This book has been a great companion book as I read through the Old Testament. By comparing Old Testament statements next to their contemporary counterparts, the differences are compelling. If the same amount of criticism and skepticism were directed at these, they would give Christianity a pass. The bottom line to any truth claim is does it work. Like the Apostle Paul discovered,
Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
It is like Keith Green said, "I know God is real because He changed me."
This is a review of Is God a Moral Monster by Paul Copan with study questions added to turn them into lessons. These lessons are part of a wider study on Sanctification by Faith which has as its goal the fulfillment of Gal 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. Because sanctification depends upon faith, doubt will be seen as a hindrance. Misunderstanding can lead to doubt as well as ignorance, deception, and experience like - it doesn't feel right. This lesson seeks to combat ignorance, deception, and misunderstanding. By erasing these, our faith is free to function at a higher level. I’ve set all of these studies in a specific order so that anyone may easily build on the foundation of Christ with the finest materials - gold, silver, and precious stones (1 Cor 3:10-13). God has gifted the Church with amazing evangelists, pastors, and teachers to do the mining so that we have these materials to complete the building project. (Eph 4:11-16). I invite you to study along with me. You can see an overview of the complete Sanctification by Faith study here. To go to the start of the current lesson (Is God a Moral Monster) click here. Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thess 5:23

20: We Have Moved beyond This God (Haven’t We?) Jesus as the Fulfiller of the Old Testament
The Gifts of the Jews
On February 16, 1809, John Adams wrote a letter to F. A. Vanderkemp in which he insisted that “the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation.” Not only did their laws help bring a civilizing influence to the nations, but they preserved and propagated to humankind “the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.”[1]
In his fascinating book The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill reinforces this argument. This ancient nomadic desert tribe helped introduce to humanity a sense of history-a past, present, and future-and the idea that history is going somewhere, that it has a point.[2] For the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and other ancient peoples, time was cyclical—the same old same old. We could say the same about many Eastern philosophies and religions today; they espouse the doctrine of karma with its reincarnation cycles of birth, death, and rebirth.
What’s more, the Old Testament reveals a God who has a global (cosmic) plan and who involves humans as history-shaping participants in that plan. Yes, humans matter. The Old Testament’s genealogies reflect the important role that humans play in the unfolding of God’s purposes.
On top of this, the Jews introduced a robust monotheism. Rather than being just one god in a pantheon of others or just a regional deity, Yahweh was/is the only deity who matters. Indeed, he is the only one who exists. Along with this, the Jews introduced a new way to experience reality. There is a divine being who regularly, personally engages humans, whose choices really make a difference. Human decision making has great significance, and God interweaves these choices into his overarching plans. We’re not the pawns of fate or at the mercy of the whims of the gods. On the other hand, humans aren’t so powerful that they can manipulate God to do their bidding. These themes are some of the gifts of the Jews to the rest of the world.[3]
The Gifts of the Christians
Horrendous, anti-Christian actions have been carried out in the name of Christ: the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch-hunting, or fighting between Catholics and Protestants in Europe could be named. Not that Jesus wants to be identified with this kind of religious zealotry. Many things can be done in God’s name that cause it to be “blasphemed among the Gentiles” (Rom. 2:24).
The problem with Christopher Hitchens’s claim that “religion poisons everything” is that it’s both vague and extreme. The term religion in the existing literature is notoriously vague and difficult to define. And if Dennett and Hitchens suggest that Stalin was somehow “religious,” then at this point we throw up our hands in bewilderment. Hitchens’s statement about religion’s noxious influence is also extreme in its lopsidedness.[4] Does religion poison everything and bring no benefits whatsoever? More thoughtful, sophisticated atheists would strongly disagree. As atheist philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong responds, this religion-poisons-everything slogan is “inaccurate and insulting.” He advises atheists not to cheer on or laugh at Hitchens’s jokes, nor should they remain silent. To Sinnott-Armstrong, Hitchens’s critique of religion is “like a senile relative” who is constantly making “bizarre statements”; his assessment is neither fair nor very illuminating.[5]
Ironically, the New Atheists’ moral grenades lobbed against the Christian faith in the name of morality are actually historically founded upon the very faith they criticize. Historians have documented that the values of human rights, tolerance, social justice, and racial reconciliation are the legacy of the Christian faith, not some secular Enlightenment ideals. For all her flaws, the Christian church has played an important part in bringing huge benefits to civilization. This impact has often been inspired by devotion to Christ, which overflows to love for one’s neighbor to the glory of God.
