Category: Redemptive History

Q. Why did God want human sacrifices, for example, Isaac and Jesus?

In my first post in response to this question, I showed that the clear and consistent teaching of the Bible is that God does not want human sacrifices.  Now in this post I will consider the cases of Isaac and Jesus, which might appear to be exceptions.

To start with Isaac, when we consider in its entirety and in its cultural context the story of God telling Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, but then stopping him at the last minute, we realize that this story was actually included in the developing Hebrew Scriptures to discourage later generations of Israelites from offering human sacrifices.  As I say in another post, in response to a slightly different question, “It’s not as though God thought up human sacrifice as an extreme way to test Abraham’s loyalty. Rather, God was asking of Abraham what it was believed the other gods were asking of their followers. When Abraham demonstrated his complete devotion, God then made clear that he didn’t want human sacrifices.”

In other words, this episode from the life of Abraham was recorded and retold in the Scriptures  precisely so that later generations of Israelites would follow the example in the story and offer the animals God had designated as acceptable sacrifices, instead of their own children.  The need for this example is understandable.  The surrounding cultures were offering human sacrifices, and the Israelites might otherwise have felt that they were not as devoted to their own God, or that their God was not as deserving of costly devotion as other gods, if they did not do the same.

Turning to the case of Jesus, even though his death is often spoken of as a “sacrifice,” it’s important to understand that it was not a “human sacrifice” in the sense of the sacrifice of a human being to God.  Rather, it was God, in human form, sacrificing himself for our sakes.  Jesus described his own death in this way: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

The death of Jesus is so rich in meaning that in the Bible and Christian theology it is described and explained in many different ways.  Each way brings out a different facet of its significance.  One common understanding is that our sins and wrongs against God and other people were so serious and destructive that they were deserving of death.  But Jesus willingly accepted the death penalty in our place, satisfying the justice of God.  This is the sense in which he “sacrificed” himself for us.

But there are many other understandings of the meaning of Jesus’ death as well.  Perhaps the one that comes closest to what ancient cultures were trying to accomplish through human sacrifice is the idea of “propitiation.”  This term refers to the act of doing something generous for, or offering something valuable to, another person in order to change their disposition from hostile to gracious.  (The term comes from the Latin word propitius, meaning “gracious,” “favorable,” or “well-disposed.”)  The idea is that Jesus’ death on the cross was a precious gift to God that won His favor.

Accordingly John writes in his first epistle that Jesus is “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” Later in this same epistle John elaborates to say, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”   In other words, God himself provided the gift that won back His own favor for us!

We should note, moreover, that what made Jesus’ sacrifice such a precious gift was not that it embodied the value of a human life, not even that of the long-awaited Messiah, as opposed to some less valuable offering.  Rather, it was the spirit of obedience, humility, generosity, and especially love in which Jesus offered himself that made his sacrificial death so pleasing to God.

And so we can see that the cases of Isaac and Jesus are not exceptions to the Bible’s consistent teaching that God does not want human sacrifices.  When we do consider them, however, these cases reveal more about what God has done for us in Christ.  Christian interpreters, in fact, have long seen a foreshadowing of Jesus’ incarnation and self-sacrifice in Abraham’s statement to Isaac that “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.”  As Micah said, in the words I noted last time, God does not want me to “offer my firstborn for my transgression,” or “the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul.”  God himself, in Christ, has graciously made all the provision any of us needs to be forgiven and restored.

Q. Why did God want human sacrifices, for example, Isaac and Jesus?

Actually, the clear and consistent teaching of the Bible is that God does not want human sacrifices.  I’ll demonstrate that in this post, and then in my next post I will consider the two cases you mention and explain why they are not exceptions.

The pagan nations surrounding ancient Israel did make human sacrifices to their gods, but the law of Moses insisted that this was not the way that Yahweh, the God of Israel, the Creator of the world, wanted to be worshipped.  One law, in Leviticus, prohibits making any child a burnt offering to the Canaanite god Molech:  “You are not to make any of your children pass through the fire to Molech. Do not profane the name of your God; I am Yahweh.”  A more general law in Deuteronomy says, “Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire.”

