Was Abraham Wrong? Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 1
Does conscience require us to stamp the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac as unhistorical or Abraham wrong and a moral failure?
“The Sacrifice of Abraham” by Rembrandt, 1635: In this earlier work, the angel knocks the knife from Abraham
Best-selling author Rachel Held Evans has a popular blog, speaks frequently, and has published three books through the Christian publishers Thomas Nelson and Zondervan. One of her blogs garnered a lot of attention: “I would fail Abraham’s test (and I bet you would too).” You may recall that in Genesis 22, God tests Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son Isaac on a mountain. The aged Abraham and young man Isaac go to the mountain. Isaac allows his father to bind him and lay him atop a stack of wood, but as Abraham takes up his knife, an angel stops him. Abraham then sees a ram caught in a thicket behind him and sacrifices it instead.
Rachel Held Evans’s Reimagined Text
Here’s what Evans wrote about Genesis 22 (emphases hers):
It’s a test I’m certain I would have failed:
Get your son. Get a knife. Slit his throat and set him on fire.
I’d like to think that even if those demands thundered from the heavens in a voice that sounded like God’s, I’d have sooner been struck dead than obeyed them.
Regardless of one’s interpretation of this much-debated and reimagined text (which makes a bit more sense in its ancient Near Eastern context), the story of Abraham’s binding of Isaac should unsettle every parent and every person with a conscience. Yes, God provided a lamb, but only after Abraham gathered the wood, loaded up the donkey, made the journey, arranged the altar, tied his son to the stake, and raised the knife in the air.
Be honest. Would you have even gathered the wood?
I think I would have failed Abraham’s test. And I think you would have too.
And I’m beginning to think that maybe that’s okay….
Evans’s “reimagined text” has God callously barking out orders and Abraham tying his son to a stake—embellishments that make a difficult text more difficult, that create a straw man that’s easier to defeat than the actual text, and that obscure the text’s real meaning.
straw man fallacy: Arguing against a distortion, an exaggeration, or a misrepresentation of someone’s position rather than against the actual position.
Alternative: Not Historical Reality
Evans later brings up Joshua driving the Canaanites out of the Promised Land to show why the two stories may not be true:
Those who defend these stories as historical realities representative of God’s true desires and actions in the world typically respond to challenges to that interpretation by declaring: “God is God, and … we have no business questioning [what he commands]”
Here Evans is not among those who “defend these stories as historical realities”; in other words, she thinks Genesis 22 may be false.
“Abraham’s Sacrifice” by Rembrandt, 1655: In this later work, the angel tenderly wraps his arms around Abraham
Why does Evans doubt these passages are real events? She says that “God … imprinted us all with a conscience—with a deep sense of right and wrong,” and to accept “as just … actions I believe are evil” would be “to deny that conscience.” One of the actions her conscience tells her is wrong is God’s command to Abraham, because she (like atheist Richard Dawkins) thinks the command looks like abuse:
… it doesn’t make sense to me that a God whose defining characteristic is supposed to be love would present Himself to His creation in a way that looks nothing like our understanding of love. If love can look like abuse … everything is relativized! Our moral compass is rendered totally unreliable.
Alternative: God Doesn’t Exist
She explains that she doesn’t want to accept these stories as true because if they are
This is a hard God to root for. It’s a hard God to defend against all my doubts and all the challenges posed by science, reason, experience, and intuition. I once heard someone say he became an atheist for theological reasons, and that makes sense to me. Once you are convinced that the deity you were taught to worship does evil things, it’s easier to question the deity’s very existence than it is to set aside your moral objections and worship anyway.
Alternative: Abraham Wrong & Failed the Test
So far she’s presented two alternatives: the stories are not historical realities or God doesn’t exist. Evans ends with a third alternative:
I am not yet a mother, and still I know, deep in my gut, that I would sooner turn my back on everything I know to be true than sacrifice my child on the altar of religion.
Maybe the real test isn’t in whether you drive the knife through the heart.
Maybe the real test is in whether you refuse.
So if God is good and did ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, then, in Evans’ mind, the test was in whether Abraham would refuse, and since Abraham didn’t refuse, he failed the “real test.” This alternative makes Abraham wrong and a moral failure.
***
Those strong statements contradict the Bible’s estimation of Abraham being an exemplar of faith for this very deed. And Evans’s first alternative—pitching perplexing Bible passages—always leads to bigger doubts about the Bible as a whole and about whether any of it can be trusted.
Should Christians follow Evans’s lead? Do we need to reject the Bible’s assessment of Abraham or call the chapter fiction?
