Paul Copan > Quotes

“These days, though, tolerance means that you accept the other person's views as being true or legitimate. If you claim that someone is wrong, you can get accused of being intolerant--even though, ironically, the person making the charge of intolerance isn't being accepting of your beliefs.”
― Paul Copan

“Atheist’s denial of God’s existence needs just as much substantiation as does the theist’s claim; the atheist must give plausible reasons for rejecting God’s existence.”
― Paul Copan

“Serious circumstances remind us that the difficulty of finding the truth is no excuse for not looking.”
― Paul Copan

“The atheist philosopher of science Michael Ruse says that Dawkins’s arguments are so bad that he’s embarrassed to call himself an atheist.10”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“Notice how atheists who believe in real right and wrong make a massive intellectual leap of faith. They believe that somehow moral facts were eternally part of the “furniture” of reality but that from impersonal and valueless slime, human persons possessing rights, dignity, worth, and duties were eventually produced.”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“As New Testament scholar Ernst Käsemann once said, “In scholarship as in life, no one can possess the truth except by constantly learning it afresh; and no one can learn it afresh without listening to the people who are his companions on the search for that truth. Community does not necessarily mean agreement.”13”
― Paul Copan, When God Goes to Starbucks: A Guide to Everyday Apologetics

“On closer inspection, the hero status accorded to Abraham, Moses and David in the Old Testament (and echoed in the New Testament) is rooted not in their moral perfection but in their uncompromising dedication to the cause of Yahweh and their rugged trust in the promises of God rather than lapsing into the idolatry of many of their contemporaries.”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“It's exceedingly difficult to see how we move from a valueless series of causes and effects from the big bang onward, finally arriving at valuable, morally responsible, rights-bearing human beings. If we're just material beings produced by a material universe, then objective value or goodness (not to mention consciousness or reasoning powers or beauty or personhood) can't be accounted for.”
― Paul Copan, Passionate Conviction: Modern Discourses on Christian Apologetics

“Passing on the good news of Jesus is not equivalent to saying “I’m better than you.” Rather, as the famous saying goes, it’s like one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”
― Paul Copan, True for You, But Not for Me: Overcoming Objections to Christian Faith

“In the words of human rights scholar Max Stackhouse, “Intellectual honesty demands recognition of the fact that what passes as ‘secular,’ ‘Western’ principles of basic human rights developed nowhere else than out of key strands of the biblically-rooted religion.”9”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“Today, many American Christians seem to mix up church and state. They believe the community of genuine believers in America is the people of God— both in heaven and on earth. But the nation of America isn’t the people of God; we don’t live in a theocracy. The sooner Christians realize this, the sooner the church can make a deeper impact as salt and light in society.”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“Pride, we know, is an inflated view of ourselves—a false advertising campaign promoting ourselves because we suspect that others won’t accept who we really are.2 Pride is actually a lie about our own identity or achievements. To be proud is to live in a world propped up with falsehoods about ourselves, taking credit where credit isn’t due.”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“On the cross Jesus paid our debt in full. There is no karma to face—Christ's work is sufficient. Christians have this message of joy and hope for our Hindu friends, who would agree: there's absolutely nothing funny about karma.”
― Paul Copan, Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics

“We cannot have an authentic witness to the world without having an authentic apologetic of Christianity. Hence, the use of reasonable apologetics and biblical distinctives cannot be sacrificed at the altar of political correctness and cultural contextualization.”
― Paul Copan, Passionate Conviction: Modern Discourses on Christian Apologetics

“While few would actually put it in these terms, faith is now understood as a blind act of will, a sort of decision to believe something that is either independent of reason or that makes up for the paltry lack of evidence for what one is trying to believe. By contrast, biblical faith is a power or skill to act in accordance with the nature of the kingdom of God, a trust in and commitment to what we have reason to believe is true.”
― Paul Copan, Passionate Conviction: Modern Discourses on Christian Apologetics

“Moral relativism and rights don’t mix. Relativism undermines any appeal to rights: If rights exist, relativism is false; if rights exist, where do they come from? Again, we’re pointed in the direction of a good God in whose image humans have been made—and thus who sets the parameters regarding our sexuality.”
― Paul Copan, When God Goes to Starbucks: A Guide to Everyday Apologetics

