Now we have another diversion from the Land Promise issue, from the President of the Land of Axle Grease. It goes like this: X essentially asked the Stupid Skeptic Question, "Why didn't God use His powers to make sure Israel didn't fail?" I briefly replied that God gave people free will, and X essentially replied with Stupid Skeptical Question #2, "Why did God set up this covenant with Israel, knowing they would fail?" I said this was a diversion, off topic, and X whines back now:

Meanwhile, given the widespread assumption that the god Yahweh was omnipotent, I am certainly asking a reasonable question when I ask why such a deity could not have made good on his promise to give land within defined borders to Abraham's descendants.

Whoa there, a moment, Old Paint. The issue is not whether or not it is a "reasonable question" -- ain't a cowboy on the ranch who doesn't think omniscience/omnipotence vs. free will isn't a debatable topic, and any hombre who doubts it need only mosey down to the public library and look for names like Plantinga, which X's never seen because he's busy with the books where you find Waldo. The issue is whether or not "omniscience/omnipotence vs. free will" is a "reasonable question" but whether it has squit to do with the topic at hand: the consistency of the Biblical records re Yahweh's Land Promise. By that accounting it doesn't matter if we take the view that Yahweh is omnipotent at the top of the scale, or at the other far end, where we find such eminences as bacteria, warm jello, and Brain of Reader of The Skeptical Review. But since X wants to play, we'll have some fun activities for him while he's being driven to his next dental appointment.

First off, let's start with where X strives to yank the NT into line with his agenda. He offers Gal. 3:15-17:

Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ. What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.

With this X snorts, "Once the promise was made to Abraham, the promise had been made. Nothing done or said later could 'set aside' the covenant without making Yahweh untrue to a promise he had made." Well, that's just X forgetting to put the seat down again, because as we have made clear in our responses, shooing the Israelites out of their territory when they were Bad Boys was part and parcel of the covenant. It wasn't "set aside" but fulfilled to the letter when that happened. He's still trying to figure this out, and we'll wait.

In the meantime, a few other aspects, then a surprise. After cheering the gullible skeppies with the piddle-point that it's unlikely that God exists in the first place (note how easily X sweeps aside all of those years of lit on the subject -- too bad we can't do that kind of gumball generalization and get credit), and repeating some of the same stale stuff from the Land Promise issue itself, we get to this, the main diversion:

This would necessarily obtain from the fact that if the descendants of the human party would later prove to be disobedient reprobates, the omniscient, omnipotent party would have known at the time the covenant was made that this was going to happen and would never have wasted his time making a conditional covenant with descendants of the human party whom the deity knew would never be able to satisfy his conditions.

X then relates this to his 12,748,387,763rd mention of Deut. 9, and that's basically it. So we're left with omni- vs. free will, which X dispensed with in this paragraph, allowing all of you Ph. D's in philosophy to go home and make some ribs on the BBQ. Well, in reply, we have a few points of consideration.

First, this is really nothing but another form of the objection brought up by gumball-machine skeptics all over: "Why did God choose people like Abraham, Saul, and David to do His bidding when they turned out to be such rotten eggs?" OK, let me ask in reply: God chose Abraham -- who else was available? Unless someone can prove (and they obviously cannot) that there was another person in the world who would have been both more moral and better able to do God's bidding, then this objection is nothing but a pathetic excess of groundless skeptical nitpicking. The same goes for X's "why did God bother" objection. All right, X, don your scarf, get in your time machine, and riddle me this:

1. What people was around at any time in history who would have obeyed the covenant better than Israel?
2. If God had just thrown up his hands and said, "Why bother?", how would history as a whole have been better?

I wonder if X, should he find he was wrong and appear before the divine throne after death, will say, "Well, you may as well have just sent me right to hell as soon as I was born?" You saying you didn't even want a chance? I can hear skeptics bellowing from the rafters, "That wouldn't be fair! I didn't get a chance!" Well, didn't Israel deserve a chance, even if God knew they would fail? If not, why not?

Here's a fun little related bit from Part 8, now, which as usual is 95% fluff and repetition. We said:

In terms of choosing "bad eggs" we would challenge our opponent to provide a full and complete list of candidates for the kingship in Israel who would have been a better choice, in the longer term, than those who did get the nod. If he can produce such a list, his debate challenge is accepted.

Skeptic X calls this a "stupid demand" (which means that, of course, what he asked was a "stupid question") and at first dodges the matter by reminding everyone that he thinks "much of the 'history' of Israel was fictionalized" and that "responsible biblical scholars" and seminaries agree. Do you smell red herring cascading over the dam? Whether he thinks the history is fiction or non-fiction is not at issue. He admits, however, that the record either way is "too incomplete to compile such a list." Well, then, where does Skeptic X get off complaining about Yahweh's choices for the kingship? All he can throw out weakly is that, "if someone like, say, Manasseh was even half the tyrant he was depicted in 2 Kings, it shouldn't have been too hard to find someone who would have been a better king. I would think that Yahweh could have yanked just anybody off the street and gotten a better king than Manasseh was." Well, first of all, Manasseh wasn't exactly handpicked by Yahweh; but even assuming he was, then, let's have that list of people off the street showing that they would not have been as tyrannical or corrupt, or would not have led the people into even greater disaster. Show us that any one of them would have been a better pick and done a better job than Manasseh. What? The record is incomplete? Well, then how do we know -- oh, we don't know. Oh.

Pass the cream, pickles, and salt, we have herring and crow to eat.

Of course, all of this drains down to an original question, "Why did God even create the universe at all?" And if X wants to keep busy, we have some surprises for him below. For now here are some measured thoughts modified from one of my other essays.

As noted, God chose Abraham, and why? Because Abraham fulfilled God's purpose precisely, but clearly a second person would have fulfilled God's purpose less precisely, and this is why they were not chosen and Abraham was. Secular writers know the principle behind what I am saying. One of my favorite fiction genres is that of alternate history, as by Harry Turtledove. A recent book by this author proposed to show what would have happened had George III of England and George Washington made peace, not war. The world was in many ways "better" but in many ways merely different and seldom "worse": air travel was by dirigibles; ground travel, including by cars, was by steam. Life's pace was more leisurely. The bald eagle was not seen as a heroic bird, but as a filthy scavenger. Alaska still belonged to Russia. An Iriquois nation existed in New York state. John F. Kennedy was alive and was the lecherous editor of a Boston periodical, never having been President. Los Angeles was a city named Victoria. X Skeptic X actually had some manners and could read. And so on. Such exercises in creativity are fun, but they make a certain point: Upon the smallest actions may history turn. And thus as well God can exercise sovereignty via a wide range of actions, even human failure.

Now let's expand on the points above by way of illustration. To create our illustration, we will begin by hypothesizing three worlds. For the entertainment of all my fellow Star Trek fans, we will name these worlds Vulcan, Tellar, and Andor.

