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End Of Christianity
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Item Description...
Overview
A leading intelligent design supporter writes to prove a good God's existence in an evil world, in turn explaining what the end result of true Christianity must be.
Publishers Description
Theodicy attempts to resolve how a good God and evil world can coexist. The neo-atheist view in this debate has dominated recent bestseller lists through books like The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins), God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens), and The End of Faith (Samuel Harris). And their popularity illuminates a changing mental environment wherein people are asking harder questions about divine goodness. Surprisingly, these books please intelligent design champion William Dembski, because “They would be unnecessary if Christianity were not again a live issue.”Entering the conversation, Dembski's provocative The End of Christianity embraces the challenge to formulate a theodicy that is both faithful to Christian orthodoxy and credible to the new mental environment. He writes to make peace with three claims: (1) God by wisdom created the world out of nothing. (2) God exercises particular providence in the world. (3) All evil in the world ultimately traces back to human sin. In the process, Dembski brings the reader to a fresh understanding of what “the end (result) of Christianity” really means: the radical realignment of our thinking so that we see God's goodness in creation despite the distorting effects of sin in our hearts and evil in the world. Endorsements:" The End of Christianity towers over the others in profundity and quality . . . I have read very few books with its deep of insight, breadth of scholarly interaction, and significance. From now on, no one who is working on a Christian treatment of the problem of evil can afford to neglect this book." —J. P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Biola University and author of The God Question A thought-provoking and well-worth reading book by a brilliant evangelical thinker on the perennial and puzzling problem of how to explain physical evil in the world before the Fall. I could not put it down. It has so much intellectually stimulating material in it. —Norman Geisler "Believers have badly needed the kind of compelling case for biblical theodicy provided in Dr. Dembski's new book-grounded, as it is, not in traditional philosophical arguments (often not merely obtuse but irrelevant in today's scientific climate), but in intelligent design, of which Dr. Dembski is the world's foremost academic proponent." —John Warwick Montgomery "William Dembski is a first-rate scholar who has focused his attention on the perennial challenge to Christianity: Why does God allow such evil and cruelty in the world? While staying well within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, Dembski offers fresh insights that can truly be described as groundbreaking. Whether you end up embracing his solution or not, The End of Christianity is a book all Christians-and even non-Christians-need to wrestle with. We enthusiastically recommend it." —Josh and Sean McDowell, co-authors of Evidence for the Resurrection and More Than A Carpenter |
Item Specifications...
Pages 238
Dimensions: Length: 0.75" Width: 6.75" Height: 9.25"
Weight: 1 lbs.
Binding Hardcover
Release Date Nov 1, 2009
Publisher Broadman And Holman Publishers
ISBN 0805427430
EAN 9780805427431
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Availability 12 units.
Availability accurate as of May 26, 2012 10:02.
Usually ships within one to two business days from Johnson City, TN.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | An interesting solution to the problem of natural evil before the Fall Apr 9, 2010 |
This strangely-titled book is a speculative attempt to combine our current scientific understand of the history of planet Earth with an orthodox Christianity. William Dembski begins with a well-written survey and commentary on the current engagement of science and Christianity, including a nice summary of the spectrum of views on the Fall and natural evil.
Dembski`s hypothesis is that viewing natural evil as a consequence of the Fall is entirely compatible with mainstream understandings of cosmic and natural history. At the heart of his view is the idea that the effects of the Fall can be retroactive as well as proactive, much as the saving effects of the Cross stretch not only forward in time but also backward, saving, for instance, the Old Testament saints. He suggests that his view is compatible with young-earth creationism, old earth creationism and theistic evolution (evolutionary creationism). Dembski traces the history of his view back to 1846 (J. Jay Dana) and 1851 (Edward Hitchcock)and suggests that it didn't catch on then because no one developed a coherent theory of how God could act across time.
