There is a dominant and highly-attractive narrative at work among Christian thinkers, and it looks like this:

1. God created a very good world and called humans to look after its wellbeing.
2. Humans acted so sinfully that creation itself was broken, too. In response, God set apart the descendants of Abraham to do something about that brokenness.
3. Though Abraham’s descendants failed to make this world a better place, God sent Jesus to cast a clearer vision of world betterment. After doing so, Jesus died on the cross to conquer sin and death— the very things that were keeping this world from becoming the better place God intended it to be.
4. God did not want Jesus to fix this world by himself, so he gathered Abraham’s willing descendants, empowered them by his Spirit, enlarged their ranks to include all ethnic groups, and sent them into all nations to continue his work.
5. Jesus will return someday and complete the task of world betterment (26).

But John Nugent, in his new book Endangered Gospel, thinks this narrative sells the Bible’s story short. His proposal, and this gives Nugent’s book a distinctive contribution unlike any narrative approach to the Bible I’ve seen, has to do with the divinely-created powers: institutions and the like. Nugent is right: they are ignored in nearly all narratives (and even more so ignored in soterian approaches to the Bible). What are they?

To make the world a better place, God institutes a plurality of competing powers—an international system of checks and balances (48).

My point is this: The tasks of keeping sin in check, meeting basic needs, and making the world a better place are crucial for human thriving, but they are tasks that God has assigned to ordinary human power structures. Most people assume that the powers hold world history in their hands. The powers are the movers and shakers. What they do has potential to make life better for all people. This is why everyone gets so excited around election seasons and regime changes. What rulers do appears to be most important.

God’s people have always been tempted to be like these powers (49).

Now we are ready for how and where God makes the world a better place. The powers are designed by God to be places of preservation; the people of God are places designed to be places of redemption.

Nugent finds light for this approach in the Torah, and appeals to Deuteronomy 4:5-8; 30:15-20 and Isaiah 2:2-3 to conclude these five points:

1. God takes his people away from the nations and makes them his own nation.
2. God’s people order their lives according to God’s instructions.
3. God’s people thrive due to the superior way of life that he gives them and the blessings he pours upon them.
4. The nations notice and are impressed, having never before seen such a life.
5. The nations decide on their own to come to where God is blessing his people in order to learn this way of life from him (54).

That is, “They simply live how God calls them to live. They don’t try to make the world a better place. They humbly accept that God is making them into a better place” (54).

But things don’t work well enough according to Israel so they pursue their own agendas. Hence, the prophets:

Through the prophets, God gave his people a piece of his mind. They detailed every destructive misdemeanor and cast every vision of a wholesome alternative. Yet they never fault Gods people for neglecting to make the world a better place…. The Israelites disregarded the prophets, so God removed the kingship from them, as well as territorial sovereignty and national independence. Since they did not use their land for God’s purpose, God gave it to others to look after. He gave it first to Assyria, then Babylon, and eventually Persia. By the time of Jesus, it passed through the hands of the Greeks and Romans as well (56, 57).

Hope remains. That God would make this world a better place. “This world will become a better place, but Gods people must first become the better place that God called them to be on behalf of this world” (58).

Hence, Jesus (next post).

God promised Abr(ah)am a son in his old age, and then elaborated that the promised son would come from his wife Sarai, now Sarah, a promise that made both Abraham and Sarah laugh.  I have heard a multitude of sermons over the years on Sarah’s laughter (generally casting it in a negative light – occasionally feminine weakness contrasted with Abraham’s faith). God’s promise and delivery of a son for Abraham by Sarah is a turning point in the biblical story, and one worth a careful look.

Our slow meander through the book of Genesis continues with a look at the several incidents were the Lord promises to make Abr(ah)am a mighty and populous nation.  The promise is first stated in Genesis 12:2-3 repeated in v. 7 in broad sweeping terms.  After the sojourn in Egypt, separation from Lot, and rescue of Lot and others from Sodom and Gomorrah, God comes to Abram again, this time in a vision. This is where we pick up the story today.

After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:

“Do not be afraid, Abram.
I am your shield,
your very great reward.”

But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. (15:1-6)

This is followed by  a promise concerning the land, backed up by a covenant between Abram and the Lord. An interesting ritual with Abram preparing sacrificial animals and the a smoking firepot and blazing torch passing between them signifying the Lord’s covenant promise to Abram. This incident is interesting and worth discussion, but not the focus of our post today.

Studies of ancient Near Eastern culture shed light on this passage. Bill Arnold (Genesis) suggests that prior to the separation of Lot and Abram, Lot was the heir apparent. Now, however, Abram and Sarai cannot count on Lot to care for them in old age. As a result, a servant of the household is heir providing he care for the couple as they age. Arnold along with Tremper Longman (Genesis) and John Walton (NIVAC Genesis) note that this was an accepted practice in the ancient Near East as a protection for the childless couple.  Eliezer of Damascus was trusted, traveling with, and serving Abram and Sarai.

A son from a maid servant. In Genesis 16 we read the strange (to our ears) story of Sarai, Hagar and Ishmael.  Although it is popular in Christian circles to discuss the shortcomings of Abram and Sarai here, how they failed to trust God and took matters into their own hands, this isn’t really a fair reading of the text or a fair evaluation of the situation. Thus far the promise of a son for Abram hasn’t included Sarai as the biological mother. It was accepted practice in the culture to give a servant as a concubine to bear a child when the wife was barren. Arnold, Longman, and Walton all make this point.  C. Leonard Woolley in The Sumerians comments:

A barren wife could be divorced, taking back her dowry and receiving a sum of money by way of compensation; otherwise the husband could take a second wife, but in that case he not only continued to be responsible for the maintenance of the first but had to safeguard her position in the home; the new wife was legitimate, but not the equal of the old, and a written contract defined the degree of her subservience, thus she might be obliged to ‘wash the feet of the first and to carry her chair to the temple of the god.’ In practice, however, the status of the two women must have been somewhat anomalous, and to forestall this the wife might present to her husband one of her own slaves as a concubine; on giving birth to a child the slave-woman automatically became free … but was by no means the equal of her old mistress; indeed, should she rashly aim at becoming her rival, the mistress could again reduce her to slavery and sell her or otherwise get rid of her from the house. (p. 102-103)

Taking a second wife is never mentioned in the story of Abraham, but the practice of giving a concubine to bear children is seen in the story of Hagar and Sarah and in the story of Jacob and his twelve sons.  In fact, the story of Hagar and Ishmael follows well established  procedures. As John Walton points out, Sarai may be “invoking the terms of her marriage contract” as existing examples of contracts specify the giving of a maid servant and even the dispensing of the servant (and presumably the child) if the wife later produces an infant for her husband.