Our illustrations here will necessarily be highly simplified. Obviously God's choice is far from limited to three possible worlds. But since it is not possible to lay out, much less show in this space, all possible options, we will have to be limited in our presentation. Let's now consider these three worlds from certain perspectives. Our assumption is that all three worlds, like ours, will be populated by beings with free will:

Well, so much for the benefits of logic! (Inside joke for Star Trek fans.) Now all of you readers would easily suggest that Tellar is the world to make out of these three. Simple enough? So it seems, but let's now work out some of the processes involved in getting those 117 billion to their destination. (The reader will note that we have not hypothesized a world where all are saved. It would be our assertion that no such world is logically possible -- and if Skeptic X wants to argue that, we want to know where he bought the omniscience to know it.)

We'll need to hypothesize, for convenience, two "turning point" events in the history of Tellar. Then we'll hypothesize three levels of God's exercise of sovereignty. (In other words, 30% may mean just pulling a nail out of a few horseshoes; 55% may mean somehow directing riders; 85% may mean pulling a castle wall down, and so on.) Obviously this is highly simplified as the number of events and the number of levels of direct involvement by God are potentially infinite in scope. But it will serve as an illustration.

God's level of exercised sovereignty would clearly have a profound effect on the results of each event. We will express the effects in terms of number of persons saved. Start with event 1:

"Hey! How could being involved more mean less people will be saved?" Ask a skeptic -- the one who sees God as an unwelcome intruder in their lives. Some persons may react different when confronted subtly rather than directly. But hang on a moment, because there is another issue. Event 1 may or may not be tied in to Event 2. If it is, then what happens? Then God's sovereign choice in Event 1 may affect what happens in Event 2. So now let's make two more tables suggesting what might happen depending on which route God takes:

If you picked 55% involvement level for event 1, you just fouled up -- far fewer people were saved. And that's once again why you aren't in charge of things, and especially why X isn't either. His way we'd probably all be selling tourist trinkets in Hoboken.

Our illustration here is profoundly simple, because as noted, the multiplicity of events and factors is far beyond our comprehension. Only an omniscient being can keep it all together and truly know what the best route is that will result in the fulfillment of His purpose. It is little wonder that the answer to Job from the whirlwind was essentially, "As if you know." Skeptics like Skeptic X who demand a better explanation, or want to know why God bothered with eventual failures, need to take a chill pill: They don't have the time or the knowledge to get a complete rundown of the multiplicity, and it is hardly as though the sovereign Creator owes any ignorant bumpkin from Bam Bam Bible College an explanation.

The idea of middle knowledge, to which I hold, maintains that God's omniscience means that He knows everything, not just each and every actuality but all the potentialities as well. Within this He knows not only who will reject Him under any and all circumstances, but who will accept Him and precisely what circumstances will be required to affect their decision. In His providence (a part of His omnipotence) He therefore places those individuals who will accept Him into the requisite circumstances and does what is needed to affect their decisions. Israel failed? So what? Out of that failure came salvation for others, and we would say, more salvation than if Israel had not been given the chance at all, and more than if someone else had been offered it. If Skeptic X thinks otherwise, he still has the keys to his time machine. Skeptic X may never accept salvation, but his continuing to make a jackinape of himself will certainly drive more people to faith, or deeper faith, in God, as he has many readers who have written in to us. Now there's an example of God using failure to good purpose.

Skeptic X will probably now want to go straight to the origin story and ask, "Huff, puff, why then did God create at all?" Tell you what, X. You like your little diversion game; here's mine. It's an entire series of articles (nearly 1MB in 5 parts) by Glenn Miller on this subject. We all know how much you love Glenn Miller, don't you? No, not the band leader. And I'm putting it in MY essay so that you have to answer ALL of it, or else I'll say things like, "Why won't X answer this material? Is he chicken? Do I need to send him a yellow jumpsuit?"

Either that, or you'll have to stop playing all of this diversionary nonsense and start sticking to debate topics at hand.

Good question...God apparently set humanity up for failure in the Garden, so doesn't this show Him to be cruel, schizoid, or psychotic?

Glenn --
 

I read the following document at the "Walk Away" site: http://www.berkshire.net/~ifas/wa/godly.html,

and it troubles me very much. I have been a Christian for four years and am pretty intellectual and pretty well-versed in Scripture, but this threw me for a loop. I know that the author is incorrect in a few minor points of Scripture, but the main thrust of his argument is not trivial. Especially the paragraph:

Thanks,

Minny

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Minny,
 

The first thing I need to point out is that the skeptic's response to the situation (as he understands it) is the only reasonable and humane response. If the situation were indeed as the skeptic portrays it, then we all should join him in abject abhorrence and revulsion toward such a "god". His response is the heart-full response, to a heart-less situation. (That kind of a sick and twisted God, however, would likely not be able to even create creatures with hearts sensitive enough to be morally superior to Him/Her/It/They, of course, but let's leave that alone for right now.)
 

But the second thing I need to point out is that the skeptic's position is one of considerable exaggeration and has most of its emotional force in innuendo. We will see that he essentially superimposes his theological 'portrait' of God's heart over a passage that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject. The accusations he makes of God in the piece about orchestrating the whole thing to get us to fail so that His Son would later "look good to us" is methodologically naive at best, and "reverse fundamentalism" at worst.
 

There are two distinct 'pieces' to your question above...

The first piece of your question (and the entire thrust of his brief web-work) concerns that author's depiction of the character of the God of the Bible. The author accepts the existence of some good, harmonious, and intelligent Creator (based on his classes in botany, physics, and astronomy), but can find no good reason to identify this Creator with the "manipulative, sadistic, almost psychotic" God of Jesus and the Bible. In fact, he asserts that this sub-human character is manifest throughout the bible, and cites a few of the more vivid examples (e.g., David's census, the Breach against Uzzah, the Hardening of Pharaoh's heart).

His main argumentation, in the piece, comes from the situation into which God placed the First Pair, from Genesis 2-3. On the basis of this understanding, he concludes that the Christian God is unworthy and morally inferior to himself. The issue of prophecy vs. naturalistic explanations of the supernatural are irrelevant to him; he has enough confidence in his exegesis of Genesis and other passages to discount any possible supernatural "proofs" of divine presence before they are even evaluated. The skeptic seems to find no reason to doubt his exegesis and theological understanding of the main proof-texts of his position.

I have dealt with some of the other examples in other places in the Tank, as well as with other examples he did not mention but would no doubt advance (such as the wars of Canaan). I will only make a few summary remarks on these here. In this piece, I want to focus on his argumentation from Genesis 2-3.
 
 

Now, the second question--with implications for God's character--is one frequently raised. It is different that the first, and one that generally bothers most believers who both think and feel (!)...
 

