Randal Rauser
Auteur de Finding God In The Shack
A propos de l'auteur
Randal Rauser is associate professor of historical theology at Taylor Seminary in Edmonton, Canada, where he teaches in the areas of theology, apologetics, world-view and church history. He earned his Ph.D. at King's College, London, where he focused on the doctrine of the Trinity. Rauser is the afficher plus author of several books, including You're Not as Crazy as I Think, Finding God in the Shack and Theology in Search of Foundations. He can be found online atwww.randalrauser.com. afficher moins
Œuvres de Randal Rauser
What on Earth Do We Know about Heaven?: 20 Questions and Answers about Life after Death (2013) 23 exemplaires
An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar: Talking about God, the Universe, and Everything (2016) 18 exemplaires
You're Not As Crazy As I Think: Dialogue in a World of Loud Voices and Hardened Opinions [Paperback] (2010) 13 exemplaires
Encontre Deus Na Cabana - Finding God in the Shack By Randal Rauser ( Book in Portuguese ) (2009) 6 exemplaires
Conversations with My Inner Atheist: A Christian Apologist Explores Questions that Keep People Up at Night (2020) 4 exemplaires
What's So Confusing About Grace? 2 exemplaires
Progressive Christians Love Jesus Too: A Response to Alisa Childers (and the heresy hunters) (2022) 2 exemplaires
Finding God in The shack 1 exemplaire
Oeuvres associées
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- Canada
- Lieu de naissance
- Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
- Lieux de résidence
- Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada
London, England, UK
Caronport, Saskatchewan, Canada
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Membres
Critiques
Vous aimerez peut-être aussi
Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 19
- Aussi par
- 1
- Membres
- 317
- Popularité
- #74,565
- Évaluation
- 3.3
- Critiques
- 10
- ISBN
- 29
- Langues
- 1
Rauser provides a compelling examination of the apparent biblical divine sanction of genocide (against the Canaanites). I appreciate his relentless honesty, in that, while seeking to uphold the Christian faith, he is willing to ask hard questions and propose creative answers. He is also willing to critique fellow Christians when he believes their arguments don't hold up. His ability to identify and navigate between biblical, theological, and philosophical matters related to the larger issue is impressive.
The above approach is used in this book to interrogate the perennial problem of God's apparent command to ancient Israel to eradicate the Canaanites. Rauser proposes that if we find this morally reprehensible, that should be a strong indicator that it in fact is, and therefore it should dramatically reshape the way such texts are interpreted. He argues that common Christian explanations are unsatisfactory, including the proposals that the Canaanites were uniquely deserving of genocide, or that this was a "just war" (and so not a genocide).
Rauser does find support in the Christian tradition for rejecting violence attributed to God in the spiritualization of such Scriptures. But while these indicate that Christians have often struggled with violent texts, spiritualized application doesn't resolve the reason for the existence of such texts.
Ultimately he proposes an interpretive approach emphasizes God's accomodation to the cultures to which he was revealing himself. This means that the perfect God intentionally permits errors into Scripture, which he believes is inevitable given the accommodation process. Since human understanding of the world and morality is never perfect and is historically embedded, any revelation must be comprehensible to those receiving it -- which entails being comprehensible within erroneous worldviews. In short, God allows for "error" in his communication, in order to communicate something more significant, and to bring about his greater purposes. Scripture, then, will accomplish what God perfectly designed it to accomplish (guiding God's people to grow in love of God and neighbour), even while containing the errors of accomodation.
Rauser comes close to adopting Gregory Boyd's approach to discerning what can be understood to be errors in morality in the Bible, in that he upholds Jesus as the moral standard. Any action apparently attributed to God in the Bible must correspond to the morality of the words and works of Jesus (and specifically, in Boyd's case, demonstrated through Jesus' crucifixion). In short, any action attributed to God in Scripture that contradicts the morality revealed through Jesus (and innate human moral sense) must be understood as not, in fact, being an action of God, but rather a misattribution of immoral actions upon God. Rauser doesn't believe Boyd is fully consistent in his application of this moral principle in his interpretation of the Canaanite genocide, but overall their views are fairly close.
In sum, for Rauser, God did not command genocide. This contradicts human moral sensibilities and the NT revelation of Jesus. But Rauser knows that there are still difficult questions remaining. Is the inclusion of such violent texts in the Bible, for example, really the best way to bring about God's purposes? Rauser believes so, but in the basis of faith in the author of Scripture being the perfect God, who knows what he's doing even when we do not.
Again, I appreciate Raiser's willingness to be very honest with the best of Christian responses to this difficult issue, and even with his own limitations. He doesn't claim to have resolved every question but invites the reader into the dialogue. Whatever one thinks of his conclusions (and I find them compelling, although I'm still processing them), Rauser clearly lays out the key questions and issues that Christians should not ignore.… (plus d'informations)