This is the view of Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion:
'The God of the OT is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser... a capriciously malevolent bully.'
The value of a challenging wisdom text like Job is that it gives us resources for having a faith that questions, a faith that perseveres and a faith for extreme situations.
It is reported that some Jews in the concentration camps went to their deaths with the words of Job on their lips: 'Though He slay me, yet shall I trust Him' (Job 13: 15).
What else is there in the Bible that speaks to such a situation?
It's a bit like finding your doting grandfather was also a camp commandant at Dachau. Sure, he did oversee the deaths of thousands of "undesirables" but he was lovely at Christmas and always sent you a lovely thoughtful gift on your birthday. And gave horsey rides.
If this is really what you have found God to be, well that sucks.
You say you hope your picture is inaccurate. What grounds do you have for that hope, and what would a more accurate picture look like?
This is the view of Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion:
'The God of the OT is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser... a capriciously malevolent bully.'
I think that says a lot more about Richard Dawkins than it does about God.
If Richard Dawkins had a good knowledge of the Bible then he could have written a even stronger counter narrative. But what this misses is the recognition that the Bible is not telling a single voiced narrative. It is a multi layered library of different viewpoints and genres. The voices have arguments and disagreements across the centuries. It is a pity to miss out on this dimension because it makes the scriptures much more fascinating. How do we enter the world of Chronicles? Why is Ecclesiastes in the canon? What was the author of Job really trying to say? And what do they have to tell us about God and His relationship with His people?
It's a bit like finding your doting grandfather was also a camp commandant at Dachau. Sure, he did oversee the deaths of thousands of "undesirables" but he was lovely at Christmas and always sent you a lovely thoughtful gift on your birthday. And gave horsey rides.
If this is really what you have found God to be, well that sucks.
You say you hope your picture is inaccurate. What grounds do you have for that hope, and what would a more accurate picture look like?
Grounds for hope? That everyone, some of whom claim to know and have experience of God, tell me he's not like that. That Jesus doesn't seem to reveal a God like that. But then why wasn't he more explicit that these old ideas were wrong?
This is the view of Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion:
'The God of the OT is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser... a capriciously malevolent bully.'
I think that says a lot more about Richard Dawkins than it does about God.
No, that's dodging the question. Dawkins' description there is a perfectly reasonable summary.
Right at the start of Genesis God's creation is declared by God to be good.
Either God is fundamentally good in the way we understand it, or he isn't, or he doesn't exist.
If he isn't good, or if his goodness extends only to the moral equivalent of brutal dictators giving their grandchildren horse rides, then resistance, however futile, seems to me to be the only honourable course of action (as I said about Rokyo's Basilisk). We also don't need to pay any attention to any claimed revelation about him such as the Bible.
That does however leave me wondering where this notion of "honourable" might have come from, or indeed the notion of "good".
If he is good (and this would amongst other things provide an explanation for this longing after "good" that we have) then the challenge we face is reconciling that with our understanding of what claims to be revelation about him, notably the bloodthirstier bits of the OT. History suggests that others before us have struggled with this and managed it.
If he doesn't exist then we face other existential challenges, but I personally can't escape the conviction that he does, so I go for the struggle option.
So is the God of the OT really a vindictive mass murderer?
Or do we see Him through the lens of the OT scribes who composed these texts and their views of God? As Martin54 commented, hermeneutics plays an important role in the understanding of the Bible. A point that Dawkins completely disregards.
Take the example of the command to exterminate the Canaanites in Joshua 11: 20 - a really problematic text. Did that really happen? Or did a nationalistic scribe think that this is what really ought to have happened for the purity of the nation? Genocide was a rare occurrence in the ancient world. And we see that there is a strange ongoing issue with intermarriage and religious syncretism for an exterminated people. We also discover Biblical characters with Canaanite names like Jerubabbel. So was the real narrative one of extermination or assimilation?
What we can say about the OT is that it records the faith story of the Hebrew people and their ongoing relationship with God over a period of 4000 years. No other ancient peoples have survived in this way. There are no modern Philistines or Midianites, the contemporaries of the Hebrews. But the people of the Covenant have survived. Because of the faithfulness and love of their God. It's really quite a remarkable story if you think about it.
It's not. He's putting a case for the prosecution, and prosecutors do not give perfectly reasonable summaries.
It seems one to me.
Not to me. It focuses heavily on certain parts of the OT while totally ignoring others—including vast chunks of the prophets and the psalms.
But then we're back to the doting uncle Herman aren't we?
No, I don’t think so at all—at least in part because, for one example, I don’t believe God ordered the genocide of other nations. For my money, such stories tell us more about ourselves and our desire to align God with “our side” than they tell us about God. That may be how some writers of Scripture interpreted events (again, which may be revealing of human nature), but it is not consistent with the fundamental nature of God revealed throughout Scripture, most specifically in Jesus.