Based on the word of the Lord to Abram thus far, and the culture of the time, Ishmael was a legitimate heir and “a son who is your own flesh and blood.”  Unless there was some revelation to Abram we don’t know, he wasn’t second guessing God or rushing the matter.  This isn’t to say that all behavior related in this incident was honorable. None of the principles are blameless – Hagar in her pride, Sarai in her jealousy, or Abram in his failure to uphold Sarai before it got so far.

The promise brings laughter. In Genesis 17 the Lord appears to Abram again and makes the covenant more clear – Abram, now renamed a slight variant Abraham, “will be the father of many nations.”  Circumcision (a common practice in the ancient Near East, although not infancy) is given theological importance as a sign of the covenant between God and his people. Abraham is specifically told that Sarai, now Sarah will give birth to a son, and this is the son of the promise.

Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”

Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.” When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him. (17:17-22)

Abraham laughed at the idea that he and Sarah would have a son.  He was also concerned for his first born son and God promises Abraham as he promised Hagar in Genesis 16 that Ishmael would be blessed.

Finally we have the popular story of the three visitors in Genesis 18:1-15.  Abraham prepares a feast for the three travelers, to a level that went beyond common hospitality, about 36 pounds of flour to make bread, a choice tender calf, and curds and milk.

Now it was Sarah’s turn to laugh.

Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”

Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?”

Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.”

But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.” (18:10-15)

In Genesis 21:1-7 the promise comes true when Isaac was born. God brought a pleasant laughter to Sarah and to Abraham.  Hagar and Ishmael are sent away … not in the best of ways or on good terms … but God protects and blesses Ishmael as well.

Sermons, Sunday school lessons, and Bible studies. Along with most other Christians, especially those in the church from childhood, I have heard many sermons and lessons on these passages in Genesis. A fair number of them have missed the point in one fashion or another. It is common to emphasize Abraham’s faith (15:6) and Sarah’s laughter (18:12). But I can’t remember a sermon or lesson where Abraham’s laughter was mentioned alongside Sarah’s. Both of them laughed at the idea of a child at their (especially her) age.  Whether they were really  90 and 100 years old when Isaac was born is unimportant (I tend to think the ages are symbolic exaggeration as numbers often are in the Old Testament). Sarah was barren and past the normal age for bearing a child.  To emphasize Sarah’s laughter misses the point.

Likewise, sermons and lessons that focus on the impatience of Abram and Sarai, their failure to trust the promise of God by turning to Hagar to bear a son reads our expectations back into the text. Human nature is such that the practice causes trouble, but not substantially more than the trouble caused by barrenness and the lack of offspring.  I tend to think that Ishmael, and the twelve rulers from his descendants, are part of God’s plan of eventual blessing for the entire world.  This isn’t a plan B tacked on because Abram and Sarah jumped the gun.  How it all works out, we are not told. “Note that God’s care for Ishmael and his descendants is motivated by his relationship with Abraham, illustrating that blessing comes not just to the so-called elect line, but also to other nations.” (Longman p. 273) Later: “At a minimum, the fact that God is with Ishmael again shows that God does not have contempt but rather love for the nonelect offspring of the patriarchs and those nations that ultimately derive from them.” (Longman p. 274)

God’s covenant follows Isaac. Ishmael isn’t abandoned by God, but Isaac and his descendants through Jacob are God’s elect people. Isaac’s birth is significant. Isaac is not only the result of natural biological processes, but specifically the result of the promise of God superseding the natural. Sarah was past the age of child bearing, yet as promised she bore the child of the covenant.  Through the birth of this son God’s mission in the world was made clear.  Tremper Longman comments “the birth at this “appointed time” clearly demonstrates that this child is not simply the result of natural human processes, but is rather a divine gift.” (p. 271-272)

The prediction of the birth of Isaac, the fact that this was an unusual birth, all this helps confirm the hand of God in Abraham, Sarah and their descendants.  This is, in many respects, the heart of Genesis.

What significance should we attach to the birth of Isaac?

How have you heard this story taught?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

By Michelle Van Loon, who blogs at patheos.com/blogs/pilgrimsroadtrip and who tweets at michellevanloon.com

Some in shriveling churches have prayed a form of Ezekiel 37:1-14 for their congregations. The prophet Ezekiel was given a vision of dry bones, and as he spoke in God’s name over them, God supernaturally reassembled them into a vibrant living body. God told Ezekiel that the vision was about the return from exile of the revived Chosen People to the land he’d given them. The appropriation of these words in prayer over a failing local church tends to signal the congregation is in its final stages of existence.

In 2010, my husband and I visited a Chicago-area congregation we used to attend three decades ago. I wrote about the experience here. Visiting after so many years was a shock.

It was once a vibrant community full of the fruit of the Jesus Movement, but had withered to a numerical and spiritual shadow of what it once had been. The musical worship was a grim revue of the popular praise songs of the late 1970’s, back from the church’s glory days. The thirty of so people who were still hanging on were our age (that is to say, middle aged) or older. The nursery and children’s ministry rooms had long fallen silent. I had the sense that the pastor was recycling his old messages as I listened to his speak that morning. He left as soon as the service was over.

While some bash a graying church, I believe these gatherings of “two or more” with gray hair to gather for worship, prayer, and fellowship have merit. But there are small, aging congregations that have life in them, and there are congregations that exist only out of habit. The church we attended with such joy in our 20’s was dying of those tired old habits in 2010.

My husband was an elder in a dying church in Wisconsin in the late 1990’s. Intramural politics split then decimated the congregation. He and the other remaining elder made the call to close the church doors after the congregation dwindled to a couple of handfuls of people with nowhere else to go. A house church gathering merged with those remaining in our church and carried on in that form for a number of years. Watching a congregation die was one of the saddest church experiences we’d ever had. When we visited our Jesus Movement church in 2010, I thought I saw the same sort of bone graveyard I knew from our own experience in Wisconsin.

