This is my review of Paul Copan's Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011). This review should be read as a supplement to Copan's book. You may purchase Copan's book here. This review may be freely distributed, reposted on your personal blogs and websites, printed off, emailed to friends and enemies, or completely ignored. If you do post it online or quote from it, please link back here or cite the source.

Download the Review: Is God a Moral Compromiser? Right-click and 'save as' on the link to download the review.

I used the Kindle edition of Copan's book to write my review, so the pagination may be slightly off throughout. If anybody who has a hard copy of Copan's book wants to fix any pagination errors, I'd be in your debt.

Please keep comments substantive, and refrain from abusive language and personal attacks. That is to say, no attacking Copan, myself, or anybody else. The goal of conversation here is to be productive, constructive, and to engage the substantive issues pertaining to the content of Copan's book and my critique of it. Nothing more than that falls within the purview of this comment thread. If your comment isn't immediately approved, it's because I'm in the shower or watching X-Files. So don't take it personally. If it isn't posted within a few days, it's because your comment has violated my tender sensibilities. Of course, friendly banter is perfectly welcome. :)

I've put a little bit of effort into this review. I don't expect commenters to match my effort equally, but I do expect any critical engagement to demonstrate substantial attention to the arguments I've taken the time to lay out in a thorough manner. If we must disagree with one another, let's do so as civilized people.

Finally, I wrote this rather quickly and it hasn't been properly edited; just a few quick proof-reads. So as I find errors I'll fix them and re-upload, noting updates with a date stamp.

All right. Happy reading!

UPDATED: 11:17 EST 4/26/2011 (fixed error on p. 175, bottom line: from "a thousand years older" to "a thousand years later")

UPDATED: 13:19 EST 4/26/2011 (added C. S. Lewis quote on pp. 299-300; fixed some minor typos)

UPDATED: 07:36 EST 4/27/2011 (fixed a few more minor typos)

UPDATED: 07:56 EST 4/27/2011 (added section on William L. Moran on p. 272)

UPDATED: 15:24 EST 4/29/2011 (corrected error on p. 53)