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Conscience Says Abraham Wrong? Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 5

Does God expect us to deny our conscience by accepting the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac?

This is my fifth and final post addressing Rachel Held Evans’s October 2014 blog post, “I would fail Abraham’s test (and I bet you would too).” Her main argument (as I understand it) is 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 (in her opinion) 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 “question the deity’s very existence.”

This is clearly a faulty dilemma because there are at least two more alternatives: we’re missing facts about the story which clear up the dilemma, and/or our conscience misinforms us. My last three posts explained missing facts that should clarify the passage and resolve conscience issues.

The Sacrifice of Abraham and conscience

“Abraham’s Sacrifice” by Rembrandt, 1655

But what if our conscience still bothers us about this story? This appears to be an important question to Rachel Held Evans—she uses the word “conscience” eleven times in this blog. Here’s an example:

But why would the very God I believe imprinted us all with a conscience—with a deep sense of right and wrong—ask me to deny that conscience by accepting [God’s command in another Bible story] as just? … And how could I ever bring myself to worship a God who, if these accounts are true, ordained and derived glory from actions I believe are evil?

I agree with Evans that God gives people a conscience. But accepting these Bible passages as historically true does not require one to “deny that conscience.” We’ll look in a moment at how Jesus addressed people whose consciences disagreed with his words. But first we must understand why people’s consciences differ.

Why do people’s consciences differ?

Our political system shows a nation deeply divided on issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and gun laws with people on both sides claiming the moral high ground. How can this be if all our consciences come from God?

Let’s look at two facts about conscience.

Moral convictions are learned

Talbot Seminary theology professor Klaus Issler calls the conscience “moral sensitivity and moral reasoning.” He says:

The particular convictions within our conscience … are not set and fully formed at birth. “The biblical notion of conscience does not imply that we are given an innate moral code common to all human beings, as popular usage sometimes suggests. It is rather a conscious sensitivity … that needs to be informed, sharpened, and directed.” Like a personal computer, our conscience must be programmed with appropriate input for it to be useful. Since our convictions are learned throughout life … we will acquire both good and sinful values. Thus, the urgency arises for growing believers to regularly evaluate and educate their conscience toward righteousness.[ref]Klaus Issler, “Conscience: Moral Sensitivity and Moral Reasoning,” in Christian Perspectives on Being Human: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Integration, ed. J. P. Moreland and David J. Ciocchi (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1993), 268. Issler quotes Arthur F.Holmes, Shaping Character: Moral Education in the Christian College (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 27. [/ref]

For example, the Apostle Paul testified, “I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day” (Acts 23:1). Yet for a time his conscience told him it was right to kill Christians (Acts 22:3-4). Once the risen Lord appeared to him, he became one of the Christians he formerly thought deserved death. New information informed his conscience and he realized what he formerly judged right (killing Christians) was actually wrong.

Conscience of Martha and Mary differed

Martha’s and Mary’s consciences differed. St. Nicholas Church, Orebro, Sweden. Public domain photo by David Castor.

While God gave us our conscience, he did not fully form it. Instead, it’s shaped by influences such as parents, teachers, culture, religious texts, persuasion, reason, fear, and desires—including the desire for praise from others. Because it’s subject to such influences, people differ in what they think is right or wrong and their moral convictions can change, as Paul’s did.

Conscience is not fully reliable

If there are absolute moral truths (and I agree with Evans that there are), then because conscience is shaped by outside forces and because it can change, it is a guide, but it’s not fully reliable. Indeed, the Scripture warns that “The heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9), and experience shows us humans are adept at justifying in themselves actions they normally condemn in others.

The Apostle Paul recognized that conscience can mislead: “My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Corinthians 4:4). Therefore, while we must keep our conscience clear, we must also properly inform it.

How did Jesus address faulty consciences?

God asks us to keep a clear conscience, but he also asks us to change mistaken beliefs that affect our conscience.

