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Did the Flood of Genesis 6-8 really happen, and if so, did God really send it?

By Jeremy Myers
18 Comments

Did the Flood of Genesis 6-8 really happen, and if so, did God really send it?

The flood of Genesis 6-8 is one of the most troubling passages of Scripture due to its violent portrayal of God. In general, there are three approaches to understanding the flood event.

1. Resistance is futile! Assimilate or die!

This view says this about Genesis 6-8:

It happened exactly as the text says, and God is sometimes very violent. Deal with it. If you don’t like this, God will probably be even more violent toward you in eternity when you burn in hell. But I love God, so He’ll be nice to me. And even though God said He would never again destroy the earth with water (Genesis 8:21), in the future, God will send a flood of fire upon the earth to destroy everyone again (2 Peter 3:6-7).

the waters of the flood(Note: I include Greg Boyd’s “Divine Withdrawal” view in this category. He argues that God finally got fed up with the evil of mankind, and so He withdrew His divine hand of protection that was holding back the destructive floodwaters, thereby allowing them to destroy humanity. In this view, God didn’t do the destroying Himself; He simply stepped back to let the destroyer have its way with humanity. In a personal conversation with Greg Boyd, I related to him the following video clip, and he agreed that for the most part, it represents his position.)

2. Flood? What flood? We don’t need no stinking flood!

This second view says this about Genesis 6-8:

The account is some sort of myth. Maybe it complete fiction. Maybe it’s a fable of some sort that teaches a lesson about God’s hatred of sin. Maybe there was some sort of local flood that might have happened a long time ago, but it certainly didn’t cover the earth and kill everyone. Whatever happened (if anything happened at all), it didn’t happen as the text says.

People who hold this view also reject the historical accuracy of many other passages in Scripture as well. Some will even reject the historicity of the miracles of Jesus, including His resurrection.

I have never been comfortable with calling anything in Scripture an error, partly because such an approach often allows people to simply pick and choose which passages they like and which ones they don’t, consigning the texts they don’t like into hermeneutical oblivion. In other words, writing off a text as “error” allows a person to avoid seriously studying and teaching that text, thereby ignoring or missing the deep truth(s) it contains.

3. The Correct View

(That’s a joke! I’m proposing a view, which I think has a lot of merit in Scripture…)

(Oh, and I believe the flood truly happened. I believe the worldwide flood is an historical event. There is lots of sociological and geological support for the flood, which I won’t dive into here. But regardless, my view of the flood can still be true even if there was no worldwide flood.)

Before I suggest a third view, note two things from the text:

1. People were violent before the flood (Genesis 6:5, 11, 13).

The stated reason for God sending the flood is because the earth was filled with violence. God seems opposed to how violent mankind has come, and so decides to do something about it.

2. People were violent after the flood (Genesis 8:21)

The flood brought no change to the evil and violent tendencies of the human heart.

Isn’t this strange? If the stated reason for the flood was to stop the violence of humanity, then God seems to have failed in His task of stopping violence. Is God so foolish that He couldn’t look at the hearts of humanity before the flood and see that even if He killed them all, the survivors and their descendants would continue to constantly live with evil hearts and violent lives?

To ask the question is to answer it. Of course God is not foolish! Something else must be going on behind the scenes.

So … Wait … God hates violence?

As soon as we start looking for what this “something else” might be, some other details from the text start to jump out from the page.

For example … God states at the beginning of the account that He is sorry He made mankind because they are so evil and violent (Genesis 6:6).

Ok, so God is opposed to violence. That’s a good thing.

But then … to show how opposed He is to all the violence that covers the face of the earth … God engages in the greatest act of violence possible by drowning all the people and animals on the earth (except for those on the ark)?

So to stop the violence that covers the earth, God sends a violent flood to cover the earth?

Something’s not right here.

Yes, “God is God and can do what He wants,” but this seems a bit over the top, even for God.

family drowning in the floodIs this just a divine example of the bad parenting advice “Do as I say; not as I do?”

If so, then since we become like the God we worship, it is no wonder that people were just as violently evil after the flood as they were before.

It is a very, very tiny step from believing that “God is extremely violent against evil people” to “God wants me to engage in violence against evil people.” Indeed, the rest of biblical history (along with all human culture) reveals this exact step taking place over and over and over again.

If God really is so violent, why wasn’t Jesus?

Jesus was adamantly opposed to all forms of murderous violence, even against His so-called “enemies.”

He didn’t call down fire from heaven, but rather rebuked His disciples for thinking such things (Luke 9:54). He didn’t call down angels to defend Himself (Matthew 26:53). He even told Peter to put away His sword, and then He healed the man that Peter has struck (Matthew 26:52).

Yes, Jesus cleansed the temple, but no human or animal died, nor does the text say anyone was even hurt (Matthew 21:12-17; Mark 11:15-19; Luke 19:45-48; John 2:13-16). Yes, Jesus told his disciples to buy a sword , but this was to fulfill prophecy; not so they could actually use it. And don’t even get me started on the book of Revelation.

If it is true, as Scripture says, that Jesus fully reveals God to us (John 1:14, 18; 14:9-11; 2 Cor 4:4; Php 2:6; Col 1:15; Heb 1:2-3), but Jesus was never violent, then we are faced with a choice: Either (A) God truly is violent and Scripture is lying when it says that Jesus fully reveals God to us, or (B) Scripture is not lying, and Jesus does truly reveal God to us, and therefore God is not violent, and we need to understand all those violent texts in some other way.

I go with Option B: Scripture is not lying, and Jesus is not violent, so neither is God.

Isn’t that a contradiction?

If Scripture is not lying, but Scripture says God is violent, while Jesus shows that God is not violent, isn’t this a contradiction?

It initially seems so.

But with one small little tweak on how you read the Bible, it all falls into place.

Most people think the Bible reveals God to us. And while it does to some extent, the ultimate revelation of God is found in Jesus Christ (whom we read about in Scripture, of course). But Jesus shows us how to read the Bible. Jesus provides the interpretive lens through which to study Scripture.

Jesus crucifiedAnd when we look to Jesus, and specifically the most violent aspect of the life of Jesus, His crucifixion, and we carefully see what is being done to Jesus on the cross, we discover something surprising.

God didn’t kill Jesus on the cross; we humans killed Jesus on the cross … and we blamed God for it. Humans killed Jesus and claimed they did so in God’s name, to fulfill God’s will.

But they weren’t fulfilling God’s will. They were doing the opposite. They were committing the greatest sin in human history. And they were completely ignorant of what they were doing. This is why Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).

Through the cross, we see Jesus showing us how to understand the “violence of God.” The “violence of God” against Jesus on the cross is not God’s violence at all, but is rather the violence of humans which we then blame God for.

Since we (1) Believe God is violent, we (2) become like the God we worship by engaging in our own violence, and (3) justify our violent actions by blaming our violence on God.

But Jesus entered into this twisted framework of violent theology and blew it up from the inside. Through His death and resurrection, Jesus showed (1) that God is supremely non-violent and that (2) we humans are the violent ones.

Once we see this revelation of Jesus on the cross, we then discover that all the other violent portions of Scripture reveal exactly the same thing.

The violent texts of the Bible do not reveal God to us … they reveal us to us. The violent passages of Scripture are not a revelation of the heart of God; they are a revelation of the heart of humanity.

But humans didn’t send the flood!

So now we come back around to the flood. The flood event is extremely violent, and the text blames this violence on God. This fact invites us to read the flood through the lens of the crucifixion.

2 Peter 2 the flood

And when we do, we realize that the flood account of Genesis 6–8 sounds like the explanation that is offered for any natural disaster throughout human history.

“God sent Hurricane Katrina on the people of New Orleans because of Mardi Gras and Voodoo.”

“God sent the Indonesian Tsunami because the people there are Muslim and Hindu.”

“God caused my neighbor to get in a car wreck because he said some profane things about God when I invited him to church.”