As I explain in this post, Jephthah, one of the judges, sacrificed his daughter in fulfillment of a vow because he was ignorant of the further law that said a human being who would otherwise be the subject of such a vow had to be “redeemed” (bought back), not sacrificed.  This story is included in the book of Judges to show what tragic and evil things happen when “everyone does what is right in their own eyes.”

The other historical narratives in the Bible uphold this standard from the law of Moses and use it to evaluate the later Israelite kings.  It is said about King Ahaz, for example, “He did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord his God. He . . . even sacrificed his son in the fire, engaging in the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.”  About King Manasseh it is said similarly, “He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. . . . He sacrificed his own son in the fire . . . He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.”

Such human sacrifices were a chief reason why the kingdom of Israel was taken into exile, again according to the historical biblical narratives:  “All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God . . . They worshiped other gods and followed the practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before them . . . They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire. They . . . sold themselves to do evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.”

The prophetic tradition within the Bible similarly says that God does not want human sacrifices.  The prophet Micah, for example, reflecting on what he would have to offer to make up for his sins and be restored to God’s favor, considers greater and greater sacrifices, all the way up to the sacrifice of his own firstborn child, but then realizes that what God really wants is for him to live a life of humility and compassion:

With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

So the biblical teaching against human sacrifice is clear and consistent.  Why, then, did God say to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you”?  And why is the death of Jesus so often described as a “sacrifice”?  I’ll explore both of these questions in my next post.

Q. If morality is based on God’s character and is absolute and unchanging, why is it that God didn’t establish the modern Christian morality from the beginning? That is, why didn’t He directly punish or hinder those who had multiple wives and that sort of thing? Of course, Genesis subtly subverts many of the customs of that time such as that of having multiple wives, of giving preeminence to the first born, and of worshiping idols, but why isn’t it more overt?

I think Jesus actually taught that God’s ideal wishes for human life were presented right from the start in the laws and covenants that God gave Israel, so long as their true meaning was understood.  Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”  In the context of the book of Matthew, “fulfill” means to reveal the fullest and deepest meaning of something that happened earlier in redemptive history.  So Jesus is saying that in his teaching, he will not change what came before, or substitute something else, but rather show how God’s ideal intentions have been disclosed all along.

And that’s just what Jesus does in this part of the Sermon on the Mount.  He shows that the command against murder, for example, really teaches that we’re not supposed to hate anyone or hold grudges, but actively pursue reconciliation with others.  The command against adultery is actually a call for a pure life that’s free from lust.  The law against breaking oaths is really teaching that we should speak sincerely and truthfully, without the need for external guarantees of our honesty.  And so forth.

But let’s take one more specific example, from another of Jesus’ teachings, to explore a bit further how this works.  Matthew tells us that some Pharisees, trying to “test” Jesus (that is, to put him in a “can’t win” situation by making him commit to one side or another of a controversial question), asked him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”  In his reply, Jesus appealed to the original creation order, as described in the Scriptures: “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Now when the Pharisees were asking about what was “lawful,” they were thinking not of the original creation order, but of a specific command in the law of Moses. They were hoping to embroil Jesus in the controversy surrounding it.  So they counter, “Why then did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”  (The only issue for them was the grounds on which a man could do this.)

Jesus replies, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.”  This reply is very instructive, because it shows that this question about divorce is a specific case that illustrates a general principle.  Many of the laws in the Bible are accommodations to protect people in less-than-ideal situations in which they otherwise might be exploited. But the situations behind these laws do not express God’s ultimate intentions, and they are not being endorsed in the process of being regulated.

These are specifically casuistic laws, which describe what to do when a given case or situation arises (as opposed to apodictic laws that speak universally, i.e. “Do not oppress a foreigner.”)   In this case, the full law is considering a situation in which a man decides to divorce his wife and so “writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house.” Then, “if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled.”  This, the law concludes, “would be detestable in the eyes of the Lord.”