Not at all.
My husband tried to contact Evans through her publicist and referenced my 2011 post, “Abraham, Isaac & Child Sacrifice,” and the publicist said Evans would get back to him, but she never did. Her post poses questions I didn’t address, so I’ll address them here in a series, beginning today by defining and examining Evans’s main argument. Although Evans flits from Bible story to Bible story as she presents her reasons for doubting this one, for this series I’ll address the questions as they pertain just to the story of Abraham binding Isaac.
Rachel Held Evans’s Main Argument
Evans is right to ask questions and seek answers. Of course she should not “disengage my emotions and intellect and keep them a safe distance from my faith.” It saddens me whenever I hear anyone has been told that.
“The Sacrifice of Isaac” by Juan de Valdes Leal, 1659
But there are good, solid answers to the Abraham-Isaac questions that don’t call for discarding parts of the Bible and historic Christian doctrine.
Let’s look at Evans’s main argument. As I understand it, it goes like this:
The conscience “God … imprinted us all with” tells her “that I would sooner turn my back on everything I know to be true than sacrifice my child on the altar of religion” as Abraham almost did; therefore, either
-
- God’s “real test is in whether you refuse,” or
- “stories” such as these are not “historical realities,” or
- the “deity you were taught to worship does evil things” so “it’s easier to question the deity’s very existence than it is to set aside your moral objections and worship anyway.”
To summarize:
Her conscience tells her sacrificing an offspring is wrong; therefore, either
-
- God meant for Abraham to refuse to obey, or
- the story about Abraham and Isaac is historically false, or
- the God revealed in the Bible does not exist.
Let’s look at that first option.
Was Abraham wrong? Did he fail the test?
Evans says, “Maybe the real test is in whether you refuse,” proposing that Abraham failed the test. Here obedience made Abraham wrong. In her follow-up post the next week, she quotes a rabbi who says that Abraham failed the test because he should have protested.
Is this interpretation valid?
No, because it doesn’t fit the text.
Both the OT and NT affirm that Abraham’s obedience was what God wanted.
First, Genesis 22 says God neither rebuked nor corrected Abraham; rather, he blessed him for his action: “because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you … because you have obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:15-18, emphasis mine).
Second, the New Testament repeatedly praises Abraham for the offering. James writes that Abraham was “justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar” and that this act fulfilled the Scripture that said, “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness (James 2:21, 23). The author of Hebrews tells us, “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac” because he “considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead” (Hebrews 11:17-19).
Both the Old Testament and New Testament, then, affirm that Abraham’s obedience was what God wanted. His obedience did not make Abraham wrong and a moral failure.
So the first option—that Abraham should have refused to obey—doesn’t at all fit the text. Let’s look at Evans’s second option: the story about Abraham and Isaac never happened.
Is Rachel Held Evans right that Abraham failed the test when he bound Isaac? #apologetics Share on XIs the story not “historical reality”?
The main trouble with this view for Christians is that, as we saw above, the New Testament treats the story as something that actually happened. Jesus himself honored Abraham and praised his works (John 8:39).
Moreover, Paul writes that Genesis 22 “preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham … the man of faith” (Galatians 3:8-9). How? The prophets Abraham and Isaac were acting out a future event—the Father sending the Son as a sacrifice for sins—so that the Jews would recognize the significance of the future event when it happened (more on this in a coming post).
New Testament scholar D. A. Carson says that when Jesus said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad” (John 8:56), he referred to the binding of Isaac and the promise resulting from it of the blessing of all nations:
Even if ‘to see my day’ does not mean some prophetic vision of the literal fulfilment of prophecy in Jesus and his ministry, but some vision, however vague, of the promise inherent in the binding of Isaac or (better) of the covenant promising that in him all the nations of the earth would be blessed …, the fact remains that Jesus identifies the ultimate fulfilment of all Abraham’s hopes and joys with his own person and work.[ref]D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 357.[/ref]
“Sacrifice of Isaac” by Caravaggio, 1603
Besides the New Testament’s testimony to the binding of Isaac being an actual historical event, there’s the difficulty that atheists will consider it cheating that Evans claims that the parts of the Bible she likes are true and the parts she doesn’t like are false. Tim Keller calls this making a God in your own image, and, ironically, Evans agrees that “we can’t go …bending God into our own image.”
This course of action doesn’t ultimately console Christians either, because they know that once you toss out passages you don’t like, you’re going to wonder whether you have any logical reason to keep the passages you do like.
Such as salvation by grace.
