This is my reply to J. Warner Wallace's article:
I have many unbelieving friends who laugh when I claim the God of the Bible is both all-powerful and all-loving. As they read through the Old Testament, they point to a variety of passages and episodes where God seems to be anything but loving. They cite passages, for example, where God seems to command the pillaging and killing of Israel’s enemies with great brutality.
they should have pointed out the passages where God specifies that he will take "joy" in causing men to rape women, and causing parents to eat their own children, such as:
15 "But it shall come about, if you do not obey the
LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with
which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake
you:
16 "Cursed shall
you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country.
30 "You shall
betroth a wife, but another man will violate her; you shall build a house, but
you will not live in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but you will not use its
fruit.
53 "Then you
shall eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your
daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the distress
by which your enemy will oppress you.
63 "It shall
come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply
you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and
you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. (Deut. 28:15-63 NAU)
"Delight" in both cases is the same word, whether in Hebrew or Lxx, so you won't be escaping this one on linguistic grounds. And good luck finding a Christian commentary that provides any argument that might favor your position. Indeed, if God really meant his threats to inflict horrific torments, to be taken seriously, then he does indeed delight to inflict such things no less than he delights to prosper those who obey.
How can a God who would command the brutal destruction of Israel’s enemies be called moral or loving?
Easy, he isn't moral or loving in the modern American sense, he's only moral and loving in the ancient Semitic sense.
It’s easy for us to judge the words and actions of God as if He were just another human, subject to an objective standard transcending Him. But when we judge God’s actions in this way, we are ignoring His unique authority and power.
Not really, god admits in Genesis 6:6-7 he sometimes regrets his own decisions, so with precedent like that, you cannot dismiss the possibility that god is such an asshole in the OT because that was back when he had less moral maturity. I don't believe in biblical inerrancy, so I couldn't care less that you can find another bible verse that says God is infinitely wise. Inerrancy is so disputed even among spiritually alive people, that spiritually dead people are smart to dismiss it as speculative, and refuse to use it as tool of interpretation, and therefore, to insist we can know what Genesis 6 means without reconciling it with everything else in the bible.
While great work has been done by Paul Copan (Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God), describing the proper context of these passages in the Old Testament,
I've already refuted them; their exegesis of 1st Samuel 15 (where King Saul is dispossessed by God precisely because Saul did not completely destroy the kids as the ban had required) is foolish, and completely ignores the reason why those kids were ordered killed: their great-great-great-great grandfather Amalek had attacked the last of the Israelites as they exodused from Egypt, an event that took place more than 400 years before Saul's time. That is, the reason that current generation of Amalekite kids was ordered slaughtered is not because they were obstinately holding on to parts of the promised land God wished to give to Israel, but because they were corporately guilty of an ancestor's sin. In which case they wouldn't stop deserving death merely because they fled the land.
and by Clay Jones (Killing the Canaanites: A Response to the New Atheism’s “Divine Genocide” Claims), describing the view God held toward the sin of Israel’s neighbors,
"Genocide" merely muddies the waters. The problem is that this god gives every appearance of thinking his plan for Israel to go around killing off pagans is his "best" plan, when in fact he could have achieved his goal without causing children to suffer, by waving his magic wand. And his employment of an imperfect plan argues there is no god to discuss, this is just godless ancient Hebrews who are mischaracterizing their military strategies as if they were commands of God. NOthing more significant than the modern fundie who justifies his bombing of an abortion clinic by saying "God told me to do it".
I would like to add the following observations about the nature of God as we consider His actions in the Old Testament: God is the Greatest Artist If you and I were in an art class together and I suddenly grew frustrated with my sketch and decided to destroy it, you wouldn’t complain in the least.
That's because destroying inanimate objects doesn't create suffering of live creatures.
If I stepped over to your easel and destroyed your sketch, however, you would certainly complain that I was doing something unjust. You see, the artist has the authority and right to destroy his or her own work.
You also have the right to burn all of your house and possession to the ground as long as you don't do it for a criminal or illegal reason. But if you did that once per year, people would still conclude, with rational justification, that you were crazy, despite the fact that you had the "right" to do it.
The art belongs to the artist.
And according to Genesis 6:6, the artist often screws up. It could very well be that God today, if he exists, thinks similarly to Genesis 6:6, that is, that he regrets having been such an asshole in the OT. Once again, that bible verse and its likely meaning will not go away just because you presuppose bible inerrancy as a hermeneutic, and you think we need to reconcile Genesis 6:6 with the rest of the bible. Bible inerrancy, for reasons already staed, does not deserve to be exalted in our mind to the status of governing hermeneutic. Therefore, you cannot get rid of the imperfect God that verse tells about, by smothering it with something else in the bible. And even if bible inerrancy were true, you don't know whether Genesis 6:6 should be interpreted in the light of other bible verses, or if the other bible verses declaring God infinitely wise, need to be interpreted and delimited in the light of Genesis 6:6.
If there is a God, all of creation is His handiwork. He has the right to create and destroy what is His, even when this destruction may seem unfair to the artwork itself.
Exactly why there is no rational reasoning with Islamic extremists. YOU might not think it fair to be injured in a suicide bombing, but Allah does. So there's no rational reasoning with you, your religious belief becomes more important to you that common sense once you get to thinking God wanted something done a certain way.