These documented achievements include the following:[6] [7]
It’s difficult to exaggerate the impact that Jesus of Nazareth has had on history and the countless lives impacted by this one man’s life and teaching—indeed, the transforming power of his cross and resurrection. The historian Jaroslav Pelikan remarked that by the changing of the calendar (to BC and AD according to “the year of our Lord”) and other ways, “everyone is compelled to acknowledge that because of Jesus of Nazareth history will never be the same.”[8]
Dawkins is quite wrong in asserting that the Christian faith—like Islam—was spread by the sword.[9] If he took an honest look at Christian history, he would have to acknowledge that the earliest Christian movement was one of the politically and socially disempowered. This movement was first called “the Way” (Acts 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22) in honor of its Savior (John 14:6), and it often gathered to itself slaves and members of the lower classes. In the first three centuries, the church grew by deeds of love and mercy and the proclamation of the Good News of Jesus. Holy wars had no place in this nonviolent movement.
Rodney Stark—the respected eight-hundred-pound gorilla among sociologists—shows in his book The Victory of Reason how the “success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians.”[10] But don’t just take a Christian sociologist’s word for it. Jürgen Habermas is one of Europe’s most prominent philosophers today. Another fact about Habermas: he’s a dyed-in-the-wool atheist. Yet he highlights the inescapable historical fact that the biblical faith was the profound influence in shaping civilization. Consider carefully his assessment:[11]
Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than just a precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and a social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.[12]
In the words of human rights scholar Max Stackhouse, “Intellectual honesty demands recognition of the fact that what passes as ‘secular,’ ‘Western’ principles of basic human rights developed nowhere else than out of key strands of the biblically-rooted religion.”[13]
Consider three fundamental historical facts.
Even non-Westerners have come to recognize the remarkable impact of the Christian faith in the West. Time magazine’s well-respected correspondent David Aikman reported the summary of one Chinese scholar’s lecture to a group of eighteen American tourists:
“One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world,” he said. “We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”[15]
This lecturer was not some ill-informed crackpot. To the contrary, he represented one of China’s premier academic research organizations—the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). We don’t just find Western scholarly support for the Jewish-Christian worldview. We find it in the East as well!
Jesus as the Climax
The Scriptures begin with the creational affirmation that all humans are made in God’s image. In many ways, the improvements of the Old Testament over a good deal of other ancient Near Eastern legislation were a significant move toward that ideal. The Old Testament provides us with enduring perspectives about human dignity and fallenness, not to mention moral insights regarding justice, faithfulness, mercy, generosity, and the like.
However, if we stop with the Old Testament, we won’t see the entire story line as it’s brought to completion in Jesus. The Old Testament was in many ways anticipatory of something far greater. So if Jesus truly brought a new covenant for the true Israel and has begun to renew the creation as the second Adam, then we ought to concern ourselves with how his incarnation, ministry, atoning death, and resurrection shed light backward on the Old Testament, with all its messiness. To stop with Old Testament texts without allowing Christ, the second Adam, and the new, true Israel to illuminate them, our reading and interpretation of the Old Testament will be greatly impoverished and, in certain ways, misrepresented.[16]
One day we’ll fully enjoy the realization of pristine goodness and shalom. In the new heaven and earth, no social or racial discrimination will exist. Swords will be beaten into plowshares. Peace will reign. In his own day, Jesus reaffirmed Old Testament texts about loving God and neighbor and called Israel back to live by God’s creational designs. That was then, but hardened hearts are still with us today. Yet Jesus’s approach to the Old Testament should instruct us Christians living in the already/not yet. We’re living with many benefits of the cross of Christ (already), but we still live in a fallen world as we await the new heaven and earth and the receiving of our resurrection bodies (not yet).