About 3 or 4 years ago, a young friend of ours accepted the call to lead the dying Chicago-area congregation. At first glance, our friend, a funny and brilliant son of a pastor, seemed poorly matched to the congregation. Though they’d been on life support for several years, a few believed that maybe those dry bones could live again.

Our friend took a physical therapist’s approach to rehabilitating the atrophied church. In tiny increments and with great patience, he asked them to exercise their spiritual muscles by again taking ownership of their congregational life. There were some hard conversations along the way. He recruited some help with music. He and his young wife had two young kids, and there weren’t any other children in the congregation. There hadn’t been for years. But they hung in there through loneliness and the exit of one or two people who simply didn’t want to move forward. Change has been slow.

My husband and I have had an opportunity to visit this congregation again recently. The congregation has grown by about 50%. There were enough children in attendance that they now included prayer for them during the service each week before dismissing them to a classroom time. The music was no longer stuck in the 1970’s. They’d reorganized their congregational government, and they were gathering with resurrection vigor for study and prayer outside the weekly worship service.

Can these bones live again?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. When is it time to let a church die a natural death? When might it be wise to take a physical therapist’s approach to attempt to bring new life to an atrophied body of believers?

By Angela Hurst:

Angela Hurst is currently the senior teaching pastor at Cross City Church in Richmond, Kentucky. She has served in many different ministerial capacities, has been military officer for twenty-five years and is an active member of the Reserves.  She and her husband have been married for twenty-four years and have five children.

I remember how embarrassed I was the day I walked into work with a black eye. I dreaded the questions, knowing I would have to reveal my lost battle with lawn equipment, and worrying that someone might wrongly suspect my husband of abuse. I turned on the office lights, sat down at my desk, and interacted with people all day.

No one said anything about my black eye.

No one, until my boss privately asked about my injury. I told him the whole story of my wrestling match with a weed eater.

I was relieved that the day’s conversations did not revolve around my black eye, but by evening, it really had me thinking. What if I had been beaten? What would it be like live in fear, to be one of the 5.4 million women in the U.S. who are battered each year?[1]

I have recently begun to see that abuse is much broader than I’d previously believed. I now realize that I narrowly escaped an abusive relationship during college, and missed some serious red flags at the time. My boyfriend always wanted to be with me, to know where I was, and who I was talking to. He once pulled me with him across a busy street with oncoming traffic, and had on one occasion pushed my face down toward a lit gas stove top.

Rather than immediately ending the relationship, I stayed. I was supposed to be nice. I was supposed to please him, not hurt his feelings. I was a woman, and I was supposed to defer to him.

Why would a well-educated, confident woman fall in line with that kind of thinking? Why would she tolerate such behavior?

In my case, it was because of church doctrine. It was subtle, but it was there nonetheless.

Mutual submission was not taught in my church culture growing up. Some believed it, some didn’t, but it was never a sermon topic. Women’s groups were focused on pleasing husbands and being good wives.

Additionally, the dangers of abuse were never addressed in the church community. In the fairy tale world of my church, the world many churches still live in, abusive relationships simply did not exist. Men would never abuse their “biblical” power over women, because they were godly men! If a woman was abused, she had clearly done something wrong. And she needed to be the one to make it right.

A reccent heartbreaking and now very public case of a pastor abusing his wife illustrates this well. Mr. Abedini, a pastor, was held in Iranian prison for nearly four years while his wife worked tirelessly for his release. Upon his release and return to the US, he was exposed as an abusive husband. Though he pled guilty to domestic assault in 2007, he denied knowing about the conviction and publicly placed the full blame for his fractured marriage on his wife.

The response of the mainstream church? Welcome him home and give him a platform. Question the integrity of his wife. Question why she remained silent for so long. Question why she worked so hard for his release. Question how he could possibly be abusive to her from an Iranian prison. Question, question, question the wife. Give the abusive husband a microphone.

What would Jesus do?

Would Jesus tolerate domestic violence and tell its victims to pray harder, be more submissive, and just take it for one more night, as some complementarian leaders have recommended? Or would he call out the abuser and lead the victim to safety?

Jesus had no problem taking abusers to task. He reprimanded powerful people, people who were tightly woven into the religious and government structures of the day. It was one of the reasons they killed him.

Today, when victims call out their abusers, something similar happens. They aren’t always physically killed, but their relationships and reputations suffer. And usually, the religious elite circle the wagons and defend their chosen ones regardless of the accusations or evidence.

Are we truly demonstrating the love of Christ when we allow abusers to continue in their manipulation, lies, and violence?

When the body of Christ silences victims to “protect the name of Christ,” there is a serious problem. When the church supports and enables abusers through ignorance, silence, or a willing blindness to the facts, there is a serious problem. The church fails when it protects reputations instead of victims. This trulymaligns the name of Christ.

What of Christians who are left believing complementarianism is “God’s way,” and are enduring abuse?

We the church have a responsibility to break this damaging theology. The first step is to educate ourselves on abuse. We must learn to recognize the signs, and call it what it is. We must expose flawed theology that leaves women vulnerable to abuse and their abusers unaccountable. It is also vital that we learn to support victims in a way that helps them heal. Above all, we should assert that abuse victims are not obliged to stay where their souls and lives are in danger.

Complementarian teachings left me vulnerable to an abusive relationship. I thank God for a father whose values helped pull my heart away from male headship theology. I thank God for a husband who encourages me to reach my full potential, and who has never once raised his hand to me.

The body of Christ must stamp out destructive theology that leaves women at the mercy of abusive men. We must walk into healing alongside tattered and battered souls. We must teach the upcoming generation what freedom in Christ means: We are free from hierarchical role-playing. We are free to be loved and valued as daughters of the creator. We are free to walk away from abuse.

Notes

[1] Statistics from www.cdc.gov: National Intimate Partner Sexual Violence Survey 2010 (Full report)

There are two common ways of looking for authority and certainty in the Christian faith.

We can turn to the church. In this view authority is vested in the institutional church and our faith is founded on the inerrancy of church tradition and church hierarchy. This is the rock upon which we stand. The search for authority drives many converts from evangelicalism to Roman Catholicism (See Scot’s book Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy). But when the church fails – and it often has and still does – this undermines the foundation of faith.  Examples of greed, corruption, and sexual abuse from those who “should” be the most trustworthy, who have supposedly given themselves wholly to the service of God, can be devastating. An occasional bad apple can be explained, but systematic protection of the bad apples and failure to admit a problem hints to the presence of deeper problems. These problems are not limited to Roman Catholicism, of course.  Similar examples are found within Protestantism, often with devastating effects for faith. But it is worse when the church is the foundation and authority.

