Is God a Vindictive Bully? cover art

Is God a Vindictive Bully?

Reconciling Portrayals of God in the Old and New Testaments

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About this listen

Critics outside the church often accuse the Old Testament God of genocide, racism, ethnic cleansing, and violence. But a rising tide of critics within the church claim that Moses and other "primitive," violence-prone prophets were mistaken about God's commands and character. Both sets of critics dismiss this allegedly harsh, flawed, "textual" Old Testament God in favor of the kind, compassionate, "actual" God revealed by Jesus. Are they right to do so?

Following his popular book Is God a Moral Monster?, noted apologist Paul Copan confronts false, imbalanced teaching that is confusing and misleading many Christians. Copan takes on some of the most difficult Old Testament challenges and places them in their larger historical and theological contexts. He explores the kindness, patience, and compassion of God in the Old Testament and shows how Jesus in the New Testament reveals not only divine kindness but also divine severity. The book is helpful for anyone interested in understanding the flaws in these emerging claims that are creating a destructive gap between the Testaments.

©2022 Paul Copan (P)2022 eChristian Bible Study Bibles & Bible Study Christianity Judaism Sacred Writing
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The moral God makes more sense than we think when viewed through the eyes of our "internal sceptic" as Copan calls our desire to criticise our beliefs. The audiobook is tediously and tiresomely full of references and the voice is monotonous but this isn't meant to be a fun-times adventure book.
Highly recommended for those of us who have actually read the Bible and are continuing to seek answers as non-theologians.

An excellent overview of the criticisms of Christianity

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I really enjoyed this book. It opened up a lot for me. One of the issues I had been turning over in my mind was the issue of the ‘little children’ who mocked Elisha and subsequently were killed by the bear. I read ‘Is God a Moral Monster?’ (another brilliant book) by the same author and it was not resolved there. I am glad Copan wrote this book as the issue was brilliantly addressed and I have cross-checked this theory.

Something I keep getting reminded of as I learn the scriptures from brilliant and blessed minds such as Paul Copan, N.T. Wright and Bible Project discourses, is that even we who love and aim to follow Christ still have so much to learn from His written Word and we must not make the mistake to think we know it all because we am memorise the text, chapter and verse.

I am reminded to beware of generational arrogance; we mustn’t read scripture like like 8-year-olds reading about simplistic and 2-D characters, because humanity then was just as complex as humanity today.

Even where there are varying opinions and thoughts on a scripture and possible human impact on scripture, God’s intrinsic goodness and awesomeness still stands and is very clear, even taken alongside the severity of God. Maybe especially because of the latter.

I have also learned that if we indeed ‘seek’ we will FIND God’s heart, wisdom and truth in this written Word, even though He is infinitely larger than what this written word can contain. And that itself is a wonder and a joy! 🙌🏽

Definitely one to re-read thoroughly to get all the meat off.

Wonderful! Eye-opening! Affirming!

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