Though the New Atheists don’t intend it and though they often go about it in wrongheaded ways, they can serve as a proper challenge for us Christians.[17] How? By reminding us to be more thoughtful in our faith, to live kingdom-centered lives with greater Christian passion and consistency, to deepen our commitment to justice and opposing oppression, to think through contemporary obstacles to belief, and to offer a more compelling vision in word and deed to a watching world. We all need to take a fresh look at Jesus and let our gaze at him shape our devotion to him, our love for others (even our enemies), and our concern for the culture and world in which we find ourselves. Author and pastor Tim Keller gives us a start for our reflection:
If your fundamental is a man dying on the cross for his enemies, if the very heart of your self-image and your religion is a man praying for his enemies as he died for them, sacrificing for them, loving them-if that sinks into your heart of hearts, it’s going to produce the kind of life that the early Christians produced. The most inclusive possible life out of the most exclusive possible claim-and that is that this is the truth. But what is the truth? The truth is a God become weak, loving, and dying for the people who opposed him, dying forgiving them.[18]
While we may stumble or be troubled when reading certain Old Testament texts, we can put them in proper perspective by looking in the right places. The ultimate resolution is found in God’s clarifying Word to us and the One who became flesh and lived among us, who died and rose again on our behalf. The God whom the New Atheists consider a monster is not just a holy God to be reckoned with but a loving, self-sacrificing God who invites us to be reconciled to him.
Further Reading
Hill, Jonathan. What Has Christianity Ever Done for Us? Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005.
Schmidt, Alvin. How Christianity Changed the World. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004.
Stark, Rodney. The Victory of Reason. New York: Random House, 2005.
Wright, N. T. Evil and the Justice of God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006.
Click on the "Is God a Moral Monster" tag below to see all the posts in this series. To go to the start of this series click here.
Questions & Notes
John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams, vol. 9 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1856). Available at http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php&title=2107. ↑
Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews (New York: Anchor, 1999). ↑
Contrary to the New Atheists, what contributions have Jews made to civilization? This book lists some of them. Can you think of others? ↑
When Christopher Hitchens says that “religion poisons everything,” what does he mean? What is the problem with his claim? ↑
Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, Morality without God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 154. ↑
Jonathan Hill, What Has Christianity Ever Done for Us? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2005), 176-77. For thorough documentation on these phenomena, see Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004). ↑
What have been some of the contributions Christians have made to the world? What Christ-inspired effects have brought light, help, and hope to the world? Can you think of any other contributions not mentioned in the book? ↑
Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 33. ↑
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 37. ↑
Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason (New York: Random House, 2005), xi. ↑
Look at Jürgen Habermas’s quotation on the influence of the Christian faith. What do you think of it, and why is this important in light of the New Atheists’ critique? ↑
Jürgen Habermas, Time of Transitions, ed. and trans. Ciaran Cronin and Max Pensky (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), 150-51. ↑
Max Stackhouse, “A Christian Perspective on Human Rights,” Society (January/February 2004): 25. ↑
Ibid., 24. See also Max L. Stackhouse and Stephen E. Healey, “Religion and Human Rights: A Theological Apologetic,” in Religious Rights in Global Perspective, ed. J. Witte Jr. and J. D. van der Vyer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996), 486; and Mary Ann Glendon, The World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Random House, 2001). ↑
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2003), 5. This quotation serves as an exclamation point to round out Rodney Stark’s study, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success (New York: Random House, 2005), 235. ↑
How does the coming of Jesus bring clarity to the Old Testament and some of its challenges? ↑
Overall, what have been some benefits you’ve taken away from reading and discussing this book? What have you learned about the character and activity of God across the two testaments? How have you been stretched and even strengthened in your faith? ↑
Tim Keller, “Reason for God,” The Explorer (Veritas Forum) (Fall 2008), www.veritas.org/explorer/fall2008.html#story1. ↑