Edgework

In Part Three of A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren tackles the thorny issue of the fact that God is portrayed as vindictive, cruel, retaliatory and bloodthirsty in much of the Old Testament. He states that having let go of the six-line Greco-Roman narrative (Part One), and the Bible as Constitution (Part Two), he begins to see ways of addressing the problem of the image of a violent God which most Christians find disturbing and even embarrassing.

Of course, traditionally, biblical scholars have tried to harmonize this violent view of God with the gentle, forgiving and loving God who shines through in other Old Testament passages. So many have simply concluded that God is both a God of wrath and love, and that we must come to terms with these two sides to God, like the two sides of a coin. For some this “harmonization” has been satisfactory. But increasingly Christians are not content with thinking of God in a schizophrenic way; unpredictably violent in one moment and loving in the next.

McLaren’s approach to the question of whether God is, in fact, a violent God, is to suggest that throughout the Old Testament there is an evolution of thought about God. He posits the notion that, in any given moment, writers of the Old Testament story did their very best to communicate their understanding of God from within their worldview. The ethos within which the Jewish nation was formed simply saw all of life as a competition between various gods and their adherents. So it is from that perspective that the story is frequently told. It is a human perspective which does not fully and fairly represent the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

That being the case, modern readers of the Old Testament should be careful not to simply take all the ways God is depicted in the Old Testament at face value. As Chalke and Mann suggest in their book, The Lost Message of Jesus, some kind of a discernment process must be employed to get at the truth (49).

An alternative evolutionary approach to this problem is to think in terms of “progressive revelation.” Instead of blaming an inadequate understanding of God on the writers of Scripture who recorded partially-developed views of God, the responsibility moves into God’s court. Being so determined to stay involved with God’s people in their real life context, God participates in their lives in ways that do not match the “higher” ways of God which would be revealed to them later on.

It seems that McLaren sees some credibility in this approach as well when he notes that a grade two math textbook will clearly state that you cannot subtract a higher number from a lower one. However, when students are ready to learn more they are told that in fact you can subtract a larger number from a smaller one, creating a minus figure. In other words, more complex truths are revealed as students become prepared for them.

However, in her book, Razing Hell, Sharon Baker questions the whole concept of evolutionary development with respect to an understanding of who God really is – whether from a human or divine perspective. One of the problems she cites is the fact that scholars are not agreed and cannot be sure of the time periods in which the various biblical texts were written (27). And it is true that the image of a retributive, vengeful God declaring destruction on all enemies and evil doers is not only found in the Pentateuch. It permeates many of the Psalms and later prophetic writings as well. So instead of a steady progression toward a kinder, more gracious view of God over time, Baker sees the two visions of God existing side by side throughout the Old Testament.

From my perspective, questions related to an evolving image of God and/or two images of God existing side-by-side need further comparison and study. But, in any case, McLaren and Baker both emphatically insist that instead of trying to harmonize these two visions of God in the Old Testament, whether they are evolving or existing side-by-side, we should evaluate them from the vantage point of Jesus as revealed in the Gospels. McLaren declares that “God is like Jesus,” so any depiction of God in the Old Testament that does not compare favorably with the life and witness of Jesus must be seen as less than a full revelation of God. And Baker speaks of reading the Old Testament accounts “through the lens of Jesus” (59).

What comes through clearly in both McLaren and Baker is that we are not “stuck” with the violent images of God in the Old Testament. We are not forced to imagine a schizophrenic God. It is always right to declare that “God is Love,” but we cannot say that “God is Wrath.”

Anabaptists have been advocating for many centuries by now that we read the Old Testament in light of the New. So what we have in this section of McLaren’s book is a dialogue around basic Anabaptist Theology.  However, I have found that in many Anabaptist circles, reading the Old Testament in light of the New is suspect, nonetheless. There is a fear that, by doing so, we are somehow declaring the Old Testament to be invalid and thus without an authentic place in the biblical canon. This illustrates to me how much Anabaptists today have adopted the “flat book” approach to the Bible which allows you to cherry-pick any passage from either the Old or New Testament and apply it directly – personally, in church or in society.

I understand why such a discussion feels threatening to those who view the Bible as dictated by God. But for those of us who are seeking to move beyond the Greco-Roman six-line narrative and a constitutional view of the Scriptures, we can confidently declare that God is not violent. God is what we see in Jesus. Hallelujah!

For On-going Dialogue:

1. How have you dealt in the past with those sections of the Old Testament that depict God participating in acts of genocide and brutality that simply are not acceptable in today’s world?

2. Do you see an evolution of thought about God in the Old Testament as McLaren does, or two tracks depicting a violent and loving God side-by-side throughout as Baker does? Does it matter which one is more valid than the other?

3. How do you feel about those Old Testament texts that do not reflect the God revealed in Jesus? What value do they have, if any?

4. Why, in your opinion, has the idea of reading the Old Testament in light of the New, which Anabaptists have held to for centuries, taken so long to take root in wider Christian circles?