“Many Christians have put their trust in changing laws rather than, with God’s help, changing hearts of fellow sinners for whom Christ died (1 John 2:2). The church in America often depends on legislation to do the work that God calls his people to do. The Spirit’s transformation of ourselves and of those around us comes when we love God and neighbor—the very core of our Christian commitment.”
― Paul Copan, When God Goes to Starbucks: A Guide to Everyday Apologetics

“Maybe God has placed within us the awareness of our mortality to prompt us to cast ourselves upon the ever-living God. The Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 begins with the question, What is your only comfort in life and death? The answer, so beautifully put, is:
That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ, who, with his precious blood, has fully paid for all my sins, and delivered me from the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that everything must fit his purpose for my salvation.”
― Paul Copan, That's Just Your Interpretation: Responding to Skeptics Who Challenge Your Faith

“Old Testament ethics is one hot topic, and it creates all kinds of reactions— from bewilderment and confusion to anger and outpourings of hostility. I’ve sensed the need for an accessible, less-lengthy book on this topic. Though I’ve done scattered writing on Old Testament ethics in various books and articles, I wanted not only to expand on these themes but also to add a good deal of new material. In this case, I’m killing two birds with one stone—not only tackling a tough subject but also using the New Atheism movement as a springboard for discussion.”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“This important theme of Abraham’s deep trust in God’s promise and faithfulness helped shape Israel’s own self-understanding and identity. So it’s not surprising to hear Moses’s words to Israel at Sinai: “Do not be afraid; for God has come in order to test [the Hebrew verb is nasah] you, and in order that the fear [yir’ah] of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin” (Exod. 20:20). These two key verbs link back to Genesis 22. Abraham was tested by God (Gen. 22:1) and through this ordeal demonstrated his fear of God (v. 12). Abraham’s obedience is intended to serve as a model for Israel and to inspire Israel’s obedience and solidify their relationship with (“fear of”) God.5”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“President Thomas Jefferson, a Deist who believed Jesus to be merely a powerful moral teacher of reason, cut up and pasted together portions of the four Gospels that reinforced his belief in a naturalized, nonmiraculous, nonauthoritative Jesus. The result was the severely edited Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels—or, The Jefferson Bible. He believed he could easily extract the “lustre” of the real Jesus “from the dross of his biographers, and as separate from that as the diamond from the dung hill.” Jefferson believed Jesus was “a man, of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, [and an] enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions of divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition by being gibbeted [i.e., crucified] according to Roman law.”1 Jefferson edited Luke 2:40, “And [Jesus] grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom,” omitting “and the grace of God was upon him.” This “Bible” ends with a quite unresurrected Jesus: “There they laid Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.” Deism’s chief motivation for rejecting miracles—along with special revelation—was that they suggested an inept Creator: He didn’t get everything right at the outset; so he needed to tinker with the world, adjusting it as necessary. The biblical picture of miracles, though, shows them to be an indication of a ruling God’s care for and involvement in the world. Indeed, many in modern times have witnessed specific indicators of direct divine action and answers to prayer.2 The Christian faith stands or falls on God’s miraculous activity, particularly in Jesus’ resurrection (1 Corinthians 15). Scripture readily acknowledges the possibility of miracles in nonbiblical religious settings. Some may be demonically inspired,3 but we shouldn’t rule out God’s gracious, miraculous actions in pagan settings—say, the response of the “unknown God” to prayers so that a destructive plague in Athens might be stayed. However, we’ll note below that, unlike many divinely wrought miracles in Scripture, miracle claims in other religions are incidental—not foundational—to the pagan religion’s existence.”
― Paul Copan, When God Goes to Starbucks: A Guide to Everyday Apologetics