Good Christians are bothered by the related issues of "Why did God go ahead with such a plan?". So someone else, quite in love with God, wrote in:

I am a Christian, have pastored, been on the mission field, and am no stranger to spiritual warfare- particularly in reference to the challenges to the mind and heart. I am not much of a philosopher or scholar, but the following has been by far the most devastating doubt I have ever dealt with, as it affects my very love relationship and worship-from-the-heart with God. I have no problem with God's justice and judgment upon sin. I have no problem seeing God's love in history and in the cross. What I struggle with is why a God of love would still choose to create a race of people in His image with the foreknowledge than a fair percentage of them would still choose eternal suffering and darkness. How can we perceive the value of a perfect future creation in light of the eternal suffering (albeit deserved) of countless millions of souls? Like the ostrich in the Book of Job, have we just been created incapable of understanding in such matters, or is there any Biblical or reasonable answer to this in this life? I have enough of the fear of God in me to submit to His wisdom, but I'd much rather have a kinder picture of Him in my heart and mind. Thanks for any insights.

And, as you might expect, I am no stranger to this problem either--this piece is not named 'gutripper' for nothing...
 

Twenty-odd years ago, a Bible college professor spoke of what he called the "$64,000 question"--why God, in His foreknowledge of all the temporal and eternal suffering of humans, which He would have known before the beginning of time, went ahead anyway with the plan. He pointed out that the bible never answers the question, nor gives us much data concerning it, nor is the question ever even raised in the bible.
 

The 'rub' of the question is fairly obvious: would this not imply that God was cruel, or at least incredibly insensitive to His sentient creatures, perhaps with a radically different perspective on value than humans? The world seems full of suffering and misery, with no apparent major 'overrides' by God, and after even after this life, the prospect of endless torment awaits many, according to this mainstream view.
 

In much of traditional orthodoxy, heaven will be populated by a very small minority of the world's population. And, although they will be blessed immeasurably, this doesn't really seem 'heavy enough' to counterbalance the belief that the vast majority of the population is tormented forever in a hell of conscious agony. To make the situation even more grim, this unending torment is often said to be based on events which transpire within a range of a few decades or so of human time. The stakes are incredibly high, and often, it seems these stakes are not even in the awareness of those making them. It is difficult to conceive of any action, decision, or lack thereof, by a mortal being, having that level of impact--and/or "deserving" that severity of repercussion. [Theologians make honest attempts to make 'finite' decisions to reject God, into 'infinite sins' (via rejection of an 'infinite' God) as ways of making sense of the apparent imbalance between cause/effect.]

This, of course, is a standard way of stating the problem, but there are additional problems that can be heaped upon it.

The first is the one raised by your skeptic here--that some would argue that we were set up for failure to begin with. Not only did God decide to consign the majority to un-ending suffering, but in this theory, God also stacked the deck against us, so that we would be forced to kiss up to Him to avoid this horrible consequence. Allowing the Arch-Deceiver to prey upon helpless and naïve humans in the garden, while apparently not letting them know of the Tree of Life alternative early enough to avoid falling, are telltale signs of God's "inhuman" characteristics, so the story goes.
 

Notice how this problem runs into the theologian's 'free will defense' at some level. Often, God's alleged respect for free will is said to be so high, that He cannot/will not override mortals, if they refuse heaven and choose hell. If we were set up for failure, and placed into such a diabolical situation, then our free will was basically compromised to begin with. The temptation of the Serpent was simply over-powering, after all.
 

An additional problem (alluded to by your author) comes from the linkage of each human to Adam. In most constructions of "original" sin, each post-Adam offspring of Adam/Eve inherited Adam's guilt. And so, Adam's single sin sent us all to hell. In spite of obvious verses to the contrary in Scripture (e.g., Deut 7.10; 24.16), our eternal future was somehow compromised by one man/one act, as allegedly described by Romans 5.
 

There are other problems that can be added, but all in all, the overall point is to deny the goodness and/or benevolence of God. God is portrayed as being manipulative (perhaps a megalomaniac addicted to praise of wind-up toys or the devotion of little pets), and certainly quite pathological in heart.
 

And the implications of this for the Cross are significant as well. The love of God, shown in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, becomes a massive effort, but to such little effect. He who 'takes away the sins of the world' gets so little out of the deal--a small minority of worshippers (who were somehow manipulated into this worship--not really appreciating Him for His beauty and character), and a endless cadre of souls who likely curse Him every moment for their unending torments in hell. And, as the questioner voices, it at least can be suggested that the Fall is 'staged' such as to make the Son of God look good...
 

Now, this articulation of the situation (above) seems to me quite pointed and indeed disturbing, but I must confess that I find your author's argumentation quite methodologically confused on several points, containing a significant number of dangerous oversimplifications, and making some very questionable assumptions. [In all fairness to him, I need to point out that his article is a 'popular' piece of only three pages in length, and that he could no doubt be able to make a stronger case given more time and space. But I will use his 3-page document as the basis of this critique, while understanding that his position may be stronger than his smaller piece might indicate.]
 

This is truly a complex issue, involving the nature of God's knowledge, the nature of hell and death, the very structure of human choice, the relation between independence and authority, the meaning of 'authority', and certainly a host of exegetical issues. The truly godly heart of the Christian finds this abjectly horrible and finds it incredibly difficult to maintain confidence in the goodness, kindness, and fairness of his/her loving Lord. The Christian struggles with this, but in the final hour, finds solace in the assurances of his/her Lord's beautiful character ("Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?" and "The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.")

 ......................................................................................................

But there are two different subjects that I have to deal with here: the problem itself (as posed by the Christian) and the first 'objection' raised by the skeptic.

 So, in this piece, I will try to deal with both of these:

1. Does your skeptic writer make a reasonable case from Genesis that the biblical God's character is morally grotesque?
2. How could we approach the issue of God's motive for "going ahead"?

There are three pre-analytical observations that I need to make before I began rambling through the various issues:
 

One. In the final analysis, we may not have an answer to the (second) question "why?", which means that we will not be warranted in answering it negatively or positively. If we are not able to discover a motive for God's decision to 'go ahead anyway', then we will not be justified in judging that unknown motive to be either adequately good (to warrant a positive 'assessment' of God's character) or to be insufficient (allowing a 'worse-than-us' value judgment of God's heart).

 We must be clear on this. Absence of data on "the motive" will not allow us to assume that the motive is inadequate to "justify" the choice to "go ahead". We will not be able to jump from "ignorance" to "certitude" with any level of warrant. Methodologically, it would be just as inappropriate to assume God's guilt (given this absence of data) as it would be to assume God's innocence in the matter. The Christian may be warranted in extrapolating from instances of God's alleged grace, goodness, and kindness elsewhere to this issue, and the skeptic may be warranted in extrapolating from instances of God's alleged cruelty and insensitivity to this issue, but we must be clear that this is pure extrapolation and extension, and cannot carry nearly the same force as the content of the motive itself.
 