Meanwhile, God, through Jesus Christ, is saying,

“NO! No no no no no! Please stop saying such things! I didn’t send those storms. I didn’t kill those people. I love them and forgive them as my own children! It was a terrible disaster that happened to those people, and my only involvement is to weep and mourn with them, while calling you to go help them!

“But as long as you think I am punishing them, you will continue to sit and gloat at the disaster that has come upon your enemies. But your enemies are not my enemies, for I have no enemies. I call you to love your enemies, for they are my children too.”

So What Happened in the Flood?

I believe the flood account of Genesis 6–8 was written many thousands of years after it actually happened, and is therefore a human explanation for an actual historical event. I believe it is an inspired and inerrant account of the human explanation for a natural disaster, and as such, it invites us to see how we humans explain natural disasters today.

The flood event of Genesis 6-8 contains all the signs of a human rationalization for a violent natural disaster:

The people committed great sin (Genesis 6:1-4) and became monsters. They were so bad, they did nothing but evil all the time (Genesis 6:5, 11, 13). And so God destroyed them all! Yay! But … it didn’t really work, because we’re still pretty violent. So be careful … If you sin against God, He might destroy you too!

Do you see? A flood did occur. It was a terrible natural disaster unlike anything the world had ever seen. After the fact, the few survivors started to postulate about why such a disaster occurred, and, just like every human before and since that time, they decided that God sent the disaster to punish humans for their sin.

But now, in Jesus, we have learned that this is not what God does. So when we read the flood account of Genesis 6–8, we no longer read it as a warning about what God might do to us if we sin, but rather as a warning about how we will be tempted to think and act when we see bad thing happen to other people.

the flood and total depravityLooking at our face in the mirror of Genesis 6–8, we must ward ourselves against the common human practice of condemning others when bad things happen to them. We must stop saying, “Well, he lost his job and got cancer, so God must be punishing him for some secret sin.” (Remember Job?) Instead, when bad things happen to people, we must, like Jesus, enter into their hellish pain and sorrow, and help them or love them in in any way we can.

When bad things happen to others, we must remind them (and ourselves) that God did send the disaster and is not punishing them for sin. Instead, He is with them in their suffering and grieving for their loss.

So the flood account is a hard text to read. Not because it reveals a God before whom we must cower in fear and trembling, but because it reveals to us the blackness of our own sinful hearts when we prefer to condemn others in God’s name rather than help them through their pain.

The next time something bad happens to a family member, friend, or foe, how will you respond?

This post was part of the September 2018 Synchroblog on the topic of the flood. Here are the other contributors to this month’s topic. Go and read them all!

  • The Flood Story – K. W. Leslie
  • A Flood of Insightful Hope – Jordan Hathcock
  • There will Never Be a World Wide Flood Again but Was There Ever One in the First Place? – Done with Religion
  • The Flood as a Foreshadowing to the Cross of Christ – God is Not like Thanos from the Infinity War – Scott Sloan\
  • The Great Flood: 7 Amazing Lessons Every Christian Needs To Know – Joseph A. Brown
  • Is God like Thanos from the Avengers Infinity War? – Scott and Sadie
  • The Flood is a Remedy for Corruption – Tomasz Leszczynski
  • Did God Really Drown Millions in the Flood? – Mike Edwards

God is Redeeming Scripture, Redeeming Theology, z Bible & Theology Topics: crucifxion of Jesus, flood, Genesis 6-8, Genesis 6:1-4, Genesis 6:11, Genesis 6:13, Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8:21, inerrancy of Scripture, synchroblog, violence of God

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Why is the Bible so Bloody? Jesus tells us why in Matthew 23:29-35

By Jeremy Myers
5 Comments

Why is the Bible so Bloody? Jesus tells us why in Matthew 23:29-35
http://media.blubrry.com/one_verse/p/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/417229323-redeeminggod-111-why-is-the-bible-so-bloody-and-violent-matthew-2329-35.mp3

Lots of people wonder why the Bible is so bloody … that is, why there is so much violence and bloodshed in the Bible. (I am going to provide a brief explanation below, but if you want a more detailed explanation, you can read my book, Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.)

Many Christians often condemn the Muslim Qu’ran for being a violent book, but did you know that the Bible is far more violent than the Qu’ran? And this is not just descriptions of violence. There are more endorsements and commands to violence by God in the Bible than in the Qu’ran.

Of course, many Christians rightly point out that Jesus came and changed all that. That Jesus revealed a new a different way, a way of love and forgiveness.

I agree.

blood to horses bridles Revelation armageddonBut then many Christians turn right around and say, “But in the future, Jesus is going to return to this earth, and slaughter millions of people. There will be the greatest, bloodiest war the world has ever seen. When Jesus returns at the battle of Armageddon, the Valley will be filled with blood up to the horse’s bridle.”

So … wait. Is Jesus violent and bloody or not?

Are we saying that God in the Old Testament was violent and bloody, and then Jesus showed up to try love and forgiveness, but at the end of the world, even Jesus realizes that violence and bloodshed is the only solution after all? That love and forgiveness doesn’t actually work?

I think something is terribly wrong with this way of reading the Bible.

And by the way, this way of reading the Bible causes people to become violent themselves. I have heard Greg Boyd say that we become like the God we worship. If we worship a God who is violent at heart, and even though He tries love and forgiveness for a bit, He ultimately resorts to violence and bloodshed … then this is how we will act toward others.

This is why we hear Christians say, “Well, we tried to love and forgive those people over there …we really did, but they didn’t change, so now we are forced to drop bombs on them.”

Maybe we don’t drop bombs on them … but we do feel justified to hate other people when they don’t respond to our attempts to love and forgive them.

I had a conversation on Facebook Messenger the other day which reveals this attitude pretty well. Here is a screenshot:

(By the way, if you want to Message me on Facebook, you can do so here.)

Do you see? When we believe that God loves for a while, but then turns to hate when people don’t respond to Him, this causes us to hate those who don’t respond quickly enough to our evangelism efforts.

Now, if this is truly the way God is, then I agree that this is how we can behave as well.

But I do not believe that God is hateful, angry, violent, or bloody. I believe that Jesus reveals that God is quite the opposite. I believe that Jesus shows us what God is like, and that God has always been and always will be just like Jesus in the Gospels.

Jesus says “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” Paul says in Colossians 1:15 that Jesus “is the image of the invisible God.” The author of Hebrews says that Jesus is the exact representation of God, the express image of His person (Hebrews 1:3).

Now when Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews were teaching these things, they were talking about how Jesus lived during this life on earth as recorded in the Gospels.

During His life and ministry, Jesus did not engage in bloody violence or acts of vengeance upon anyone. Instead, He always loved and only forgave.

If we believe that Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews knew what they were talking about, then we are forced with a decision: We must either decide that Jesus was hiding the dark, bloody, and violent side of God so that He did not actually reveal to us the full and perfect image of God (and therefore, Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews are not telling the truth), or we must decide that Jesus did, in fact, fully reveal God to us (as He claims to have done), and so God has never been violent and bloody, and never will be.

does God hate us while Jesus loves us

For myself, I believe that Jesus is telling the truth, and so is Paul and the author of Hebrews.

Which means we need to figure out why the Bible is so violent and bloody. We need to figure out why the Bible contains so much bloodshed. We need to figure out why God apparently commands so much violence and bloodshed in the Old Testament. We need to figure out why John writes in the book of Revelation about the return of Jesus in such violent and bloody ways.

Thankfully, this is not something we have to figure out on our own. Jesus Himself told us why the Bible is so violent. He did this in numerous ways and at various times during His life and ministry.

The greatest explanation was provided through His crucifixion, of course, but many of the parables and teachings of Jesus were also directed at revealing the truth to us about why the Bible is so bloody and violent.

