How do we read the Bible when God behaves badly?

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[00:00:02]After the great Puritan writer John Milton wrote his magnum opus Paradise Lost, a young Puritan named Thomas Elwood asked uh John Milton.

[00:00:14]He said, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou said of Paradise Found?"

[00:00:21]And that prompted Milton to give his uh second work in that series, I guess you could call it, Paradise Regained.

[00:00:31]Yesterday I posted a video explaining uh critiquing Frank Turek's explanation of the killing of the firstborn Egyptians to a young lady asking a question how God could command such a horrible thing.

[00:00:45]And I gave a critique of Turek's three arguments, but I didn't give my own {quote} "solution." So, several people asked, "Well, how would you address this topic?" Essentially, they're echoing Thomas Elwood, "What hast thou said of Paradise Found?"

[00:01:01]So, I want to address that question in this video. And to do that, I've pulled together Pardon me, I [clears throat] pulled together a few old slides from my seminary lectures when I would lecture on some of these topics regularly back in the day.

[00:01:17]And I want to begin here.

[00:01:19]Um First of all, the big question at the outset is how do you think about the Bible? What is the Bible?

[00:01:28]Many Christians especially many conservative Christians are raised to think of the Bible as essentially a big history book.

[00:01:37]Beginning in Genesis, ending in Revelation, telling the history of salvation, creation, fall, and salvation, and written in such a way that all the narrative that you find in the book should be read as sort of a straightforward historical narrative description.

[00:01:59]Whether that's the creation of the world in 6 days or a great pit in Revelation 20 and the devil being thrown into that pit for a thousand years, all of that should be interpreted quite in a straightforward {quote} {unquote} sense.

[00:02:15]And I say {quotes} because of course straightforward honestly is a rather naive there's certainly a danger there of a rather naive projection of what a 21st century English Western reader thinks is straightforward to them.

[00:02:32]But I think that is really a wrong-headed approach to the Bible. That approach to the Bible encourages people as I said to think everything from creation in 6 days to a literal interpretation of a thousand-year millennium is just a straightforward historical reading of the Bible.

[00:02:51]Uh and they think that um Yeah, or a future reading in the case of Revelation. And then they also think so that obliges us then to read everything literally and as historical whether it's you know the um uh Jonah and the whale let's say or a talking donkey everything has to be just read or a talking snake in the garden.

[00:03:16]It's all historical written as it happened.

[00:03:20]I think there's a much more appropriate way to think about the Bible and more nuanced and to illustrate that I always go back to when I was an English student 35 years ago in university and one of our core textbooks certainly in one of my classes was the Norton Anthology of American Literature.

[00:03:41]Today so far as I can see the Norton Anthology is published in three separate volumes but back in the day it was like 1,000 page book kind of like the Bible.

[00:03:50]The interesting thing about the Norton of American Literature, it told the story, I would say, of the American people through a collection of literature written by American people.

[00:04:03]So, it included things like historical narrative, essays, scientific writing, speeches, poetry, story.

[00:04:12]All of that was collected into one anthology to tell the story of the American people.

[00:04:18]And how wrong-headed it would be to think that the way that you interpret the Norton Anthology of American Literature is by reading it all as a straightforward historical narrative.

[00:04:29]That's not what it is. It's a diverse collection of genre.

[00:04:33]The Bible is very similar to that.

[00:04:36]The Bible, I like to say, is like the Norton Anthology. It's It's God's anthology of God's people, Israel and the church.

[00:04:44]And it likewise is a collection of a very diverse genre of literature, different types of literature, some of which can be read historical, although historical in uh the sense of the ancient writer is not necessarily historical in the manner that we think of it today.

[00:05:04]Uh for all my disagreements with Mike Licona, particularly on his Maga Mike stuff, nevertheless, he's made a lot of good points, for example, in various first-century methods of writing history present in the Gospels, which we are unfamiliar with today, like the use of compression, for example, or um the fact that in the Gospel of John, John can take the cleansing of the temple sequence out of chronological sequence and put it thematically at the beginning of his Gospel to make a particular point. When today, people would often think that that's not how you write history.