But even without Jesus, I think God is primarily revealed in the OT as a god of love, justice, mercy, forgiveness and healing. That seems to be how Jews see God, and they’re looking only to what Christians call the OT. If stories such as the killing of entire nations don’t seem to factor into their understanding of who God is, I'm not sure why they should factor into Christians’ understandings.
Over in DH I borrowed @lilbuddha's "lens to correct for error" image. A lot depends what you emphasise and why. There is enough bloodshed in the OT to be offer a focus for the likes of Dawkins, but that bloodshed arguably isn't where the OT puts the focus, still less the NT.
It's not. He's putting a case for the prosecution, and prosecutors do not give perfectly reasonable summaries.
It seems one to me.
Not to me. It focuses heavily on certain parts of the OT while totally ignoring others—including vast chunks of the prophets and the psalms.
But then we're back to the doting uncle Herman aren't we?
No, I don’t think so at all—at least in part because, for one example, I don’t believe God ordered the genocide of other nations. For my money, such stories tell us more about ourselves and our desire to align God with “our side” than they tell us about God. That may be how some writers of Scripture interpreted events (again, which may be revealing of human nature), but it is not consistent with the fundamental nature of God revealed throughout Scripture, most specifically in Jesus.
But even without Jesus, I think God is primarily revealed in the OT as a god of love, justice, mercy, forgiveness and healing. That seems to be how Jews see God, and they’re looking only to what Christians call the OT. If stories such as the killing of entire nations don’t seem to factor into their understanding of who God is, I'm not sure why they should factor into Christians’ understandings.
Yes, that's all very well, but the fact is the OT says quite explicitly God ordered genocide. More than once. Now you can say, and I would tend to agree, that they must have got it wrong but we have to admit that we're going against what the Bible actually says. We both have the same problem with it.
It's not. He's putting a case for the prosecution, and prosecutors do not give perfectly reasonable summaries.
It seems one to me.
Not to me. It focuses heavily on certain parts of the OT while totally ignoring others—including vast chunks of the prophets and the psalms.
But then we're back to the doting uncle Herman aren't we?
No, I don’t think so at all—at least in part because, for one example, I don’t believe God ordered the genocide of other nations. For my money, such stories tell us more about ourselves and our desire to align God with “our side” than they tell us about God. That may be how some writers of Scripture interpreted events (again, which may be revealing of human nature), but it is not consistent with the fundamental nature of God revealed throughout Scripture, most specifically in Jesus.
But even without Jesus, I think God is primarily revealed in the OT as a god of love, justice, mercy, forgiveness and healing. That seems to be how Jews see God, and they’re looking only to what Christians call the OT. If stories such as the killing of entire nations don’t seem to factor into their understanding of who God is, I'm not sure why they should factor into Christians’ understandings.
Yes, that's all very well, but the fact is the OT says quite explicitly God ordered genocide. More than once. Now you can say, and I would tend to agree, that they must have got it wrong but we have to admit that we're going against what the Bible actually says.
Well, I never said it doesn’t say that. But I’m not an inerrantist, so I can live with that.
In some ways, it seems to me like a version of prooftexting: The Bible says this in this verse, so it must be so exactly as written, rather than placing and considering what is written in one place in the context of the whole. I would say that on the whole, and in Jesus particularly, Scripture tells us of a God whose nature is love, mercy and justice. Verses in Scripture that say that God ordered genocide must be viewed and interpreted in the context of what Scripture says as a whole.
It's not. He's putting a case for the prosecution, and prosecutors do not give perfectly reasonable summaries.
It seems one to me.
Not to me. It focuses heavily on certain parts of the OT while totally ignoring others—including vast chunks of the prophets and the psalms.
But then we're back to the doting uncle Herman aren't we?
No, I don’t think so at all—at least in part because, for one example, I don’t believe God ordered the genocide of other nations. For my money, such stories tell us more about ourselves and our desire to align God with “our side” than they tell us about God. That may be how some writers of Scripture interpreted events (again, which may be revealing of human nature), but it is not consistent with the fundamental nature of God revealed throughout Scripture, most specifically in Jesus.
But even without Jesus, I think God is primarily revealed in the OT as a god of love, justice, mercy, forgiveness and healing. That seems to be how Jews see God, and they’re looking only to what Christians call the OT. If stories such as the killing of entire nations don’t seem to factor into their understanding of who God is, I'm not sure why they should factor into Christians’ understandings.
Yes, that's all very well, but the fact is the OT says quite explicitly God ordered genocide. More than once. Now you can say, and I would tend to agree, that they must have got it wrong but we have to admit that we're going against what the Bible actually says.
Well, I never said it doesn’t say that. But I’m not an inerrantist, so I can live with that.
In some ways, it seems to me like a version of prooftexting: The Bible says this in this verse, so it must be so exactly as written, rather than placing and considering what is written in one place in the context of the whole. I would say that on the whole, and in Jesus particularly, Scripture tells us of a God whose nature is love, mercy and justice. Verses in Scripture that say that God ordered genocide must be viewed and interpreted in the context of what Scripture says as a whole.
