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Document Details : Title: Een godsdienstfilosofie van de verschroeide aarde Author(s): SAROT, Marcel Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 53 Issue: 2 Date: 2013 Pages: 126-135 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.53.2.3203314 Abstract : In his God in the Age of Science? Herman Philipse misrepresents the religious views he aims to refute. Three examples of this misrepresentation are: (1) Philipse supposes that if various Biblical authors disagree on a topic, this undermines the reliability of the Bible. He suggests that one example of such disagreement regards the question whether Christians should continue to observe Jewish law. According to Philipse, the author of the Gospel of Matthew disagrees, while St. Paul is said to have agreed. Philipse is shown to be mistaken about the details of the case (e.g., by ignoring other texts in the Gospel of Matthew), ignoring the wider New Testament context (e.g., Acts 15) and ignoring the well-known fact that the Bible in many cases presents several different versions of the same story, so that a single view of revelation cannot be assumed. (2) Philipse suggests that Christians believe that God is a person without a body, and argues that this is a meaningless concept. This article shows that Christians believe that God is three persons, and that the concept of personhood employed here, differs from the ‘ordinary’ concept of personhood that Philipse discusses. (3) Philipse tries to show that the traditional Christian view of the Resurrection of Christ is untenable. Unfortunately, he fails to discuss the arguments in favour of this view. In all of these cases, Philipse draws on literature that is not representative of Christianity and/or academically inadequate. The final point of this article is that Philipse’s approach is sometimes disrespectful (e.g., when he speaks of a ‘[fake] death penalty’), and that the image by Joseph Wright of Derby that adorns the cover of his book should be seen in light of its contents. |
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