McLaren and others think many Christians read Scripture from the wrong standpoint, the “Greco-Roman narrative,” which they have received. That G-R narrative shapes them to read it wrongly, so that God is violent and blows up in rage over our imperfections due to our fall into sin. People need to be forgiven so God will love them, yet He still has determined to sort them into one of two destinies: heaven, or hell, where He will blow up in rage for eternity upon them.
Yet, for McLaren, Jesus’ story needs to be read in its Jewish context, in which sin should be treated more as our “coming of age.” Though we act foolishly with new opportunities and freedoms, God does not disown us because we are in His “family.” Instead, He gives us instruction and correction. God does not let our freedoms run wild, restricting what we can do sometimes by limiting our freedoms and letting natural consequences take their effect, so we learn and grow. However, He never works directly, only indirectly; for instance, God did not cause the water in the Nile to turn into blood, but it likely turned red from a red tide.
When we develop socioeconomically and technologically faster than morally, we “fall” into sin, not just personally but also by social dynamics. Examples include how many in Germany became involved with the Nazis’ agenda, and how western nations built empires through colonization, for these oppress others and grieve God’s heart.
For McLaren, biblical depictions of God as wrathful stem from evolving interpretations of Him, but we find the mature view in Jesus. That view matches with the peaceable kingdom portrayed in McLaren’s understanding of the prophets’ main message, which he summarizes under the label “Isaiah.” God is good, which for McLaren means He is non-violent, loving, and just, yet His justice comes by His naming sins for what they are, getting us to agree with Him about them, and then His absorbing and forgetting them.
Now, surely he is right that God does not exhaustively determine the future. If He did, then God would be the author evil. Yet, that does not mean that his open theism wins by default; instead, McLaren should consider middle knowledge, a view on which God is sovereign and omniscient, yet we are free in a libertarian sense.
More so, is McLaren’s “Jewish” story a faithful, forward reading of the Bible, especially of the Old Testament? For various reasons, I don’t think so. Frequently, the biblical authors ascribe to God violent actions for judgment, e.g., the flood; the plagues upon Egypt and Pharaoh; death in conjunction with the Passover; the destruction of Egypt’s army in the Red Sea; the destruction of Israelites who worshipped the golden calf; the Levitical animal sacrifices; Jehu and God’s destruction of Ahab’s house; God’s sending Assyria and Babylon to conquer Israel and Judah, respectively; and many more. Even the prophets couch their message of a future, peaceable kingdom in terms of God’s judgment upon nations and His own people who sin.
So, what might seem to be a more faithful, forward reading of the Bible? I think the theme that Scripture develops, from Gen 1 through Rev 22, is that He is seeking a people for whom He will be their God, they will be His people, and He will dwell in their midst. While God is love, He also is holy –purely, completely good, and even the standard of goodness, and utterly undefiled by any evil. Therefore, being His people cannot take place on any terms other than His. Throughout Scripture, God will not leave the guilty unpunished because He is purely holy and just, and to be purely good, God has to be truly holy. Otherwise, He could allow evil to be in his presence and go unaddressed.
Yet, we will see in the next blog more reasons to see that on their view, God is not truly good, and even One of whom to be afraid.