I guess Richard Dawkins didn’t read my book. . . .

Well, not that it would have mattered: Dawkins seems determined never to give religion the benefit of the doubt. In his God Delusion, he considers Yahweh an “evil monster” whose command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is “disgraceful” and tantamount to “child abuse and bullying.” Have Jews and Christians missed something all these millennia? Dawkins’s own hostility toward religion greatly diminishes his charitability quotient.

Not only can we detect hostility in Dawkins, but hypocrisy as well. In his book River out of Eden, he denies that evil exists at all:

If the universe were just electrons and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies . . . are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention . . . . The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. So we have “no evil and no good” there and Yahweh as an “evil monster” here.

So which is it? If, presumably, Dawkins hasn’t drastically changed his metaphysical outlook, what exactly is his case against an allegedly evil deity?

We’ll let this pass and turn back to Abraham. In my book How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong? (Baker), I address the sacrifice of Isaac passage from Genesis 22. I’ll simply summarize some key points and make a few others in hopes of providing a far different and more accurate perspective than Dawkins’s.

First, God’s command to Abraham isn’t some contextless bolt out of the blue. Rather, it comes in the broader context of God’s dealings with Abraham. These interactions included God’s promise to bless the nations through Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3) and His permitting Abraham to let Hagar and the non-promised son Ishmael depart into the wilderness with the assurance that God would take care of them (Gen. 21). Without this divine promise, it would have been wrong for Abraham to send them away. In fact, the latter passage proves to be a “test run” for Abraham, who had hoped Ishmael would be the son of promise. God said this was not to be. Instead, the promise-child would come from both Abraham’s and Sarah’s bodies (Gen. 17:19).

Secondly, Abraham had already known God’s faithful character and had come to trust His promises; so here God is calling on Abraham to trust Him yet again, but in a dramatic—indeed, startling—manner. Even in the command to Abraham, God says something unusual in Gen. 22:2: “Please take your son.” According to the Old Testament scholar Gordon Wenham, we see a remarkable tenderness here, which cushions the harsh command. The command hints that “the Lord appreciates the costliness of what he is asking.” And to reinforce the implied message to trust in God’s faithfulness, He further refers to the long-awaited son of promise, Isaac: “your son, your only son, whom you love.” Abraham knew that without Isaac, God’s promise couldn’t be fulfilled. In addition, God’s sends Abraham to a mountain in the region of Moriah (Gen. 22:2, derived from “provide, see,” cf. 22:14). This harks back to God’s initial call to Abraham, who was to leave for a land “which I will show you” (Gen. 12:1). In the very word Moriah—“provision”—we have a hint of salvation and deliverance. In God’s command, we have a triple reinforcement that God will somehow deliver on His promises.

Interestingly, Abraham doesn’t assume that God’s command is tantamount to human sacrifice so common in the ancient Near East—a practice the Scriptures roundly condemn (Lev. 18:21; 20:2; Jer. 19:5; Ezek. 20:30–31; 23:36–39). Abraham registers no moral shock since he suspects that God has something completely different in mind. We need to keep in mind that God’s command is unique and unrepeatable and that it takes place in the particular salvation-historical context of God’s promises and unique provision.

We could add that since God is the giver and sustainer of life, He is under no obligation to allow us a certain number of years on earth. The testing of Abraham serves as a reminder that God—in His good and sovereign purposes—may give and take away and even make demands we can’t fully understand. Though God will do what is right, He is not on equal footing with humans.

Thirdly, though Abraham doesn’t know how in the world God is going to fulfill His promise, his response reflects a confidence that Isaac will not ultimately perish. Abraham doesn’t separate God’s promise in Genesis 12 and 17 from God’s command in Genesis 22—and neither should we. Abraham knew that even if the child of promise died, God would somehow fulfill His promise by raising Isaac from the dead. This is why Abraham tells his servants as he departs with Isaac. “We will worship and we will return to you” (Gen. 22:5). Hebrews 11:17-19 reinforces this theme, stressing that Abraham was confident that God could even raise the dead.

Fourthly, God, in his sovereignty, has used the example of Abraham, who freely giving (rather than “sparing” [Gen. 22:12]) his son to God, as a picture of God’s freely providing His “beloved” and “one and only Son” for our salvation. As Paul writes in Romans 8:32 (with Abraham’s sacrifice in mind): “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”

Those are a few reflections on Dawkins’s reaction to Genesis 22. Before signing off, however, perhaps I should mention that my book How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong? also tackles other issues pertaining to what Dawkins calls the “ubiquitous wierdness” of the Old Testament. So I look at levitical laws—including kosher laws—and some of the harsh civil laws for Israel. Contrary to Dawkins and other new atheists, these laws are not to be taken as ideal and universal for all cultures across the ages. Rather, they are a divine accommodation to human hard-heartedness (cp. Mt. 19:8), which included structures of slavery, polygamy, and male-biased patriarchy—despite God’s ideals spelled out at the beginning of Scripture. These include the fact that all humans being made in the divine image (Gen. 1:26-27) and the ideal of lifelong monogamous marriage between husband and wife (2:24). God’s creational design rules out slavery, male-domination, racism, and polygamy.

The Mosaic law is a remarkable humanizing attempt at morally elevating Israelite culture (e.g., slaves and women received rights unheard of in the ancient Near East). At the same time, the laws of Sinai regulated and restrained inferior ancient Near East social structures that Israel had adopted. Unfortunately, many of the new atheists’ arguments against “the God of the Old Testament” are misleading caricatures, which neglect important nuances and the role of progressive moral development. In the next few blogs postings, I’ll highlight more of these.

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