Is Rachel Held Evans right--the story of Abraham binding Isaac isn't historical? #apologetics Share on XDoes a good God exist then?
Are we stuck then with Evans’s final alternative: a good God doesn’t exist?
Certainly not.
This is a faulty dilemma. There are at least two more alternatives: (1) we could be missing facts that clear up the issues, or (2) we could have a mistaken conscience. We’ll look at those options in the rest of this series. There we’ll see the bigger context of what God was doing in Abraham’s life and what the Scripture means when it says Scripture “preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham.” We will see why this story is an integral part of the gospel and how it served to bring people to know him.
faulty dilemma: presenting two (or three) views, options, or outcomes in such a way that they seem to be the only alternatives.
***
Next, part 2 of this series addresses Rachel Held Evans’s main argument by explaining missing cultural facts that clear up parts of the story.
Does conscience force us to reject the story of Abraham binding Isaac? #apologetics Share on XRelated Posts
- Abraham & Human Sacrifice? Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 2: Did Rachel Held Evans miss cultural facts?
- What Made Abraham Different? Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 3: Rachel Held Evans said she’d sooner be struck dead than obey, so why did Abraham nearly sacrifice Isaac?
- Do God’s Motives Matter? Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 4: If God’s defining characteristic is supposed to be love, why would he ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?
- Conscience says Abraham Wrong? Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 5: Does God expect us to deny conscience by accepting the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac?
- Abraham, Isaac & Child Sacrifice: A short version of this series
- Jesus in the Old Testament
Thank you!
You’re welcome!
“If love can look like abuse … everything is relativized! Our moral compass is rendered totally unreliable.”
Absolutely. And that’s kinda the point…
Jeremiah 17:9 — The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
The knowledge that we are imperfect — that we have a FLAWED, INCOMPLETE view of the world — is central to the Christian faith. We can only see our little sliver of the world, and even that imperfectly, whereas God can see the WHOLE world, every decision and outcome past, present, and future.
As such, our moral compass IS totally unreliable. While it may see SOME truth in a situation, any sitcom on TV can demonstrate just how little truth we ACTUALLY see.
Can love look like abuse? You betcha. Just ask any kid who has ever been spanked or grounded. Just ask any teen whose desperate parents left them sitting in jail rather than bailing them out, hoping against hope that THIS time they’ll wise up. Abuse is predicated on one thing — the disregard of the person being “abused”. Sometimes, lessons are painful, but the pain does NOT disprove the love of the one doing the teaching.
Back to the argument — what would a loving God hope to accomplish with such a request to Abraham? Quite simply, a heart entirely sold out to Him. See, God knew where Abraham’s heart was, but Abraham didn’t. He COULDN’T, having never been in that position.
God tested his faith in a CONTROLLED SETTING — a setting OUTSIDE of everyday trials that Abraham could chalk up to the Devil — to give Abraham insight into his own heart and God’s faithfulness… because if a God of righteous judgment who LOVED Abraham could save him from His own judgment, how much MORE would that same God save Abraham from an adversary that wanted to steal from him, kill him, and destroy him?
Well said, nashdude!
You said:
“Can love look like abuse? You betcha. Just ask any kid who has ever been spanked or grounded. Just ask any teen whose desperate parents left them sitting in jail rather than bailing them out, hoping against hope that THIS time they’ll wise up. Abuse is predicated on one thing — the disregard of the person being “abused”. Sometimes, lessons are painful, but the pain does NOT disprove the love of the one doing the teaching.”
—
Indeed, that was part of the value of the test of Abraham.
Nevertheless, God had not set out to contrive that test Himself. And the test was not a punishment. God was *not* saying to Abe, “Yo, Abe, I want you to believe, from now on, that I am the kind of God who wants child sacrifice.” Abe set out to comply with the seeming sincere request to have Isaac’s life’s-blood shed, but NOT SIMPLY because God had seemed sincerely to request its accomplishment.
Abraham was a pagan. And God does not repeat Himself in vain. So there has never been such a test posed by God ever since.
Abraham was a pagan, but who had come to have faith in the God of Shem, Noah, and Adam.
So Evans’s point is not meritless. And the *popular* Christian defense of that test is so willing to defend God therein that that very defense misrepresents God’s point of view of the matter. Namely, to represent God as having been justified to pose such a test because of its serving as a type for the future fulfillment in the reality of Christ. Such a rationale makes God look like a really wacked-out character!
‘Oh’ says God one day, ‘I would so love to pose such a test! That way, people can look back on it and say, “God was being so loving in making a human being think that God ever wants humans to take the life’s-blood of anyone”.’
