God is Good

Exploring the Character of the Biblical God

Martin G. Kuhrt

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725263963
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

Is the God of the Bible the most unpleasant character in all fiction, as Richard Dawkins claims in The God Delusion? He is backed up by former preacher and now virulent atheist, Dan Barker, who has cited Scripture, seeking to justify every one of Dawkins's infamous character slurs about the God of the Old Testament. Dawkins says the biblical God is "jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." Barker has added eight accusations of his own. Dawkins was too kind, he says. The God of the Bible is also "a pyromaniacal, angry, merciless, curse hurling, vaccicidal, aborticidal, cannibalistic slavemonger." Furthermore, Barker thoroughly implicates Jesus in the alleged crimes of his Father. God is Good seeks to answer every one of these twenty-seven accusations. Written for theological students, pastors, preachers, thoughtful laypeople who wince at some of what they read in the Bible, and those atheists who are honestly searching for truth, this book ducks none of the difficult questions and problematic passages.

Introduction

The Most Unpleasant Character in all Fiction?

In 2006 the first edition of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion was published and in the following ten years some three million copies were sold. The book contains many lines of attack against monotheistic faith. Christian writers have defended their beliefs against the broad range of his arguments.1 This book is mainly an attempt to tackle just one paragraph, albeit an infamous one. Dawkins wrote,

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”2

These words inspired American preacher–turned–atheist Dan Barker to write a book seeking to justify every one of these accusations—a chapter for each one. There are nineteen in all plus another eight he has thought up himself and added for good measure. Dawkins was too kind, he says. God is also a

“. . . pyromaniacal, angry, merciless, curse hurling, vaccicidal, aborticidal, cannibalistic slavemonger.3

Daniel Dennett, another book-writing atheist, in his afterword to the tenth anniversary edition of The God Delusion, referring to the criticism the Dawkins paragraph provoked, concedes that it is indeed a startling one, but says,

“aside from deploring it, who has the temerity to go through it, point by point and dispute it? As Dawkins notes, Dan Barker has published a rollicking case for the prosecution, God: The Most Unpleasant Character in all Fiction, citing chapter and verse for each feature. The ball is in the critics’ court but I don’t expect to see a return of service.”4

Well this book is a return of service. In each chapter I will respond to one of the now twenty-seven charges. The final three chapters specifically address the Jesus of the Gospels and his attitude to the Hebrew Scriptures (what Christians call the Old Testament), the general question of biblical authority and a final word on the character of God as revealed by the Old Testament.

First, I would like to make two general points. Dawkins and Barker are entitled to their opinion that the Bible is a work of fiction. However, they should at least then treat the biblical books as having literary integrity within themselves, as they would with works of fiction generally. If they did this, it would challenge some of the aspersions they cast on the character of the biblical God. So, for example, the God who tells Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice is portrayed in the narrative of Genesis as the God who created all life and who promised Abraham that his millions of descendants would trace their line from Isaac. Isaac was the miracle child born to Sarah in her barren old age that God promised him a year earlier. So Abraham, as the writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews comments, reasoned (on the basis of God being faithful in the past and all powerful and good enough to keep his promises in the future) that God would raise Isaac to life again to fulfil what he said he would do. Thus Abraham figured God was not asking him to do anything that as an omnipotent deity he could not undo, and wanted him to simply trust in his goodness and power. (See chapter fourteen for all the problems associated with this story and the accusation that the biblical God is filicidal.)

Also, the God who commands Moses to execute a man for desecrating the Sabbath is, in the Exodus narrative, the same God who has just demonstrated his miraculous mighty power in saving the Israelites from slavery by sending supernaturally awesome plagues on the Egyptians. He had parted the Red Sea to allow them to escape from Pharaoh’s chariot army, and he had told the Israelites clearly that their obedience to the covenant he made with them was vital for their ongoing survival as a nation during their desert journey. (See chapter two for an exploration of the gravity of the offence of desecrating the Sabbath.)

Secondly however, the Bible is mostly not written in the style of literary fiction. Apart from some stories, the historicity of which is debated, and parables, which are short, earthly tales loaded with spiritual meaning, the Bible comprises material that purports to belong somewhere among a range of non-fiction literary genres. Historical narratives, social commentary, genealogies, inventories, songs of worship, detailed specifications for the tabernacle, laws, philosophy and poetry, prophetic oracles, apocalyptic literature, ethical exhortation, and pastoral guidance make up the vast majority of the sixty-six books.

Therefore, the picture of God which the Bible paints should be viewed differently from one created by authors who are deliberately using a fictional genre. The biblical writers explicitly claim that the God they are speaking of is not a mythical projection of human culture and values (as are the gods depicted in, for example, Babylonian and Greco-Roman literature) but the one, real, transcendent, unfathomable God who nevertheless deigns to act in human history and who remarkably calls us to respond to his revealed truth in a way that works with him in transforming the course of that history.

The Influence of the Bible in Shaping Our World

The biblical God relates to the world as it is, not as we would like it to be, with its beauty and goodness tarnished by cruelty, injustice, pain, and misery. He is also, however, the God who changes things. The Bible has shaped our Western culture for so long that it is easy to fail to appreciate how different things would have been without it. It is from the Bible that we have come to believe that we can know truth, as a concept, and that the created order is rational, the product of the Word (the Logos of John’s Gospel chapter one). Though marred by sin it still conforms to laws established by its creator and can be scientifically explored with both reason and a sense of awe and wonder. In pagan religion the world emerged from the violence, insecurity and deceit of competing gods.5 In that worldview the priority of man was the need to appease malevolent gods or spirits, rather than rational thinking based on belief in one Almighty God, the source of all truth. Within Eastern religions, having a basis in pantheism, which denies that God is a being distinct from the universe, scientific thought fared little better. So, for example, Indian sages thought that spiritual enlightenment could be achieved getting in touch with primeval silence, senseless sound (mantra), cosmic energy and impersonal consciousness. The development of science and scholarship was therefore stunted as compared with Western culture, shaped by the Bible, because like other cultures not influenced by the Bible, Indian culture did not inspire or encourage the pursuit of rational knowledge.6

The Bible tells us all human beings are made in God’s image and have intrinsic worth. God came in the flesh and thereby honored the lowliest of human beings. Jesus taught that whatever we do for the least of his brothers we do for him. Pagan religion didn’t teach that. So it was the Bible’s re...