 

Two. We must note that, in the first question, we (somewhat insignificant 'carbon-based life forms') are presuming to judge God's morality and character on the basis of our own! For a human being, with the incredible paucity of data we have about the universe, morality, reality, and complexity, to decide that God is less kind, less noble, less compassionate, less moral, less 'humane' than they, seems quite bizarre, in my opinion.

 Think about this for a second. Let's consider two cases: one without a God (i.e., Materialism of one form or another) and one with.
 

In the latter case, we have a God that somehow creates a derivative, "smaller" creature (i.e., human) with a superior morality and better heart! So, when a person says "I refuse to worship such a heartless god" we have the absurdly strange situation in which the "effect" is somehow greater than/superior to the "cause". [If you haven't read Aristotle recently, perhaps now is a good time to read his discussion on causality, to see what problems this might include (sardonic smile).] This is pure and naïve presumption...[Notice that the analog of this--"I have a greater intelligence than the absolute source of all intelligence" makes the absurdity even clearer.]
 

In the former case of materialism (no spirits or deities or 'souls'), we have a creature that has climbed from the slime to some kind of superiority (i.e., "top of the food chain"!) by wholesale application of 'survival of the fittest' (read: "extinguishing" or "subjugating" others). Vast amounts of human evil--the responsibility for which is borne in this scenario solely by the human, since there are no other agents to pin this on or share the blame with--have been perpetrated and are inexorably justified, under the evolutionary leveling of all to 'self-interest'. The elimination of countless species of life in this evolutionary, ceaseless, and random struggle; the very atrocities that are used as examples of 'the problem of evil'(!); and the wholesale failure of the human race to produce anything in the area of human rights at all but the most insignificant scale, makes me question the 'moral superiority' of such a creature...Indeed, since his moral judgments will eventually reduce to thinly-disguised but cosmetically-complex positions of 'self-interest', why should they be taken as 'objective' in any sense? Despite Herculean efforts to construct systems of evolutionary ethics to account for altruism, cooperation, and "animal rights" type of oddities, while attempting to avoid the racist and biological supremacist implications of the early Darwinian exponents, we are stuck with our own bloody and shameful history of action. [Recent studies on advanced forms of cooperation in higher primates(cf. PH:GN) only pushes the problem 'down' and 'early' a little further.]

To agree that a "mudball, with hair and teeth, red in tooth and fang" can transcend this history to the point of making authoritative statements about morality and character, is well beyond my skeptical limits...

The very fact that I believe that I can make moral judgements about my actions and the actions of others, presuppose that my source of origin has at least as good an ethical standard as I. For me to believe that I can make objective moral judgments, and then take the position that my ontological source of ethical abilities is inferior to me, borders on the self-stultifying. [This is not to mention the problem of the Ultimate Reference Point of morality, as noted by the Existentialists. There has to be a "God the Father" for real value to exist, to use Sartre's explication.]

Now, strictly speaking, the skeptic is certainly warranted in raising the question of God's character--on the basis of his individual exegetical and theological construction--I would not fault him in the least for this. We often do this; something strikes us morally 'odd' about a passage or a doctrine, and it forces us to examine it more closely and more carefully and more open-mindedly. Often in the this process we discover our 'hidden baggage' that we bring to the text. In the skeptic's case, however, instead of having an independent basis (such as a warm personal experience of God or a careful and informed understanding of the life and character of Jesus Christ) for giving God the "benefit of the doubt" and suspending judgment until he has time to turn all the possible understandings over, he instead hits the "Finish" button and arrives at the conclusion.

The main problem is one of sequence. The skeptic foregoes deciding about the more 'objective' issues such as "was prophecy fulfilled beyond reasonable plausibility?" or "did the resurrection really occur?", or "how did Jesus feel about this God?", and instead starts the process with a subjective moral judgement of God's character, based on his fundamentalist-like understanding of Genesis and some of the other texts (some of the stranger texts in the bible, I might add). In normal life, one generally tries to move in the opposite direction--from the more-sure to the more-questionable...
 
 

Three. This objection sounds strangely like the one advanced by the famous serpent in the very passage under discussion. The serpent in Genesis 2-3 advances two propositions: (1) God is a liar; and (2) God does not desire your best, and His motives cannot accordingly be trusted.

Notice that this 'objection' (at least as worded in most forms) intends the same result. It attempts to get us to say that (1) God is a liar [i.e., He is NOT good, merciful, kind, benevolent, and interested in the welfare of all His creatures, great and small, in spite of all the statements and evidences He adduces to this effect); and (2) God does not desire our best (but His own best) and His motives cannot be trusted. I find this diabolically ironic that the passage describing the first 'attack' on the beauty of God's heart is used so effectively in our time to do exactly the same!

 Although this, of course, cannot be used as evidence against the position itself, the similarities might suggest ways of approaching the question.

..............................................................................................................................
 

With this said, what I want to do is to evaluate the skeptic's position first, and then look at the more general problem of "why did God go ahead with the program?" in the next installment.
 
 

The skeptic's argument is not too difficult to deal with, since it shares many of the same exegetical and methodological weaknesses of certain types of fundamentalist approaches (which our skeptic friend has not completely discarded yet).
 

The first major problem with his construction of the dynamics of the Garden is that it makes too much of too little.
 

Making such comprehensive theories of God, volition, human nature, and evil from such a small and complex passage such as Genesis 3 is not methodologically sound. The data is way too scarce (e.g., we have only two remarks by the serpent!), and there is too much missing information. Think of some of the other data elements we would need to know to make this scenario plausible (or even, "possible to evaluate with any meaningful degree of certitude"!):
 

1. How many times did Adam/Eve say "no" to the serpent, or to individual thoughts about the Tree of Good and Evil (TGE)?
2. How many years/decades did Adam/Eve remain true to God, before the Fall? (it could have been close to 130 years!)
3. What instructions or information did God give Adam about the Tree of Life (ToL), if any? Did He tell them they could eat from it after X days/months/years of loyalty?
4. What would have happened had Adam eaten of the ToL after he had fallen?
5. Did God forgive Adam, so that he did NOT die as soon as he ate of the fruit?
6. How many attempts at deception on Adam and/or Eve did the serpent make?
7. Were the other animals almost as 'crafty' as the serpent? Did they play a role?
8. Why do the curses pronounced on Adam, Eve, and Serpent not mention anything--however slight--about hell or after-death existence?
9. Why are the trees given such "symbolic names"?
10. Was the ToL un-guarded before the Fall?
11. Was the serpent given his name by Adam in the naming of the animals?
12. Why are there no mentions of anger or wrath in the passage?
13. When God stopped a fallen, guilty, and ashamed Adam/Eve from eating of the ToL, did He in effect stop them from "going straight to hell" in the process (i.e., living forever in a fallen state?) Was this an act of mercy?
14. Why is hell or eternal consequences not even mentioned in the passage, but only 'death'. (What would Adam and Eve have understood by "death"?)
15. Why did the humans not die on the 'very day they ate', but received much less severe a sentence?--was this mercy, perhaps due to the fact that malicious will was allowed to influence their decisions?
16. Was the ToL a promised reward for loyalty, or even a source of healing, had adam/eve actually confessed their disloyalty to God openly?
17. Were they already eating the ToL daily? (as some commentators believe)

And when the Tree of Life appears again--in Revelation 22--why is it so obviously symbolic:
 

Genesis 1-3, in historical context, makes no real attempt to explain these things, but rather functions as a counter-thrust to the religious creeds of Israel's neighbors and predecessors in Mesopotamia [cf. BAW]. This is like trying to answer the Problem of Evil from the Book of Ezra, or Christological controversies from Philemon--they just weren't written with those purposes in mind.

