Evangelical Christian books describing
conflicting beliefs on key religious topics
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Background and implications:
InterVarsity Press,Zondervan, and other publishers produce
books which describe the full range of conservative Christian beliefs about
important religious topics. In these books, a number of leading
evangelical Christian writers and theologians explain their personal views on a specific topic,
and critique each others beliefs as being false.
It is worth noting that each
of the authors is an intelligent, sincere, serious, devout, thoughtful theologian and
is quite confident that their personal belief is the only one that is biblically based. Yet,
the authors' conclusions conflict with each other.
A comment by InterVarsity Press on its book "Women in Ministry" is typical of this type of book:
"Even those who agree that Scripture must determine our answers do not agree on what it teaches. And too often differing sides have not been willing to listen to one another. Here in ove [sic] volume are the views of four deeply committed evangelicals that focus the discussion on the issues."
This type of book
illustrates very clearly some of the ambiguities that theologians have found in the
Bible. Some academics suggest that since the Bible appears to be quite ambiguous, terms
such as "inerrancy"
or "authoritative" cannot really be applied to the Bible. That is, although there is reasonable agreement about what the Bible says
concerning many basic beliefs, there
is little consensus on what it means, even within the evangelical wing of Christianity. If one were to widen the scope of the book to include the full range of Christian theologians, including some from the Roman Catholic Church, mainline Christian denominations, liberal/progressive Christian groups, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Mormon denominations, there would be many more beliefs promoted -- each one explained as "the" sole biblical belief.
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a similar series of books from InterVarsity Press,Zondervan, or any other publisher in which views representing the full diversity of Christian theologians are presented. That is a great pity, particularly to fundamentalists and other evangelical Christians who need to know all Christian beliefs in order to be effective prostelyzers. Publishing such a series would be a great opportunity for a more inclusive publisher.
Millennium: Robert G. Clouse, "The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views." Read
reviews and/or order
War: Robert Clouse. "Theologians and philosophers examine
four approaches to war," (1991) Out of
print and very expensive. Read
reviews and/or order.
Wealth & poverty: Robert Clouse, "Four Christian views of economics," (1984). Read
reviews and/or order.
Female clergy: Robert & Bonnidell Clouse, "Women in
ministry: Four Views," (1989). Read
reviews and/or order.
The unsaved: Gabriel Fackre et al., "What about those who have never heard? Three views on the destiny of the unevangelized," (1995) Read
reviews and/or order.
Hell: E.W. Fudge & R.A. Peterson, "Two views of Hell: A
biblical and theological dialog," (2000) Read
reviews and/or order.
Creation & evolution: J.P. Moreland et al., Ed.,
"Three views on creation and evolution," (None of the
three views include naturalistic evolution.) Read reviews or
order this book safely.
Revelation: Steve Gregg, "Revelation: Four views. A parallel
commentary," Gregg describes the preterist,
historicist, futurist and spiritual (or symbolic or idealist)
interpretations of the last book in the Bible.
Read reviews or
order this book.
Kregel Publications:
Dispensationalism: Herbert W. Bateman IV, Ed., "Three
central issues in contemporary dispensationalism: A comparison of
traditional and progressive views." Read reviews or
order this book.
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