Jesus tells us why the Bible is Bloody (Matthew 23:29-35)

One of the key texts where Jesus reveals this is Matthew 23:29-35 (cf. Luke 11:49-51):

[You] say, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.” … Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

why is the Bible so bloody and violentIn this text, Jesus provides a summary of how He reads and understands the Old Testament. This is “The Old Testament according to Jesus.” And according to Jesus, the Bible is filled with violent bloodshed.

From Abel to Zechariah, from A-to-Z, the Bible reveals the violence of the human heart as we kill others in the name of God. According to Jesus, the Hebrew Scriptures are primarily about a revelation of bloodshed.

They reveal what the origins of bloodshed, and how sacrificial religion is often at the root of bloodshed, as human beings kills others in the name of God.

And it is not just evil sinners who are killed in the name of God, but righteous, innocent victims, such as Abel, Zechariah, and the prophets.

Jesus also says that the people in His day are doing the same thing.

This violent murdering of others in God’s name is the constant human sin of every culture and every generation. Yet no generation thinks that they themselves are guilty of it. The people in Jesus’ day say that if they had lived in the days of the prophets, they would not have participated in killing the prophets. Yet the people in Jesus’ day killed Jesus.

Today, we say that if we had lived in the day of Jesus, we would not have participated in killing Jesus. But is this true?

If you had lived in the days of Jesus, do you think you would be among those who cried out for His arrest and crucifixion? Or would you instead be among those who stood faithfully at His side and wept for Him as He bled and died?

Do not be too hasty to answer.

In Matthew 23:29-35, Jesus explains that the religious people who claim they would not have participated in murdering the prophets are the very same people who are planning to kill the prophets of their own day.

In this context, Jesus clearly equates blood with murder and violence, and especially the bloodshed that is religiously motivated. When the Bible speaks of blood, it primarily has in mind the sacrificial and religious bloodshed which takes place when we kill and murder in God’s name.

Of more importance, however, is the shocking truth that this text contains for us modern Christians. We Christians like to say that if we had lived in the days of Jesus, we would not have been among those calling for His crucifixion, but would have sided with Him instead, defending His innocence and calling for His release.

Sadly, Jesus disagrees with our assessment. The human condition and tendency is to side with the mob in calling for the death of the innocent scapegoat victim. The religious people in Jesus’ day claimed that they would not have participated in killing the prophets of old, yet it is they who led the charge in accusing, condemning, and killing Jesus.

Just as with every other violent text in Scripture, Matthew 23:29-35 is a serious call to take a careful look at the condition of our own hearts toward others.

This text, like so many others, was not primarily written so that we can condemn the ignorance of those in the past, but so that we can allow this text to expose the darkness in our own hearts. Just as the people in Jesus’ day were guilty of the same sins they condemned in their ancestors, so also, we are guilty of the same sins we condemn in them.

We say we would not have condemned Jesus, yet it may very well be that the people we think God should kill today are the very prophets whom God has sent to us to reveal our sin. Who is it that you want to see dead?

Who is it that you believe God could (and should) “righteously” kill? Could it be that you only think this about them because they are exposing your sin to you, just like the prophets of old?

This reveals why the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, is so violent.

Jesus died to reveal the source of violence

Why is the Old Testament so Violent?

Much of the Old Testament is filled with blood, whether it is the blood spilled in the sacrificial rituals of the Mosaic Law or the blood spilled during Canaanite Conquest and subsequent wars of Israel.

It is not without reason that some have called the Bible the bloodiest religious book in human history. Such a charge is not unfounded, for when the actual calls for violence and bloodshed are tallied, the Bible has more bloody texts than the Muslim Qur’an or any other religious holy book.

The proper response to all this bloodshed in the Bible, however, is not to try to explain it away and justify God as the bloodiest deity in the history of religion, but instead to embrace the revulsion that we feel and recognize that the reason the Bible is so bloody is not so that we emulate the behavior we read about in its pages, but instead to see these events as though they were a mirror being held up to our own faces (James 1:23-24).

In Matthew 23:29-35, Jesus says that the Bible is so violent and bloody, because it reveals what we ourselves are doing in our own day. Jesus says that the Bible is so violent and bloody, not so that we can condemn the people of the past, but so that we can see how we ourselves participate in the same exact bloodshed and violence.

Jesus says that the Bible is so violent and bloody, not because it reveals what God is like (for only Jesus does that), but because it reveals what mankind is like. And therefore, what we are like.

The Old Testament does not reveal God to us as much as it reveals mankind to us.

The bloody passages of the Old Testament provide a better glimpse into the heart of man than they do the heart of God.

This is how to read the violent portions of the Bible, so that when we turn away from them in revulsion, we are trained to turn away from similar violent tendencies in our own heart as well.

Until we read the Bible this way, we will forever be confused about why there is so much blood and violence in the Old Testament. But once we read the Bible through this lens, we see that the Bible reveals man to us so that in Jesus Christ we receive both a perfect revelation of what God is like and a perfect revelation of what mankind is supposed to be like.

Through His death on the cross, Jesus willingly submitted Himself to the violent death of ritualistic sacrifice as a way of exposing to humanity the sin to which humanity is enslaved.

Jesus died, not to affirm and reinforce the idea that God wants blood sacrifice, but to unveil and expose the truth about sacrifice, the truth that it is we who want sacrifice; not God.

It is we who shed blood; not God.

By letting us kill Him in such a violent and bloody way, Jesus unveiled the truth about humanity and the truth about sin, and in so doing, called us to abandon these scapegoating, sacrificial rituals in our own lives.

By letting us shed His blood, Jesus revealed that all such scapegoating sacrificial rituals have nothing whatsoever to do with God and originate instead within the hearts of mankind.

Jesus fully exposed and unveiled the mystery of the scapegoat sacrifice by fully submitting Himself to it.

Through His life and death, Jesus revealed how to live:

We are not to make sacrificial scapegoat victims of others, while at the same time we are to willingly lay down our lives for others.

The blood of Jesus reveals that true life does not come through the death of others, but through the death of self for the sake of others. While seeking life through the death of others leads only to more death, seeking life through the death of self leads to life for all.

The blood of Jesus teaches that while humans seek death, God seeks life, and so when the life of God is in us, we will stop seeking the death of others.

To learn more about this, get my book, Nothing but the Blood of Jesus, or take my online course, The Gospel Dictionary, which you can take for free by joining my online discipleship group:

The Gospel DictionaryUnderstanding the Gospel requires us to properly understand the key words and terms of the Gospel. Take my course, "The Gospel Dictionary" to learn about the 52 key words of the Gospel, and hundreds of Bible passages that use these words.

This course costs $297, but when you join the Discipleship group, you can to take the entire course for free.

God is Redeeming God, Redeeming Scripture, Redeeming Theology, z Bible & Theology Topics: blood, blood of Jesus, crucifixion of Jesus, death of Jesus, Matthew 23:29-35, violence, violence of God, violence of Scripture

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The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

By Jeremy Myers
5 Comments

The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

I always love reading books that attempt to explain all the violence in the Bible … especially the violence that is attributed to God. I have written two books on the subject myself, but love seeing how other people deal with this difficult topic.

So when Matthew Fleischer asked to send me a review copy of his book, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence, I readily accepted.

Old Testament case for non violenceAs I read the book, there was much that I loved and agreed with, but a few things that did not sit well with me. Let me start with the positives.

3 Things I LOVED about this Book

First, the book is very readable. It is not overly technical and provides a good overview of some of the views, issues, and texts related to the topic of violence in Scripture.

Second, despite the title of the book, it actually presents a New Testament case for nonviolence as a way of reading and interpreting the Old Testament. I love this approach to Scripture, and have written elsewhere about the importance of “reading the Bible backwards.” Though the New Testament chronologically follows the Old, it provides us with the theological and hermeneutical framework through which to read and interpret the Old Testament.