  • Jesus corrected those who said wrong things were right. Jesus told the scribes that seeking places of honor and praying long public prayers for a pretense—things they thought right and honorable—were wrong and would bring them condemnation (Mark 12:38-40).
  • Jesus corrected those who said right things were wrong. When the Pharisees told Jesus that healing on the Sabbath was wrong based on their traditions, Jesus explained why their rules contradicted God’s commands and, when they persisted, pointed out that the reason they rejected his arguments was they were people-pleasers rather than God pleasers (Matthew 12:10-13; John 5:15-17, 44).
  • Jesus condemned hypocrisy. Jesus said those who condemn others for behaviors they excuse in themselves would be judged by the standards by which they judged others (Matthew 7:2).

What does conscience tell us about human sacrifice?

Rachel Held Evans appears to believe that “everyone person with a conscience” would agree all human sacrifice wrong. But that’s not so.

People’s consciences differ regarding human sacrifices

As I explained in Part 2, people in Abraham’s culture considered human sacrifice to be morally good because they believed that unconcerned deities were behind the forces of nature and that they could manipulate these deities through human sacrifices in times of need (such as famine).

Today, however, people in our Western culture typically believe most human sacrifices are wrong because (a) our laws have a Judeo-Christian heritage that forbids people sacrificing humans (Leviticus 18:21); and (b) we do not believe idols who grant blessings for human sacrifices exist.

Note that a belief against sacrificing children to attain blessing is not universal, however, even in our culture. Ethicist Peter Singer argues that parents should be allowed to kill infants up to thirty days old if it will increase the family’s happiness to do so.[ref]Scott Klusendorf, “Peter Singer’s Bold Defense of Infanticide,” Christian Research Journal (Charlotte: Christian Research Institute, April 16, 2009), accessed January 5, 2015, http://www.equip.org/article/peter-singers-bold-defense-of-infanticide/. [/ref] Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, said, “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” [ref]Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race (New York: Truth Publishing, 1920), page 63, accessed January 5, 2016, http://books.google.com/books?id=a-skAAAAYAAJ&dq=The%20most%20merciful%20thing%20that%20a%20large%20family%20does%20to%20one%20of%20its%20infant%20members%20is%20to%20kill%20it.&client=firefox-a&pg=PA63#v=onepage&q=&f=false. [/ref] And many see no problem with partial birth abortion, which is the killing of an infant whose living body has been birthed feet-first to the neck.

Human sacrifice is not always wrong

Was it wrong for the Allied generals to send troops to the Normandy beaches on D-day knowing there would be great human sacrifice in order to accomplish the defeat of Hitler and the saving of other human lives?

Was it wrong to scramble F-16 fighter jets to down “an airliner full of kids and salesmen and girlfriends” on September 11, 2001, in order to accomplish the saving of human lives on the ground?[ref]Steve Hendrix, ”F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on Sept. 11,” The Washington Post (DC: Washington Post, September 8, 2011), accessed January 5, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/f-16-pilot-was-ready-to-give-her-life-on-sept-11/2015/09/06/7c8cddbc-d8ce-11e0-9dca-a4d231dfde50_story.html. [/ref]

Conscience and human sacrifice

The ultimate human sacrifice. “The Three Crosses,” by Rembrandt, 1653

Was it wrong for the Father to send his Son Jesus to earth knowing he would be sacrificed in order to accomplish the defeat of sin and death and the saving of human souls?

Definitely not.

Then was it wrong for God to ask the prophets Abraham and Isaac to be portents of that event by acting it out at a time in history in which such deeds were not considered wrong?

No. God was showing what love looks like: It looks like sacrifice.

Does God expect us to deny our conscience?

Rachel Held Evans asked, “Why would … God … ask me to deny … conscience by accepting” God’s commands in certain Bible stories “as just?”

God doesn’t ask anyone to deny conscience; rather, he asks us to change the mistaken beliefs that misinform our conscience.

Rachel Held Evans says, “I would sooner turn my back on everything I know to be true than sacrifice my child on the altar of religion.” God isn’t asking her to sacrifice her child: he made it clear when he stopped Abraham and when he gave the Law of Moses that he does not want humans sacrificing humans on altars.

And she doesn’t need to “turn my back on everything I know to be true”; she can accept the New Testament’s testimony of the historicity of this story by simply turning from the belief that because she “would have failed Abraham’s test,” nothing could justify Abraham’s test. Her situation—and ours—has little in common with Abraham’s. His was

At the same time, Abraham’s test has one important thing to do with us: it demonstrates what the Father did when he sent his Son as a sacrifice to save us. Hallelujah.

