evil, which I hope needs no justification for anyone.
Numerous people deserve my thanks and appreciation for their help in this project. Bryan Dyer and Jim Kinney from Baker Academic and Brazos Press have showed enthusiasm for the project from the first day I suggested it to them. James Korsmo and the team at Brazos Press shepherded the manuscript well. Denver Seminary has continued to afford wonderful facilities, library resources, and supportive conditions for my writing. My wife, Fran, who early in my career read and critiqued everything I wrote, was not able to keep up with all of it as our girls were growing up and then as she worked on the pastoral staff of two local churches we attended, in turn. Now that she is retired, she is reading my books again, and for that I am again grateful. Our two grown daughters put up with occasionally being “found out” to be related to me but more importantly give perceptive feedback whenever I bounce ideas and questions off them.
I continue to be grateful for the support of the administration and board of Denver Seminary and for their generous sabbatical policy, although this book was largely completed in between two sabbaticals that gave and are giving me the opportunity for researching and writing longer works. The distinguished professorship, which I have held since 2006, has provided an annual stipend for research assistants and assistance, without which I could not possibly have kept on publishing the quantity of scholarship that I have. The research assistant who has had the greatest amount of input in this volume is Alicia Duprée, who is now also my (adjunct) faculty colleague and a part-time PhD student in New Testament studies as well. I am profoundly grateful for her help in this project and wish to dedicate this volume to her.
Introduction
B logs, tweets, podcasts, YouTube videos—these and other high-tech forms of communication allow people to express their commitments and convictions to a huge audience as quickly as ever in the his