In essence, an over-dependence on the church in any branch of Christianity is a dependence on (always faulty) human construction.

We can turn to Scripture. Here, common in the Protestant church, authority is vested in scripture and our faith is founded on scripture. Scripture is the rock upon which we stand. In the context of modernist thought this foundation is only secure if scripture is inerrant. If any piece of scripture is questioned and found wanting – all is open to question and we start down the slippery slope … Our belief in the historicity of the resurrection depends, for example, on the complete historicity of Noah or the Exodus. No distinction is possible.

This is something of a caricature I admit, but the image I am often left with is a house of cards faith. We have a construct built by taking the pages of scripture and assembling an understanding of the faith and church. If any page, any card, is removed the whole structure is shaky and may collapse, some would say will collapse. The foundation of faith is Scripture – but more than this, the foundation of faith is every jot and tittle of scripture. It leads to ever increasing attempts to fence Scripture.

Charles Ryrie’s statement on biblical inspiration (p. 76 of Basic Theology) provides a great example of this impulse to build fences.

Formerly all that was necessary to affirm one’s belief in full inspiration was the statement, “I believe in the inspiration of the Bible.” But when some did not extend inspiration to the words of the text it became necessary to say, “I believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible.” To counter the teaching that not all parts of the Bible were inspired, one had to say, “I believe in the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible.” Then because some did not want to ascribe total accuracy to the Bible, it was necessary to say, “I believe in the verbal, plenary, infallible, inerrant inspiration of the Bible.” But then “infallible” and “inerrant” began to be limited to matters of faith only rather than also embracing all that the Bible records (including historical facts, genealogies, accounts of Creation, etc.), so it became necessary to add the concept of “unlimited inerrancy.” Each addition to the basic statement arose because of an erroneous teaching. (emphasis added)

Well, Ryrie viewed them all as equally erroneous anyway. The issues couldn’t be discussed on their merit. Properly constructed fences could dispense with the need to wrestle before God. Ryrie continues (also p. 76) …

The doctrine of inspiration is not something theologians have to force on the Bible. Rather it is a teaching of the Bible itself, a conclusion derived from the data contained in it.

I agree with Ryrie – inspiration is not something theologians have to force on the Bible and I believe in the inspiration of the Bible. But most of the subsequent refinements (responses to what Ryrie considered erroneous teachings), that define exactly what is meant to some people by “inspiration” culminating in “unlimited inerrancy,” do have to be forced on the text. These are not really something the Bible teaches of itself as a whole or conclusions that can be derived from the data contained in it. In fact they lead to a great deal of cognitive dissonance as many come to fear (or realize) that the text does not live up to the pronouncements.

In essence, an over-dependence on the Bible in any branch of Christianity is a dependence on (always faulty) human interpretation and construction.

Aren’t we better served by a third view – our faith is founded on God alone. The rock on which we stand is God alone – and his work in this world, including the atoning work of Christ. Scripture illuminates God, his nature and his interaction with his creation.

In this view our questions about scripture do not shake the foundation. The idea that the story of Gen 3 tells important theological truths in mythic form; the suggestion that the story of the exodus from Egypt may (likely does) have elements that are not exactly historical in the modern sense of literal – factual reporting, the conquest of Canaan including the fall of Jericho likewise, even the redaction of Matthew and the authorship of 2 Timothy … these are ideas, questions, suggestions that we can consider and discuss without fear, but with reverence.  We are not looking for errors in Scripture – but rather digging down to try to understand the message.

In this view we require that scripture is reliable (the lamp must give off light) – but we do not require that scripture be inerrant in the common evangelical use of the term (it is not the foundation of knowledge). A reliable scripture is consistent with the evidence and not demolished by modern biblical scholarship. And we can use modern biblical scholarship to help us better understand the text and the message. Mark Roberts’ book Can We Trust the Gospels? is an excellent readable discussion of one aspect of scripture along these lines. The Gospels are reliable. N.T. Wright’s book on Scripture Scripture and the Authority of God is also good (as is the his earlier, shorter book The Last Word).

And to go back to the notion of authority vested in the Church. The church is on the rock, but it is not the rock on which we stand. In this view the Church, the traditions, are not foundational, but paths blazed before us on the rock. We do well to take with utmost attention the wrestlings and opinions of those who have gone before us and those who stand alongside us, but we also do well to consider when and where the Church as institution has and does go astray.

Concern with inerrancy changes our focus. There is a serious consequence with the Protestant focus on inerrancy. Harmonizing strategies used to achieve concord between science (including archaeology) and the Bible transform our understanding of the message of scripture. This isn’t just true for questions of science. Harmonizing strategies within scripture also tend to fall into the same trap … strategies reconciling the details of the differing accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 and even Job; the histories in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles; the details in the Gospels (there are differences both between John and the synoptic gospels and between incidents within the synoptic gospels – as with the fig tree for example: Wither the Fig Tree, Whither the Wandering Saints); Paul’s account of his post Damascus journey with the account given in Acts; and this isn’t a complete list. The harmonizing strategies that we use transform the notions they seek to unite. At the very least harmonizing strategies draw attention away from the core message of passages they seek to defend.  We shouldn’t transform Scripture … we should be transformed by the message.

The alternative. When it comes to scripture the alternative to inerrant isn’t errant. I do not believe the bible is errant. But “inerrant” (at least inerrant as it has come to be defined in evangelical Christianity) is simply not a useful term to describe what scripture actually is or what it testifies about itself. We have to take the bible as we have it, with poetry, story, proverbs, history, prophecy, apocalyptic imagery, satire, ancient Near Eastern myth, anachronisms, … with all of the trappings. Here we have a faithful transmission of God’s work in his world, his law, his character and more, recorded in forms shaped by experience and context of the people involved, including both authors and editors. It is foolishness (the wisdom of the world) to force it into a mold (unlimited inerrancy) of our own making.

Perhaps the best alternative to inerrant is quite simply to return to Ryrie’s first statement without all the detailed baggage he wishes to encumber upon it – I believe in the inspiration of the Bible. And we can go a step further with Paul. Paul wrote to Timothy that all scripture is God-breathed (inspired) in the context of a statement that defines the purpose for scripture. It gives “wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Jesus Christ” and it is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” To receive this message we have to read, listen to, and study scripture from beginning to end. We need to be immersed in the mission of God revealed in these pages and we need to be transformed by the message.