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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 his son Isaac? Do God’s motives matter?

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet spurns Mr. Darcy’s marriage proposal despite his vast wealth and enviable social standing. Why? Because, she declares, Darcy had ruined the romantic prospects of her sister and the financial prospects of Mr. Wickham, and these actions are proof of “your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others.”

Mr. Darcy's motives and God's motives matter

Darcy and Elizabeth at Charlotte’s house. Illustration by Hugh Thomson, 1894. (Austen, Jane. “Pride and Prejudice.” London: George Allen, 1894.)

The next day, however, she learns Darcy’s motives. He had discouraged his friend from courting her sister mostly because she seemed indifferent towards the young man—and an embarrassed Elizabeth recalls she had been warned her sister was too guarded! More mortifying was the news that Wickham had rejected the clergyman livelihood he claimed Darcy had denied him, requesting and receiving money instead, and when he had gambled that away, had tried to elope with Darcy’s fifteen-year-old sister to snag her inheritance. Only then do past discrepancies in Wickham’s actions come clear to her. “‘How despicably have I acted!’ she cried; ‘I, who have prided myself on my discernment! … But vanity … has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other … I have courted … ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned.’” [ref]Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (New York: Walter J. Black), 179-198. [/ref]

Understanding motives can make all the difference in our judgments of others. When it comes to Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac, we need to look at God’s motives, and this is something Rachel Held Evans seems to have misjudged. She echoes atheists such as Richard Dawkins by likening Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac to 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.

In this series, so far we’ve looked at two missing facts that clear up the story. Today we’ll look at a third: God’s motives.

God’s motives

In the story, God asks Abraham to take his son Isaac whom he loved to a mountain and offer him as a burnt offering. It was a test, we’re told. God asked tenderly: The word now in “Take now your son” (NASB) is often translated “please” and has the sense of an entreaty. Scholar Paul Copan says, “God’s directive is unusual: ‘Please take your son’ … God is remarkably gentle as he gives a difficult order. This type of divine command (as a plea) is rare.”[ref]Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 47. [/ref] But at the moment of no return, the angel of the Lord stops him and shows him a ram to offer instead.

Why did God ask Abraham to do something he didn’t intend for him to follow through on?

The story tells us one of the motives: It was a test that proved Abraham’s devotion (Genesis 22:1, 12): “Now I know that you fear God.” It also showed God did not want humans sacrificing humans. But there are more.

God’s motives: preaching the gospel to Abraham

Galatians 3:8 tells us that in this story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, the Scripture foresaw “that God would justify the Gentiles [non-Jews] by faith” and “preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham.” In other words, “the good news of salvation was to be extended to all peoples, including the Gentiles, who would be declared righteous by God, just like Abraham, on the basis of faith.”[ref]Timothy George, New American Commentary – Volume 30: Galatians, (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1994), WORDsearch CROSS e-book, 224. [/ref]

So how did this story preach the gospel?

By portending the Father sacrificing Jesus

Abraham and Isaac were prophets.[ref]Abraham is called a prophet in Genesis 20:7. Isaac received visions and divine revelations in 26:1-4, 24. Psalm 105:9, 15 calls Abraham and Isaac “anointed ones” and “prophets.”[/ref] Sometimes God asked prophets to be portents by performing actions that foreshadowed and explained future events (Isaiah 8:18: “Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents”). The actions were often shocking so that they would be remembered when the future event occurred, and people would recognize its significance and that it came from God.

portent (POUR-tent): a sign or warning that (something, especially something momentous or calamitous) is likely to happen

portend (pour-TEND): be a portent

There’s something important here that we shouldn’t miss: When Abraham began to bind Isaac, Isaac understood he was the sacrifice. He was between 15 and 30 and was stronger and faster than his elderly father, but he allowed Abraham to bind him and lay him down on the stack of wood. At this point, Isaac participated willingly.[ref]Kenneth A. Matthews, New American Commentary – Volume 1b: Genesis 11:27-50:26, (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2005), WORDsearch CROSS e-book, 295. [/ref]

Abraham’s near sacrifice of his willing son Isaac portended the Father sacrificing his willing Son Jesus to atone for human sins.