We honestly know so very, very little about what really went on in the Garden that we must only take out of the passage what the author put in. The passage speaks about the advent of physical death, of course, but it is much more concerned with how God and man interacted in a couple of dimensions of their relationship. One should be very, very cautious about making sweeping theological systems out of such a limited base of data, especially constructing conspiracy theories about a God who eventually goes to the Cross for us...

[Quite honestly, not only has our skeptic probably done this here, but evangelicals are notorious for treating Genesis in such a way. I often imagine that if the original author of Genesis were to hear some of the grand schemes we have made from Genesis 1-6, that he/she/they would burst out laughing in amusement or be flabbergasted at how we got so much "out" of what little they put "in". It would be like me writing a passage including a sentence like "John wrestled with the beast of his envy all night", only to have one of my readers obsessively press me for details about what the beast looked like, its dietary habits, and its origin!]

Although I can fault the skeptic for being wrong here, I can certainly understand how he arrived at such a reconstruction of the text. The methods he was likely taught by his previous sub-culture may have lead him to his conclusion quite logically.
 
 

Secondly, the skeptic's position oversimplifies the complexity of choice and influence, between the agents in the story and even relative to us.

 For example, somehow, our moral choices don't exist. Some nebulous "wheels set in motion" are the sole active agents in this story. The billions of people referred to later in the argument, somehow do not have any involvement in this process-we have all simply disappeared as persons somehow. Somehow "hell" is not in any way connected with how we decide to treat one another (in spite of God's repeated pleas and warnings to this effect), and all moral choices (good or bad) are simply part of some deterministic, a-personal, Newtonian causal chain. The first domino fell over, hitting the next one, and the next one (hmmm, maybe even Satan was set up to fail?)...The deterministic worldview implied therein is no longer a plausible worldview, and hasn't been so for the last twenty or thirty years. The complex interactions between agents and intentions have gone far beyond some billiard-ball like "causal" and "object" interactions between "faculties" of will, intellect, and emotion. The situation involved in human choice and action is significantly more complex that our skeptic friend seems to be aware of.

The position of "if it happened, then it was inexorable" is good metaphysical determinism, but fails in the light of the reality of agent causation. [Some of you will notice that the skeptic's deterministic position is remarkably close to some schools of theological orthodoxy today.]

The character of conscious choice is quite complex, and it cannot be reduced to such simplicities as these. It is not simply a matter of there being helpless and gullible people in the garden, at the mercy of a superior intellect, while God is somehow arranging the stage so "the right inputs produced the right outputs" in strict Newtonian fashion! Such a shallow picture!

Mind you, I am a "fallen creature", but I say "no" to temptation and hassle and testing every day of my life. I say "yes" sometimes, but I say "no" more often than not. Adam was to cultivate the garden-how long did he obey God in this task before the Fall? Somehow enough to survive the Fall. Although he blamed the woman (and the God who gave her to him) at confrontation, he later expressed his faith and hope by naming his wife "Eve" (i.e., "living"). He looked forward to life. Eve likewise overcame the failure, expressing her faith when she "got a child from the Lord."

But they all shared the responsibility for the failure-the man, the woman, the serpent. The complexity is real, but the objection paints a picture in which the play had to unfold in the way God "orchestrated it". When all will resolves down into one will, then there really is only one sinner in the universe, because there is only one agent (and the skeptic and I both disappear from the volitional landscape). And the objection assumes such a reductionist view of the situation.
 
 

Thirdly, also out of whack here is the relationship between the serpent and the humans. Your skeptic seems to believe that the humans were no match for the serpent, and that the outcome was inevitable. And following this, is the conclusion/implications that the God who allowed such a superior maleficent intelligence to have access to the naïve and helpless little humans was setting them up for failure (and therefore 'orchestrating' their failure and subsequent doom of billions of souls, etc.).

But we have no reason (from the bible) to believe that this was overpowering to the humans; indeed, we have evidence to believe that it was entirely within their range of ability to "master".

• First of all, mortals were created a "little" lower than the angels, not a "lot" lower than the angels (Ps 8)
• Second, God does not allow His spiritual children to be tempted beyond what they can stand today (I Cor 10.13); we have no reason to believe He would do less with His first two created ones;
• Third, the New Testament portrays the adversary as one who can be resisted by even fallen humans (Eph 4.27; Jas 4.7; 1 Pet 5.8)
• Fourth, the passage ranks the serpent barely above the animals (3.1);
• Fifth, the other main passage (with considerably more detail than Genesis) in which God allowed Satan to attack/tempt/test a human (Job, a fallen human, non-Israelite), showed the temptation to be successfully resisted;
• Sixth, even the post-Fall experience of Cain showed God expecting him to "master" sin, which was "crouching at the door" (Gen 4.7).

Although I certainly don't want to minimize the resourcefulness and effectiveness of the adversary, at the same time the evidence seems to indicate that the original Two had considerable ability to deal with the problem, and in all likelihood had a history of resisting before the Fall (there is no indication that Genesis Three was his initial attempt!). Accordingly, I cannot accept the assumption that the deck was stacked and the original Two were put in a situation beyond their ability to endure. If it was stacked somewhat, it was stacked against the adversary.
 
 

Fourth, the skeptic has made a rather common error of caricaturing the nature of the afterlife.

In common with much traditional religious thought, the afterlife is somehow characterized in "one-dimension" only.