Third, and related to the first point, Fleischer not only encourages people to read the Old Testament through truths revealed in the New Testament, but specifically points people to the truths revealed through Jesus Christ on the cross (e.g., chapter 10). In one of my books, I call this the “crucivision” lens. I completely agree that the death of Jesus on the cross provides the clearest explanation of all violence in Scripture.

There are other things I love about the book, but let me briefly discuss two things I disagreed with.

2 Things I Disagreed With

First, Fleischer places a lot of emphasis in the book on progressive revelation (which he calls incremental revelation). This is the idea that as human history progressed, God revealed more and more of Himself to humanity, so that the later portions of Scripture more accurately reveal the true nature of God than the earlier portions (see chapters 2, 11). I have never been a fan of this view.

I know … I know. It seems that earlier I said exactly the opposite when I praised the practice of reading the Old Testament in light of the New. Let me try to clarify.

In the progressive revelation view, we see humanity at its lowest in the early chapters of Genesis, and then as God calls Abraham, then Israel, then Judges, then Prophets, and then Kings, each successive step gets us higher up the ladder of truth until we ultimately arrive at Jesus, who then encourages us to keep learning and moving upward toward truth. So in this view, the revelation from God can be drawn like a slope that moves higher as human history progresses, so that we are smarter and wiser and know more truth than did the people of 500 years ago, and especially the people of 5000 years ago.

C. S. Lewis called this view chronological snobbery, and I agree.

In my view, we probably know less today about God and “true” theology than did people of the past, such as Adam, Abraham, and Moses. While we do have a superior revelation in Jesus Christ, we have so drastically failed to understand what most of what Jesus revealed about God, we are still theologically inferior to Adam, Abraham, and Moses.

So in my view, rather than a constant upward slope toward “truth,” human history actually made a downward slope into sin and ignorance. Jesus Christ came at the deepest trough of this slope, and turned things around. His life, ministry, and teachings provided the correction, so that we are now generally on an upward trajectory, but we are still “below” some of the biblical saints of the past when it comes to what we know to be true about God.

This may seem like a minor point, but really, it makes a world of difference in how we approach some of the ancient biblical texts, like those of Moses and David. Rather than approaching them with a morally and theologically superior attitude, we instead approach them with humility, asking and hoping and praying that we can see what they saw and know what they knew.

This brings me to my second criticism of Fleischer’s excellent book.

Due to his view of progressive revelation, he frequently mentions that since people of the past did not have the full revelation that we have today, God had no choice but to occasionally accommodate their violent tendencies by engaging in some violence Himself.

Fleischer especially argues this in his chapters on “Just War” (chapter 7; see esp. pp 121-122), and then reinforces this idea in some of the concluding words of the book where he writes that God “may have temporarily used limited violence to advance his nonviolence agenda, but his use of such violence was always good and just” (p. 230).

just war theory

I simply cannot agree, based on what is revealed about God in Jesus Christ. Jesus reveals what God is truly like, and Jesus shows us that there is no violence in God and never has been.

So should you read this book?

Of course. And you can get it here on Amazon. It is a good introduction to the difficult theme of violence in Scripture. But as you read, just recognize that there are other ways of dealing with the violence in Scripture than by assigning these activities to God and calling them “good and just.” God does not accommodate such violence, nor does He withdraw and allow it to fall upon us.

Instead, He dives into the mess and sin of life with us, and bears the blunt and the blame for sin on His own beaten and bloody back. This is what we see in Jesus. I present this idea in one of my other books, which is also available on Amazon.

God is Redeeming Books Bible & Theology Topics: Books I'm Reading, nonviolence, Old Testament, violence of God, violence of Scripture

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Jonah 3:10 – The Repentance of God

By Jeremy Myers
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Jonah 3:10 – The Repentance of God
http://media.blubrry.com/one_verse/p/feeds.soundcloud.com/stream/344209586-redeeminggod-89-jonah-310-the-repentance-of-god-1.mp3

What is repentance? What is evil? If you think you know, here are some harder questions:  Does God ever need to repent? Does God commit evil?

Well, Jonah 3:10 seems to indicate that God does commit evil and does repent of it. Yikes! What does that mean? This is what we’ll look at in today’s study.

repentance

The Text of Jonah 3:10

Jonah 3:10. And God saw what they had done, that they repented from their evil ways, and God was sorry about the evil which He had declared to do to them, and He did not do it.

In this discussion of Jonah 3:10 we look at:

  • What is repentance?
  • Does God ever repent?
  • What is evil?
  • Does God commit evil?
  • The sad, humorous truth about repentance from evil in Jonah 3:10

Resources:

  • Redeeming God Discipleship Area
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Downloadable Podcast Resources

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God is Redeeming God, Redeeming Scripture Bible & Theology Topics: evil, Jonah 3:10, One Verse Podcast, sin, violence of God, violence of Scripture

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What I hoped to discuss with Greg Boyd at the ReKnew Conference about his Cruciform Hermeneutic

By Jeremy Myers
2 Comments

What I hoped to discuss with Greg Boyd at the ReKnew Conference about his Cruciform Hermeneutic

Well, the conference is over. I got five minutes with Greg in his final session today, so clearly, 99% of my concerns below could not be discussed. Even in the five minutes I got with him, I still feel like he didn’t hear or understand me. I am a little disappointed by this, because I was invited to the conference to converse with him about it in a session, and they gave me 5 minutes. But whatever … let’s move on.

I attended the ReKnew conference because I have been writing and teaching a lot about how to understand the violence in Scripture, and I thought this would be a good conference to attend. The conference is focused on the three books Greg Boyd published this year, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God (2 vols), and the shorter summary of those two books, Cross Vision. I have read all three books in their entirety, and some sections multiple times. I also listened to Greg’s explanation in the ReKnew conference, and have read numerous of his blog posts and listened to scores of his podcasts on this topic.

This post contains my response to the information in the books, blog posts, podcasts, and the conference.

I apologize for the unprofessional, unpolished nature of this post. It is likely filled with incoherent thoughts, typos, grammatical mistakes, and lots of repetition. The ideas below are basically a hastily-typed compilation of notes that I have scribbled in about 15 different places over the last several months.

Let me begin with a few areas of agreement

Ultimately, I agree with almost everything in Volume 1 of CWG. I am in absolute agreement that it is most important to interpret the text as we have it, rather than what historical event might (or might not) exist behind the text. It is the text that is inspired, not the historical event. God gave the text to us as it is for a reason – because it points us to Jesus Christ, just as it is written.

I agree with Boyd’s Conservative Hermeneutic Principle, that it is best to be more conservative than liberal when it comes to thinking about inspiration and the authority of Scripture. I agree that the Bible is inspired and infallible. That it is God-breathed in all its words and ideas. I agree that it is primarily when we begin with this framework that we work hard to understand why a troubling text was included in the Bible. I believe many scholars miss out on some of the most important truths of Scripture because they are too willing and ready to write something off as “error.” To write off various portions of Scripture as error is to miss out on some of what God wants to teach us about Himself, when viewed through the lens of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Boyd calls this the “cross vision;” I call it “crucivision.”

Speaking of the crucivision lens, I agree that God looks like Jesus. That Jesus most fully reveals God to us. That we must read Scripture and think about God through the lens of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I have written about this in The Atonement of God, and Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.

Summary of my areas of disagreement

With these agreements (and many more I did not mention), I do have some areas of disagreement. And while many of these might appear to be merely semantic on the surface, there might not be any field of study where the meaning and use of words is more important than with theology. Word matters, and when it comes to theology, it is the precise words that matter most.

There were numerous times I cringed at some of Boyd’s terminology and ideas, such as his way of describing unregenerate people as “unrepentant” (p. 787), and his acceptance of annihilation (p. 787), but in regard to the overall purpose and goal of the book, I am most concerned with three of Boyd’s four Principles of the Cruciform Hermeneutic.

The first principle is the Principle of Cruciform Accommodation. In my view, I would change this to the Principle of Cruciform Incarnation.