What is your rock?

What role do the Scriptures play in this?

Is it enough to affirm the inspiration of Scripture?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

(This post is an edited integration of two earlier posts on the nature of Scripture.)

The word “inerrancy,” like the word evangelical, beggars clear and compelling definitions and articulations. Many of inerrancy’s proponents don’t believe simpler words — like truth, truthful, trustworthy — adequately express what is to be believed about the Bible. So there is an Inerrancy Debate, and it is now in an official form: Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy. The editors are J. Merrick and S.M. Garrett, and the contributors, with responses to each of the other essayists, are R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Peter Enns, Michael F. Bird, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, and John R. Franke. Believe me, this is one of the more volatile issues among evangelicals (the term “inerrancy” tends not to be used except by evangelicals, and then not by all). I am not a fan of these Counterpoint books since, in general, the responses go down hill fast. I do value sketching various views of a topic, including inerrancy. But this sketch is clearly an in-house-evangelical affair with not a look at Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans or others.

Mohler kicks the volume off, and after reading him carefully I have come to this conclusion: Mohler creates an argument the way Kris and I do crosswords — we work in this corner and then that corner, and then on this line and then on that line. We don’t finish up one section before we move on to another. The problem is that arguments are not crosswords. Mohler’s essay, in other words, is a tangled mess with barely any order — here one thing, there another, with an application/polemical point now and then later another one, with some Bible and then no Bible. One can discern what he believes well enough, but for a representative of the “classic” view (and he means Warfield through the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy) this is at best a hodgepodge of claims. There are much better studies, including those by B.B. Warfield, E.J. Young, J.I. Packer, and Paul Feinberg’s well-framed essay in a book called Inerrancy (ed. N. Geisler).

I was a college student when the inerrancy debate became big at the hand of Harold Lindsell’s famous The Battle for the Bible. I devoured the book, stood amazed at some of his claims, but knew there was much to study in this topic — so I read B.B. Warfield and E.J. Young cover to cover, carefully watching how they worked. They were articulate, careful, and mostly convincing. But not all have achieved their level of patient exposition of the Bible’s understanding of itself.

He contends inerrancy is supported by the Bible’s own claims, by the course of theological history, and for pastoral reasons.

These are representative statements by Mohler:

“An affirmation of the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible has stood at the center of the evangelical faith as long as there have been Christians known as evangelicals” (29). He’s more or less right: I don’t think it is all that helpful to call the Reformers “evangelicals” (as we know them today), but evangelicalism (properly boundaried) has believed in inspiration and authority.

One of his best lines is “When the Bible speaks, God speaks” (29).  He accepts ETS’s older statement — “The Bible alone, the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs” (29). He approves of Carl Henry’s line that “inerrancy should be seen as a requirement of evangelical consistency rather than as a test of evangelical integrity” (29), though I’m not sure what this means. He knows many aren’t in agreement, including Roger Olson.

He believes in a slippery slope mentality: give up inerrancy and things fall apart theologically, morally, epistemologically, and ecclesially. Giving it up leads to “hermeneutical nihilism” and “metaphysical antirealism” (31).

His history of this discussion focuses on the 20th Century — from Warfield to Lindsell to ETS and CSBI (1978). God is perfect; his words therefore are perfect; Scripture is inspired by God and therefore inerrant; the Spirit attended the authors and the text and speaks to us today in the inward witness; the Bible is plenarily inspired; authority follows from this and without this the authority is shaken.

He then makes his case: the Bible, history and pastoral ministry.

His case for the Bible starts off poorly for me. He quotes 2 Peter 1:21, which in the NIV 2011 reads: “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Mohler’s observations: “Peter’s point is that the Scripture is to be trusted at every point, and he defines its inspiration as being directly from God, through the agency of human authors, by means of the direct work of the Holy Spirit” (37). Well, not exactly: Does “prophecy” mean “Scripture… at every point”? I doubt it. He speaks of the “original text” but is that one of Peter’s categories? Anyway, the point is that Mohler colonizes 2 Peter 1:21 into his existing theory of inerrancy and explains Peter through his theory. Fortunately, his section on the Bible improves and his stuff here on Paul is done well. Yes, I agree: Paul and the NT authors, including Jesus, were Jewish and had a “high” view of Scripture and its truthfulness and God’s trustworthiness in the Word. This does not solve the hermeneutical problems but it does give us a good framing of the early Christian view.

On the faith of the church, Yes, the church has always believed the Bible is true, trustworthy, and authoritative. To import the word “inerrancy,” which means CSBI or ETS for Mohler, is simply a bad case of anachronism run amok. It is not good history to impose later categories on the church fathers and medieval theologians or even the Reformers. Plus, they always operated with a strong sense of “tradition” alongside the Bible.

The authors are to use test cases: Joshua 6, the tension of Acts 9:7 and 22:9, as well as Deut 20:16-17 and Matthew 5:43-48. On Joshua 6, Jericho, archaeology and the Bible: he believes in inerrancy, therefore there is no problem; on Acts 9 and 22, he believes in inerrancy therefore there is no problem; and the same on Deut 20 and Matt 5.

This is a great example of a priori logic, of assumptions, and of deductive logic but I’m glad there are other essays in this volume.

Three more critical observations: Mohler makes claims about the history of theology without documentation. Why not trot out statements from Augustine to the modern day? Why not frame what they believed in their terms and let the chips fall where they may? Instead, he makes summary statements about history, and (as we will see) his summary statements are not accurate. Both Bird and Vanhoozer take Mohler to task for his claims about history. The second observation is that here is how Mohler’s logic works: I believe in inerrancy, therefore the Bible is not wrong. Over and over he says, Since I believe in inerrancy this theory about a passage can’t be right. This is a priori logic, if not fideism, and it is being used for a doctrine that was formed, if my reading of the history is right, on the basis of inductive logic. Third, for someone who affirms inerrancy of the Bible there is precious little emphasis in this study on the Bible itself. He has one short section (3 pages) and in the challenging portions he spends far too little time patiently examining what the Bible actually says. A “biblical” inerrancy is one founded on patient study of what the Bible says.

