Book Review: Is God a Moral Monster by Dr Paul Copan

I haven’t done a blog post in a while, but I’ve been spurred into action by having read an excellent and provocative book by Paul Copan entitled “Is God a Moral Monster: Making Sense of the Old Testament God”. If you’ve ever heard about the supposedly terrible things that God did in the Bible, or ever wondered about the seemingly bizarre food laws, or if you’ve ever squiggled uncomfortably at the many mentions of slavery in the Bible, this book is for you. Many of the major attacks portraying God as a sadistic being or the Bible as a morally out of date relic are addressed in this work, and Copan manages to cover it all surprisingly in less than 250 pages.


Throughout the book Dr Copan strives to be  “reasonably popular-level” while dealing with the most challenging passages of the Old Testament, in particular with the issues and arguments as they are often spitefully phrased by the New Atheists. The comfortably low page count is probably a part of Dr Copan’s plan of keeping it as an easily accessible book, and for the most part he succeeds in that goal. Dr Copan reaches a comfortable middle ground of using a scholarly level of argumentation and citation while using language and phrasing that doesn’t require a philosophy degree to follow.

One of the first questions I ask when considering the content of a book is who the author is and what his qualifications are on the subject. In this case I’m pleased to say that Dr Copan is stands up to scrutiny. He earned his PhD from Marquette University and is the professor and Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida. He’s also the author of more than a dozen books on religious philosophy and editor of many more. Qualified? Check.

Content? There are many touchy subjects and the toughest Bible passages addressed here: God’s rage and jealousy, why in the world were clams and other seemingly random foods forbidden by God to the Israelites, multiple chapters are dedicated to addressing each slavery and supposedly ethnic cleansing ordered by God. Copan goes about this by pointing out the mistaken views that are held when one comes to the text either so casually as to not take other passages into consideration, or with a bias toward only proving the Bible to be barbaric. For a brief example: Copan points out when slavery is mentioned in the Bible people nowadays usually envision the slavery of southern States from a few centuries ago however the two are very, very different. Copan suggests they are in fact so different that it’s not even appropriate for us to use the term slave anymore with the Old Testament passages, but rather bond servant. One of many key major distinctions that Copan points out can be found by considering that slaves in the US context were kidnapped en masse from Africa and forced into slavery, whereas those referred to in the Old Testament were not kidnapped (to the contrary, kidnapping was actually punishable by execution!), but rather voluntarily made themselves a slave (or bond-servant) in order to work off their debt! This is of course just a taste of many subjects and arguments that he delves into, citing supporting passages and scholarly literary work as appropriate.

Overall Dr Paul Copan does an excellent job of addressing many of the toughest passages in the Bible and giving deeply insightful and satisfying answers to the attacks launched by the New Atheists. In a world growing increasingly comfortable with mocking the Bible I would recommend this book to anyone as a first rate resource, whether pastor or layman believer.