Boyd says that out of self-sacrificial love, as seen in Jesus on the cross, God stooped or accommodated to human sin and failures. I am not a huge fan of the terms “stooped” or “accommodated.” While I agree that the image of parent stooping to look a child in the eye and talk to a child on his or her level is helpful when some people think of how God interacts with us, I also think that this image or idea does some damage to how it is that we humans actually think of God.

When we think of God stooping, we think of a God who is so far above us, He is almost beyond reach. And while God is, in many ways, superior to us, the incarnation of Jesus shows that God is not “up there,” but is already “down here,” in our midst, at our level. The incarnation reveals what God has always been doing with humanity. He has not gone from up there down to here, but has always been with us in a humble and quiet way.

But when it comes down to it, I don’t mind “accommodation” too much. It is probably not worth quibbling over. The terminology of the second principle, however, I do think is worth some quibbling…

The second key idea of Boyd’s cruciform Hermeneutic is the Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal. In my view, I would call this the Principle of Redemptive With-us, or Redemptive Following. Neither is as catchy as Greg’s term, but is in this area where I take most exception with Boyd’s terminology, so something else is needed other than “withdrawal.”

Boyd frequently writes that God withdraws from us, and he uses numerous synonyms to help explain this view. He writes that God abandons (p. 769, 778, 782), leaves us alone (p.741, 874), withdraws his presence (p.889) to “let sin have its way” so that we receive the punishment “we deserve” (p. 903). These sorts of statements in in the books reminded me of Job’s friends.

While I agree that the Bible does use such terminology, I think this is a perfect case where what we see occurring on the cross reveals that “something else must be going on.” I do not believe that God ever leaves or forsakes us. He never abandons us or leaves us alone. He never withdraws His presence. Yes, sin bears its own punishments, and yes, the consequences of sin fall upon us, but this is not because God backed away to let us receive the punishment we deserve.

This way of thinking can cause horrible psychological and spiritual damage to people who have already been abandoned by loved ones, or feel that they have sinned so bad, God has withdrawn from them and has left them alone to face the fallout from their sin. It is far better to provide hope and healing to such people, and remind them that God will never withdraw, but is always with us. It is no help whatsoever to say, “This hurts God more than it hurts you” (cf. p. 904).

What happens when we experience the suffering from sin is that God warned us about the pain and destruction that can come through sin (though we often don’t hear it), and we go our own way anyway. In such situations, God does not let us go without coming along as well. He lets us choose our own destructive routes, and He chooses to join us in the mess and pain of sin. This is what we see in the incarnation and on the cross. He walks with us into the suffering and shame, and bears it along with us, protecting us from what He can. This is what we see in Jesus.

I found it strange that he did not address this objection in his chapter on common objections (chapter 18). I am not sure what this means. But let me move on.

Third, Boyd argues for the Principle of Cosmic Conflict. I prefer to think of the Principle of Creation Chaos.

Yes, there are forces and powers that cause evil in this world. But I think that most of these forces were initially supposed to be subject to the will and mind of humankind, and due to going our own way, they have spun out of control. Just as a car is not evil when it kills someone after spinning out of control of the driver, so also, creation is in chaos because the human drivers have lost control.

Satan, as the accuser, is one of these powers. So also are the “fallen” angels. I owe much of my thinking in this area to Walter Wink, but I go further than he does, and give the powers a bit of will, though it would be by the subconscious will of a human collective.

Finally, Boyd writes about the Principle of Semiautonomous Power. This is the idea that God gives humans free will and power (even power-filled items) with which to carry out His will, and sometimes people misuse and abuse this power in evil ways. I agree with this. I think this principle here helps explain most of what goes wrong in this world, and much of the evil human violence we see in Scripture. No complaints from me here!

With these four initial criticisms in mind, let us step a bit deeper into the book and discuss some of the questions that arose for me as I read.

Is Progressive Revelation Real?

I know that the idea of Progressive Revelation is a “given” in most of modern theology, but I have never been convinced. The more I study Scripture in light of culture and history, the more convinced I become that we today might know less about God than most of the generations in Biblical history. The assumption that we know better today because we are more technologically advanced, are further along in time, or have more books is what C. S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” We look down out modern noses at the people of the past and think that they were ignorant fools who knew nothing of God and His ways, but we, with all our research and writing, we now know better.

But do we? I am not so sure.

Yes, I know Paul writes about seeing in a mirror dimly (1 Cor 13:12), that the prophets longed to see our day (Matt 13:17; Luke 10:24; 1 Pet 1:10), and similar verses. I also agree that Jesus Christ is the supreme revelation of God and that He most fully explains God as no other generation has ever known. But does this mean there was a progression in thinking from the time of Abraham up to the time of Jesus, and that this progression has been marching forward ever since?

No, I would say that there was a regression from the time of Adam to the time of Jesus, when He burst on the scene as a ray of light in the darkest of nights, and we have been trying to make sense of that light ever since. If there has been any progression since the incarnation of Jesus, I do not think we have progressed (or retraced the path of regression) much past the later prophets. We have definitely not returned to what Moses and Abraham and Adam knew about God (John 8:56; Exod 33:11).

So I am not a fan of progressive revelation. Instead, let us humbly admit that we know nothing, and return to sitting at the feet of our Master while He reveals Himself to our spirits and through the pages of Scripture.

Is the Cross the Supreme Revelation of God?

I think we can all agree that Jesus is the perfect and fullest revelation of God. Yet the emphasis seems to be on the revelation of God in the crucifixion, that it is on the cross where God is most fully manifested.

I tentatively agree with this, but primarily in reference to violence. The cross is an extremely violent event, and so when it comes to understanding God’s involvement with violence, the cross is the best revelation of this truth.

Yet the crucifixion is only one event in the life of Jesus. We must not overemphasize the crucifixion, as if it were the only event in the life of Jesus, or as if everything else in His three-year ministry was just prologue. No, the entire life of Jesus, from conception (which precedes birth) to ascension (which follows the crucifixion and resurrection) is essential for understanding what God is truly like.

Once we recognize that the entire life of Jesus reveals God to us, this then raises other questions.

Is God Stooping?

Over and over we are told that God stooped, accommodated, or allowed certain things to happen because the people were not ready for something better, different, or more godly. But I am very uncomfortable with all such language, because it seems to deny the truth of the incarnation. It seems at times that while Boyd places a wonderful (and often neglected) emphasis on the crucifixion, he has somewhat neglected the incarnation. Even the word “stooping” seems to imply that God is “up there” above us, and He “stoops” down to our level. But this is not the truth of the incarnation. The truth of the incarnation is that God is always with us.

If Jesus, in His entire life, reveals to us what God is like, then we cannot say that God “stooped” to become human, but rather that since the incarnation reveals what God has always been like, then God has never stooped, but has always been with us. In Jesus, we don’t see a God who has come down to us, but rather, we see God with us. He did become this way; He has always been this way.

Let me put it another way. John writes that God is love (1 John 4:8). We could say that love is of the essence of God, that love is a central and defining characteristic of God. But does love exist in a vacuum? No. For there to be love, there must be an object of love. This, I believe, is one way of proving the truth of the Trinity, but that’s another topic.

One essential characteristic of love is give and take. Love requires interaction, collaboration, listening, following, caring, freedom, flexibility, and risk. Love involves looking out for the interests and needs of others.

It is sometimes taught that God limited Himself in creating other beings with free will. But did He? In giving some genuine “say-so” to created beings, is this actually a self-limitation of God, or is it rather the definition of love? In giving freedom to His creatures, God did not limit His own freedom, and therefore “stoop” to our level, but rather, was true to the character of love.

And this is exactly what we see in Jesus. As God incarnate, He did not stoop to join humanity, but continued in His loving relationship with humanity in a way that we could more fully grasp and understand. The incarnation of God is not the stooping of God; it is the relating of God, which He has always done.

