Tag: The Widening of God’s Mercy

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 4

Was the Law not good? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Remember how last time I said it gets worse?

Prepare yourselves. Here it comes.

In the midst of this speech, God says that because of the people’s disobedience, “I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live. I defiled them through their very gifts, in their offering up all their firstborn, in order that I might horrify them, so that they might know that I am the LORD” (Ezek 20:25–26).

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 68). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

It has been my contention that for the Hayses to defend same-sex romantic relationships from the text, they will have to demean God and/or the text. This is a prime example. Christopher especially should know better. If he wants to say the law and statutes of God were not good, I think a guy named Paul would have something to say about that.

No. What is going on here is God is saying “You don’t want to live by my laws and statutes? Deal. Enjoy Babylon. See how you like their laws!”

And yet, it gets worse.

The implication probably isn’t immediately clear to those who don’t live by the Mosaic law, but God’s comment refers clearly to Exod 22:29b–30: “The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. You shall do the same with your oxen and with your sheep: seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to me.” And how did they give oxen and sheep to God? By blood sacrifice—as Exodus 22:31 makes clear with its reference to eating meat.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 69). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

The problem is, Christopher didn’t tell you all of what Exodus 22:29 said. If he had, you would have seen right through this.

“Do not hold back offerings from your granaries or your vats.

“You must give me the firstborn of your sons.

This is about an offering of service more than anything else. It is certainly not human sacrifice! Even if we were unsure, it is best to read the text in a way of charity and the Israelites detested human sacrifice.

If the text has to be made to say this to justify what Christopher wants it to justify, then the mainstream reading is on good grounds.

He even takes this over to the story of Abraham and Isaac saying God doesn’t want human sacrifice, but wants people willing to sacrifice their children. Never mind the real historical context that this is seeing if Abraham trusts that Isaac will be the one who will fulfill the promise made.

The propagation of these Deuteronomic laws is generally associated with the reign of Josiah in the late seventh century BCE, which was also the time of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah goes farther than the other texts; in one of the book’s divine speeches, God similarly recounts “all the evil of the people of Israel and the people of Judah that they did to provoke me to anger” (Jer 32:32), including, “They built the high places of Baal in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter my mind that they should do this abomination, causing Judah to sin” (32:35). He doesn’t simply forbid the practice; he denies that God ever commanded it. This is irreconcilable with Ezekiel 20:25, which says God did command it.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 72). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Look at that paragraph very carefully.

According to Christopher Hays, in the Old Testament, God commanded human sacrifice.

And what does Christopher draw from this in the end?

The harmful effects of social pressures on LGBTQ youth can be measured in various ways, but one of the most stark, tragic, and comparable is their rate of suicides and suicide attempts. A recent study endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association reported that 20.1 percent of sexual minority teens reported attempting suicide in 2017—3.8 times the rate of heterosexual teens.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 74). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

If these people are willing to kill themselves like this, there is something deeper going on. He is really just engaging in emotional blackmail here and saying “If you do not affirm them the way they want to be affirmed, then they will kill themselves and it will be on your head.”

No. No, it isn’t.

If anything, I think what Christopher is doing is the unloving thing. He is enabling them in a path of destruction that will result not just in a temporary death, but an eternal one.

If he is also wrong on this, he will have to give an account before God, the one who he says commanded human sacrifice and gave laws to His people that were not good, why he did what he did.

My stance is made. I will stick with what Jews and Christians have always said about what the Bible says about LGBTQ relationships. He who marries the spirit of the age is destined to be a widow.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 3

Has justice widened? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This chapter starts with the story of the daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers. They say their father did not participate in a rebellion against YHWH, but he had no sons. Why should his inheritance disappear? Moses takes their case to the Lord who agrees with the daughters, although later they are restricted in who they can marry to make sure they don’t take another tribe’s portion, which they accept.

It’s an interesting and a simple story. So what’s the big deal? Why is it in this chapter?

Hays presents it as a change in the attitude of God. Why? We are not told. All readers of Numbers will know is that this wasn’t included in the Law and it was a unique situation. On those cases, Moses would go to God for that one.

Apparently, this is supposed to be an opening to show God changing His mind allegedly on other issues.

Hays says that 1 Samuel 15 is another example and claims that Samuel misrepresents God by saying God doesn’t change His mind. Am I misrepresenting Hays? If only I was.

Humans, however, really like to put God in a box. We have already seen how Samuel, in his frustration at the failure of the king he anointed, misrepresents God by saying that God does not change his mind.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 62). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

So apparently, this is a part of Scripture where we are not presented with accurate information about God. This despite a prophet saying a clear prophecy that did indeed come true. It looks like to defend LGBTQ relationships from Scripture, you have to lower God.

Even looking at the case of Saul, it doesn’t argue what Hays claims. Had Saul been faithful, he would have had a lasting kingdom. Did God choose Saul knowing Saul would fall? Yes. God didn’t change His mind. Because the covenant was not argued, Saul was rejected. This didn’t surprise God at all.

There are passages of Scripture that on the surface do seem to indicate a change of mind. After reviewing this book, since it is an important topic, I do plan on writing on that one and showing why I think it’s anthropomorphic language. It’s meant to describe God to us in ways we can understand.

But getting back to Zelophehad….

The story of Zelophehad’s daughters suggests that the diversity and disagreements within the biblical laws are not an accident or an embarrassing error caught by pesky scholars. This story shows God himself taking part in reinterpreting and outright revising existing practices. In the Bible, God seems less troubled by change than his spokesmen are.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 64). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

So apparently God was ignorant when He gave the Law and hadn’t considered all the ramifications. At points like this, I don’t know what God the Hayses are presenting. He sure isn’t any that I recognize as the supreme being of YHWH revealed in Christ.