The heart of Dembski's book is Chapter 20, where he finally gets around to discussing his kairological (time measured by purpose) interpretation of Genesis 1-3 and retroactive natural evil. "A kairological reading of Genesis preserves the young-earth creationist emphasis on tracing all evil in the world to human sin: God creates a perfect world, God places humans in that world, they sin, and the world goes haywire." However, "it must also account for how the world could go haywire before human sin. . . . An infinite God who transcends time can redeem a botched performance by acting across time. In particular, God could make effects of the Fall evident in creation so that these effects, though attributable to the Fall, come temporally prior to it. In other words, the effects of the Fall can be retroactive."
In Dembski's own words: "Genesis 1 describes God's original plan for creation. The Fall and its consequences, in subverting that plan through human rebellion, elicits no radically new creative activity from God. . . . God's immediate response to the Fall is therefore not to create anew but to control damage. The challenge God faces in controlling the damage resulting from this original sin is to make humans realize the full extent of their sin so that, in the fullness of time, we can fully embrace the redemption of Christ." To do this, "God does not merely allow personal evils to run their course subsequent to the fall. In addition, God allows natural evils to run their course prior to the Fall. Thus, God himself wills the disordering of nature, making it defective on purpose . . . to bring humanity to its senses by making us realize the gravity of sin."
" If we accept that God acts to anticipate the Fall, then, in the chronology leading up to the Fall, the world has already experienced the consequences of human sin in the form of natural evil. This seems to raise a difficulty, however, because humans who have yet to sin come into a world where natural evil is already raging. . . . The Garden of Eden, as a segregated area in which the effects of natural evil are not evident provides the way out of this difficulty. . . .The drama of the Fall unfolds in a segregated area. Genesis 2:8 refers to this area as a garden planted by God (i.e., the Garden of Eden). Now, ask yourself why God would need to plant a garden in a perfect world untouched by natural evil. Any why, once humans sin, must they be expelled from this garden and live outside it, where natural evil is present?"
I recommend this book for Christians who are exploring ways to integrate an old earth and/or biological evolution with their Christian faith. Though speculative, this is certainly one possible approach. | | | | Superb Discussion of the Existence of Evil and a Good God Mar 23, 2010 |
Contrary to the very misleading title of the book, this book is actually about integrating the natural `evils' of death, disease, pain and suffering of evolution, with the existence of the benevolent Judaeo-Christian God.
Being a young-earth creationist, I was quite surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I was specifically surprised with the honesty that the author displayed in his exploration of the many hurdles that his model of integration faced. He was also quite honest about the advantages that young-earth creationism has in regards to theology and theodicy.
Dembski delves quite deep into the question of the existence of natural evil in a universe created by a benevolent God for both the young-earth and old-earth models of origins. He gives quite a thorough treatment of the many past attempts at answering the question, and why they fail.
No matter what your position of origins, you will find that the author's exploration of the subject will be very illuminating and informative. Despite my many differences of beliefs with the author, I found myself in agreement on many more points.
He never shies away from the many tough questions that most authors do, even at the risk of illuminating problems that aren't, in the end, adequately solved. His method of attacking the questions is honest and scholarly, and worthy of high praise.
The author gives a superbly honest review of the history of interpretation of the Creation account in Genesis. Not once does he try and skew the history of Genesis exegesis, like many modern scholars do, in an attempt to discredit the fact that Biblical scholars throughout history believed in a young earth. Nor does he try the typical fancy wordplay to make Genesis conform to his thesis. This was quite refreshing.
In fact he goes as far as saying that "a young earth interpretation of Genesis seems natural and fitting." It is because of this, I believe, that he doesn't even try to reconcile the text of Genesis with his model. I assume he knows that it is impossible to achieve in an honest way.
The thrust of the author's argument is that the natural evil that seems so uncharacteristic of a benevolent God, was actually created in the cosmos by God prior to human sin, as a retroactive punishment.
He says that natural evil was created prior to the Fall, in order to `amplify' the effects and consequences of sin so that we will full comprehend it.
He seems to be implicitly suggesting that proactive sin, as is spelled out in Genesis, is inadequate for us to reasonably comprehend the gravity of sin. Though I can't imagine why.