Some might wonder about Philippians 2 and kenosis. Did Jesus “empty Himself” of his divine attributes? Several things can be pointed out which will move us in the right direction. First, Paul brings Jesus up as the perfect example of love that seeks the good of others over oneself. This is not “stooping” to the other person’s level (such an idea is actually quite proud), but is just what love does (Php 2:1-4). Since Jesus does this with us, we know that this is what God has always done this with us as well. He has not stooped; He has loved.

Beyond this, however, it does not seem best to understand kenosis in 2:7 as a reference to Jesus emptying Himself of His divine nature. Such an idea becomes very dangerous to our Christology, and hence, to our Theology Proper. If Jesus perfectly reveals to us what God is like, and Jesus emptied Himself of His divine nature, then this would mean that God also emptied Himself of His divine nature. But what does that mean? How can God have less than the full divine nature? It seems best, therefore, to understand Paul’s reference here (which is probably an early Christian hymn) in light of the Platonic philosophical idea of “forms.” But contrary to some scholars who have noted this connection, I do not believe that Paul is agreeing with Platonic thought, but rather disagreeing. I believe Paul is saying that although Greek philosophy uses the concept of “form” to think of god as this perfect, unchanging, unfeeling deity, this is not what we see in Jesus Christ. Instead, though Jesus was perfectly equal with God, we see a God who becomes a nobody, a servant, and joins humanity in life. He humbles Himself, even to the point of death on a cross. God, in Jesus, did not stoop to become this, but revealed to us in Jesus that this is what He has always been like. Jesus did not seek to be equal to the form of God, that is, to the perfect, unfeeling, uncaring, unchanging ideal of god that human philosophy presents us, but instead, through the incarnation, revealed to us what God is really like.

I am not saying God is physical. That God is human. We know that God is Spirit. We also know that there are aspects of God that could not be fully represented in human form, such as His omnipresence. But I think this helps explain why Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit.

Anyway, I don’t believe God stoops or accommodates as people usually understand those words. I believe that, out of perfect love for humanity, He has joined us in our journey through life. This is not Him acting as “less than God” but is instead Him acting as the “perfectly loving God” that He truly is, as revealed in the incarnation of Jesus. God does not accommodate His creation, but is, in fact, somewhat accountable to His creation. He is a suffering God, who willingly takes our pain upon Himself out of love. To explain God’s actions in Scripture as “accommodation” is just as much an evasion of what is really happening as it is to call some uncomfortable description of God as an “anthropomorphism.” We cannot explain things away so easily.

So Does God Withdraw?

No. There is no withdrawal. There is only God with us. He never leaves us nor forsakes us. He never abandons us or lets us go our own way without Him.

Yes, He pleads with us and warns us and instructs us to not go down certain paths in life, but when we ignore His pleading and rebel against His instructions, and go in the way He has warned us not go, God does not throw up His hands and say, “Well, I’ll be waiting here when you come crawling back to me in pain and agony from how you messed up your life.” No, when we choose to go our own way, God, out of His great love for us, does not withdraw from us, but goes with us. He does not abandon us to our sin, but dives headlong into the mess of sin with us.

This is what we see in the incarnation and the crucifixion, and is also what we see everywhere in Scripture. The priesthood, the law, the sacrificial system, and the monarchy were not what God wanted and not God’s plan or idea. But when we humans turned our back on what God desired and wanted (a loving relationship with each and every person), God did not accommodate us, or stoop down to let us have our own way, or even withdraw from us so that we were abandoned in our rebellion. No, God, out of His great love for us, said, “Well, it’s not my way, but if that is what you want, we will go down that road together for a while. Are you ready?”

Though God tells us the direction in which we should go, and warns us of the dangers down other roads, when we persist in going our own way, God does indeed let us go, but He does not let us go alone. Instead, He goes with us, so that He might do all He can to protect us from the evils of our own choices. Due to genuine freedom, of course, He cannot protect us from all harm.

The great problem, of course, is that while God goes with us wherever we go, we humans rarely sense or see His presence with us. Though He is always with us, we feel as if He has abandoned and forsaken us. We feel His has left us to our own devices out of disgust and anger at our sin. We regularly cry out to God, “Why have you left me? Why have you allowed this to happen? Where are you, God? Why have you forsaken me?”

So the cry of Jesus on the cross about His own forsakenness is not the cry of Jesus the man being forsaken by God, but the cry of Jesus the God finally feeling the despair of humanity at not sensing the presence of God. Did God forsake or abandon Jesus? No! Jesus is not God-forsaken, and neither are we. God did not abandon Jesus on the cross, and He does not abandon us. God did not withdraw from Jesus when He became sin for us, and He does not withdraw from us when we commit sin against Him. Go here to read more: https://redeeminggod.com/why-have-you-forsaken-me/

Even if Greg is right that God abandoned Jesus to sin (which I do not agree with), wouldn’t it be better to say that God abandoned Jesus to sin so that God did not have to abandon us to sin? In my view, it is best to say that God never abandons anyone. Not Jesus and not us. “Something else is going on” when Jesus cries out from the cross, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?”

The flood event in Genesis 6-8 is one example of how Greg Boyd deals with the violent texts of Scripture. He says that since wickedness had spread over the face of the earth, all humanity had become corrupted by the sons of God (Gen 6:1-8), and so Noah was literally the last pure man on earth, and so to save, rescue, and deliver humanity from complete destruction, God had to step back from humanity and withdraw His protection so that sin would destroy humanity and a new creation could occur through Noah and his family, whom God rescued and delivered from the flood through the ark. Boyd argues that God’s only activity in the flood was to rescue and deliver Noah. The flood waters came on their own as God stepped back.

I am extremely uncomfortable with such an explanation of the flood account, or such a way of reading Scripture. My discomfort is not because Boyd’s thesis is new, but because I think it ultimately violates one of his preliminary points, that all of Scripture must be read and interpreted through Jesus Christ, and especially through Jesus Christ on the cross. I do not believe that what we see on the cross is God withdrawing from sin, but rather jumping head-first into it.

God does not withdraw from sin. He dives into it. Since Jesus reveals to us what God is really like, and since Jesus is the incarnation of God, then Jesus also reveals how God deals with sin. God does not back away from sin to let it have its way. No, God, in Jesus, enters fully into our sin, not to participate in it, but to deliver us from it. He does not draw away; He dives headlong into the mess.

This view of mine raises two possible objections. First, some say that just as a loving parent must sometimes withdraw from a child to let the child grow and mature, or just as sometimes a loving parent must draw back from a rebellious child so that the child can learn through pain what they have failed to learn through instruction, so also God, as a loving Father, withdraws from us at times for similar reasons.

Yet we must look at the reasons why parents “withdraw” from their children in such situations. Typically it is so that the rebellious child will not harm other family members. Similarly, it could be argued, God wants to protect the children in His house, so He “kicks out” the rebellious one.

This might work, except for the fact that when God “withdraws” or “kicks a rebellious child out,” usually a huge disaster follows in which lots of children (and animals) are killed in horrible ways. Just look at the flood, or the Ten Plagues, or Korah’s Rebellion, or any number of “divine withdrawal” scenarios in the Bible. If we are going to carry the divine withdrawal analogy to the proper parallel, we would have to say that after a parent withdrew from a child, that child went out and murdered everyone in town, as well as the pet dogs, cats, and hamsters. In such a scenario, would it not have been better to let the rebellious child stay at home? I submit to you that it would.

Cannot God in His wisdom find another way to deal with wayward sinners than by “withdrawing his protection” so that hundreds, thousands, or millions of people do not get caught in the cross-hairs of destructive forces?

And while I am on the topic of forces, is it sufficient to say that destructive forces are like gravity, so that just like dropping a water bottle so that gravity does the rest, so also, God just stops holding back the destructive forces and lets them go their natural way? Do we really want to equate God to Zeus, who says “Release the Kraken!” whenever there are rebellions to quash? No, God is not like Zeus. He does not “unleash” destructive forces on anybody, even if it just “withdrawing His protection.” To argue this way is to say that Zeus is not responsible for what the Kraken did once released. He just stopped holding it back and let it go its way. Look at the quotes at the bottom of this post to see how Greg talks about the withdrawal of God.