By showing how God would fulfill his promises to Abraham

After the angel stopped Abraham from completing the sacrifice, God said, “In your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:18). According to Galatians 3:16 and 19, this “offspring” is Jesus, and Jesus blessed “all the nations of the earth” by dying to pay the penalty for people’s sins so that those who had faith in him could be declared righteous.

By foretelling Jesus’ substitutionary provision

Just as the Lord God substituted a ram for Isaac, so would the Lord God substitute his Son as a sacrifice for others. Rightly Abraham prophesied, “The Lord will provide” (Genesis 22:8, 14).

God’s motives: providing evidence that Jesus’ crucifixion was in his plan

God preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand so that when Jesus died and rose again, Abraham’s descendants might recognize the parallel and accept his work on the cross as from God. Jesus told the Jews, “For if you believed Moses [that is, the first five books of the Bible], you would believe me; for he wrote of me” (John 5:46). This story is one of the places that the first five books of the Bible talk about Jesus.

But the evidence wasn’t for Jews alone. God also gave this evidence so that non-Jews could see that saving humans through Jesus’ sacrifice was always God’s plan.

God’s motives: showing what his love looks like

Rachel Held Evans said, “The story of Abraham’s binding of Isaac should unsettle every parent and every person with a conscience.” I agree. The story of Abraham and Isaac should unsettle us, just as I’m sure it unsettled Abraham. That’s the point. The Passover Lamb was another sign pointing to Jesus’ sacrifice. But an animal sacrifice didn’t come near to expressing the fullness of what the Father and Son were willing to do to save humankind. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac does.

Evans said, “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.”

Actually, God was demonstrating exactly what his love for sinful people looks like: The Father sending his willing Son to die for humankind’s sins. But no angel stayed the hand of the Father.

Because that’s what love looks like.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

Do God's Motives Matter? Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 4 Share on X 'That's what love looks like!' Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 4 Share on X Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac portended the Father sacrificing Jesus Share on X

Part 5 of this series addresses other questions RHE’s post raises, such as, “Might God repeat the request?”

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What made Abraham Different? Answering Rachel Held Evans: Part 3

Rachel Held Evans says if she’d been Abraham, she’d have sooner been struck dead than obeyed; what made Abraham different?

In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Henry Baskerville fumes at a hotel waiter over losing two boots a maid was to have polished: a new brown boot the night before and now an old black boot. Sir Henry returns to his room and finds the first, never-worn boot beneath a cabinet under which he is sure he already looked.

Most see the hotel’s ineptness as annoying, but certainly not connected to the Baskervilles’ larger worries about the curse of a deadly, demonic hound that locals claimed to have seen and heard about the time Sir Henry’s uncle died. Only Sherlock Holmes grasps the boots’ significance and concludes the uncle was murdered and Sir Henry himself is now in danger. Later when all is resolved, Holmes explains to Watson about the missing boots:

… a most instructive incident, since it proved conclusively to my mind that we were dealing with a real hound, as no other supposition could explain this anxiety to obtain an old boot and this indifference to a new one. The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.

In many mystery stories, the key to the solution is found in some odd fact that is overlooked by unskilled observers.

The story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is like such mystery stories. The key to understanding Abraham’s response is in a fact whose significance is often missed: God’s miraculous, unmistakable revelation of himself, his trustworthiness, and his power to Abraham. Indeed, it’s a fact that Rachel Held Evans’s post, “I would fail Abraham’s test (and I bet you would too),” overlooks.

What made Abraham different?

Woodcut of the Lord directing Abram to count the stars, for “Die Bibel in Bildern” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860 [public domain]

Recap. In Part 1 of this series, we looked at Evans’s main argument about the Bible story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac: 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 people should “question the deity’s very existence.” This is a faulty dilemma because missing facts make everything clear. Part 2 of this series looked at the missing fact that Abraham’s culture considered ritual human sacrifice to be morally good. Today we’ll look at a second missing fact, one that’s there in the story but which is easily overlooked as significant: miraculous revelation.

About God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Evans says:

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. 

So what made Abraham different?

Abraham different in how God prepared him

The significant fact leading up to Abraham’s test is God’s revelation of himself to Abraham. God prepared Abraham for the test by giving Abraham and his family unmistakable evidence of himself and his character.