Dembski argues that if Christ's death on the cross has retroactive consequences, why not Adam and Eve's sin?
But while God's retroactive benevolence is a credit to Him, this alleged retroactive malevolence would surely discredit His benevolent character.
To me it seems that proactive sin is totally adequate in impressing apon humanity the gravity of our sin. Retroactive punishment seems utterly superfluous in achieving this end.
Punishing Adam and Eve before they sin achieves nothing, other than to make God look sadistic.
Even assuming he is right, all this would mean that God actually used the rape, infanticide, torture, death and disease of evolution, as His primary creative method!
Its one thing to punish the whole of creation for the sin of humans before they actually sin, but it's another thing to use this kind of `sadistic' malevolence as your chosen method of creation.
In an effort to legitimise his model, the author attempts to refute young-earth creationism. While the author rightly sees the young-earth creationist's interpretation of Genesis as providing a superior form of theology and theodicy, he feels as though secular science alone is enough to reject the young-earth position. So he then surveys some specific arguments that are used by young-earth creationists.
While he doesn't seem to have any problem with the actual scientific evidence as such, he does wrongly believe that the arguments of young-earth creationists are only based on Scripture, rather then on independent evidence for a young earth. But, had he looked a bit harder he would have found mountains of such independent evidence.
He states that "A good reality check in such discussions is to ask yourself what age you would estimate [for the earth] if you didn't feel the need to square the age of the earth with a young-earth interpretation of Genesis 1-11."
But in the end, the author's critique of young-earth creationism is rather ill researched and poorly thought out. He would have done himself a huge favour had he consulted some of the commonly available young-earth creationist literature, or contacted the authors. He would have found that all his questions would have been quickly answered.
It also struck me as highly hypocritical of the author to criticise young-earth creationism (falsely) for not having any independent evidence, when his own model of retroactive punishment contains no such independent evidence itself!
When you swap a few words in Dembski's challenge to YEC's (as quoted above), you see how he has violated the sin that he falsely berates YEC's of:
`A good reality check in such discussions is to ask yourself if retroactive punishment is necessary if you didn't feel the need to square the age of the earth with an old earth interpretation of scientific data.'
Well, the answer is clearly no!
This is the first book of it's kind that I have seen that openly admits to all the obvious flaws that are inherent in such a marriage between evolution and Christianity. Instead of playing down all such problems, the author does try to fit them in, which is admirable.
But in the end it is utterly futile, futile because, the model that he formulates never really fixes any of these problems.
All in all, the author tries a new, and refreshing, approach to integrating evolution into Christianity. Not only will evolution-believing Christians gain a great deal of insight into the reconciliation of evil with a Good God, but so will young earth creationists. Dembski does an absolutely superb job in surveying the whole issue.
But for all his superb reasoning, in the end, I feel that he only provides an inferior theological substitute to the traditional young-earth interpretation of Genesis.
| | |  | A roller-coaster Mar 19, 2010 |
What Mr. Dembski does in this book is reconcile, through his proposed theodicy, the evil that we all witness in the world with the existence of a good god. And he does a marvelous job of demonstrating how by sticking to the fundamental arguments in the Bible, no science can prove God's claims wrong, on the contrary, only by sticking to Christian orthodoxy through thick and thin do we continue to be in the mêlée. Mr. Dembski does not get so much into the discussion of whether the young-earth creationists or the old-earth creationists are right, or to what extent does evolution play a role ("scientific evidence supports only limited forms of evolutionary change"); those are not the issues here. The point is that what can do harm to Christianity is not having a theodicy that holds tight and encompasses these three claims: 1. God by wisdom created the world out of nothing. 2. God exercises particular providence in the world. 3. All evil in the world ultimately traces back to human sin.
Other books have been written on intelligent-design (if ever something self-evident needed to be proved, 'the fool says there is no God'). But what really does harm is the lack of an explanation as to what comes afterward: So there is a God, then what?
To those fanatics of evolution and Darwin read this: "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almmost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world .. The break between man and his nearst allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." Darwin 'Descent of Man'.
