I just learned from James McGrath’s site that ex-fundamentalist Ken Pulliam died suddenly from a heart attack. Ken’s blog was Why I De-Converted from Evangelical Christianity.
Ken Pulliam received a Ph.D. from Bob Jones University and became a professor of apologetics. At some point, he concluded that the answers he was giving to his students were inadequate, and he ceased to be an evangelical Christian. The issue that apparently concerned him the most was the doctrine of penal substitution, the view that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins. Ken wondered how it was just for an innocent person to be punished in place of the guilty, and he searched far and wide for a Christian solution that could convince him. But, as you can see from his blog, which continually featured and critiqued prominent Christians’ defenses of penal substitution, he found their solutions to be wanting.
Ken also struggled with other issues, such as the biblical Conquest (which included the Israelite slaughter of Canaanite children) and God’s approval of slavery in the Bible. Again, Ken found evangelical attempts to address these issues to be lacking.
Ken wrestled with what he should do in response to his loss of Christian faith. Should he continue to teach in seminary, when he no longer believed? That would make him a hypocrite! And yet, how else could he support himself and his family? He wasn’t trained for other lines of work. Fortunately, an opportunity for him to support himself came along, and he could have the necessities of life while maintaining his intellectual integrity. He once joked that his experience in this case was similar to the testimonies of Christians he knew, who talked about not having work, until God provided for them at just the right time. Personally, I’d like to think that God did provide for him. Why would God want anyone to be a hypocrite, or afraid to ask the hard questions?
I always admired Ken’s tact. Unlike many atheist bloggers, he didn’t call people stupid or put people down. He simply said why he agreed or disagreed with a position. He relied on logic, not smug condescension or a sense of intellectual superiority.
I’ll miss his blog. He posted on it yesterday, so I’m shocked that he is now dead—and in his 50′s, at that. I didn’t read all of his atonement posts, but I did visit and cite his blog a lot. It was one of my favorites. I came to his blog because I was intrigued by the story of a Bob Jones graduate who walked away from his evangelical faith. But I also enjoyed reading the comments on his blog by Christians and those who were disenchanted with evangelical Christianity. As I said on a number of occasions, the comments were often as interesting and as educational as Ken’s post! And I got laughs when I visited Ken’s blog, as he posted fractured Bible stories from YouTube as well as the comic strip, “Jesus and Mo.”
Many will miss you, Dr. Pulliam.