Book Reviews

By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.

In God and Moral Law: On the Theistic Explanation of Morality, Mark Murphy critiques the two most well-known theistic theories of morality, natural law theory and divine command theory, and then presents a third view which he argues is superior. In this book he doesn’t argue for theism; rather, he assumes theism is true and then explores what sort of relationship, given theism, we should expect between God and morality. He also explains that he’s arguing with the assumption of perfect being theology, though that doesn’t seem to play a large role in his argument, with the following exception: based on his understanding of perfect being theology, sovereignty is a perfection and thus any explanation of morality must put God in the center.

By John Trapasso

This book review was written by John Trapasso. He is a freshman at Lamar University in Beaumont, TX. During his free time, John enjoys studying theology and the philosophy of religion.

Yujin Nagasawa’s The Problem of Evil for Atheists seeks to transform the debate on the problem of evil by demonstrating that it poses a significant challenge to almost all worldviews—not just traditional theism. In addition, Nagasawa claims traditional theists are better equipped to deal with the problem than their competitors.

Part 1 begins with a systematic analysis of the problem of evil for traditional theists. Nagasawa shows the general “scheme” of the problem always consists of three essential variables: (I) God, (II) evil, and (III) an allegedly conflicting relationship between (I) and (II).