Biblical Theology: Past, Present, and Future (I)
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 55, No. 2 – Spring 2013
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
By Paul Copan. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011. Paperback, $14.99.
Making Old Testament ethics accessible and understandable to academics, as well as non-academics, is a challenge. Paul Copan has tackled the job with a consistent clarity and forthrightness that leaves any who try to train pastors and lay leaders with a healthy hermeneutic of Old Testament ethical issues in his debt. His claim is that he bases his work on “thoughtful, credible scholarship that offers plausible, sober-minded explanations and angles that present helpful resolutions and responses to perplexing Old Testament ethics questions” (11).
One of Copan’s first efforts is to place this discussion in the postmodern context of a “new atheism,” which is attacking Christianity as if it were a radical sect, compared to radical Islam. Their attack is a “cool-headed, scientific rationalism” that reflects what Michael Novak calls a kind of desperate defensiveness. Some of the primary targets for these atheists are the ethical problems of the Old Testament, thus the need to clarify the context for Copan’s hermeneutical effort. Copan’s approach to handling these neo-atheists is to attack them in like kind, with a confrontational apologetic that treats their arguments (like those attacking the existence of God) as “flimsy, often resembling the simplistic village atheist far more than the credentialed academicians” (17). The reason for taking this approach is because these neo-atheists reflect some of the common, unreasoned thinking, that unfortunately is expressed by some modern Christians, especially those with limited Biblical knowledge and understanding. This text was written to help sincere believers understand the ethical problems and conundrums of the Old Testament and thus be able to defend it against these modern-day attackers.
Essential to the hermeneutic of Copan is to show that the God of the Old Testament is the same as the one in the New, and that Jesus Christ is the same God as well. Considerable scholarship is shown through careful explanations of ancient near eastern cultures and customs, which are the background for most, if not all, of the problematic actions and teachings which are usually misunderstood and misinterpreted. Even though it is a limited volume of 252 pages, the vast majority of the ethical problem areas of the Old Testament are given fair treatment. This is as healthy and handy a document as a pastor can have for guiding his church leaders and teachers in dealing with non-believers and new believers who have doubts about the validity of the Old Testament for their faith in God.