Notice that nowhere in this law does Moses “command” husbands to give their wives certificates of divorce, as the Pharisees claim.  Moses simply says, on God’s authority, that if men do this, they are not to use it as a pretext to pass women around among themselves.  In other words, this law is really designed as protection against sexual trafficking, not as a license for men to go back on their wedding vows.

God’s ideal intentions for marriage are the ones that Jesus describes: “What God has joined together, let no one separate.”  Nevertheless, even in the New Testament we find a further accommodation to unfortunate human situations in terms of divorce.  Paul writes to the Corinthians that if a person becomes a follower of Jesus and for that reason their unbelieving spouse wants to divorce them, “If the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace.”

Why doesn’t Paul uphold Jesus’ teaching that marriage is for life and say that we shouldn’t let anyone separate what God has joined?  Like Moses before him, he’s making a realistic accommodation to a less-than-ideal situation.  He sees no point in requiring believers to engage in a protracted and hopeless fight against divorce when their very faith is the grounds their spouse is holding against them.  But when we read Paul’s counsel in its full context, we see that he is nevertheless urging believers to do everything they can to save their marriages even in these situations—the believer is never to be the one to start divorce proceedings on the grounds of incompatible faith, for example.

So, in short, there is an ideal for human life that is revealed from the start in God’s laws and covenants.  But at the same time, there are accommodations to protect people in less-than-ideal situations.  (Another such law is the one that requires husbands to continue to love and provide for their first wives even if they also marry other women—this is not meant as approval for polygamy, but rather as protection for women who might otherwise be neglected and abandoned.)

And this much said, I would also stress that in any situation, we should exercise all of our daring and creativity to try to live out God’s highest and best ideals, counting on God’s help and even intervention to make it possible for us to do that.  We shouldn’t fall back on the accommodations we find in the Bible to excuse any lower aim.

What you make of the argument that God is not a stable or consistent character in the Bible, that He is shown to change and grow over time?

I guess the question is really twofold:

1) Does your reading of the books of the Bible see any inconsistency in the way God is presented over time?

2) If yes, does that inconsistency show a change in God, a change in our understanding of God, a gradual revelation of who God is (culminating in Jesus), or something else?

If we’re talking about God as a character who features in each book in the biblical collection, and if we’re thinking of that collection as organized by an overall story, then I’d say yes, God as a character definitely does change over the course of the Bible.

For example, in the early accounts in Genesis, God doesn’t seem to be omniscient or omnipresent.  God has to come down to the earth to investigate what the builders of the Tower of Babel are doing.  God doesn’t realize that Adam and Eve have sinned until he takes his customary evening walk in the Garden of Eden and he can’t find them–because they’re hiding among the trees.

Later in the Bible, God is portrayed as aware of what people on earth are doing, but as relying on the help of various agents to accomplish his purposes.  For example, God knows that wicked King Ahab is contemplating attacking Ramoth Gilead and that he’s likely to get killed if he does.  So God asks the heavenly hosts around him who will go and entice Ahab to do this.  The Bible says that “one suggested this, and another that,” and “finally a spirit came forward” and offered a plan. God felt it would succeed, and so sent the spirit on its way.

By the time of the New Testament, God comes to be portrayed with all of the attributes we usually associate with him, such as omniscience and omnipresence.  Peter says on the day of Pentecost that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus were events accomplished by “God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge.”  Paul tells the Greeks in Athens that God “is not far from any one of us.”

So how do we explain this change in God as a character?  I think it’s the last two things you suggested:  a change in our understanding of God, as collective human knowledge develops; and a greater revelation of who God is, culminating in Jesus, as God continues to relate to humanity through the covenants that shape his redemptive-historical work.  As a result, the early anthropomorphic (that is, God-as-human) portrayals are recognized to belong to an immature phase of the human understanding of God—but fascinatingly, they’re allowed to remain in the Bible.  We still hear the various parts of the story as they were first told by those who experienced them.

But to say that God as a character changes over the course of the Bible is not to say that the character of God changes.  From the start we see that God is consistent in his character qualities:  creative, loving, generous, merciful even in judgment.