Annotated Bibliography Part 2

Beale, Gregory Kimball. Union with the Resurrected Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023. 576 pages. $49.99. ISBN-13: 978-1540960429 Cessario, Romanus. The Seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023. 304 pages.$32.99. ISBN-13: 978-1540962546 Hernández, Dominick S. Engaging the Old Testament: How to Read Biblical Narrative, Poetry, and Prophecy Well. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2023. 320 pages. $21.99. ISBN-13: 978-1540962836 Laird, Benjamin P. Creating the Canon: Composition, Controversy, and the Authority of the New Testament. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2023. 272 pages.$30.00. ISBN-13: 978-1514001103 Marsden, George Mish. An Infinite Fountain of Light: Jonathan Edwards for the Twenty-First Century. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2023. 176 pages. $26.00. ISBN-13: 978-151400662

Toward an Analysis of the Abductive Moral Argument for God’s Existence: Assessing the Evidential Quality of Moral Phenomena and the Evidential Virtuosity of Christian Theological Models

The moral argument for God’s existence is perhaps the oldest and most salient of the arguments from natural theology. In contemporary literature, there has been a focus on the abductive version of the moral argument. Although the mode of reasoning, abduction, has been articulated, there has not been a robust articulation of the individual components of the argument. Such an articulation would include the data quality of moral phenomena, the theoretical virtuosity of theological models that explain the moral phenomena, and how both contribute to the likelihood of moral arguments. The goal of this paper is to provide such an articulation. Our method is to catalog the phenomena, sort them by their location on the emergent hierarchy of sciences, then describe how the ecumenical Christian theological model exemplifies evidential virtues in explaining them. Our results show that moral arguments are neither of the highest or lowest quality yet can be assented to on a principled level of investigation, especially given existential considerations

Letter from the Managing Editor

Letter from the managing editor on the definition of faith, the variety of barriers, and the issue\u27s contents

Ranking Objections to Christian Theism: A Survey of Subjective Declarations and their Correlations with Expert Opinions

There have been numerous books written on the top objections to Christianity—sometimes stated as “common,” “major,” “frequent,” “every day,” “cultural,” “tough,” “difficult” objections. However, there is a dearth of behavioral studies in the literature that show how and given population ranks objections to Christianity. As such, the apologist has had to rely on expert opinions from the books that have been authored. These expert opinions are based on familiarity with the literature in the field and contact with laity from university, church, and other speaking engagements. The purpose of this study is to document trends in how people report the relative strength of objections to Christian theism.[1] We analyze whether these trends correlate with popular works of Christian apologists—our baseline for expert opinion. Further, we determine whether there are any statistically significant relationships between reported demographics, rankings, and attitudes. Summary of Results and Analysis. Subjective declarations of respondents of the questionnaire showed that most participants were either 18-24 (marginally more than 55-64 and 65-74), male (marginally more than female), had some college (marginally more than bachelor’s, master’s degrees), lived in a suburban community, or lived in the South. In comparing the expert opinion baseline with the aggregate survey ranking results, we see similar rankings between the objection that “God is unloving/immoral” and that the “Bible is not inerrant” (ranked by both as 1st and 2nd, respectively) at the higher end of the spectrum. We found that those identified as agnostic seem to have the closest potential correlation to expert opinion (baseline). The mean of their rankings produced four objections that closely approximated the baseline, one objection that was about one rank removed from the baseline, and three objections that were about two ranks from the baseline. For demographics and rankings, we found statistically significant relationships between religious identification and the objection “God does not exist” with those who identified as atheists, giving it an average ranking of 3.74 (on a scale of 1-13; 1 = highest, 13 = lowest). For demographics and attitudes, we found statistically significant relationships between religious identification and age, religious discussion importance, and attitude toward Christian theism. (See “Analysis” section.) [1] The study was done under the School of Divinity Department at Liberty University in compliance with Liberty University’s Internal Review Board (Research Ethics Office). IRB-FY21-22-12. Policy: Post-2018 Rule. Submitted 07-06-2021. Last approved 09-07-2021, no expiration date applicable