I can't really see that as interpreting. We're basically saying, in response to "God said..." "Oh no he didn't".
Yes, I think that this is why the adult Isaac was not tested with a challenging journey of faith like his father Abraham or his son Jacob. Instead it is his wife Rebecca who undergoes the journey of faith instead.
It would have deeply hurt Isaac additionally to have a family member harmed.
It's not. He's putting a case for the prosecution, and prosecutors do not give perfectly reasonable summaries.
It seems one to me.
Not to me. It focuses heavily on certain parts of the OT while totally ignoring others—including vast chunks of the prophets and the psalms.
But then we're back to the doting uncle Herman aren't we?
No, I don’t think so at all—at least in part because, for one example, I don’t believe God ordered the genocide of other nations. For my money, such stories tell us more about ourselves and our desire to align God with “our side” than they tell us about God. That may be how some writers of Scripture interpreted events (again, which may be revealing of human nature), but it is not consistent with the fundamental nature of God revealed throughout Scripture, most specifically in Jesus.
But even without Jesus, I think God is primarily revealed in the OT as a god of love, justice, mercy, forgiveness and healing. That seems to be how Jews see God, and they’re looking only to what Christians call the OT. If stories such as the killing of entire nations don’t seem to factor into their understanding of who God is, I'm not sure why they should factor into Christians’ understandings.
Yes, that's all very well, but the fact is the OT says quite explicitly God ordered genocide. More than once. Now you can say, and I would tend to agree, that they must have got it wrong but we have to admit that we're going against what the Bible actually says.
Well, I never said it doesn’t say that. But I’m not an inerrantist, so I can live with that.
In some ways, it seems to me like a version of prooftexting: The Bible says this in this verse, so it must be so exactly as written, rather than placing and considering what is written in one place in the context of the whole. I would say that on the whole, and in Jesus particularly, Scripture tells us of a God whose nature is love, mercy and justice. Verses in Scripture that say that God ordered genocide must be viewed and interpreted in the context of what Scripture says as a whole.
I can't really see that as interpreting. We're basically saying, in response to "God said..." "Oh no he didn't".
Again, I’m not an inerrantist, so I don’t necessarily have a problem with that.
But I think there can be more to it than that. We may be saying in response to “God said…,” “at least, that’s how the writer understood it. What might the writer’s understanding tell us about God or about ourselves? Might it say something about our desire to put God on our side?”
In other words, Scripture in cases like this might still reveal something about our relationship to and understanding of God. It just may not be what the words say at face value.
Dawkins is spot on. About the text. Not about God. And this all shows the need for precision, to say what we're talking about. God or the text. KarlLB, you consistently go on as if the texts are basically true about God, which, who I used to revel in. Adore. Love And fear. Why? You're a liberal, I wasn't.
E., Nick, where are you at? You both believe in God in Christ. Is there any Bronze Age God the Killer in Christ? Or are you, like me, seeing the divine behind the text, despite it? If so, lucky us. And I lose the plot. Big time last year. Realising that Jesus may well have meant everything He said. Good AND bad.
Because, Martin, of the lurking fear that the texts are right. It's like a suspicion, a rumour that Uncle Harry's real name is Herman and the whispered hints of Dachau are true. Makes any thought of closeness unwelcome. Just in case.
I know what the texts say. I don't know for sure about God. And people tell me - some of them - that he can only be known through the texts. And by doing a Job with my reaction to all that, which brings us back to Stockholm, albeit they'll call it humility.
It's not. He's putting a case for the prosecution, and prosecutors do not give perfectly reasonable summaries.
It seems one to me.
Not to me. It focuses heavily on certain parts of the OT while totally ignoring others—including vast chunks of the prophets and the psalms.
But then we're back to the doting uncle Herman aren't we?
No, I don’t think so at all—at least in part because, for one example, I don’t believe God ordered the genocide of other nations. For my money, such stories tell us more about ourselves and our desire to align God with “our side” than they tell us about God. That may be how some writers of Scripture interpreted events (again, which may be revealing of human nature), but it is not consistent with the fundamental nature of God revealed throughout Scripture, most specifically in Jesus.
But even without Jesus, I think God is primarily revealed in the OT as a god of love, justice, mercy, forgiveness and healing. That seems to be how Jews see God, and they’re looking only to what Christians call the OT. If stories such as the killing of entire nations don’t seem to factor into their understanding of who God is, I'm not sure why they should factor into Christians’ understandings.
Yes, that's all very well, but the fact is the OT says quite explicitly God ordered genocide. More than once. Now you can say, and I would tend to agree, that they must have got it wrong but we have to admit that we're going against what the Bible actually says.
Well, I never said it doesn’t say that. But I’m not an inerrantist, so I can live with that.
In some ways, it seems to me like a version of prooftexting: The Bible says this in this verse, so it must be so exactly as written, rather than placing and considering what is written in one place in the context of the whole. I would say that on the whole, and in Jesus particularly, Scripture tells us of a God whose nature is love, mercy and justice. Verses in Scripture that say that God ordered genocide must be viewed and interpreted in the context of what Scripture says as a whole.
