Dr. Robert Sumner passed away in December 2016. The Biblical Evangelist newspaper is no longer being published and the ministry of Biblical Evangelism has ceased operation.

The remaining inventory of his books and gospel tracts was transferred to The Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles and may be ordered here.

THAT’S JUST YOUR INTERPRETATION
by Paul Copan

THAT’S JUST YOUR INTERPRETATION by Paul Copan; Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI; 3 Parts, 21 Chapters, 240 Pages; $12.99, Paper

This is a book of apologetics (the subtitle is Responding to Skeptics Who Challenge Your Faith). Copan has divided his material into 3 sections: “Challenges Related to Truth and Reality” (4 chapters), “Challenges Related to World-views” (8 chapters), and “Challenges Related to Christianity” (9 chapters). The author previously published his apologetic, True for You, but Not for Me, which we reviewed unfavorably, noting that while a lot of it might have been true for him, it wasn’t for us.

In the worldview section of this work he deals with such subjects as pantheism, reincarnation, free will and predestination, and the doctrine of Hell (Copan says “the ‘fire’ in Scripture should not be taken literally,” emphasis added). In our judgment, his third section is the best of the three. In this latter part he deals with the Trinity, the incarnation, the humanity of Christ, creation versus evolution (two chapters), genocide, slavery, seeming contradictions in the Gospels, and whether Old Testament prophecies take passages out of context.

In his creation chapters he holds to the day-age philosophy, saying “yom” (Hebrew for day) can mean other than a 24-hour day. While that is true, our position is that “yom” means a 24-hour day when numbers are connected with it and the term “evening and morning” is used to describe that day. Copan’s use of Hosea 6:3 to prove his point here hardly applies since that prophet did not speak of morning and evening.

He also errs in joining liberals in saying the creation account is poetry, while that in itself would not deny literalness, it is one of several favorite terms liberals use when putting down the historicity of the passage. (As Francis Schaeffer, whom he quotes favorably on another matter, put it in discussing Genesis 1-3: “But considering that both Paul and Christ accepted those chapters as real history, if we reject them we are rejecting the authority not only of Paul but even of Christ Himself.”) He further argues that Genesis is theological, not scientific. But how theological could a scientifically erroneous account of creation be? These two chapters of Copan’s book are not reliable at all, in any sense of the word. (One of his favorite authors in this section is Hugh Ross, so what would you expect?) He also claims there was death in the world before the fall, yet the curse of sin (“death”) came from the fall.

Even though there is some value to the rest of the book, these two chapters – so far off base in our judgment – prevent us from recommending the book. We would not want to put it into the hands of the skeptical.