God is the Greatest Physician If you or I suffered a snake bite on our elbow and were miles from the nearest hospital, a doctor might advise us (over the phone) to tourniquet the arm to save our life. In doing so, we would surely sacrifice an otherwise healthy hand to prevent the venom from spreading to our heart. But the doctor understands that this drastic action is required to prevent our death.
That's because the doctor is not an all-powerful genie who can cure us with a wave of his magic wand. Your God is. Now back to your "his-ways-are-mysterious" excuses.
You and I might not agree with the plan, or like the outcome, but the doctor knows best.
But the doctor of Genesis 6:6-7 admits to regretting his own decisions, so it's far from rock solid that because God is God, his choices are beyond criticism.
The treatment plan belongs to the doctor. If there is a God, all of us are His patients. He has the wisdom and authority to treat us as He sees fit, even when we might not be able to understand the overarching danger we face if drastic action isn’t taken.
Such as when a little girl dies from an STD she got due to an adult man raping her. The truth is that your god has far more in common with fairy tales than reality, the arguments for God's existence are less than convincing and suffer the fatal religious language objection, and for these reasons, we are rationally justified to limit how often we entertain your trifling excuses, as often as we are justified to limit the extent to which we entertain Mormon apologetics. But clearly, you aren't arguing to convince skeptics, you are building your argument on presuppositions you share with other Christians.
God is the Greatest Savior If you and I live as though our mortal lives are all we have, we’ll often become frustrated that our lives seem to be filled with pain and injustice.
Too many Christians have complained that their lives seems to be filled with pain and injustice, for you to pretend that becoming a Christian will fix that attitude.
But the Christian Worldview describes human existence as eternal.
Unfortunately, the OT contains statements that cannot be reconciled with that idea, according to other spiritually alive orthodox people such as 7th Day Adventists, which means you are a fool to expect spiritually dead atheists to figure out who is right in this in-house Christian debate.
We have a life beyond the grave.
Not if the best that can be argued toward that end is J.P. Moreland's ridiculous
The Soul: How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters.
We live for more than 80 or 90 years; we live forever, either with God in Heaven, or separated from God for all eternity. If there is a God, He is certainly more concerned about our eternal existence than He is about our mortal comfort.
If he was as concerned about our eternal well-being as you say, he'd likely be doing ALL that he could to save us, not just the minimal bit he says is sufficient to compel faith. When our kids are drowning, we don't do what we think is minimally sufficient to save them, we do all that we can until we either save them, or find that our best efforts weren't good enough. I don't ask you whether God thinks He's done what is "sufficient" to make the gospel believable. I ask you whether God is doing his "best" to make the gospel believable. Could God have provided more convincing evidence than what 2,000 years of church history gave us? He apparently doesn't mind violating freewill, how blown away do you suppose the Israelites were when they saw the wall of water on either side as they passed through the parted Red Sea? God is NOT doing his "best" to convince unbelievers, hence, he is less concerned with saving unbelievers than you say. And quit pretending that your view is "the" Christian view. 5-Point Calvinists quickly insist that God never wished to save those who end up in hell.
His plans are grander than our plans. His eternal desires are greater than our mortal desires.
They are also occassionally errant, Genesis 6:6-7, and the "anthropomorphism" interpretation cannot be sustained by anything in the grammar, immediate context, or larger context, hence such interpretation is likely false.
If there is a God, He is more concerned about saving us for eternity than He is about making our mortal lives safe.
Spiritually alive Christians known as Calvinists refuse to classify all unbelievers as loved by God, the way you do. Don't expect spiritually dead atheists to correctly figure out which of you got it right.
Christians understand that there have been times in the history of humanity when God’s chosen people (those who placed their trust in Him) were in great eternal spiritual jeopardy from those who surrounded them. God understood the risk as the Great Physician and often prescribed drastic action to cut off the threat.
He could have used his telepathic tractor beam powers and stirred the hearts of whoever he wished away from whatever sinful goal they were trying to achieve. God has that kind of power according to Ezekiel 38:4.
God had the authority as the Great Artist to destroy what was His in the first place,
And as noted before, if you employ your "right" to destroy your stuff too many times, most people will conclude, with rational justification, that you have mental problems. So god's having the "right" to destroy his people, doesn't insulate him from a justified charge of being the sadistic lunatic he is. Deut. 28:63
and He also had the wisdom and compassion as the Great Savior to do what was necessary to protect the eternal spiritual life of His creation.
Then he failed, since he could very easily have made the gospel far more believable in past centuries, to those who rejected it and apparently went to hell, and he could have achieved that goal without violating their freewill...unless you think a jury's freewill is violated when the prosecutor's evidence is absolutely unassailable?
If God failed to act in these situations, we would hardly call him all-powerful and all-loving.
There's plenty of biblical passages that cannot be reconciled with the others that teach God is all-powerful and all-loving. God can defeat wooden chariots but not iron chariots in Judges 1:19 (inerrantists are forced to read their speculations into the text in order to "reconcile" this with other bible passages nabout God's omnipotence, and yet you shall not add to his word, Proverbs 30:6. And I don't care what you say, burning your daughter alive because she had premarital sex (Lev. 21:9), or putting children to death by burning because they helped their father steal a wedge of gold (Joshua 7:15) has about as much chance of being reconciled with any rational understanding of love, as beating them to death does.
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