I can't really see that as interpreting. We're basically saying, in response to "God said..." "Oh no he didn't".
E., Nick, where are you at? You both believe in God in Christ. Is there any Bronze Age God the Killer in Christ? Or are you, like me, seeing the divine behind the text, despite it?
The best response I can manage to that at the minute is here (the first half especially). I think it's a question of focus.
Because, Martin, of the lurking fear that the texts are right.
This word jumped out at me because I think @Nick Tamen is on the money with his analysis of your instinctive approach to the texts. I was having a RL conversation with someone this week struggling with the historic inerrantism of their parents and how to respond to it. The word "fear" also came up.
To me, this kind of fear is the product of an abusive system, and it isn't productive. Working through that kind of fear, especially when it comes with relational baggage, is not easy, but my experience is that one can overcome it and see the texts in a whole new light without deriding or rejecting them wholesale à la Dawkins. And that's what I said to my RL friend.
And by doing a Job with my reaction to all that, which brings us back to Stockholm, albeit they'll call it humility.
Ah, that makes more sense of what you said earlier. Just to clarify, are you saying that for you personally, viewing and experiencing Christianity as a spiritual Stockholm Syndrome is actually as good as it can get?
In interpreting the Bible you need to decide your position. You may decide to interpret it literally as the revealed word of God. It's a perfectly valid position to take. But then you have to wrestle with the problem of passages like Joshua 20: 11.
Or you may decide that it contains the word of God and it also contains cultural contextualisations. In which case you have to do the work of analysing the genre, the date and the context of composition. And consider why the text was written and by whom and how this may have influenced its form and its content - and its presentation of God.
Those who put together the canon of the Bible had to consider these questions too. The books we have in the Bible today are regarded as being inspired texts. Some of them such as Ecclesiastes and Job are theological problems told as stories. The OT contains history, prophecy, wisdom writings, proverbs, poetry and songs. They are all the voices of faith and useful resources for spirituality. But they all tell the narrative of God's love for His people - which is continued in the NT.
E., Nick, where are you at? You both believe in God in Christ. Is there any Bronze Age God the Killer in Christ? Or are you, like me, seeing the divine behind the text, despite it?
The best response I can manage to that at the minute is here (the first half especially). I think it's a question of focus.
Because, Martin, of the lurking fear that the texts are right.
This word jumped out at me because I think @Nick Tamen is on the money with his analysis of your instinctive approach to the texts. I was having a RL conversation with someone this week struggling with the historic inerrantism of their parents and how to respond to it. The word "fear" also came up.
To me, this kind of fear is the product of an abusive system, and it isn't productive. Working through that kind of fear, especially when it comes with relational baggage, is not easy, but my experience is that one can overcome it and see the texts in a whole new light without deriding or rejecting them wholesale à la Dawkins. And that's what I said to my RL friend.
And by doing a Job with my reaction to all that, which brings us back to Stockholm, albeit they'll call it humility.
Ah, that makes more sense of what you said earlier. Just to clarify, are you saying that for you personally, viewing and experiencing Christianity as a spiritual Stockholm Syndrome is actually as good as it can get?
Only if the texts have to taken as written - if God ordered genocides, if he drowned most of humanity, if he decreed the Mosaic Law, if most of humanity is hell-bound, then yes, it would be.
I think we disagree about what "as written" means.
The hapless Jonah is described as being swallowed by a great fish, so that is what the text "as written" says. But I don't think one "has" to "take" the "text as written" in the sense of having to subscribe to that being what actually, literally happened to see the text as being divinely inspired and having something to say to us. Indeed I think it would be a distortion of the original intent to be required to take it that way.
(Note that this does not rule out the possibility that it did actually, literally happen, either - but it shifts the focus of what's important)
In the end it is the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth about God to us. Consider asking the question: God reveal yourself to me. And then read the Bible and see what jumps out at you. It's remarkable what happens then. I once spent an afternoon on a retreat doing just that and discovered something very important for my faith. It only takes three hours to read through the four gospels. God is not a violent God and He won't hurt you. God is a very gentle God and He will respect you.
Because, Martin, of the lurking fear that the texts are right. It's like a suspicion, a rumour that Uncle Harry's real name is Herman and the whispered hints of Dachau are true. Makes any thought of closeness unwelcome. Just in case.
I know what the texts say. I don't know for sure about God. And people tell me - some of them - that he can only be known through the texts. And by doing a Job with my reaction to all that, which brings us back to Stockholm, albeit they'll call it humility.
Well stop it! I screeched to a halt myself last Autumn. Still haven't fully processed it. The God we hear in Christ - not see... although... - suddenly became atavistic and threw me back. We liberalize and rationalize the dark sayings of Jesus just as you describe, saying that he didn't mean it, he only means the nice stuff. On what basis? Human beings are pretty consistent in their duality, their paradoxes. What ameliorates it, orthogonally to that light-dark axis, is, unfortunately, the realisation that this is all myth. Which doesn't mean that it isn't true, valid or accurate by the Spirit, it's how it looks as a literary form.