[00:05:42]All of this And so, what that means is that even in the historical portions of the Bible, you have to be careful about reading them with the expectations and assumptions of a 21st century reader.

[00:05:53]To say nothing of the fact that many parts of the Bible are not to be read as historical at all.

[00:06:01]And so, that's the first point. The next point brings me to the Apostles' Creed.

[00:06:06]Cuz then you want to start with the ground level. You want to say, "Okay, what is historical?" If you talk to a fundamentalist, they're going to say everything begins with um the creation in 6 days and then with the global flood. That those are the historical foundations on which everything else in the Bible rests.

[00:06:24]That is utterly erroneous. That is nonsense. And people who say such things show very little theological awareness of what Christianity actually is.

[00:06:35]Christianity is represented in the Apostles' Creed.

[00:06:38]Uh the Apostles' Creed is a triune Creed, which begins with God the Father talking about creation, and then talks about Jesus, the Son, his incarnation, his death, his resurrection, his assumption, and ultimately his anticipated second coming, and then the Holy Spirit, the coming of the Spirit, and the establishment of the church.

[00:06:59]That is the core of the Christian story.

[00:07:04]Those are the non-negotiables in terms of history when it comes to that story.

[00:07:10]When you wrestle with the anthology of God's people, Israel and the church, like the Norton anthology, beyond that, you're going to be wrestling in various ways with what degree to what degree you should accept some particular narrative as historical. And there can be many reasons why you would interpret something as non-historical. Obviously, literary reasons, but there are also theological reasons, there are moral reasons.

[00:07:37]All sorts of reasons that you might adopt a non-historical reading of particular passages.

[00:07:44]Or I should say not just non-historical, but non-literal.

[00:07:48]For example, C.S. Lewis in Reflections on the Psalms, he's at one point he talks about the imprecatory Psalms or the cursing Psalms where God is described by the psalmist in various ways.

[00:08:04]As the psalmist says God hates his enemies, he laughs at their coming destruction.

[00:08:09]God wants his enemies to die.

[00:08:12]The the psalmist likewise wants his enemies to be killed.

[00:08:17]Seems to assume that his view of who the bad people are is in pretty precise alignment with God's view of who the bad people are.

[00:08:25]The psalmist wants to see their names wiped out of the book of life. He wants to see their children orphaned. He wants to see their backs bent and he wants to bathe his feet in their blood and to take their babies and dash them against the rocks.

[00:08:38]That is what the psalmist says in various imprecatory Psalms. And there have been Christians with that sort of flat approach to the Bible that I referenced earlier who think because it is expressed by the psalmist, we somehow have to baptize these sentiments as somehow praiseworthy or laudatory at least in particular context.

[00:08:58]That is obviously theologically disastrous.

[00:09:01]The psalmist at multiple points should be censured.

[00:09:05]Should be the voice of the psalmist in those moments should be rejected.

[00:09:10]As C.S. Lewis says, we must not either try to explain the imprecatory Psalms away or to yield for one moment to the idea that because it comes from the Bible, all this vindictive hatred must somehow be good and pious.

[00:09:24]The human qualities of the raw materials show through.

[00:09:28]Naivete, error, contradiction, even in the cursing Psalms, wickedness are not removed.

[00:09:35]Did you hear what C.S. Lewis just said?

[00:09:37]Wickedness is not removed from the voice of the biblical author at particular moments. And you need to have your theological thinking cap on and your moral cap on often in order to discern when it is time for the reader to critique the author.

[00:09:55]Lewis continues, because you might be thinking at this moment, "Okay, does this mean that parts of the Bible are just tossed out?"

[00:10:02]No, it means you're misunderstanding the purpose of this book.

[00:10:07]It is not to meant meant to be a perfect moral record in terms of the voice of the human author any more than it is meant to be a bit perfect historical record in terms of the voice of the human author.

[00:10:17]You have to discern in each moment with respect to the core end of this text, uh which is to tell the story of God's people, and to conform us to Jesus, who is the historical center, the gravitas, the fulcrum of the entire story. To make us more like him, that's the purpose of the Bible.

[00:10:39]And you have to then be able to critique portions of the Bible or readings of particular biblical passages based upon that informed reading. And so Lewis says, "The total result is not the word of God in the sense that every passage in itself gives impeccable science or history." And I add here, "Or morality."