“First, while the church shouldn’t affirm homosexual activity (or adultery, idolatry, or greed, for that matter), it should welcome anyone—gays included—to discover who God is and to find his forgiveness.5 Lots of people wear WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelets and T-shirts, but they don’t treat homosexuals as Jesus would. He wouldn’t react in fear or avoid them; he would welcome them, sit with them, and tell them of God’s deep interest in them. Many churches treat homosexuals as modern-day lepers—as outcasts; but Jesus came to heal, help, and set all people free to live for God. Surely churches can welcome gays without condoning their lifestyle—just as they can receive adulterers and alcoholics. As my pastor, Bill Stepp, regularly says, “God accepts you the way you are, but he loves you too much to leave you as you are.” It’s strange that professing Christians single out homosexual activity as the most wicked of sins. Often those who claim to be saved by God’s grace are amazingly judgmental, hateful, and demeaning (calling homosexual persons “fairies” or “faggots”) rather than being compassionate and embracing. Professing Christians are often harder on homosexuals outside the church than they are with the immorality within the church (cf. 1 Cor. 5:9–13). New Testament scholar Bruce Winter writes with a prophetic voice, “The ease with which the present day church often passes judgment on the ethical or structural misconduct of the outside community is at times matched only by its reluctance to take action to remedy the ethical conduct of its own members.”6 Second, the Bible doesn’t condemn homosexual inclinations, but rather sexual activity outside of a marriage relationship between husband and wife. In fact, no writers of antiquity, including biblical ones, had any idea of “sexual orientation”; they talked about sexual behavior. When the Scriptures speak against immoral sexual relationships, the focus is not on inclinations or feelings (whether homosexual or heterosexual).7 Rather, the focus is on acting out those impulses (which ranges from inappropriately dwelling on sexual thoughts—lusting—to carrying them out sexually). Even though we are born with a sinful, self-centered inclination, God judges us based on what we do.8 Similarly, a person may, for whatever reasons, have same-sex inclinations, but God won’t judge him on the basis of those inclinations, but on what he does with them. A common argument made by advocates of a gay lifestyle is that the Bible doesn’t condemn loving, committed same-sex relationships (“covenant homosexuality”)—just homosexual rape or going against one’s natural sexual inclination, whether hetero- or homosexual. Now, “the Bible doesn’t say anything about ——” or “Jesus never said anything about ——” arguments can be tricky and even misleading. The Bible doesn’t speak about abortion, euthanasia, political involvement, Christians fighting in the military, and the like. Jesus, as far as we know, never said anything about rape or child abuse. Nevertheless, we can get guidance from Scripture’s more basic affirmations about our roles as God’s image-bearers, about God’s creation design, and about our identity and redemption in Christ, as we’ll see below.”
― Paul Copan, When God Goes to Starbucks: A Guide to Everyday Apologetics

“Everyone is a philosopher.” Everyone takes a philosophical view of things—a worldview, some call it—even if their philosophical assumptions are subconscious and unexplored.”
― Paul Copan, A Little Book for New Philosophers: Why and How to Study Philosophy

“He considers them to be both out of their depth and misrepresenters of the Christian faith: “they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince.”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“Divine jealousy should be seen as God’s willing the best for his creatures. C. S. Lewis’s insightful perspective puts divine jealousy and human idolatry into proper perspective: If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.11”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“Shall”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“William Lane Craig, he wrote an essay titled “Dawkins’s Delusion,” which responds to Dawkins’s book The God Delusion. Craig does his best to piece together Dawkins’s argument against God’s existence, which is really “embarrassingly weak.”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“a quick check of Dawkins’s documentation reveals a lot more time spent on Google than at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“Anger isn’t necessarily wrong (Eph. 4:26)—indeed, at times it is virtuous. The never-angered person is morally deficient. The slow-to-anger person is the virtuous one. He’s better able to calm disputes or listen well (Prov. 15:18; 16:32; 19:11; cf. James 1:19), but he also opposes injustice and tyranny.”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God

“God doesn’t want humans to detach themselves from ultimate reality, which only ends up harming us. God’s calling for our worship isn’t a manifestation of pride—of false, overinflated views of himself. The call to worship means inclusion in the life of God. Worship expresses an awareness of God’s—and thus our—proper place in the order of things, and it also transforms us into what we were designed to be.”
― Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God