How do we see God in Christ? In His faith and in His ignorance. His whole mission was humanly inevitable in ways that cannot work now. He saw Himself and - suicide (and yes I recoil at using that word) - mission in the texts with nodding from the Spirit even though... it isn't there.
Or Uncle Harry is Hermann. God is at best pragmatic and pathologically righteous about redemptive violence.
In the end it is the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal the truth about God to us. Consider asking the question: God reveal yourself to me. And then read the Bible and see what jumps out at you. It's remarkable what happens then. I once spent an afternoon on a retreat doing just that and discovered something very important for my faith. It only takes three hours to read through the four gospels. God is not a violent God and He won't hurt you. God is a very gentle God and He will respect you.
Well said. Movingly so. Despite what I'll say later!
Because, Martin, of the lurking fear that the texts are right. It's like a suspicion, a rumour that Uncle Harry's real name is Herman and the whispered hints of Dachau are true. Makes any thought of closeness unwelcome. Just in case.
I know what the texts say. I don't know for sure about God. And people tell me - some of them - that he can only be known through the texts. And by doing a Job with my reaction to all that, which brings us back to Stockholm, albeit they'll call it humility.
Well stop it!
Can't. We don't know. The Dachau camp God cannot be proven false. He exists alongside every other concept of God from Brahma to non-existence and every stop in between in an uncollapsable probability waveform in which no probabilities are known. Historically the homicidal maniac God addressed via Stockholm Syndrome or by being a psychopath oneself seems to have held sway but that doesn't tell us the reality. Nothing does. We can hope what we don't know but to be consistent we must fear what we hope isn't. Because it might be.
We do Karl. Rationally. Predicated, on top of faith. If God is, He is nothing like the evolving one we made up over a thousand years of texts. He obviously doesn't intervene. Ever. Except by the Spirit subsequent to a brief incarnation. Keep staring in to the pit of eternity. It's OK. It transforms everything. Eternity means that God is not an actively ruthless bastard even in a good cause, even to save everyone. He obviously Zens mate. Even Jesus got Him wrong. He's THAT subtly, passively... ruthless in a good cause.
If God is the God of the Bible, He's got a lot of explaining to do.
Just because we make Him up don't mean He ain't there.
I think we disagree about what "as written" means.
The hapless Jonah is described as being swallowed by a great fish, so that is what the text "as written" says. But I don't think one "has" to "take" the "text as written" in the sense of having to subscribe to that being what actually, literally happened to see the text as being divinely inspired and having something to say to us. Indeed I think it would be a distortion of the original intent to be required to take it that way.
(Note that this does not rule out the possibility that it did actually, literally happen, either - but it shifts the focus of what's important)
Perfect. I'd love it to be true. But it's irrelevant. And we can never know. The story is true.
It's not. He's putting a case for the prosecution, and prosecutors do not give perfectly reasonable summaries.
It seems one to me.
Not to me. It focuses heavily on certain parts of the OT while totally ignoring others—including vast chunks of the prophets and the psalms.
But then we're back to the doting uncle Herman aren't we?
No, I don’t think so at all—at least in part because, for one example, I don’t believe God ordered the genocide of other nations. For my money, such stories tell us more about ourselves and our desire to align God with “our side” than they tell us about God. That may be how some writers of Scripture interpreted events (again, which may be revealing of human nature), but it is not consistent with the fundamental nature of God revealed throughout Scripture, most specifically in Jesus.
But even without Jesus, I think God is primarily revealed in the OT as a god of love, justice, mercy, forgiveness and healing. That seems to be how Jews see God, and they’re looking only to what Christians call the OT. If stories such as the killing of entire nations don’t seem to factor into their understanding of who God is, I'm not sure why they should factor into Christians’ understandings.
No. The God of the OT is pathologically righteous. And the God we see only in Jesus is a hard bastard too, if His hard sayings have as much weight as His soft. And the God of the OT is resurrected on steroids in the NT.
The rational and empirical God is nothing like that.
Over in DH I borrowed @lilbuddha's "lens to correct for error" image. A lot depends what you emphasise and why. There is enough bloodshed in the OT to be offer a focus for the likes of Dawkins, but that bloodshed arguably isn't where the OT puts the focus, still less the NT.
[x-post]
Until you got to the last book with a few hints on the way.
Perfect. I'd love it to be true. But it's irrelevant. And we can never know. The story is true.
Yes to all. Certainly as regards Jonah, I have seen things as you have them in all but the last sentence for a long time now, and I suspect some of those "literalists you take too literally" probably do too. And you are one of the people that have helped me see that the importance of the truth of the last sentence, and that this assertion is not a diminution of essential truth.
[ETA let's leave Revelation for another time, eh? Only one existential crisis at a time please]
to be consistent we must fear what we hope isn't. Because it might be.