For example, somehow he has assumed that there is no correlation between 'hell' and our behavior and/or choices. The popular stereotypes and caricatures of hell are adequately represented, but these in themselves fail miserably to represent the biblical position. The biblical position is very, very explicit that any suffering in hell is exactly matched to the works done during the earthly life. The whole point of the "judgment" is justice (although there may be an extra measure, due to the suffering the evil might have created in the lives of others-cf. Ex 22.1; 2 Sam 12.6; Lk 19.8). If whatever hell consists of is NOT perfectly just, then it is not the biblical hell at all. And, if our moral choices don't exist (a la the scenario), then we wouldn't end up in hell anyway--there wouldn't be anything to punish us for! The consistent self-violation of the human race wouldn't be worthy of any response, merciful or judgmental, if moral choice didn't matter. (In fact, if moral choice didn't matter, why would we fault this aberrant "god" for making a bad one anyway?) The Christian position is fundamentally that of the Mosiac Law-"as you do unto others, so will be done unto you". This can be seen over and over and over in Scripture. Consider:
 

Fifth, the metaphor of the nuclear bomb, although clever and forceful, is quite backwards. The biblical model is more like God having built a luxurious garden playground, but the humans in the city tear it down, pave it, and then they build a nuclear bomb on the site to wield as a power tactic within the various arrogant factions of the city. Our personal judgment is created by us-"hell" was not designed for humans, but for destructive angels (see Mt 25.41). Instead, God builds an alternative city and welcomes any who are simply honest enough about their need (and about their danger from their own self-created disaster) to join the new city. [My alternative metaphor is woefully incomplete, of course, since it doesn't include the substitutionary work of Christ--sorta like Him taking the bomb-blast personally, but the metaphor of the nuclear thing is more difficult to fit into this modification.]
 
 

Sixth, the remark about the whole thing being "orchestrated to make us feel dependent upon God" is pure conjecture (and maybe even unjustified paranoia). The bible makes no such claim, so the statement is mere assertion, and in the absence of any evidence offered to support it, need not be taken seriously.

But, in fact, the opening chapters of the book of Job demonstrate that God is interested in a "considered" response. In the interactions between Satan and God, Satan accuses God of the very motif suggested by our skeptic friend--that Job only worships God for selfish reasons (sorta like avoiding a bomb-blast). In the absence of such 'selfish benefits' from God, Satan accuses, Job would cease to value God for His intrinsic worth and therefore cease to honor Him as a Person. (Job, remember, has other relationships [e.g., wife, friends, kids] that include valuing others not only for the 'benefits' they provide, but also for their worth as individuals. Satan is simply suggesting to God that God is only being 'used' by Job to meet his own self-centered ends.)

C.S. Lewis, in the Screwtape Letters, makes the remark that God cannot "overpower," He can only "woo" to achieve His desired responses of non-robotic love (or simply, "love", since expressions of love by a robot would hardly be considered a non-coerced whole-person response, even by the most avid artificial intelligence advocates).

A forced and horribly precipitated "feeling of dependence" could fall much closer to coercion than it would to wooing!

(This is not to say that 'fear' of judgment is not an appropriate reason to open up to God, but that it is neither the main reason people come to Christ [the main reasons are the sheer beauty of His character and the often never-before-experienced warmth of His acceptance, affirmation, forgiveness, and love], nor is it frequently experienced "purely" enough to precipitate some sort of turning to God.)
 
 

Seventh, the comment about God "staking the future of mankind on this one event" is likewise confused. Each individual experiences life as a series of his or her own events, and the interplay between context, and the events and choices, and the resultant character, is what God uses to judge a person. It is not just occasional lapses of morality, nerve, or judgment, but rather that which proceeds from the very character of a mortal that comprises the evidence. Jesus put it very simply:

First the Tanakh/OT:
 

And I should point out, that where the Fall did affect subsequent humans, it was met moment-by-moment with God's assistance, from the clothing provided by God, to the pre-murder coaching of Cain, to the preaching of Noah, to the warnings to Abimelech...Paul pointed out that "where sin abounded, grace super-abounded"...The aberration was significant--just as mine are--but not without God's immediate provision and warmth.
 
 

Eight, the scenario commits a rather odd type of blame-shifting. The scenario itself leaves this slightly implicit (even though it is clear that God is to blame for making the scenario into a "no win" one for us), but your sensitive response ("it is hard for me to be glad that Jesus is my Savior, because now it seems like He's saving me from something He started in the first place!") makes this explicit. This mistake assumes (oddly) that we are somehow undeserving of any judgment because there are moral standards in place!

Think about this for a minute.

God makes a social universe in which if you intentionally commit an act of violence upon someone, then the law courts visit some kind of judgment/violence back upon your head. You are held accountable for your actions, and in this way, responsible social communities can be constructed. Boundaries and specific behavior expectations are shared by members of the community in such a way as to create an "operational unity" to (hopefully) facilitate "interpersonal unity" and growth as a culture.

Let's say that I am a member of a tribe, and that we all meet together and decide that it would be against our best interests to allow members of the tribe to sneak up on other members of the tribe while they are asleep and kill them (in order to take all their possessions). And then we decide that if someone does that crime, they will subsequently be whipped and executed in front of the others, to reinforce the seriousness of the need for trustworthy relationships among the tribe.

Now let's say I commit such a crime--I kill my neighbor and move all his belongings into my hut. When I am found out, the tribe's tribunal finds me guilty and sentences me to death for my crime. I weep and wail, beg and plead, and eventually (somehow) convince them to spare my life and that I will never, ever violate the law of tribe and betray the community trust again.

When I accept their pardon for my crime, would it make any sense for me to discount that because "they pardoned me from something they set up in the first place"?! Of course not--the rules that were "set up" were for good. That I was sentenced to punishment was not the "fault" of the rules, but of my disregard for them. I cannot shift the blame to some "system" (or worse, to the system creator) when it simply operates efficiently! Moral codes imply consequences of various types, for positive and negative respect for those codes. Consequences for destructive behavior are simply "responses" of the "necessary-for-good" law, provoked by my actions or inaction. Most of the law codes in the cultures of the world are not arbitrary--they exist in order to facilitate the growth and health of a community. While it is true that God "set up" a system of actions/consequences (and laws that express these in warning fashion), this system is healthy and embedded in reality (e.g., 'do not walk off a cliff--you will likely plunge to your death'), and certainly not arbitrary in the least.

Blame shifting, of course, was part of the original response of Adam and Eve. God expected Adam and Eve to trust His warning (and to grow thereby). But when they failed, the man immediately blamed the woman, and then God ("The woman YOU gave me, gave me the fruit to eat and I ate") and the woman blamed the Serpent ("The serpent tricked me, and I ate"). The Serpent gave no excuse, since his act was apparently one of deliberate destruction. (Remember, Jesus called him a "murderer" from the beginning, in John 8.44.)
 
 

Nine, the objection fails to appreciate (or take seriously) the nature and value of history.

From the first verses of Genesis 1, God seems to focus on growth, development, unfolding, manifestation of potential. From the "let the earth bring forth plants" to "be fruitful and multiply (after your kind/pattern)", God is involved in historical process. In the case of the garden, for example, the experience of bringing the animals before Adam to find a companion, was not for God's benefit(!), but for Adam's-to pre-build the appreciation that materialized as Eve appeared. God was delivering good to them-through time. Some of the good required choices between competing alternatives, some required action, some required restriction. With every breath, the man and woman manifested more and more of their potential. [This did not stop after sin, by the way; the very birth of Cain and Abel are historical developments that were only implicit in their state of 'innocence'. We (as humans) tend to be impatient; God works at a different pace. We settle for less; He aspires to full robustness of life and event.]