Jesus’s sacrifice was a sacrifice. By Jesus. For us. The distinction is all-important.
And so it ever came about that God posed the test to Abe ONLY because humans ARE worthy of punishment. Abe was a pagan whom God praised in heaven. Job was the everyman, so the test was not of the same, durable cloth. Abe was a *pagan*, not an everyman. And the *Accuser* was the one who sought to ‘punish’ Abe. Abe took the punishment, and won.
Later, Abe’s grandson won, too, but for a different matter. And it is to *that* different matter that we all are called. That matter is how we can ever hope to rise above the shallow, effectively a-historical understanding of those like Evans. God is not dealing with Everymen, but with a fallen human race that very much requires being rescued from itself. Abe’s very pagan level of ethical understanding was what allowed him to be shown to have been the father of the rescued.
I really do not think that you have addressed R. H. Evan’s objection.
You make much of pointing out her errors of logic and cultural history.
But you seem allow Evans the leeway to claim that you are asserting that Abraham was morally right to comply with the seeming sincere command of God to actually accomplish the death of Isaac.
Abraham was morally, ethically, wrong. Nevertheless, Abraham did not fail the test. The test was whether he would sacrifice Isaac on God’s verbatim to do so. The test was not a moral one, even though it had a moral or ethical dimension. The test was not even one that Abraham was privy to. Nor was Job’s test one that Job was privy to.
But, in order to support what the New Testament expressly says in favor of Abraham, you allow those who think as Evan’s does to presuppose what it seems to me that you yourself (and most Christians today) presuppose: that God was pleased to have to pose the test to Abraham.
…
I had a co-worker, once, against whom I found myself arguing over Genesis 22. He and I argued, off and on, for a period of months about that chapter, all without any mention of the Hebrews passage, or, indeed, any New Testament teaching that said as much. All we used to support our respective arguments was our respective views on the right of the human mind to reason at all when there was any conflict with what that mind might be impressed to think that God seems to mean by any of His words. My friend denied that the human mind has any such right, due to his conviction that what God wants is for a person to give a blindly irrational assent or obedience to any of God’s verbatim of which that person has knowledge. I, in contrast, kept arguing that in which the Hebrews passage consists, and this without ever mentioning that passage to him.
So this went on for months, and only increased in frequency and in duration of occasion. When he and I had reached a heated level of debate, and finally spent an entire day arguing while working, he next day went on vacation, and came back having experienced something profoundly like that which I had been arguing that Abraham had experienced (and of which the Hebrews passage is the spelling out).
Prior to his vacation, he had been convinced that my argument thereto had been ridiculous. When he came back from vacation, he admitted that my point was a profound psychological reality, not any easy test at all.
Nevertheless, he maintained his essential (and grossly irrational) view of God’s test of Abraham, stating that my point was beside the point.
I then spent the next hour summarizing to him how I had used common good sense all along. Then I said that there is a passage in the Bible that says exactly what I had been saying all along, Hebrews 11: 17-19, and that he should, when he got home that day, look up that passage and see for himself.
…
That argument between my co-worker and I, and my final solution to it, illustrates the deeper problem that your answers here do not address: had there been no such solution available…
In other words, had the New Testament not yet been written, and thus it not yet taught as part of the canon of ‘God’s Word’ aka verbatim, then I would have been out of luck in making my co-worker see that his view was rotten to the core.
Evan’s makes that point, but you seem willing to think that her point is entirely mistaken.
But if Evans is entirely mistaken, then my co-worker was right and I was wrong.
…
Where, indeed, would you be, logic-wise, had the Hebrews passage, and those like it, not existed?
That passage clearly teaches the general solution: that even Abraham, who lived so long ago, reasoned beyond the local verbatim. The Bible is not made up of mutually isolated bits of meaning. The whole Bible is one, fully integral system of meaning. And even if the book of Job did not exist, that still would leave us with far more than just the first two chapters of Genesis.
Job’s test was that of the Everyman. Abraham’s test was anything but. The Accuser had lost the argument over Job which the Accuser had put God in a bind to prove.
So the question for us, today, is whether we each do, in principle, as the Hebrews passage says that Abraham did: use God’s word. Genesis 22 records only a tiny portion of God’s own words, and that chapter was authored entirely from the point of view of the pagan that Abraham was. In other words, that chapter functionally is NOT equivalent to any part of the Law of Moses: it is not a Complete Idiot’s Guide to what God wants from us, and the New Testament does NOT teach that it is.