There's that word again.
No position, seemingly consistent or otherwise, that compels us to fear can be a good one. Apart from any effects on our selves, some of the worst evils in the world have been done on that basis.
to be consistent we must fear what we hope isn't. Because it might be.
There's that word again.
No position, seemingly consistent or otherwise, that compels us to fear can be a good one. Apart from any effects on our selves, some of the worst evils in the world have been done on that basis.
How can it be avoided? It's inherent in the possibility that God is exactly as described by an inerrantist reading of the OT.
Marcion in C2nd completely rejected the OT and its portrayal of God. He believed that the God of the OT was an evil creator God that Jesus came to destroy. Naturally, he caused quite a stir with his views.
Marcion also edited the NT down to only Luke’s gospel and Paul's letters. President Benjamin Franklin also took a pair of scissors to the Bible and produced the Jefferson Bible. This omitted the parts of the Bible that were 'contrary to reason' including the resurrection and the miracles. He was only interested in the moral teachings of Jesus and nothing else (like the Sea of Faith).
This is how some people go about squaring the circle. You can edit the Bible down to what you can agree with or create your own heresy. Or you can wrestle with complexity - which is more of a challenge.
@KarlLB said - It doesn't feel that way to me. It just feels like, well, pretty explicitly what's happening. The OT is full of people committing the sort of acts and instituting the sort of laws we associate with Pol Pot or IS at God's behest and with his approval and I can't see any way through it.
It seems to me that IS worship the same god.
I can only see the god of the OT as a human construct, serving the purpose of the priests/kings etc. The prophets came along to soften the message in many instances and point to a more just/forgiving god.
How can it be avoided? It's inherent in the possibility that God is exactly as described by an inerrantist reading of the OT.
I don't know Descartes' reasoning but according to the link in this post above he discounted that possibility.
It seems to me that if God is God then he could easily conceal any evil intentions from any creatures. If God is evil I have no chance of finding out and no means of resisting, so I don't see the point worrying about it, still less fearing it.
Moreover, I find the idea of God being good to be intellectually acceptable and compatible with how I read the Bible, difficulties notwithstanding. Not only that, working on the premise that he is good doesn't seem to work out too badly as a philosophy of life.
And like @Nick Tamen, I am not an inerrantist, and I think there are good reasons not to be one. The fear this position generates being one of them.
@KarlLB said - It doesn't feel that way to me. It just feels like, well, pretty explicitly what's happening. The OT is full of people committing the sort of acts and instituting the sort of laws we associate with Pol Pot or IS at God's behest and with his approval and I can't see any way through it.
It seems to me that IS worship the same god.
I can only see the god of the OT as a human construct, serving the purpose of the priests/kings etc. The prophets came along to soften the message in many instances and point to a more just/forgiving god.
Well, apart from Elijah and his religiously based mass murder of the priests of Baal for example...
You don't have to believe that inerrancy is true to be afraid of the possibility and its consequences.
Do other people have some kind of ability to not worry about things if they think they're unlikely? Because I don't.
I"m trying to learn. I never felt equal to preaching on the part of the sermon on the mount where Jesus says "don't worry" until... the Sunday before last.
I'm not going to reproduce my thoughts in full here, but I think there's a difference between a passing worry and allowing oneself to continue to worry about things beyond one's control, and that it is possible to work on one's cognitive processes to stop doing so, or at least refrain sufficiently from doing so to prevent such worries hindering one from functioning on a daily basis.
I realise this may not be of immediate help to you, but I venture to suggest that in your scheme of things, at the very least the possibility I've outlined above ought not to be any more negligible than the possibility that "inerrancy is true", and therefore invite you to consider it.
Comments
'The God of the OT is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser... a capriciously malevolent bully.'
You are being quite kind by comparison.
It is reported that some Jews in the concentration camps went to their deaths with the words of Job on their lips: 'Though He slay me, yet shall I trust Him' (Job 13: 15).
What else is there in the Bible that speaks to such a situation?
If this is really what you have found God to be, well that sucks.
You say you hope your picture is inaccurate. What grounds do you have for that hope, and what would a more accurate picture look like?
I think that says a lot more about Richard Dawkins than it does about God.
Grounds for hope? That everyone, some of whom claim to know and have experience of God, tell me he's not like that. That Jesus doesn't seem to reveal a God like that. But then why wasn't he more explicit that these old ideas were wrong?
No, that's dodging the question. Dawkins' description there is a perfectly reasonable summary.
It seems one to me.
Either God is fundamentally good in the way we understand it, or he isn't, or he doesn't exist.
If he isn't good, or if his goodness extends only to the moral equivalent of brutal dictators giving their grandchildren horse rides, then resistance, however futile, seems to me to be the only honourable course of action (as I said about Rokyo's Basilisk). We also don't need to pay any attention to any claimed revelation about him such as the Bible.
That does however leave me wondering where this notion of "honourable" might have come from, or indeed the notion of "good".