To have created Adam at Time-One and then had him eat of the ToL at Time-One-Plus-1-Minute may have been acceptable for our skeptic, but to quick-freeze the development of Adam, and forego the unfolding of humanity and of nature, and to preclude the myriad of moral choices (some good, some bad) and the robustness of civilization could easily be considered a 'lesser good'...
 
 

Tenth, the position has the methodological burden-of-proof problem of all conspiracy theories--it takes more data to prove these second-order theories than it does to accept the more simpler first-order theories.

In other words, it is not enough to suggest that God might have orchestrated such a nefarious plan, but the conspiracy theorist must offer evidence that this is indeed the case. Conspiracy cases are dependent on disclosures of the guilty party (e.g., 'secret documents' that tell what the person was really thinking...), that demonstrate the hidden agenda or the attempt to deceive or the plan to defraud. That someone might have done so only suggests a "motive" at best...
 
 

Eleventh, as a predictive model, this view of God's character fails rather significantly.

In other words, IF we construct a model of God's character as being sadistic and/or sycophantic, then our creaturely experience should reflect this. And, although there are aspects of our experience that might be understood to provide evidence for this (e.g., predation in nature? Natural evil?), the fact that our human lives are a mixture of pleasure and pain, with substantial amounts of pleasure counts quite heavily against this model.

Decades ago, a lawyer wrote:

[It might be worth pointing out here we would not even 'bemoan' our free-will, if God were truly manipulative; there simply wouldn't be any...]

...........................................................................................................
 

Let's stop there and summarize the above. The argument from Genesis of the skeptic has the following significant problems:
 

1. Making such comprehensive theories of God, volition, human nature, and evil from such a small and complex passage as Genesis 3 is not methodologically sound
2. The skeptic's position oversimplifies the complexity of choice and influence, between the agents in the story and us.
3. The relationship between the serpent and the humans is over-dramatized, and is unreflective of how it probably was.
4. The skeptic has made a rather common error of caricaturing the nature of the afterlife.
5. The metaphor of the nuclear bomb, although clever and forceful, is quite backwards.
6. The remark about the whole thing being "orchestrated to make us feel dependent upon God" is pure conjecture
7. The comment about God "staking the future of mankind on this one event" is confused.
8. The scenario commits a rather odd type of blame-shifting.
9. The objection fails to appreciate (or take seriously) the nature and value of history.
10. The position has the methodological burden-of-proof problem of all conspiracy theories.
11. As a predictive model, this view of God's character fails rather significantly.

Now, it should be clear at this point, that the skeptical author is guilty of faulty exegesis (and perhaps questionable theological method), and of the type that is commonly done in the worst of 'fundy' groups (not all fundy groups, though). This does NOT mean, however, that his characterization of God as being pathetic is necessarily false; all I have shown is that it cannot be reasonably supported from the passage he tried to use for this. There may be other evidence that he has that might support his case, but Genesis 2-3 simply cannot be so used.
 

The skeptic author does mention a couple of texts that allegedly are "other divine injustices", and let me make only the briefest remarks about these (some of these are dealt with in much more detail in the Tank).

His first quote: "God hardened Pharaoh's heart as an excuse to devastate Egypt. He took away Pharaoh's right to make the right decision and forced him to make the wrong one."

This is an amazing oversimplification of one of the most complex events in biblical history. The interplay between the cruel Pharaoh, the Israelites under his very harsh slavery, the will of Pharaoh, the court magicians, the 'gods' of Egypt, the Israelite leaders, and the 'hardening' (strengthening) of Pharaoh's will by Yahweh is immensely complex, and yet the skeptic has made this sweeping and facile statement.

This was the nation that had oppressed Israel for centuries, using recently infanticide, and whose Pharaoh brutalized Asiatics (not just Israelites) as a matter of course. God's first comment about him was this:

It is well known that Pharaoh hardened his own heart on the first several confrontations (7.13-14; 22-23; 8.15, 19, 32; 9.7) and only then did God begin to "give him what he asked for" (9.12; 10.1, 20, 27; 11.10; 14.8). Even then Pharaoh is still involved in the process (9.34-34). There is nothing like God 'taking away his right to make the right decision'! God treated him like He often treats us: He confronts us repeated with opportunity to choose good, and as we consistently say "no, go away" He eventually withdraws His support for our initial "mixed criteria" and gives us over to our then-firmed-up intentions/wills. God just coordinated this judgment with the good-hearted deliverance of two million people from oppressive slavery! His devastation was a judgment on the nation (Ex 6.6; 7.4; 12.12), not an excuse.

There are many, many other theological subtleties here, such as the relation between God and rulers, between the Patriarchs and the Hebrews, and between these events and the 'conversion' of numerous Egyptians (including some of the court magicians, cf. Ex 9.20), and some of this can be found in the Tank discussion of this issue.

Another case of judicial hardening can be found in Joshua 11.20: "For it was the LORD's doing to harden their hearts so that they would come against Israel in battle, in order that they might be utterly destroyed, and might receive no mercy, but be exterminated, just as the LORD had commanded Moses." But note in our analysis of this subject elsewhere that God's purpose was expulsion, not genocide per se.

The commentator for the EBCOT points out in this passage the same themes we see throughout the bible:

His second quote: "God also commanded David not to number the people in order to raise an army. So David didn't - until God came down and stirred up his mind and made him do it, taking away his right to make the right decision and forcing him to do something wrong. Then in order to punish David for doing it, God sends the death angel to kill seven thousand innocent men."

This shows surprising lack of familiarity with the text and the historical event, for someone who knows the Bible "backward and forward". This passage is recorded twice in scripture. The initial account was written in 2 Sam 24, and it starts out with "Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.'" In other words, Israel was already under God's judgment to begin with--there were no necessarily 'innocent men'! (For example, the revolt of Israel under Sheba--against David and Yahweh-- had only recently occurred.)

The situation is much more complex than our author would lead us to believe. It is difficult even to reconstruct the order of events between 2 Sam and 1 Chron 21. But one plausible scenario has Satan "standing up against Israel" in the heavenly court, and justly demanding punishment on Israel for some unspecified sin. (They had previously been punished by three years of famine in 2 Sam 21.1, hence "again.") God is judgmentally angry with Israel (which includes David, remember!), and punishes them by allowing Satan to "unleash" David's illegitimate pride to create a rift between them. David is 'incited' against Israel, and acts irresponsibly toward them. (But remember, they are somehow guilty of some unspecified sin.)

[I should also point out that one of the leading exegetes of the passage (Sailhammer) argues that 'satan' should be taken as 'adversary' (its literal meaning) here, referring to enemies of Israel. This fits the pattern of Judges, of course, and would fit the context of David's semi-forced military enrollment here better than the traditional understanding, which I 'defend' below.]