[00:10:59]It carries the word of God, and we receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical, or I would say a perfect history, but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.

[00:11:16]In other words, you learn who God has revealed to be in Jesus. And when you get that in your bones, you're going to be much more adept at reading the Bible critically, this collection of writings telling the story of God's people to conform us to Jesus, and being able to understand what we should affirm in there and what we should critique in there and when you critique something, there is a reason still why it is in there. So, this is the point. God includes it for a reason.

[00:11:43]I've talked before about the imprecatory Psalms at length on this point. I don't want to reproduce that material here.

[00:11:50]Um the point is, however, that when the psalmist curses the psalmist's enemies, you can find your own voice in the voice of the psalmist.

[00:11:58]Because you yourself have also been wronged and grieved and hurt just like the psalmist has been and there have been moments when you've hated your enemies just like the psalmist has and when you believe that God hates your enemies just like the psalmist does.

[00:12:10]So, you can find your voice in in the experience of the psalmist and that's why those passages are there.

[00:12:18]Everything is there for a purpose, but ultimately it is to be conformed to Jesus.

[00:12:24]Here's an example where putting on your theological thinking cap will lead you to critique a flat-footed historical, straightforward reading of the passage.

[00:12:35]In Exodus 32, God has a conversation with Moses and says he is done with Israel. They've been a stiff-necked people. He wants to get rid of them and instead turn Moses into a great people.

[00:12:48]But then Moses sought the favor of the Lord. Lord, why should your anger burn against your people? And eventually, in a back-and-forth exchange, Moses persuades God to set aside his anger and rage toward the Israelites and instead to retain his covenant with them that he originally made.

[00:13:07]Then the Lord relented and it did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

[00:13:13]Now, if you read this in a straightforward, flat-footed, fundamentalist way, presumably you're just going to say, "Well, Moses here had to remind God of his commitments, his oath, um his covenant and he changed God's mind in doing so.

[00:13:29]And insofar as God at that point had essentially lost his temper with Israel, it is Moses, not God, who is exemplifying patience and forgiveness and steadfastness.

[00:13:42]But that is a theologically absurd reading of this passage.

[00:13:47]It would be disastrous to read this in the way a fundamentalist would, as just a straightforward narrative of an actual back-and-forth exchange between God and Moses in which Moses persuaded God to change his mind and to relent from the course he had planned.

[00:14:01]Rather, with your theological thinking cap on, you engage the text and you realize this is anthropomorphic and anthropopathic language. It should not be this read as a literal description of any past historical event where God's mind was changed.

[00:14:18]So, calm down and remember what you promised. That's what God Moses has to remind God. That is a pretty absurd literal interpretation.

[00:14:28]So, finally, we come then to the killing of the firstborn.

[00:14:33]What should we think about this? How can it be that God commanded the killing of the firstborn, including many infants?

[00:14:41]Uh, when they had done nothing themselves to warrant God directly killing them.

[00:14:47]And putting on his theological thinking cap and his moral thinking cap in the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa, who was one of the founders of Trinitarian orthodoxy. You have to get this around your head. This is not some rando from the fourth century.

[00:15:04]Gregory of Nyssa was one of the guardians of Trinitarian orthodoxy coming up to the second council.

[00:15:11]Um, he [snorts] is one of the reasons, in terms of historical theological development, why we are Trinitarians today. Can't get more orthodox, and literally orthodox as well, from the Eastern Can't get more Orthodox than Gregory of Nyssa.

[00:15:26]And in his writing Life of Moses, this is what he said about the killing of the firstborn.

[00:15:32]How would a concept worthy of God be preserved in the description of what happened if one looked only to the history?

[00:15:39]The Egyptian acts unjustly and in his place is punished his newborn child who in his infancy cannot discern what is good and what is not.

[00:15:48]His life has no experience of evil for infancy is not of passion. He does not know to distinguish between his right hand and his left. The infant lifts his eyes only to his mother's nipple and tears are the sole perceptible signs of his sadness.

[00:16:02]And if he obtains anything which his nature desires, he signifies his pleasure by smiling.