To some (including myself), here is what it sounds like Greg Boyd is sometimes saying:

I do not think that God ever releases the destroyer in this way. Not now, not ever. Not even in the biblical accounts. Yes, I agree with Greg that the biblical accounts say these things, but I would say that Greg’s explanation of these difficult biblical events still turns God into a monster-releasing monster like Zeus. It is far better to say, “Something else must be going on” (which is what I have proposed in my book Nothing but the Blood of Jesus. God does not let us go. God does not withdraw in any way, shape, or form. He lets us go, but He goes with us. (And no, Paul is not teaching this in Romans 1. But I am not going to get into that discussion here. Again … something else is going on … as I have argued elsewhere.)

But don’t children need to learn from their mistakes? Yes, of course they do. And while there is “withdrawal” in some senses (we don’t carry our children around their whole lives), there is a drawing nearer in others. A mother only stops carrying her child in her arms so that the child can learn to crawl. And as the child learns to walk, the mother will let go of the child, but will always keep her arms within an inch or two of the child to catch him when he falls. It is the same as children get older.

I know a father who caught his son doing drugs. So the father warned him. The warning didn’t work, so the next time, the father took his son down to the police station himself to get him UA tested. Is that withdrawal? I wouldn’t call it that. I would call it going with the son into the pain. The son sure didn’t like it though. The son felt betrayed and forsaken. But he wasn’t.

I know a mother who did something similar with her son. Yet the son never learned, and so eventually, for the sake of her own household and the safety of the other children, she told the son he had to move out of the house. The son was furious. But did this mother withdraw from her son? No. If anything, she drew nearer. He was more on her heart and mind than ever before. He was more in her thoughts and prayers. She texted him numerous times a day to say that when he was clean, and willing to enter rehab, he could come home. In kicking him out of the house, she actually made herself more attentive to him.

I could go on and on with numerous examples. The point is this: Yes, there is an element of “learning from their mistakes,” but quite often, this learning can be accomplished in a variety of ways, and even when the parent and child must create some form of physical separation, this does not necessarily mean that the parent has actually withdrawn. So also with God, and with God, it’s even easier than with a parent who has a physical body. God might let us go the way we want into rebellion to learn from our mistakes, but when this happens, He goes with us, because He will never leave us nor forsake us.

Second, some have suggested that if God does not withdraw, then He is just enabling sinners to continue in their ways. To this, I say, “Do you live in a world where sinners are not allowed to continue in their ways?” We all live in the same world, where people whom we think should be stopped are not, but in fact, seem to get blessed with more power, riches, wealth, and fame. So yes, God is the biggest enabler in the universe. As you look around at all the evil in the world, in what way is God not enabling people? That’s what I want to know. I got this (I think?) from Robert Farrar Capon, but I cannot find the quote, so maybe it was someone else.

So why does God appear to be an enabler? The only rational answer I can come up with is the answer Greg has already provided, that once divine “say-so” (sometimes called “free will” … which is a misnomer) is given, it cannot be rescinded if is used in a way God did not want or desire. So does God enable? Of course, He does! Just look at the world around us!

But do not despair, for God is also wise, and He can step into the mess we have created, and work to redeem it and rescue us out of it. Although He is an enabler, this does not mean He does nothing about the problem. Far from it! In Jesus, God showed us what He has been doing since the founding of the world.

Does God allow sin to have its way with us?

At times, Boyd talks about how God allows sin to have its way with us. While I agree that sin bears its own punishment with it, and that God does not send punishment upon us, it is very dangerous to talk about God allowing sin to have its way. This seems to imply that God could have stopped sin from damaging, hurting, or “punishing” us, but He didn’t.

Frankly, this seems a bit like a passive form of divine child abuse. Imagine a father who warns his daughter a hundred times to not play in the street because she could get run over. But she ignores him, and so time after time he pulls he back to safety as she runs out onto the road. Is he eventually going to sigh in exasperation and say, “Fine, have it your way. Next time I’m going to allow you to get run over”? No, of course not. Such a passively aggressive father is no better than one who is aggressively abusive.

So what does God do about sin? Well, as we ignore His advice over and over again, He constantly seeks to protect us over and over again. He never fails in this. He never stops.

God does not allow sin to have its way with us, even if we continue to rebel and live in it. Nor does God destroy sin by letting sin destroy itself. I believe that God destroys sin through redemption. He destroys sin by tearing it apart from the inside, not violently, but through love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and revelation. I believe God destroys sin through the revelation and illumination brought by the incarnation. He rescues, not be retreating, but by redeeming. Jesus said “I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” And neither does God. He never withdraws. Never backs away. Never leaves us alone.

Does sin hurt us? Yes. Does sin bear its own punishment? Yes. God does not punish us for sin. But the blows we feel as a result of our own sin are the glancing blows that hit His back first. Due to genuine human freedom, God cannot stop all the pain and sorrow that comes from our bad choices, but He does do what He can to protect us from it. In no way, however, does God allow these things to happen to us, as if He could have done more or done other than He did but chose not to.

What is sin (and satan)?

I was consistently uncomfortable with Boyd’s understanding of sin. Since sin is “the problem” in Scripture, it seems he should have spent more time discussing the origin and nature of sin. For example, Boyd wrote in numerous places that Jesus bore the destructive consequences of sin “that we deserved” (cf. e.g., 768). Yes, there are destructive consequences of sin, but I am not sure that there are destructive consequences of sin “that we deserve.” That’s like saying that “Jesus came to deliver slaves from the chains that they deserve.” This means something else entirely than saying “Jesus came to deliver slaves from their chains.”

I’m not certain, but Boyd seems to view sin as creating a sort of debit in the divine ledger books, which ultimately got charged to Jesus. I think this transactional way of viewing sin led Boyd astray. What would be better is if Boyd emphasized the clear biblical connection between sin and violence, and how both are related to the accuser (satan) that leads to violence and the escalation of violence. In fact, it is very strange that in a book about sin and violence, Boyd never really seeks to define either one. I have sought to define sin in my book, Nothing but the Blood of Jesus, thereby showing the close connection between sin and violence (and how satan is involved). And when we see from Scripture that sin is not some sort of substance (either physical or spiritual) that needs to be “washed away” like dirt (I am not saying this is what Boyd believes … I don’t know what he believes on this), but that sin is closely related to violence, it is then that we begin to see how Jesus defeated sin (and violence, and satan) through His life, crucifixion, and resurrection.

What is God’s Response to Sin?

God does not retreat from sin, but redeems us from it. He always forgives and only loves and never leaves us to sin’s destructive devices. Not ever.

It is only when we come to this realization as it is clearly revealed on the cross that we begin to see the beautiful portraits of God in the Old Testament of how He stayed with this world and His people in the most sinful of situations. This then helps us know how to read and understand the rest of Scripture.

What if the Cross (and therefore Scripture) is not primarily about Theology Proper, but about Anthropology?

When it comes to theology, we humans tend to think that our greatest area of deficiency is in understanding the nature and character of God. So we read the Bible in this way, asking “What is God like? What does God do? What are the attributes and actions of God?”

But what if we are wrong in this? What if our greatest area of deficiency is not in understanding God, but in understanding ourselves? What if God inspired the Bible, not primarily to reveal Himself to us, but to reveal ourselves to us? What if the Bible is not so much a revelation from God about God, but is more of a revelation from God about humanity?

I believe this is exactly the case, and it helps make sense of a lot of passages in the Bible and why God inspired them to be written the way they were. The Bible is more about what humans are like than it is about what God is like. So also with the crucifixion. What if the crucifixion is not just a revelation of what God has always been doing, but also a revelation of what humanity has always been doing?

