I just finished reading
Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles with His Father's Questions about Christianity and I really found it interesting. As a whole, I thought it was a great book and I thought Dr. Boyd did a great job in explaining Christianity and Salvation to his father but I also disagreed with a few things. I'm going to go through and share some of my thoughts.
NEGATIVES
On page 25, Dr. Boyd is trying to answer his father about God being responsible for all the wickedness int he world and I believe he does an admirable job of not placing blame on God but he attributes it to man's "free will." I really have a problem with this. The only time mankind had a "free will" was in the Garden with Adam and Eve. They had the will to be able to choose between good and evil. With Adam's sin, we don't have that choice any more. Our "will" is bent towards sin and away from God. Dr. Boyd is correct that we have the propensity towards great good and great evil on this earthly realm and we can make that choice but it's not because of us having a "free will." It seems to think that if we have a "free will," we'd be "robots who simply act out a divine, preplanned program." Unfortunately, our "wills" are limited by our abilities and God had given us a freedom on this earth and that freedom can be used or abused for good and for evil.
On pages 39 and following is where I have my biggest
problem with this book. He states, "So God can't foreknow the good or
bad decisions of the people He creates until He creates these people and
they, in turn, create their decisions." Basically, he is teaching "Open
Theology."
He does say that this is not the traditional Christian viewpoint but he
doesn't agree with it. I believe that Scripture is very clear that God
knows the beginning to the end. I won't go into refuting this theology
here but God is not limited and saying that God does not know the future
is limiting an Almighty God. He does try to explain his position but I
have a hard time accepting it.
I also had a problem with how he explains hell.
His first explanation
On page 53, he talks about a "probation period" that God has in which
His Creation can choose to "love or not love." When that period is over
he says that they are "solidified in their decision." He says, "That is
what the Bible means by heaven or hell. It is the 'externalization' of
one's character."
I
don't have a problem with the "probation period" because it's based of
what happened to Lucifer and his angels but to call the results "hell"
is what I disagree with. Maybe he was saying that he results of choosing
not to love God is that you'll go to hell.
His second explanation
On page 196, Dr. Boyd states that most people don't talk about a
literal hell. He says that the Bible uses metaphors to describe hell to
let people know that it's a really bad place "and none of them are to be
taken as a literal 'snapshot' of what hell is going to be like." He
says that the Bible authors are telling us that hell is "the refuse of
humanity. It is the dumping grounds of the cosmos. It is the ultimate
destiny of people who freely choose to live a life God never intended
for them. They become 'garbage' ..'cast out'..'burned in the fire.'"
His third explanation
On page 199, he says
that some believe that "God will ultimately annihilate all who are not
'in Christ.' The punishment is 'eternal' because it has eternal effects,
not because it is endured eternally." He does state that he has
reservations about this view but it is a view that some theologians
believe based on what they think the Bible says.
I really don't like how he explains away God's Will. On pages 58-59, Dr.
Greg is explaining why bad things happen to people and he says that
those looking for the "purpose of God" have "a piously confused way of
thinking." He says that, "The only purpose of God in the whole thing is
His design to allow morally responsible people the right to decide
whether to drink responsibly or irresponsibly."
POSITIVES
On page 26 he makes a great distinction between religion and relationship.
On page 29 he makes some great statements. He refers to "free will" (which I don't agree with) but his comments about God's lack of interference are very insightful. He asks, "What is the freedom to love or not love unless it is freedom to enrich or harm another?" He goes on to say, "A freedom which is prevented from being exercised whenever it was going to be misused simply wouldn't be freedom." He even gives a good illustration to explain his point.
On page 34, he makes a very interesting statement when he said, "Love is really the only reason worth creating! It's not freedom for the sake of freedom that God values - it's love. Freedom is simply the only possible means to this end."
The following paragraph, found on pages 43-44, I found very interesting and insightful.
It may be that a good deal of what we call “evil” is simply due to the fact that anything which God could create would be limited in certain respects. The very fact that what God creates is less than Himself introduces limitations and imperfections into the picture. Any created thing must, for example, possess a limited set of characteristics which rules out the possibility of it possessing other characteristics incompatible with these. But this can lead to some unfortunate consequences. The rock which holds you up must also be hard enough for you to stub your toe on it. The air which you breathe must also be thin enough to allow you to fall through it when not supported by a hard surface. The water which quenches your thirst must also be dense enough so you can’t breathe in it, and so on. The dependability of the world which makes it possible for rational, morally responsible creatures to live works against us in certain circumstances. Indeed, every positive feature of any created entity is a potentially negative feature in certain circumstances.
Throughout the book I love his clear presentation of the gospel and his encouragement to his father to accept Christ as his Savior.
On page 35, he states, "On
the cross of Calvary, God took upon Himself all the sin of the world,
and all the pain and punishment that that sin produces. He didn't have
to. He did it out of love - because love is worth it. It's worth dying
for, even in God's view."
On page 54 he says, "God has given us in Jesus Christ. He became a man, lived His life, and died on the cross to perfectly reconcile us with God and to give us a new life— God’s life."
On page 90, he answers, "If God is the one perfect, loving, caring being, then we would suppose that He would do everything possible to bring about the greatest possible good for His creatures. Anything less would be less than perfect. And Christ reveals that this is exactly what God did! God Himself became a man, one of us, and suffered a hellish death on the cross of Calvary in order to rectify all the evil which His personal creatures, humans, have inflicted on themselves. He has done, and is doing, everything possible (“ possible” defined by the limits required by His overall agenda) to have us humans eternally with Him."
On pages 220-221 he gives a beautiful description of a Christian's sanctification. He says, "Christians, then, are each much like a butterfly in a cocoon. The life of beauty, of flying, of gracefulness is within them— it’s who they truly are— but this life is enclosed inside something which is inherently opposed to beauty, flying, and gracefulness. They are destined to fly, but in the meantime their life is a life of transition. They are butterflies in the process of shedding their cocoons."
I thought his discussion on prayer on pages 80-84 was pretty good and he uses some pretty good analogies. One of the things he says is, "If petitionary prayer could be conclusively “verified,” it would turn God into a sort of cosmic vending machine. Make your requests, pull the lever, and abracadabra, you have your wish granted. But this defeats the whole purpose of prayer, which is to facilitate a faith-filled relationship with the Creator. So it takes faith to pray, and faith to see the answer to prayer."
In his letter on March 8, 1990 that starts on page 95, I really liked his defense of the historical accuracies of the Bible. This will lend credibility later when he defends it being God's Word and inspired. This topic is discussed some more in his May 23rd letter starting on page 113.
This is probably my favorite and probably most insightful statement I read in the entire book. He says, "Fundamentalists, at the opposite extreme, are so afraid of anything “liberal” that they tend to read the Bible “ahistorically.” They try to make the Bible into a twentieth-century legal document."
Page 210 starts probably the best chapter in the book when Dr. Boyd answers the question, "How can another man's death pardon me?"
At the end of the book is written a beautiful tribute to his dad and how accepting Christ changed his dad's life. To be honest, it brought tears to my eyes.