There was no order from God to David to not count the men (contrary to your skeptic friend's assertion); indeed, the taking of a census was allowed in the law (Ex 30.11):

And, in the light of ancient history and epidemiology, a three-day plague that only killed 70,000 people was incredibly 'light' in itself! Epidemics and plagues in ancient times lasted years and decades and centuries--not days. They killed major fractions of the population, and were never 'contained' like in our example. For samples,

The passage is essentially useless for our skeptic, largely because so many more details would be needed to support some kind of 'theory' about God forcing David to sin 'against his will'(!). Punishing people by giving them over to their own will (a la Pharoah, a la Romans 1) is a standard judgment-type throughout the bible, but it is never done without plenty of prior opportunity to change and to open up to goodness and truth.
 

It must be noted that our author has chosen (as foundational for his character construction of God) two of the more 'odd' passages in scripture involving multiple layers of volition. The complex interactions between 'wills' of God, Satan, David, Joab, the census-takers, and sinning Israel are only glimpsed upon in passages like these. The book of Job is the classic case of the God-Satan interaction, in which God says that Satan "incited Him" to ruin Job without reason (Job 2.3). The relation of God's will/intention and non-divine will is quite mysterious (and that should be a warning to anyone about making any theories about them, much less basing an entire understanding of the character/heart of God on them!), and would need to include the likewise famous passages in which God's goodness was triumphant over the malice of men. For example, in the case of Joseph being sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt, Joseph can credit God with a loving intent (Gen 50.19 and 45.5):
 

But Joseph said to them, "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

[This is a basic of theological method, by the way. In constructing theological statements, you start first with passages in the scripture which address or involve explicitly the topic under study. You don't start with oblique passages and try to infer aspects about the subject from it, and then use these less-certain constructs to 'constrain' the more-certain and explicit statements in the more germane passages. ]
 

His final quote: "Want more? How about the time God struck a man dead for touching the Ark of the Covenant while trying to keep it from falling. Why? Because God didn't want anybody to touch the Ark. One wonders who could have died if the Ark had fallen and broken."

Again, he seems unaware of the dynamics of the text and of the historical situation.

Let's look at the passages:

Consider first the requirements for moving the ark, given in the Law of Moses (which David knew quite well!):

Now, coming back to the prescribed way of moving the ark...let's compare the list of "should do" with "did do":

I can almost feel the decision-tension within God as they start out..."Well, they mean well...I will cut them a lot of slack here...I am a little concerned that they think I am like those pagan gods, who are dead and lifeless...they need to take me seriously, so they obey the rules and I can bless them, according to the promises...I will go along with this unless it gets out of hand..." And, He has the draw the line at violation of the holiest of holies--He must maintain before them that He is different and not their stereotypical god-who-does-not-mean-what-he-says...(Personally, I have had plenty of opportunities to experience this 'tension' myself, in trying to decide when/if to "bring up an issue" with my growing children.)

This passage is accordingly filled with mercy--from start to finish. God allows them to make most of the journey without the legitimate reprisal, and at the end, blesses the home of Obed-Edom the Gittite, definitely a Levite (cf. 1 Chronicles 15:17-18, 21, 24-25; 16:4-5, 38; Jos. Antiq. 7, 83) and quite possibly a Kohathite if he was from Gath Rimmon (Josh 21:20, 24-26; 1 Chronicles 6:66, 69).

David himself admits later that his mistake was very clear (1 Chrn 15):

Again, a closer look at the details and background of the event and the context reveal more grace than judgment even in this case.
 

Let me make a personal observation here...I have been digging into these 'divine injustice' passages for several years now, and I consistently come away (after intense study!) with a new appreciation for the magnitude and purity of God's kindness and patience, and a new appreciation for the complexity of the issues of ethical governance. The incredible balancing act that is required to satisfy a gazillion 'constraints' and 'directives' and 'values', commands new respect from me each time I review these types of issues. Issues of household responsibility, representative action, corporate identity, satisfying multiple value trajectories all in the same event (like that of Joseph!) are 'too wonderful for me'...I have appreciation for the problem as a parent, of course, but even trying to balance all the ethical boundaries in difficult situations of personal choice is exceptionally difficult for me. I find it so complex at the Miller-microscopic scale(!)--I cannot imagine the number of variables to deal with in the hand and heart of God...I gladly yield to the wise and loving Sovereign, who has revealed a trustworthy heart in His word, in my history, and in my heart.
.........................................................................................................

Let's zoom out for a moment, and look at the big picture here...
 

Now, we could go round-and-round about different passages here, but the issue is broader than this. One of the central issues that emerges from the above discussion is methodological: how does one construct a 'portrait' of the heart and character of God?
 

There are a couple of basic methodological issues that emerge when one is constructing a 'theological doctrine':
 

1. What starting-point does one use, and how clear and forceful is it?

In other words, which passages become the 'center' of the doctrine? These passages will become 'authoritative' (i.e., not subject to question), and will provide 'implications' and 'assumptions' for use in interpreting less-clear passages, farther out from the 'center'. Needless to say, it is critical that the central passage(s) be unambiguous, deal specifically and centrally with the topic (not peripherally), and not be re-interpreted or revoked by later passages.
 
 

2. How wide and varied is the peripheral supporting data?

In this category, one collects all the supporting, but not central passages. These would include passages which dealt with the subject obliquely, or which made the most sense (contextually) if the doctrinal theory were true, or which lend some support to the theory, but has a higher level of ambiguity than the central passages.

The more of these passages there are, and the more varied they are in usage and provenance, the more support they lend to the theory.
 
 

3. How clear and forceful is the 'competing' center?

This is the mirror image of the first point. If the competing theory(theories) have central passages that are clearer, more forceful, and more constant, then the original theory is thereby weakened.
 
 

4. How wide and varied is the competing, peripheral, supporting data?

Again, this is the mirror of #2 above. If the data that supports a competing theory is wide, varied, and fairly clear, then the original theory is weakened.
 
 

5. How easily can the competing data be 're-interpreted' to fit the original theory? (Or, how easily can it be judged as irrelevant, extrema, misread, falsified, etc.).

Since a theory is supposed to be able to 'predict' all of the data, this step is essential. The theory that can predict the 'most data' of what we find in Scripture, religious experience, history, etc. is essentially the 'winner'. It must, under this point, be able to predict the contrary data points. It might try to dismiss them as irrelevant, inconsequential, 'false readings' or fabrications (but it must make a case for this--it cannot be taken on 'faith').

Practically speaking, in a 'battle of theories', an original theory must not only have a strong central passage and wide support, but it must be able to provide a plausible explanation of the contrary data. In other words, it must be able to explain how that contrary data 'makes sense' in the original theory. This is essentially an act of re-interpretation. The central passage of the competing theory must be 'interpreted' differently than it was in the competing theory.

As one can imagine, the starting point or central passage can radically determine how