So yes, Jesus reveals God to us. But Jesus also reveals humanity to us … both in our glory and our gore. The life and ministry of Jesus shows us how we humans are to behave, while the crucifixion shows how we actually behave. Yes, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveal how God behaves toward us. It shows us how God has taken the sin of the world upon Himself while always loving and only forgiving in return. But the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are also (primarily?) about how we humans behave toward others and then blame God for it.

The Gospels (and the Bible as a whole) is more about Anthropology than Theology Proper, and once we begin to read the Bible with this in mind, our eyes will be opened to the shocking truths of Scripture, and we will begin to see our faces on its pages for the very first time. Till we have seen our faces, we cannot begin to correct the blemishes that Scripture reveals and so conform our lives to the image and likeness of God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

Boyd’s Criticism of His Critics

One of the things I found most troubling about Boyd’s books and the ReKnew conference is in how he handled the ideas of his critics. It sometimes seemed that Boyd found it easier and most satisfying to respond to his critics with a joke and light mockery than with serious attention to what they were saying. Multiple times during the conference, I cringed as Boyd said things about people who objected to him in a way that got a cheap laugh from the audience. I experienced this myself, and I sat with others at the conference who experienced this themselves (and told me so), and I imagine that if someone like Derek Flood was at the conference, he would have felt something similar. Even at the final session with Greg Boyd, when the first person asked his question (which was an email from a Calvinistic pastor), Greg’s response at the beginning and end of his answer included mockery of the question. Humor has an important role in biblical and theological debate, but mockery must be left at the door.

Furthermore, I sometimes felt that Boyd didn’t really understand the views of his opponents. Or maybe he just wasn’t giving them a fair explanation. See, for example, the posts by Derek Flood about how Boyd misrepresented him. Yet ironically, this is Boyd’s main criticism of his critics. He says they don’t understand him and don’t properly present his views. Well, pot, meet kettle.

Another example is Girard’s Mimetic theory (which I teach on here). Boyd wrote a post about Girard’s Scapegoat Theory in which he said his critics misunderstood him, and he went on to point out his issues with Mimetic Theory. But strangely, the summary of mimetic theory he provides (while decent in his book) is terrible in this post. As a dabbler in Girard, I know that Boyd terribly misunderstood or misrepresented what most Girardians think about sin and satan and how Jesus actually (objectively) defeats them through His life and on the cross so that “the cross changed everything for every one and every thing.” Much of mimetic theory truly does view sin and satan as powers that have enthralled the world, and that through his non-violent self-sacrificial, non-accusatory love and forgiveness on the cross, Jesus truly defeated and exposed them.

So anyway, maybe it is just normal in theological debate for everyone on all sides of an issue to think that the opponents “simply don’t understand” (After all, if they understood, they would agree!). But since this is so, I don’t think that mockery has any role in theological debate. It is just not helpful.

Quotes about God’s Withdrawal

Compiled by Ben Stasiewicz, in the Crucifixion of the Warrior God Facebook Group on Monday, July 3, 2017. (And despite Greg’s comments about the Facebook group in his final session today, I feel that the group is quite loving and gracious. You should come join us!)

“We shall argue that while God’s withdrawal is punitive in nature, it always has redemption as its ultimate goal, which is why this principle expresses God’s “redemptive withdrawal.

“Since the cross reveals what God has always been like, I will argue that we should interpret Scripture with the assumption that God always judges by withdrawing his protective presence from those who are coming under judgment. While OT authors often reflect their fallen and culturally conditioned understandings of God by attributing violence directly to God, the Cruciform Hermeneutic discloses that “something else is going on.” We shall see that whatever violence transpires when God withdraws and turns people over to suffer the consequences of their sin is carried out by agents other than God and is carried out of their own free accord, just as when Jesus bore the judgment of sin in our place.” (pg. 635)

 

“the revelation of God on the cross, together with a wealth of confirming scriptural evidence, makes it clear that to bring a judgment on people, God need only withdraw his merciful protecting hand to allow people to experience the self-destructive consequences of their own wickedness, including the wickedness of trusting in violence rather than in God.” (pg 744)

—

The Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal is anchored in the fact that God the Father did not act violently toward his Son when the Son bore the judgment of our sin that we deserved. Rather, with a grieving heart, the Father simply withdrew his protective hand, thereby delivering his Son over to wicked humans and fallen powers that were already “bent on destruction” (Isa 51:13). Yet, by abandoning his Son to suffer the destructive consequences of sin that we deserved, the Father wisely turned the violent aggression of these evildoers back on themselves, causing evil to self-implode and thereby liberating creation.

We may thus state the Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal as follows:

God judges sin, defeats evil, and works for the redemption of creation by withdrawing his protective presence, thereby allowing evil to run its self-destructive course and ultimately to self-destruct.  (pg. 768)

—

“the Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal allows us to discern in the depths of these portraits a God who, with a grieving heart, brings judgment on people by simply withdrawing from them, thereby allowing them to experience the destructive consequences that are —inherent in their sin but that are typically brought about by means of other agents who were already “bent on destruction.”5 Yet, we shall see that our cross-based faith also requires us to discern that God is doing this in hopes of eventually redeeming these people and as a stepping-stone ultimately to causing all sin and evil to self-destruct.” (pg. 769)

—

Though it grieves God to do so, God is willing, out of the profound love he has for people, to withdraw his protective hand and allow them to sink to ever-increasing depths of pain in order to eventually hope- fully come to the point where they finally realize it is in their own best interest to turn from their sin and submit to God’s loving lordship. (pg. 791)

—

The judgment on the people of Jerusalem was definitely an expression of God’s “wrath” (1 Thess 2:14–16). Yet, confirming what we learn from the cross, these prophecies make it clear that God’s role in expressing his “wrath” involved no violence on God’s part. God’s role bringing this judgment about was simply to withdraw and allow the seed of destruction that is inherent in people’s rebellious choices to grow and bear its fruit (Jas 1:14–15).  (pg. 811)

—

I will argue that by acknowledging that God merely allowed the actions they elsewhere ascribe directly to God, these OT authors confirm both that God merely withdraws protection when he brings about judgments and that their violent depictions of God are divine accommodations to their own fallen and culturally conditioned hearts and minds. (pg. 852)

—

since the essence of sin is pushing God away, God’s decision to withdraw from people must be understood as a decision to give people what they want. In this respect, the unleashed pit bull analogy is misguided, for the person being attacked did not repeatedly try to get the dog owner to unleash his rabid dog. (pg. 903)

—

While God’s decision to withdraw and allow his stiff-necked people to carry out their violent proclivities against the Canaanites was just, we know from Jesus’s cross-oriented ministry that allowing this judgment to take place grieved the heart of God   (pg. 982)

—

Indeed, the cross-centered Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal specifies that the “delivering over” motif running throughout Scripture is not a manifestation of “the power of the Spirit” but a manifestation of the withdrawal of the Spirit (pg. 1000)

—

“the intensity of the NT’s cosmic conflict worldview allows us to better understand why God need only withdraw his protective hand to allow people to experience the death-consequences of sin.” (pg. 1042)

—

Hence, in light of the warfare dimension of the cross and the manner in which it is confirmed throughout the canon, I submit that our interpretation of all of God’s judgments should be premised on the knowledge that “a destructive power is at work, and that God is actively holding back the forces of evil.” More specifically, in light of the cross, I submit that all canonical depictions of God using nature as a weapon of judgment (e.g., the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah) can be, and should be, understood to be occasions in which God, with a grieving but hopeful heart, withdrew his protective hand to allow anti-creational forces that are “bent on destruction” (Isa 51:13; cf. Hab 1:9) to bring about “the undoing of creation” in an individual, people-group, or geographical region. (pg. 1071)

God is Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: crucifixion of Jesus, cruciform, crucivision, Greg Boyd, hermeneutics, violence of God

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