  • God revealed his Person: For seventy-five years, Abraham and his family worshiped the moon god Sin and various idols of wood and gold (Joshua 24:2). Then one day God spoke to Abraham and said, “Go … to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). Think of the significance of this: God spoke. This was a God whom Abraham didn’t know, but this God knew him. When Abraham obeyed and went to the land, God appeared to him in a theophany (12:7). In fact, the story tells us God appeared to him in visions and theophanies multiple times (15:1, 17:1, 18:1). He also appeared to Abraham’s wife (18:9-15). In one theophany, the Lord and two angels ate food Abraham and Sarah prepared (Genesis 18:8). This was unmistakable evidence of God’s presence—in other words, it wasn’t a dream or a vision but a physical encounter.

theophany: A manifestation to humankind of God that is tangible to human senses

  • God revealed he sees, hears, and helps: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield,” the Lord told Abraham. Abraham and at least five family members—Hagar, Sarah, Lot, Lot’s wife, Lot’s daughters—spoke with angels in ways that communicated that God hears when people cry out and he watches over those who are his (Genesis 16:7, 18:20-21, 19:15-16, 21:17). Additionally, God protected Sarah twice when powerful men tried to take her as wife (12:17-20, 20:3), and he helped Abraham defeat four armies with just 318 men (Genesis 14:1, 14-15).
  • God revealed his justice: The Lord told Abraham that the “outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great,” and he was investigating whether they were as bad as the outcry said (Genesis 18:20-21). Abraham knew the evil of the city so he interceded, asking if the Lord would destroy entire cities if “ten are found there” who are righteous. The Lord said, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it” (18:32). But ten righteous people could not be found. Two angels rescued Abraham’s nephew and his nephew’s daughters, and fire from heaven destroyed the cities. When Abraham saw the smoke rising from the cities, he knew that God investigates when people cry to him about injustice, and there is a point at which he will destroy those intent on harming others.
  • God revealed his grace: From all we know, Abraham hadn’t lived the first seventy-five years of life honoring God or following his ways. But when God appeared to Abraham in a vision and promised him a son and future offspring as numerous as the stars (Gen. 15), Abraham “believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” God showed He cared for Abraham.
  • God revealed his trustworthiness: When God first called Abraham to move to Canaan, he said that he would make of him a great nation. But twenty-four years later, his wife Sarah was ninety, past menopause (“the way of women had ceased to be with Sarah,” Genesis 18:11), and still childless. Yet the Lord appeared and told Abraham and Sarah that Sarah would bear a child by that time the following year. Impossible? Humanly speaking, yes. But God was true to his word, and Sarah conceived and bore Isaac (21:1-2).
  • God revealed his miraculous power: Through all these revelations, theophanies, destruction of evil, extraordinary helps, fulfilled promises, and the miraculous birth of the child of promise—Isaac—Abraham saw God’s unmistakable power and God’s willingness to use it.

Abraham and the angeles

“Abraham and the Angels” by Aert de Gelder, 1680-1685 [public domain]

It’s important not to miss the significance of all this: Abraham knew God. By the time God asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham knew God well enough to believe he could trust God even when he didn’t know all the answers. God had promised to make a nation from his son Isaac, and God had asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. To Abraham, both must be true. Thus, as Hebrews 11:19 says, Abraham reasoned that God would raise Isaac from the dead.

Abraham different in calling

The harder the call, the more evidence God gives. God gave Abraham unmistakable evidence of himself not only because he was establishing a covenant—involving God revealing himself to the world through a nation descended through Isaac that could teach his ways—but because he was going to call Abraham to do something exceedingly difficult: the sacrifice of Isaac. For that Abraham needed complete faith in God’s character and promise. Over the 40-55 years between God’s call to Abraham to go to Canaan and his call to sacrifice Isaac, God gave him the evidence he needed to complete the task.

Abraham different in faith

Rachel Held Evans says that if she had been in Abraham’s place, “I’d have sooner been struck dead than obeyed.” What made Abraham different? Abraham saw the evidence of God’s power and goodness; Abraham heard God’s promises about Isaac; and Abraham believed God.

***

Why was this test so important that God carefully prepared Abraham for it? The next post reveals the third missing fact: motive.