It is because of understandings of inerrancy like this of Mohler that many of us don’t want to use the term “inerrancy.” What does that mean? In the hands of Mohler, the word “inerrancy” is boundary-drawing politics and polemics. The Bible’s way of talking about the Bible is “Word” and a word is spoken by a Person, who is engaged in a covenant relationship of love, and the proper response to the Word from God is to listen because, as covenant people, we want to know what God says and do what he wants. I have sketched this in the “Boring Chapter” in The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible.

By Mimi Haddad:

Since my first week at Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE), I’ve heard stories from women who have struggled with their faith in God because they were abused by men. These women were emotionally, physically, sexually, and spiritually abused by husbands, fathers, uncles, brothers, pastors, or other men close to them. Their abusers believed that Scripture (and therefore God) gave men authority to monitor, manage, and discipline women. Longing to please God, these women submitted to abusive men, regardless of the cost to themselves. Some nearly lost their lives, others went into hiding. All are deeply wounded.

To protect these women, CBE developed a comprehensive privacy policy that predates standards now used by the medical industry. CBE’s first president, Cathie Kroeger, encountered the reality of abuse early in CBE’s history and vigorously addressed that challenge. As president, Cathie created some of the first resources on women’s abuse among evangelicals. And in 1994, CBE held its first conference on abuse. Lectures from the conference were later published in a book by the same title, Women, Abuse, and the Bible.

We were surprised and overwhelmed by the number of people who attended CBE’s first conference on abuse. We were even more shocked to discover the countless women who experienced abuse in a Christian marriage, family, church, or organization. When Cathie retired from CBE, she became founder and president of Peace and Safety in the Christian Home (PASCH), a nonprofit organization devoted to addressing domestic violence and abuse.

For nearly thirty years, CBE has developed and promoted resources that challenge male-authority as a biblical ideal. In tandem with our biblical research, we have also walked alongside women who suffered abuse as a consequence of the power imbalances justified by distorting Scripture. These events are powerfully illustrated in Ruth Tucker’s new book, Black and White Bible, Black and Blue Wife, which recounts her own abusive marriage and the theology that fueled her husband’s violence.

A prolific scholar and highly regarded historian, Tucker unearthed countless examples of women’s leadership in church history throughout her career. Her work established women’s capacity for leadership, compelling many churches and denominations to liberate women and welcome their gifts. Tragically, however, in her own marriage, Ruth was abused by a man who used Scripture to dominate her.

Given the terrifying experiences Ruth endured, it is unthinkable that anyone might attempt to persuade her to stand with individuals whose theology fueled her abuse. It would be like asking Sojourner Truth to stand with pro-slavery advocates against the abuses of slavery! It was the grueling, dangerous, life-long work of abolitionists like Truth who exposed the abuse, deceit, greed, and twisted rhetoric inherent to slavery.

Like slavery, male-headship is deeply flawed theologically and therefore ethically. It is a system of privilege that elevates one group over another, extending power and impunity to men not because of their character, but simply because of their gender. Further, the consequences of male-headship often go unaddressed by its advocates. Perpetrators are accountable not to their victims but to those with equal privilege.

Like abolitionists, egalitarians are often accused of capitulating to a secular ideology. However, an honest and consistent study of the egalitarian evangelicals offers another perspective.

Abolitionists were committed to a high view of Scripture, conversion, and proclaiming the good news in word and deed. Egalitarians (past and present) share those same values. The ideals that drove the theological and social reforming work of abolitionists, compelling leaders like Sojourner Truth to ask essential questions about the teachings and practices of pro-slavery Christians, drive egalitarians today to challenge complementarian theology. Egalitarians ask complementarians to consider whether their ideas and practices imitate the life and teachings of Jesus.

Thankfully, those who have encountered the theological and moral failings of complementarian theology are working to expose it, particularly its collusion with privilege and power. Like Ruth, more and more Christians are refusing to protect ideas and practices that distort the gospel and obstruct human flourishing.

The truth is, we are all on a journey. We all have blind-spots and need not only the challenge of our brothers and sisters in Christ, but also their grace. The giving and receiving of forgiveness is essential to human relationships. However, as Jack and Judy Balswick explain in their chapter on marriage in Discovering Biblical Equality, we can confess our failures and ask for forgiveness, but confession should be evidenced by efforts toward responsible change. If proponents of male-authority are earnest in standing against abuse, I challenge them to consider the following as steps of good faith.

1. Offer statistics on domestic violence at your events and churches, and in your published resources and online content. Give abused women and girls a platform and allow them to speak and write from their own perspectives.
2. Provide a safe space for women seeking shelter from abuse.
3. Ensure that your seminaries and colleges offer courses by trained professionals in anger management, domestic violence, and abuse.
4. Preach regularly on domestic violence and abuse, aligning with victims and denouncing all forms of abuse.
5. Discuss these topics during premarital and marital counseling.
6. Refuse to shield and shelter perpetrators from the consequences of their behavior.
7. Insist perpetrators are prosecuted when they break the law.
8. Insist perpetrators undergo treatment by professional psychologists.
9. Refuse to give perpetrators prominence as speakers, writers, and leaders.
10. Never ask or suggest that abused girls and women return to abusive family members.
11. Stock your church, college, and seminary libraries with a range of books on domestic violence and abuse, authored by trained psychologists.
12. Be disciplined in praying for justice on behalf of those who have been abused as well as accountability from perpetrators.

Whether complementarian or egalitarian, we must be vigilant in watching for signs of abuse. We must hold perpetrators accountable. We must do our utmost to prevent abuse wherever possible. We must protect those who have been abused unreservedly.

Abusers often justify their behavior by hijacking Scripture for their own perverse purposes. This was true for proslavery Christians and Christians who supported Apartheid in South Africa. It is also true for men who use complementarian theology to perpetuate their abuse.

And, sadly, I have rarely observed complementarian theologians speaking out against those who use their teachings to abuse others. In fact, it is shocking to observe the defensiveness of some complementarians when they are questioned about the abusive consequences of their theology.

In a rebuttal of complementarian critiques of Ruth Tucker’s new book, Aimee Byrd wrote, “there is a greater fear of people reading Tucker’s book and becoming egalitarian than [readers]… leaving Christianity!” Byrd is among the growing number of complementarians who believe that while complementarian theology does not “advocate abuse ostensibly… it doesn’t protect women who are abused—at all. It exposes them to more abuse. And so it is fuel for an abuser.”

