2011: Greatest Hits

The end of the year is almost upon us, and here are my favourite blog posts for 2011. I could just list the ones that have the greatest number of actual hits (traffic wise), but that wouldn’t tell us much because some posts have been accumulating hits since January and some just started in December. So, you’re left with my favourites instead. I haven’t included any podcast episodes, and I’ve chosen no more than one from each month.

January: Deal Breakers and Christian Essentials – Although I identify as a relatively conservative Evangelical Christian, I cop a bit of flack from those who think that whatever they happen to believe counts as the boundary markers for evangelicalism, and anyone who falls outside of that is either suspect or already in the garbage chute to hell. Here I offered some reflections on the kinds of things that I think should really “make the difference” when considering another person’s point of view and whatever it’s acceptable from a Christian perspective.

February: When God attacks: Trying to make sense of God in natural disasters – Written shortly after the Earthquake that devastated Christchurch, here I offer some of my thoughts on reconciling the God revealed in Christ with the suffering we see in tragedies like this one.

March: Yeah, OK, so March was pretty average.

April: It was really hard to pick just one in April, there were a few that I like here. Maybe you should just check out the whole month. But if I’m going to pick one, I’ll pick a fairly geeky one: Does John 1:3 rule out uncreated abstract objects? – Here I offer my thoughts on William lane Craig’s claim that the idea of uncreated abstract objects is at odds with the view that God is the creator of “all things,” and that it is specifically at odds with John 1:3, contrary to the view of Peter Van Inwagen. While it’s not a hill I would die on, I side with Van Inwagen and claim that actually John 1:3 is compatible with the existence of uncreated abstract objects.

May: Richard Carrier on the Resurrection part 1 – Compiling this list has reminded me that at some point I should complete part 2 of this series! This post was the first of several that will dissect the arguments of Richard Carrier on why the doctrine of Christ’s resurrection that we know of was not the original view of the early church, and that it represents a mutated view that crept in very early in the history of the Christian faith. Like most readers, I think his arguments are considerably less than compelling.

June: An open letter to my traditionalist friends – This one is an open letter to the many evangelicals who feel that they must perpetuate the crucially important doctrine of the everlasting torments of hell, and who find themselves called to combat the rising tide of annihilationism (the view I hold). Here I offer a public explanation of why, quite frankly, they are failing and ought to fail.

July: Jesus: The Cold Case – This was a collection of my thoughts on the TV documentary in New Zealand, Jesus: The Cold Case, where, in essence, a tiny selection of theologians and New Testament scholars with views that fall well outside mainstream biblical scholarship were called on to offer the authoritative view that most of hat the Gospels say about the death of Christ is creative anti-Semitic falsehood.

August: Christian employers and the hiring process – I wrote this post at the risk of arousing animosity towards myself in the community of Christian colleges, but I thought – and still think – that this needed to be said. Christian institutions that care about excellence need to purge themselves of the nepotism that many of them are familiar with.

September: Not sure really…

October: Divine Command Ethics: Ontology versus epistemology – Here I attempt to explain a very common confusion when people criticise the idea that morality might depend on God.

November: Brief thoughts about God’s freedom to command – Sometimes (!!) I can admit when I’m wrong. Here I explain how I improved (in my view) my view on the relationship between God’s nature and divine commands.

December: The conditional premise of the moral argument – Here I say a thing or two in defence of the claim that if God did not exist, then moral facts wouldn’t exist either.

Remember folks, the blog has been here since May 2006, so there are plenty of old blog posts to browse through in the Archive over on the right.

The next podcast episode will be out during this week so you still have that to look forward to in 2011, but otherwise, I hope you’ve enjoyed another year of Say Hello to my Little Friend!

Best wishes to all

Glenn Peoples