If he is good (and this would amongst other things provide an explanation for this longing after "good" that we have) then the challenge we face is reconciling that with our understanding of what claims to be revelation about him, notably the bloodthirstier bits of the OT. History suggests that others before us have struggled with this and managed it.
If he doesn't exist then we face other existential challenges, but I personally can't escape the conviction that he does, so I go for the struggle option.
Or do we see Him through the lens of the OT scribes who composed these texts and their views of God? As Martin54 commented, hermeneutics plays an important role in the understanding of the Bible. A point that Dawkins completely disregards.
Take the example of the command to exterminate the Canaanites in Joshua 11: 20 - a really problematic text. Did that really happen? Or did a nationalistic scribe think that this is what really ought to have happened for the purity of the nation? Genocide was a rare occurrence in the ancient world. And we see that there is a strange ongoing issue with intermarriage and religious syncretism for an exterminated people. We also discover Biblical characters with Canaanite names like Jerubabbel. So was the real narrative one of extermination or assimilation?
What we can say about the OT is that it records the faith story of the Hebrew people and their ongoing relationship with God over a period of 4000 years. No other ancient peoples have survived in this way. There are no modern Philistines or Midianites, the contemporaries of the Hebrews. But the people of the Covenant have survived. Because of the faithfulness and love of their God. It's really quite a remarkable story if you think about it.
But then we're back to the doting uncle Herman aren't we?
But even without Jesus, I think God is primarily revealed in the OT as a god of love, justice, mercy, forgiveness and healing. That seems to be how Jews see God, and they’re looking only to what Christians call the OT. If stories such as the killing of entire nations don’t seem to factor into their understanding of who God is, I'm not sure why they should factor into Christians’ understandings.
[x-post]
Yes, that's all very well, but the fact is the OT says quite explicitly God ordered genocide. More than once. Now you can say, and I would tend to agree, that they must have got it wrong but we have to admit that we're going against what the Bible actually says. We both have the same problem with it.
In some ways, it seems to me like a version of prooftexting: The Bible says this in this verse, so it must be so exactly as written, rather than placing and considering what is written in one place in the context of the whole. I would say that on the whole, and in Jesus particularly, Scripture tells us of a God whose nature is love, mercy and justice. Verses in Scripture that say that God ordered genocide must be viewed and interpreted in the context of what Scripture says as a whole.
I can't really see that as interpreting. We're basically saying, in response to "God said..." "Oh no he didn't".
It would have deeply hurt Isaac additionally to have a family member harmed.
But I think there can be more to it than that. We may be saying in response to “God said…,” “at least, that’s how the writer understood it. What might the writer’s understanding tell us about God or about ourselves? Might it say something about our desire to put God on our side?”
In other words, Scripture in cases like this might still reveal something about our relationship to and understanding of God. It just may not be what the words say at face value.
E., Nick, where are you at? You both believe in God in Christ. Is there any Bronze Age God the Killer in Christ? Or are you, like me, seeing the divine behind the text, despite it? If so, lucky us. And I lose the plot. Big time last year. Realising that Jesus may well have meant everything He said. Good AND bad.
I know what the texts say. I don't know for sure about God. And people tell me - some of them - that he can only be known through the texts. And by doing a Job with my reaction to all that, which brings us back to Stockholm, albeit they'll call it humility.
Well of course he didn't!
This word jumped out at me because I think @Nick Tamen is on the money with his analysis of your instinctive approach to the texts. I was having a RL conversation with someone this week struggling with the historic inerrantism of their parents and how to respond to it. The word "fear" also came up.
To me, this kind of fear is the product of an abusive system, and it isn't productive. Working through that kind of fear, especially when it comes with relational baggage, is not easy, but my experience is that one can overcome it and see the texts in a whole new light without deriding or rejecting them wholesale à la Dawkins. And that's what I said to my RL friend.
Ah, that makes more sense of what you said earlier. Just to clarify, are you saying that for you personally, viewing and experiencing Christianity as a spiritual Stockholm Syndrome is actually as good as it can get?
Or you may decide that it contains the word of God and it also contains cultural contextualisations. In which case you have to do the work of analysing the genre, the date and the context of composition. And consider why the text was written and by whom and how this may have influenced its form and its content - and its presentation of God.
Those who put together the canon of the Bible had to consider these questions too. The books we have in the Bible today are regarded as being inspired texts. Some of them such as Ecclesiastes and Job are theological problems told as stories. The OT contains history, prophecy, wisdom writings, proverbs, poetry and songs. They are all the voices of faith and useful resources for spirituality. But they all tell the narrative of God's love for His people - which is continued in the NT.
Only if the texts have to taken as written - if God ordered genocides, if he drowned most of humanity, if he decreed the Mosaic Law, if most of humanity is hell-bound, then yes, it would be.
The hapless Jonah is described as being swallowed by a great fish, so that is what the text "as written" says. But I don't think one "has" to "take" the "text as written" in the sense of having to subscribe to that being what actually, literally happened to see the text as being divinely inspired and having something to say to us. Indeed I think it would be a distortion of the original intent to be required to take it that way.