One question remains: Doesn’t complementarian theology make abuse possible and more likely by privileging men with authority over women contra to Genesis 1:26-28?

Thankfully, Byrd herself sees more mutuality in Scripture than many complementarians teach. She writes: “We are told to submit to one another out of reverence to Christ, women to their own husbands, as to the Lord (Eph. 5:22-23), and husbands are to give themselves up in love for their wives, just as Christ loved the Church (5:25).” But there is more.

From Genesis to Revelation, we see that leadership and authority belongs firstly to those who do what is right in God’s sight, regardless of gender or ethnicity. To insist that God gives authority based on gender is fundamentally and categorically a flawed reading of Scripture. It overlooks the prominent examples of women’s leadership throughout the Bible and church history. It is nearly impossible to implement consistently. And worst of all, it makes possible and sustains abuse, and often shields perpetrators.

Male-headship theology harms rather than promotes human flourishing. Like any systemic injustice, it is impossible to repair the damage of male-headship theology without dismantling the theology itself. If human beings are to flourish and perpetrators are to be stopped, this is the path we must take together.

(Image from Wikipedia: credit)

For many years a book, Grand Canyon a Different View was sold at the gift stores in the National Park. This book tells the story of the Grand Canyon from a Young Earth Creationist viewpoint of flood geology. I don’t know if it is still being sold at the National Park or not, but it is available on Amazon. According to the description on Amazon the book invites readers to “explore the majesty and beauty of one of God s greatest creations” and “see the canyon from a biblical perspective and understand how it fits into the flood of Noah” with essays from “Leading Grand Canyon Authorities: … Duane Gish, … Ken Ham, … Henry Morris, John Morris, … John Whitcomb, …”  Needless to say its presence in the National Park bookstore was controversial, especially if shelved under “science”.

For most of us this may be an interesting bit of trivia, but nothing earthshaking. A group of Christian geologists found it somewhat more troubling. A distorted picture does nothing good. They have taken the opportunity to craft a book of their own with full color pictures and essays presenting their scientific and Christian view of the canyon, The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth: Can Noah’s Flood Explain the Grand Canyon?  This book is written with abundant pictures and diagrams to educate Christians about geology and the shortcomings of flood geology. Each of the chapters is written by experts in the area, many with years of experience in the classroom answering questions raised by students. Authors include Gregg Davidson, professor of geology at the University of Mississippi, Stephen Moshier from Wheaton College, Ralph Stearley from Calvin College, all of whom I’ve had a chance to meet and talk with at BioLogos meetings. Many, but not all, of their coauthors are Christians – but all have expertise in some aspect of the geology of the Grand Canyon.  Joel Duff, who blogs at Naturalis Historia (a blog well worth reading), contributed two chapters on the fossil record.

This is an important topic. Young earth creationism (YEC) is a powerful force in significant swaths of American Christianity. The Ark Encounter opened its doors earlier this month expecting to attract more than a million visitors a year. We’ve just finished a series on Mark Whorton’s book Peril in Paradise where he tells his story of coming to grips with the evidence for the age of the earth – and to the realization that the theological and biblical underpinnings of YEC are fragile. It is a shame when artificial and unnecessary barriers are erected, causing some Christians to struggle and preventing many non-Christians from even considering the gospel.  Like Whorton’s book, this book on the Grand Canyon focuses on the age of the earth. This isn’t a book about evolution as the mechanism producing the diversity of life. It is a book about layers of rocks, some with fossils others without, and the processes that could produce these layers and canyons and the fossil record. A young earth followed by a catastrophic global flood simply couldn’t do it.  Whether evolution is true or not, it is clear that the Earth is ancient.

The book is divided into five parts. Part 1: Two Views outlines the basics of the Flood Geology view of the earth and the canyon and contrasts it with the modern geological view. Part 2: How Geology Works provides a primer on the basic science of geology applied to the canyon. Part 3: Fossils: What Story Do They Tell investigates the layering and location of fossils and the insight they add to the picture developed from the rock layers. Part 4: Carving of the Canyon looks specifically at the processes that carved the canyon out of the sedimentary layers. Fossils provide information on this as well. The book concludes in Part 5 with A Verdict on Flood Geology. If you are at all interested in these questions, either personally or as a Christian leader and teacher who has to deal with the very real questions raised by people – both Christians and non-Christians – I recommend this book highly. It is an excellent resource.

I’ll conclude this post with a few points from the introductory section on two views along with some of my own observations. In later posts we will look at some of the science in more detail.

Flood geology is an approach to science that assumes a timeline believed by its supporters to be the clear teaching of the Bible. This is foundational. As Ken Ham repeated often in his debate with Bill Nye – it all comes down to “I have a book.” In reality it is based on a selective literal reading that ignores many of the features of ancient cosmology in the text. Vaults and pillars and waters and storehouses for rain and hail and snow for example. The idea of the earth as a spheroid in space orbiting the sun is completely absent from the Old Testament including Genesis. But few proponents of YEC will argue that this is not true. Other ideas, however, are taken as absolute truth. As a result, both passages of Scripture and scientific observations are twisted to fit into a largely predetermined scenario. Only details can be modified by observation. This provides a key distinction between flood geology and modern geology. (Image from NASA)

The conventional scientific approach puts all ideas and theories about the workings of nature to the test (not tests of whether nature is superintended by a divine creator, but tests of whether nature has behaved in one particular way or another).  This approach starts with questions and works forward to find answers. All the conclusions on the right side of the table [see book for table] grew out of observations and testable hypotheses derived from studying the Earth and its surrounding solar system, with questions unfettered by preconceived notions of what the answers should be.

In contrast, flood geology starts with the answers and works backward to what questions should be asked. (p. 29)

It is important to realize that “nature” is not separate from the providential action of God. Also, despite the belief of many Christians, scientists do continually refine and modify conclusions in the light of data. This is a communal effort and every idea is tried and tested. Some conclusions are so well supported that none of us think they will be overturned, but evidence advanced to the contrary is still evaluated carefully (the supposed observation of a faster than light neutrino of a few years ago is a case in point, see here).