[00:16:08]If such a one now pays the penalty of his father's wickedness, where is justice? Where is piety? Where is holiness?

[00:16:16]Where is Ezekiel who cries, "The man who has sinned is the man who must die and a son is not to suffer for the sins of his father."

[00:16:25]One thing I would add to this is Gregory of Nyssa is assuming here that every adult father is guilty for the oppression of the Israelites which itself is absurd.

[00:16:38]Many of these people were themselves marginal living um on on a subsistence living trying to survive not much different from the Israelites.

[00:16:50]They weren't exploiting the Israelites.

[00:16:52]Many of them may may have never met an Israelite slave or known the Israelite slaves. Yet, they themselves are nonetheless subjected to this judgment where their child will be killed.

[00:17:02]So, it just compounds the problem.

[00:17:06]And this is what Gregory of Nyssa then says, "Therefore, as you look for the true spiritual meaning, the teaching is this.

[00:17:13]When through virtue one comes to grips with any evil, he must completely destroy the first beginnings of evil.

[00:17:19]For when he slays the beginning, he destroys at the same time what follows after it.

[00:17:24]The Lord teaches us the same thing in the gospel, all but explicitly calling on us to kill the firstborn of the Egyptian evils when he commands us to abolish lust and anger and have no more fear of the stain of adultery or the guilt of murder.

[00:17:39]Now, the thing that Gregory is doing here is he's trying in essence to spiritualize the text. Say, look, we should view the killing of the firstborn as an allegory essentially of the moral life. And the firstborn are those first impulses of sin which begin to grow within us and we need to eradicate those like God eradicated the firstborn, but we should not interpret the killing of the firstborn literally because that would be inconsistent with the love and mercy of God.

[00:18:09]Rather, it is a spiritual it should be spiritualized and that's its application for us.

[00:18:14]C.S. Lewis does something similar in the imprecatory Psalms. In Psalm 137, he proposes his actual wording. This is C.S. Lewis, not me, so don't shoot the messenger. He says, "When little when sinful impulses grow in you, you got to bash the little bastard's brains in." I think that's his exact pretty much his exact wording pretty close to verbatim.

[00:18:38]So, he talks about sinful impulses as like an infant.

[00:18:42]Um Origen did something similar as well with the killing of the Canaanites.

[00:18:47]Honestly, I don't think those are particularly successful and I talk about that in my book Jesus Loves Canaanites.

[00:18:53]I don't think that those are particularly successful allegorizing approaches to the text.

[00:19:00]And I I talk more at length about that in the book, but that's not really my point here. My point is not whether an allegorization of the text is satisfactory.

[00:19:10]My point is that a Christian is not obliged to read these texts historically. And if they have good theological, biblical, or historical, or scientific reasons to interpret something as not historical, then they should surely do that. And you surely do have good theological reasons and uh moral reasons, certainly, to not interpret the killing of the firstborn as a historical event.

[00:19:35]You should not read any passage in the Bible that fundamentally, and this is going to go back to what I've alluded to but have not yet explicitly said in this video, is the actual core function of the Bible.

[00:19:51]Paul said, "The purpose of scripture is it is God-breathed so that we may become to teach, rebuke, correct, and train us in righteousness, so we may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." That is the heart of what Paul says this Bible, this collection of God's writings of his people, Israel and the church, is. It is to be read a collection of writings telling their experience of God.

[00:20:16]It is to be read in order to conform us to God and Jesus, to equip us for every good work, to fully love God, and to fully love our neighbor.

[00:20:24]And with that in mind, if you have a particular reading of a passage that you are contemplating which is inconsistent with the love of neighbor, that is a good reason for you to go back to the drawing board and look for another interpretation.

[00:20:38]And if your interpretation requires you to dehumanize and objectify your neighbors by killing all of their firstborn indiscriminately, that is a good reason to revisit that interpretation.

[00:20:50]So, I'm not going to tell you how to interpret the passage necessarily. I'm going to tell you I'm going to tell you how not to interpret it, and I'm I've given you an overarching theological framework for thinking about the Bible as a collection of writings of God's people narrating their story to make us more like Jesus when it is read correctly.