(Note that this does not rule out the possibility that it did actually, literally happen, either - but it shifts the focus of what's important)
Well stop it! I screeched to a halt myself last Autumn. Still haven't fully processed it. The God we hear in Christ - not see... although... - suddenly became atavistic and threw me back. We liberalize and rationalize the dark sayings of Jesus just as you describe, saying that he didn't mean it, he only means the nice stuff. On what basis? Human beings are pretty consistent in their duality, their paradoxes. What ameliorates it, orthogonally to that light-dark axis, is, unfortunately, the realisation that this is all myth. Which doesn't mean that it isn't true, valid or accurate by the Spirit, it's how it looks as a literary form.
How do we see God in Christ? In His faith and in His ignorance. His whole mission was humanly inevitable in ways that cannot work now. He saw Himself and - suicide (and yes I recoil at using that word) - mission in the texts with nodding from the Spirit even though... it isn't there.
Or Uncle Harry is Hermann. God is at best pragmatic and pathologically righteous about redemptive violence.
Well put.
No, no, no. It's all about focus, I tell you.
[rushing out to preach on Leviticus now
Well said. Movingly so. Despite what I'll say later!
Can't. We don't know. The Dachau camp God cannot be proven false. He exists alongside every other concept of God from Brahma to non-existence and every stop in between in an uncollapsable probability waveform in which no probabilities are known. Historically the homicidal maniac God addressed via Stockholm Syndrome or by being a psychopath oneself seems to have held sway but that doesn't tell us the reality. Nothing does. We can hope what we don't know but to be consistent we must fear what we hope isn't. Because it might be.
If God is the God of the Bible, He's got a lot of explaining to do.
Just because we make Him up don't mean He ain't there.
Perfect. I'd love it to be true. But it's irrelevant. And we can never know. The story is true.
No. The God of the OT is pathologically righteous. And the God we see only in Jesus is a hard bastard too, if His hard sayings have as much weight as His soft. And the God of the OT is resurrected on steroids in the NT.
The rational and empirical God is nothing like that.
Until you got to the last book with a few hints on the way.
Yes to all. Certainly as regards Jonah, I have seen things as you have them in all but the last sentence for a long time now, and I suspect some of those "literalists you take too literally" probably do too. And you are one of the people that have helped me see that the importance of the truth of the last sentence, and that this assertion is not a diminution of essential truth.
[ETA let's leave Revelation for another time, eh? Only one existential crisis at a time please]
Please God no.
Let's hope for iron sharpening iron, eh?
There's that word again.
No position, seemingly consistent or otherwise, that compels us to fear can be a good one. Apart from any effects on our selves, some of the worst evils in the world have been done on that basis.
Well you have persevered with me and I'm most grateful.
How can it be avoided? It's inherent in the possibility that God is exactly as described by an inerrantist reading of the OT.
Marcion also edited the NT down to only Luke’s gospel and Paul's letters. President Benjamin Franklin also took a pair of scissors to the Bible and produced the Jefferson Bible. This omitted the parts of the Bible that were 'contrary to reason' including the resurrection and the miracles. He was only interested in the moral teachings of Jesus and nothing else (like the Sea of Faith).
This is how some people go about squaring the circle. You can edit the Bible down to what you can agree with or create your own heresy. Or you can wrestle with complexity - which is more of a challenge.
It seems to me that IS worship the same god.
I can only see the god of the OT as a human construct, serving the purpose of the priests/kings etc. The prophets came along to soften the message in many instances and point to a more just/forgiving god.
I don't know Descartes' reasoning but according to the link in this post above he discounted that possibility.
It seems to me that if God is God then he could easily conceal any evil intentions from any creatures. If God is evil I have no chance of finding out and no means of resisting, so I don't see the point worrying about it, still less fearing it.
Moreover, I find the idea of God being good to be intellectually acceptable and compatible with how I read the Bible, difficulties notwithstanding. Not only that, working on the premise that he is good doesn't seem to work out too badly as a philosophy of life.
And like @Nick Tamen, I am not an inerrantist, and I think there are good reasons not to be one. The fear this position generates being one of them.
Do other people have some kind of ability to not worry about things if they think they're unlikely? Because I don't.
Well, apart from Elijah and his religiously based mass murder of the priests of Baal for example...
I"m trying to learn. I never felt equal to preaching on the part of the sermon on the mount where Jesus says "don't worry" until... the Sunday before last.
I'm not going to reproduce my thoughts in full here, but I think there's a difference between a passing worry and allowing oneself to continue to worry about things beyond one's control, and that it is possible to work on one's cognitive processes to stop doing so, or at least refrain sufficiently from doing so to prevent such worries hindering one from functioning on a daily basis.
I realise this may not be of immediate help to you, but I venture to suggest that in your scheme of things, at the very least the possibility I've outlined above ought not to be any more negligible than the possibility that "inerrancy is true", and therefore invite you to consider it.