It's not about believing one thing or the other. It's about acting upon your beliefs that gets other people in trouble. Know the truth and be free indeed.
A fantastic book. I recommend it all to all Christians, it really strengthens my faith and leaves my soul at peace with the world (if only for a while). | | |  | Not convinced Mar 10, 2010 |
Christianity has a problem, a big one, right where it all starts. The earth and the universe it sits in are very old, that's for sure, science proves it (and it's actually a common sense observation). The story of Adam, Eve, paradise and the fall fits nicely into a young-earth scenario, but not in an old-earth one. An old-earth scenario creates problems that doesn't sit well in the Adam, Eve, paradise and fall story. Carnivores before Adam? Death and destruction before the fall?
The author of this book comes with a not-really-so-new angle called "Retroactive Effects of the Fall" that goes with a kairos interpretation of Genesis (as opposed to a chronological one). I followed Dembski's arguments throughout but it still feels to me like a forced retrofit solution to bridge a very complex gap between old-earth and the Fall. There's still too many holes in this approach that I cannot find peace with. In my mind the curse was meant for man as it was man than sinned, not nature, not animals. Dembski do state this, that natural evil was implemented by God to show man the consequences of sin, to make man feel it, and to get man to repent and turn to God. Why then implement this millions of years before man - in the eventual image of God - walked this earth to "feel the pain"? Why this curse for so long without the object it's meant to affect and restore?
Is there any logic in a new isolated "capsule" garden in the middle of a fully functional earth that's been suffering under the curse for millions of years, not affected by it in any way? New animals? Different weather patterns for a small area? Different plants? Lions eating grass/fruit? How deep would this capsule have gone into the eary's crust to prevent any surrounding effect from creeping in? Different geology under Adams' feet with different weather above his head?
To me the real answer lies elsewhere. For me this effort to retrofit things to make it work just doesn't work. Maybe I'm just not sharp enough to understand all that was presented. My next stop in this quest for understanding is John Walton's "The Lost World of Genesis One". | | | | It's All in the Timing: This Evil That Exists Feb 5, 2010 |
Dembski had the problem of many of resolving his scientific, logical and thoughtful conclusions with the Scriptures clear and carefully exegeted texts, especially with the problem of evil. At specific issue here is the long belief of orthodox Christianity that evil entered the world at the Fall and since has extended to all creation.
Dembski surmises that the trend in our times is to polarize the discussion over Genesis 1-3 over science vs. Bible, with only one winner. He proposes that we rather let each of them have their say in their specialty: science will exegete Genesis 1-3 (although he admits later on that there are big problems in chapters 4-11). This is where one's view of time is critical: he argues that two Biblical words for time: kairos and chronos refer to God's differing uses of time, of which chronology is the only one we work and live in. He believes geological and astrophysical work has forced us to chuck the traditional Christian church's belief that evil entered the world at the Fall. Thus, he turns to a defense of a kairological time before humans were created or endowed with the image of God, whereby God in advance was infecting all of creation with the residual impact of sin and evil.
I'm sure from many more able than me will come a serious challenge to this magesterial use of reason to interpret Genesis 1-3. This work is much of that bent, using Dembski's accumen of such as informational theory, geology, astrophysics, philosophy, etc. to reconcile one's interpretation of Gen. 1-3, which he eventually does at the waning chapters.
Others will certainly provide argumentation against his scientific conclusions, as well as those theological. I have issues with his image of God, as Gen. 5:1-3 states that Adam was made in likeness of God, but that his son Seth was created not in God's likeness, but in Adam's. Thus, we get the original sin handed down which seriously taints not only Adam's relationship with God, but Seth's and all subsequent generations as well. This relationship aspect is not stressed enough by Dembski, although he does admirably confess the redemption aspect at the ending chapters.
I found this laborious to read since the subject matter he wishes to offer is so foreign to my interests and reading, but found it fascinating and engaging and look forward to digesting it more especially in light of what others with training in these areas offer up in response.
The dialogue with this approach will be fascinating to follow. | | | Write your own review about End Of Christianity
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