William A. Dembski, The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World.
I was rummaging in the local public library and ran across a book with a provocative title and well designed cover so I picked it up, thinking: So this guy is going to solve The problem of evil? Well, half a lifetime ago the primary reader for my MA thesis was still working on his dissertation at the University of Chicago and guess what his topic was; The problem of evil. Did he solve it?
Eons later, in the early 90s, I was chatting with a sales clerk in Norman Baggs' book store out on 85th & Greenwood (Seattle) — this young man was a voracious reader, working two jobs to support his young family and involved with some innovative street ministry in Seattle — some how we got talking about The problem of evil. I told him to read John Frame's chapter on it in Apologetics to the Glory of God. The next time I saw him in the book store he told me he had read Frame but considered his treatment of The problem of evil "a cop out". Meanwhile, he had laid hands on a copy of A. Plantinga's book and was reading it and was impressed with Plantinga's argument. I had read some of Plantinga but wasn't excited about it. I think I had perhaps two more discussions with the young man before he became unreachable[1] .
The first chapter of Dembski's book is certainly better reading than my memory of other works on this topic. I tried to read my first reader's dissertation twenty years later but could not get through it. Plantinga was readable but I had a built in bias against his approach to the problem. I'm in no hurry to finish Dembski's book. I have other stuff from distant libraries, a whole pile of books by Richard Bauckham that need to be mined in the next two weeks so they can go back to where they came from. The problem of evil isn't going anywhere in meantime, it has been with us for millennia.
I just googled the single word "Dembski". The first page of hits were all but one about William A. Dembski. I am not sure what this means. Perhaps I should stick with reading R. Bauckham, L. W. Hurtado, and J. D. G. Dunn. I have long term project going on Christology.
William A. Dembski, The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World. Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Publishing, 2009
[1] the young man's name was Mark Driscoll, currently "one of the pastors at Mars Hill Church" Seattle.
Eons later, in the early 90s, I was chatting with a sales clerk in Norman Baggs' book store out on 85th & Greenwood (Seattle) — this young man was a voracious reader, working two jobs to support his young family and involved with some innovative street ministry in Seattle — some how we got talking about The problem of evil. I told him to read John Frame's chapter on it in Apologetics to the Glory of God. The next time I saw him in the book store he told me he had read Frame but considered his treatment of The problem of evil "a cop out". Meanwhile, he had laid hands on a copy of A. Plantinga's book and was reading it and was impressed with Plantinga's argument. I had read some of Plantinga but wasn't excited about it. I think I had perhaps two more discussions with the young man before he became unreachable[1] .
The first chapter of Dembski's book is certainly better reading than my memory of other works on this topic. I tried to read my first reader's dissertation twenty years later but could not get through it. Plantinga was readable but I had a built in bias against his approach to the problem. I'm in no hurry to finish Dembski's book. I have other stuff from distant libraries, a whole pile of books by Richard Bauckham that need to be mined in the next two weeks so they can go back to where they came from. The problem of evil isn't going anywhere in meantime, it has been with us for millennia.
I just googled the single word "Dembski". The first page of hits were all but one about William A. Dembski. I am not sure what this means. Perhaps I should stick with reading R. Bauckham, L. W. Hurtado, and J. D. G. Dunn. I have long term project going on Christology.
William A. Dembski, The End of Christianity: Finding a Good God in an Evil World. Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Publishing, 2009
[1] the young man's name was Mark Driscoll, currently "one of the pastors at Mars Hill Church" Seattle.
posted by C. Stirling Bartholomew | 9:46 PM
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