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Abraham & Human Sacrifice? Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 2

Did Rachel Held Evans miss cultural facts about the binding of Isaac and human sacrifice?

As I read Rachel Held Evans’s blog, “I would fail Abraham’s test (and I bet you would too),” I was reminded of Dorothy Sayers’s mystery novel, Strong Poison. In it, Harriet Vane stands accused of murder with substantial evidence against her. The police are certain of her guilt, but the novel’s hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, knows they’re wrong. Author Os Guinness describes why:

But into that grave situation steps the fearless hero, Lord Peter Wimsey. He knows Harriet, so he believes in her innocence, and his logic has a steel to match the prosecutor’s case. The known facts may be against her, but because he knows her, he knows that the known facts cannot be all the facts. The challenge is to find the missing facts that change the picture entirely. The police had jumped to the wrong conclusion on watertight-seeming evidence that was actually incomplete.[ref] Os Guinness, Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion (Downers Grove: IVP, 2015), 48, emphasis his. [/ref]

Abraham & human sacrifice

“The Sacrifice of Isaac” by Juan de Valdes Leal, 1659

It’s no surprise that by the end of the novel, Lord Peter has uncovered the missing facts and proven Harriet was framed.

Here’s what the novel has to do with the story of Abraham’s binding of Isaac. Just as the police jumped to conclusions about Harriet Vane’s guilt before they had all the facts, so we can jump to conclusions about God’s guilt in this story before having all the facts, as Evans’s blog post appears to do. Just as Lord Peter knew Harriet enough to trust her and search for the missing facts he knew had to exist, so many Christians know God well enough to trust him until the missing facts come in; Evans readily admits that she is not in such a place of trust yet.

Evans’s main argument, as I understand it, is that 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 “question the deity’s very existence.” In short, either Abraham failed God’s test, or the story isn’t historically authentic, or a good God doesn’t exist.

I addressed why the first two options of Evans’s argument are unsatisfactory: (a) both the Old and New Testaments affirm that Abraham’s obedience was what God wanted; and (b) the New Testament treats the story not only as historically authentic, but as preaching the gospel beforehand, with Abraham and Isaac prophetically acting out a momentous future event (more on this in a future post).

Now, the question remains, if the story is historically accurate, does it make God into a deity who “does evil things” that “look like abuse” such that “our moral compass is rendered totally unreliable”? No, this is a faulty dilemma: we could be missing the facts that clear up the issues.

Indeed, most of us when we first read this story are missing three types of facts:

  1. Cultural facts: facts about the culture which are missing from the story
  2. Overlooked facts: facts that are in the story but which have significance that is easily overlooked
  3. Motive: theological facts that are revealed later

It is the cultural facts that I want to examine today.

Now, Evans does say the story “makes a bit more sense in its ancient Near Eastern context.” But she neither explains that context nor tells why she considers it insufficient.

Abraham lived in a culture gone terribly wrong

Genesis says that Abraham was born in the city of Ur (traditionally in 2166 b.c.). Abraham and his extended family worshiped “other gods” (Josh. 24:2). Throughout the ancient Near East by this time, people believed that deities were behind the forces of nature. These deities weren’t much interested in human lives, and so to get their attention and manipulate them to drive nature in beneficial ways (for instance, send rain), people acted out rituals.

In Abraham’s birthplace Ur, religious rituals included human sacrifice. One of the most startling excavations from Ur is the so-called “Royal Cemetery” with its pits containing human sacrifices, most of them adults.[ref] Laerke Recht, “Symbolic Order: Liminality and Simulation in Human Sacrifice in the Bronze-age Aegean and Near East,” Journal of Religion and Violence (Academic Publishing, ISSN 0738-098X, 2014), 2:3, 413-414. [/ref] One pit had over seventy human sacrifices elaborately arrayed.

Human sacrifices found in Ur date prior to and during the age in which Abraham lived.[ref]Laerke Recht, “Human sacrifice in the ancient Near East,” Trinity College Dublin Journal of Postgraduate Research (Dublin: Brunswick Press, 2010), 9:171. Recht says, “The tradition of human sacrifice appears to have continued at Ur into the Ur III period, as shown by the evidence from the Mausoleum of King Shulgi and Amar-sin, where one tomb chamber belonged to the king, and another contained a number of human skeletons, interpreted as sacrificial victims.” [/ref] Later, Abraham moved to Haran, not far from other sites where human sacrifices have been uncovered from the same age in which Abraham lived (see ANE Human Sacrifices).