Later he says about the daughters that

The passage continues with a midrash on the women and their extraordinary faith: “They said, ‘God’s mercy is not like that of flesh and blood. The latter’s mercy is for the males more than for the females, but He who spoke and the world came into being is not that way. His mercy is for males and females.’” Paul seems also to have understood this when he wrote, “there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28), but clearly he still had to make the case in his time. In our time, new groups are asking for God’s mercy and asking to be accepted.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 67). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Yet even within the Pauline corpus, there is a distinction between male and female. What is Paul talking about in that passage? He’s talking about that when it comes to salvation, there is no distinction. All are saved the same way and all are in Christ the same way.

Are others asking for God’s mercy? Yes. They can also get it, but they must repent. The problem is Hays is saying they don’t need to repent. He has left out that Zelophehad’s daughters are asking on behalf of a man who died for his own sins and did not participate in a rebellion against God.

Alas, it gets even worse.

Next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 2

Did God second guess Himself? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was expecting that in a book such as this one, to defend same-sex intercourse, I would come across some interesting ways of interpreting texts like Leviticus and other passages. I figured Genesis 1 and 2 would be interpreted in ways that didn’t rely on a male-female relationship. Unfortunately, I was wrong in all of that. Early on in chapter two, I got this and I was stunned as I read it.

Yet we see here the emergence of a God who is already changing his mind in response to the reality of the world he has created, and especially to humankind. The first indications of this are very subtle, and are easily overlooked; they seem to fall into unspoken seams in the story. In Genesis 2:17, God warns the humans: “You shall not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”1 Of course, they go on to do just that. And yet, they do not die on that day.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 46). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Hays is not a philosopher. He does not understand the ramifications of what it means to say God changes His mind. This means that in some sense, God is limited. By what? God somehow gains new knowledge. From where? How can God be the God of all truth if all truth is not known?

Not only that, but this is on matters of morality. Did God decide that it would be wrong for Him to kill Adam and Eve on that day? If so, then there is a moral standard outside of God that God has to follow. God is not ultimate. God’s goodness is subservient to something outside of Himself. Hays isn’t really arguing about God. He’s arguing about Superman. God is just a really big man.

Still, the passage needs to be addressed. I contend that they did die that day, in that they fail away from everlasting life from being in covenant with God. I do not think man and woman were created immortal because they needed the tree of life to survive. They could have lived forever had they ate of it, but that was blocked off from them.

Yet it was at this point, I had hoped that this would be a one-off thing on the part of Christopher. I hoped I would not see this language often. As I went through the book, I saw that I hoped in vain.

Not only that, it gets worse. Hear what Christopher says when describing the flood.

After the auspicious start to creation, things have not worked out the way they were supposed to. The whole thing has been a mistake.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 49). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

God made a mistake?

If these are the lengths you have to go to to defend LGBTQ behavior from a Christian standpoint, then the case should be rock-solid that Scripture cannot be used to defend it. In order to justify man in this case, you have to lower God. That is what is consistently done in this book. God is lowered while the creation is exalted.

In describing the story of Hagar, he says:

The second theme is God’s propensity to relent from punishment, to show mercy even at the cost of changing his mind and bending his principles of justice.

Hays, Christopher B; Hays, Richard B. The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story (p. 56). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

God bends principles of justice?

If you are part of the LGBTQ community, the Hayses have not done you any favors here. They have shown how much they have to change God for their argument to work. I can only wonder if this is something that Christopher just noticed in his work when he wants to justify LGBTQ lifestyles that he somehow missed all these years.

Something is being widened here, but it isn’t God’s mercy.

And yet this is just the start.

I wish I could tell you it will get better, but no. It will not.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: The Widening of God’s Mercy Chapter 1

Has God’s mercy widened? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This book was made required reading for my first PhD seminar which starts next Monday. I suppose they want us to read something controversial we can respond to. Normally, I don’t try to use class books for my blog, but this was one that was so bad that I just had to say something on it.

Richard Hays wrote this with his son Christopher, hence I will at times be using first names in this blog to make it clear who I am speaking about. In it, they say they have changed their mind on what God has to say about same-sex romantic relationships. I thought for a bit on how to phrase that because I couldn’t say that they changed their mind on what Scripture says. As we go through the book, it will become clear what Scripture says doesn’t really matter much. Christopher takes the Old Testament and Richard the New Testament.

That being said, the first chapter is not really that disagreeable. You are going through and you really don’t see much. That makes sense as this is an introductory chapter. It is mainly introducing us to the character of God in the book and the role of man.

Christopher does talk about Calvinism some, but I’m quite sure not a single Calvinist will like this book. I’ll go further and say that not a single person who holds to classical theism at all will like this book. When writers talk about the nature of God, they should try to tun their ideas by some philosophical friends and ask “Do you think I’m opening myself up to any potential land mines by saying this?”

Unfortunately, this was not done.

Still, I will give credit that the first chapter was not entirely wrong. If anything, we could say this part was a more pleasant read than most. Christopher speaks about that it is because of the love of God that we even exist at all. I have no beef with that statement. He does treat Edwards as a negative in church history with the Sinners In The Hands of an Angry God sermon. From it, one would think that God utterly despised humanity and wanted to finish them off. If that is all you know about Jonathan Edwards that would be a shame, much like how I said in a post recently that if all you know about Pascal is his wager, you are misinformed.

He also does remind us in the end that people remember when they feel accepted and loved at a church. They also remember when they do not. While we do not need to go light on sin at all, we need to remember that those people who need healing from sin need to know that the church is a place that they can go to to get what they need. The church should be a hospital for the wounded and not a place where we shoot our wounded.

So everything sounds good. Right?

Just wait….

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)