Contrasting Flood and Modern Geology. The conclusions in the table on p. 29 (referred to in the quote above) include the age of the earth and the occurrence of a global flood. Specific to the Grand Canyon: “Most fossil-bearing sedimentary rock on Earth, including most Grand Canyon strata, formed during Noah’s flood in only one year’s time.” vs “Sedimentary rocks have formed over hundreds of millions of years through processes of sedimentation, compaction, and cementation.” and “The Grand Canyon and Colorado River were formed when large post-flood lakes emptied catastrophically.” vs “The complex history of the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon is still being investigated, but the canyon’s erosion involved millions of years.”  It is possible for a canyon to form in a catastrophic flood. According to modern geology such a process is behind the formation of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone some 14000 to 18000 years ago at the end of the ice age (see here). But the canyons in Arizona and Wyoming are very different. (Image of my own.)

Flood geology can and should be evaluated scientifically because as Moshier and Hill note in Chapter 2 “flood geologists argue that their geologic interpretations are in fact testable by scientific investigation, so throughout this book we will evaluate the claims of flood geology on their scientific merit.” (p. 29)  (Image source)

The next two chapters run through the differences between the flood geology scenario and the scenario developed through scientific investigation. Each point is carefully illustrated with diagrams and pictures. The science itself is discussed in Part 2. In future posts on the book we will look at the science and the short-comings of the explanations of flood geology.

What evidence for the age of the earth is most convincing?

Is the question of age a problem in your church or among the people you know?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

In a previous post we looked at Thomas Jay Oord’s sketch of theories of providence —

1. God is the Omnicause.

2. God empowers and overpowers.

3. God is voluntarily self-limited.

4. God is essentially kenotic. [Oord’s view]

5. God sustains as impersonal force.

6. God is initial creator and current observer.

7. God’s ways are not our ways.

Then a second post explored what “open and relational theology” is all about and today we we want to look his defense of #4, the “kenotic” theory of God’s providence. [By the way, I think “uncontrolling” love could be slightly improved with “non-controlling” love of God in the title.]

Here is a major point of theology: it can be said that in many forms of theology what is most primary about God’s essence is God’s sovereignty (e.g., some forms of Calvinism) or God’s holiness (some theologies that centralize propitiation theory), but Oord’s contention is that what is most primary is God’s kenotic love. Depending on how one defines such terms one’s theology flows directly. Open theology, however, can begin with sovereignty (God’s power to choose not to know or not to involve himself in creation) or love (God’s love determines God’s power).

Everything hinges in this chapter — in Oord’s thesis — on kenosis as a central category and, though one could quite simply dispute his definition of kenosis on historical grounds (the term has a “container” image at work somehow but in metaphorical shape), his fundamental definition of love (which differs from some of Oord’s definitions of love) can stand apart from kenosis. So what does kenosis mean to Oord?

Scholars also debate how best to translate the word kenosis. While most believe it tells us something true about God, no one knows precisely what the word means. Kenosis sits in the midst of what biblical scholars believe to be a poem or hymn, and this genre allows for an especially wide range of interpretations. Scholars interpret kenosis variously as “self-emptying,” “self-withdrawing,” “self-limiting” or “self-giving.” 156

Kenosis is not “a divestiture of something,” says biblical scholar Michael Gorman. Relational language, rather than container language, is more helpful if kenosis pertains primarily to love. 156

These three interpretations of kenosis—self-emptying, selfwithdrawing or voluntary self-limitation—present significant problems. 158

Having set out the options and then not agreeing with them, he proposes this for kenosis:

[He proposes that kenosis means] “self-giving, others-empowering love” (159).

God didn’t just act kenotically in Christ. Rather, God is kenotic love.

Essential kenosis considers the self-giving, others-empowering love of God revealed in Jesus Christ to be logically primary in God’s eternal essence. 160

And that means, of course, that “God is not free to choose whether to love because God’s nature is love” (161). God is and always acts in kenotic love — that is, God is essentially love and God’s love is essentially kenotic. But God’s how of acting in kenotic love is an act of freedom.

Essential kenosis says, however, that God freely chooses how to express love in each moment. God is free in this important sense. In each moment God freely chooses to love one way instead of another because multiple options are available. God is free when choosing among possible ways to promote shalom. 162

It is at this point that Oord differs with John Sanders, another open/relational theist. Oord thinks Sanders’ view is not sufficiently love-in-essence. But not with Oord:

Love is God’s preeminent attribute. God’s kenotic love logically precedes divine power in the divine nature. 162

This kenotic love in the essence of God then limits all else about God’s relations: God’s power is limited by love: “Essential kenosis says limitations to divine power derive from God’s nature of love” (164). God’s love is shaped toward each person: “Divine love is tailor-made for each creature in each instant” (166).

Which must mean this, and this one is big: “God cannot unilaterally prevent genuine evil” (167) and “Absolute sovereignty is absolutely unbelievable” because there are limits to God (168).

It is at this point that I would have a question, but first Oord’s own formulation:

Essential kenosis says God’s self-giving, others-empowering nature of love necessarily provides freedom, agency, self-organization and lawlike regularity to creation. Because love is the preeminent and necessary attribute in God’s nature, God cannot withdraw, override or fail to provide the freedom, agency, self-organizing and lawlike regularity God gives. Divine love limits divine power. 169

My question is this: Are these then prior to kenotic love? If so, is God essentially kenotic love?

Here are some reasons he gives for this kenotic love theory giving a better theory of providence and evil:

First, this model of providence says God necessarily gives freedom to all creatures complex enough to receive and express it. 170

Second, essential kenosis explains why God doesn’t prevent evil that simple creatures with agency cause or even simpler entities with mere self-organizing capacities cause. 171

He develops this more:

Realizing that God cannot unilaterally prevent suffering caused by simple entities helps us make sense of suffering caused by natural malfunctions or disasters. This means, for instance, we should not accuse God of causing or allowing birth defects, cancer, infections, disease, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, or other illnesses and catastrophes. The degradation brought by such calamities does not represent God’s will. Instead, we can blame simple structures, various natural processes of the world, small organisms or creation gone awry. Because God’s self-giving, others-empowering love makes agency and self-organization possible, God is not culpable for the evil that less complex entities cause. 172

Third, Essential kenosis helps us make sense of the random mutations, chance events and accidents that cause evil. 173

So he sums up his argument with this: “If God’s love cooperates rather than controls, never forces its way on the beloved and risks rather than imposes guarantees, love as the logically preeminent attribute prevents God from entirely determining others. An essentially loving God who could totally control others does not exist because God s love cannot control” (180).