Although there were also infant sacrifices in the regions, these are mostly adult sacrifices. This is significant because at the time God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice Isaac, Isaac was not a child: he was around fifteen to thirty.

na’ar: boy or young man?

The story of Abraham binding Isaac is in Genesis 22; the prior chapter (21) brings Isaac to adolescence and in the following chapter (23) he is thirty-seven. The ESV translates the Hebrew word na’ar as “boy” in Genesis 22:5, 12, but elsewhere translates it “young man.” The word is used of the trained men who went with Abraham to rescue Lot (Gen. 14:24); of the men who attempted to rape angels (Gen. 19:4); of Joseph at age 28 (Gen. 41:12); of the spies whom Rahab hid (Jos. 6:23); of trained soldiers (2Sam. 2:14); and of Absalom when he tried to overthrow David’s throne (2Sam. 18:32).[/notice]

Abraham’s culture did not think human sacrifice wrong

The people of Abraham’s day would not have thought there was anything immoral about human sacrifices. In fact, they considered it an act of great piety. Archaeologist Laerke Recht notes that we should take care in our assumptions because “we may see a creature being sacrificed as a ‘victim’, while others could see it as honoured, sacred or some other aspect not immediately clear to us.”[ref]Recht, Journal of Religion and Violence, 404. Emphasis mine. [/ref]

Additionally, in cultures that believed in gods that give blessings in return for sacrifices, sacrificing offspring would be considered a moral good. Imagine living in such a culture during a time of catastrophic drought: Children will die if no rain comes. In such a culture, it would be morally obligatory to do all you can to appease the gods and save your village. Oxford professor John Day says, “Desperate circumstances required desperate measures … and the offering of human sacrifice was thought to possess especially strong apotropaic power.”[ref]John Day, Molech: A god of human sacrifice in the Old Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 62-63. [/ref]

apotropaic: intended to ward off evil[/notice]

Abraham would not have thought that God’s request to sacrifice Isaac was morally wrong; it is more likely he considered it normal. Still, he believed God’s promises about Isaac and told his servants that he and Isaac would return together after the sacrifice (Genesis 22:5); Hebrews 11:19 says he considered that God would raise Isaac from the dead.

God’s provision brought a shift

Abraham lived in Ur where human sacrifice was practiced

“Ram Caught in Thicket” was found in Royal Cemetery of Ur along with many ritual human sacrifices

When Abraham took his knife to sacrifice Isaac, the angel of the Lord called to him and told him not to touch Isaac. Abraham looked and saw a ram caught in a thicket. Abraham offered the ram as a sacrifice and called the name of the place, “The Lord will provide.”

The answer

Rachel Held Evans asserts that if God did not mean for Abraham to protest and the story is historically accurate, then God is a deity who “does evil things” that “look like abuse” such that “our moral compass is rendered totally unreliable.” But the cultural facts tell us something different.

God asked Abraham to perform the ritual act that his culture considered the ultimate sign of devotion and perhaps the ultimate moral good. It was a test and proof to all that Abraham’s devotion to his God was as high as all others’ devotion to their gods. Then the Lord God provided a ram to show that this God was different: This God did not want humans sacrificing humans.

By this act the Lord showed he wanted his followers’ full devotion, as much devotion as they gave to other gods, but—again—he did not want humans sacrificing humans. By this act he depicted a future event which would open the way for sinful humans to have relationship with God and show the fullness of the Prophet Abraham’s words, “The Lord will provide.”

***

In the next post, we’ll examine a fact whose significance is often overlooked.

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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?

Was Abraham wrong in the binding of Isaac?

“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.

The Sacrifice of Abraham Wrong?

“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 Abraham wrong?

“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.

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Is 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 Abraham

“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.

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Does 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.

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Abraham, Isaac & Child Sacrifice

In Genesis 22, God asks Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. This story distresses some Christians who wonder how it could possibly be fair or right for God to ask this. 

The story begins in Genesis 22:2.

Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Now the Law had not yet been given, so God was not asking Abraham to disobey a commandment. Still, this request must have torn Abraham’s heart. What purpose could it serve?

Let’s start with some background.

Background

Abraham and Isaac Were Prophets

At times, God called prophets to perform actions that foreshadowed and explained future events. Abraham and Isaac acted out God the Father’s offering of His beloved Son, Jesus, to save the world.

God Carefully and Lovingly Prepared Abraham for This Task

By the time of this event, Abraham had seen God’s miraculous intervention in

  • the blazing torch and fire pot when He made His covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15:17);
  • the rescue of nephew Lot with only 318 men from the armies of four kings (Genesis 14); and
  • the saving of Lot from the destruction of Sodom (Genesis 19).

Most importantly, God had shown Himself faithful to His promise even when all looked impossible through the miraculous birth of Isaac to his wife Sarah, who was barren, past menopause, and 91 years old.

Abraham had talked with angels and God himself. God gave Abraham more evidence of His nature than He gives most people to prepare him for the position for which God chose him: the father of the nation that was to represent God on earth. But to whom much is given, much is required, and God required Abraham to demonstrate unwavering faith.

God Made Promises about Isaac

The Lord had promised Abraham Isaac would be his heir in Genesis 17:19:

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.” 

God tested Abraham’s faith in this promise by asking him to do something that appeared to make the promise’s fulfillment impossible.

Abraham Believed God’s Promises

Because he believed God’s promise about Isaac, “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead” (Hebrews 11:19). And so as Abraham took leave of his servants, he placed the wood for the offering on Isaac, took torch and knife in hand, and in faith told his servants, “We will come back to you” (v. 22:5). Turning, father and son climbed Mount Moriah together.

Abraham constructed an altar, piled the wood atop, and bound and laid Isaac on it. As his fingers wrapped around his knife, he heard the angel of the Lord call out: “’Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son’” (Genesis 22:12).

Abraham had passed the test. He saw a ram trapped in a thicket and sacrificed it instead.

What did this test achieve?

One, the test proved the strength of Abraham’s faith.

Most of his life was materially and spiritually blessed; his faithful passing of the test demonstrated unbought love. Now his descendants could know they too could trust God, though they had less visible evidence than he. They would need this through the Egyptian captivity and at other difficult times. Abraham’s faith was realized and proven.

Two, it proved Abraham loved God.

Abraham loved God more than anything on earth, including his son, and thereby set the example for his descendants. Jesus said anyone who loves son or daughter more than Him and refuses to take his cross and follow Him is not worthy of Him (Matthew 10:37-39). All of us have times in our lives where we must choose whom and what we love most, times we must face the loss of something dear to us and decide whether we will trust in God’s goodness through it. Abraham shows us we can trust God to keep His promises.

Three, Isaac’s willingness to trust his father foreshadowed Jesus’ later willingness to die for the sins of the world.

Isaac was at least an adolescent (Jewish tradition has him an adult) and Abraham was over 110, making Isaac the stronger and faster of the two, yet Isaac allowed his father to bind him and lay him on the altar. This differed significantly from the Canaanite practice of sacrificing young, defenseless children to the fire of Molech.

Four, this prevented the Canaanites from boasting.

They couldn’t claim they were more devoted to their gods than Abraham was to his God because they were willing to sacrifice more.

Five, God stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac, showing He did not want children sacrificed.

Later through Moses God forbade child sacrifice (Leviticus 20:2).

Six, the test foreshadowed the Father’s sending of his willing Son to be sacrificed for the sins of the world.

When Jesus talked about the Father sending His Son to save the world (John 3:16) by paying for our sins like a sacrificial lamb (John 1:29), the Jews had a reference to relate to so they could understand Him better and have more evidence Jesus’ teaching came from God.

Seven, Abraham’s sacrifice of the ram foreshadowed Jesus’s sacrifice.

The ram was a substitutionary sacrifice. It foreshadows Jesus’ dying instead of those who deserve death, but receive life by trusting in Him. Abraham named the place, “The Lord Will Provide.” Indeed the Lord has provided a suitable substitute for us that we might live, like Isaac.

Eight, God greatly rewarded Abraham and Isaac.

This demonstrated His faithfulness to reward us when we trust in His goodness and love when we go through difficult times and experience loss.

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ~Romans 8:32

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