Thanks for your commentary.

God may not be explicitely identified as a “mother”, but the Hebrew Bible in particular is loaded with language that alludes to God’s maternal qualities. He is said to nourish the people of Israel in the same manner that a mother breast-feeds her infant (Num 11:12), and to protect them as a mother hen (Matt 23:37). Furthermore, there are a number of pericopae in the Old Testament that suggest that there was a female counterpart to the Hebrew God Yahweh (Cf. Job 28:12–28; Prov 1:20–33; 3:7–19; 8:1–36; 9:1–18), to make no mention of the extensive archaeological evidence for female dieties as part of the religious expression in Ancient Israelite Yahwism. It seems that the characterizations of God used in The Shack tread upon Dr. Geisler’s masculine sensibilities which have led him to conclude that one can only speak of God in masculine terms. Young, I believe, is merely pointing to the fact that God defies gender altogether, and to speak of him as a man or a woman is inaccurate, but wholly understandable and acceptable.

I must confess. I, like Mr. Wheaton, have not read The Shack, but based upon Dr. Geisler’s review, it seems that I should. I don’t expect that my criticism of Geisler’s opinions will meet with a very favourable response among the readers of this blog, however, I am compelled to respond largely because the review posted follows a well-beaten path of evangelical theological fallicies. I don’t expect that what I have written will change many hearts or minds, but I do hope that those who read it will begin to think more carefully about what they believe and why.

KD.

The Bible also says that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor. 1:27–29 NRSV). The point is that the Bible says a great deal many things, and not all of it is reasonable, logical and resounding with rational clarity. Faith, by its very definition is the antipathy of reason which is based on a conviction of certainty. It’s all a part of the wonderful mystery of how God acts and how we ought to live.

Does Young actually deny this. Not from my perspective. What Dr. Geisler is missing is in his challenge is the subtle criticsm that Young is making of religion in general. It is important to note that Jesus was not a Christian: he was a Jew, and his desire was never to found a new religion, but to reform the old one. Jesus made many exclusive claims, but many of these should be considered in tension with the religious and political climate of his day. Jesus entire ministry was restricted to Palestine, and his respondents were virtually all Jews of one religious colour or another. There was a universal recognition among his listeners of what religion was, and in this context, Jesus claims of Jewish exclusivism need to be weighed carefully. The spirit of his message was more relational than cultic: and it remains a mystery what Jesus position would have been concerning non-Jewish religious practices. Young can make the claim that God does not have a religious preference, while mainting that Jesus way is the only way. He can do so in recognizing that it may very well be possible to honour Jesus, to observe his ethic and to be a member of the Kingdom of God while participating in another cultic expression the principles that Jesus taught. It is significant that Jesus never endorsed one religion over another: in fact, the majority of his criticsms are levelled against religious protocol, and involve a variety of different “religious” adherents within Judaism. Jesus never aligned himself with one group over another; rather, he claimed that they were all missing the point. I do believe that this is closer to what Young was trying to achieve in his book.

Problem Five: An Unbiblical View of Punishing Sin…“…The Shack presents lop-sided view of God as love but not justice. This view of a God who will not punish sin undermines the central message of Christianity—that Christ died for our sins (1 Cor. 15:1f.) and rose from the dead… “

In the economy of God, are we certain that “justice” requires the punishment of sin? Paul’s forensic portrait of salvation is merely one of several illustrations of how God saves. Paul suffered from the same problem as Young, and Geisler, and virtually everyone who has ever hoped to explain a spiritual truth: how do we speak meaningfully about something that defies human concepts and descriptions? I don’t deny (and I don’t think that Young would either) that Christ’s death was an atonement for sin, but I think the emphasis of The Shack’s author was meant to be upon the presumptuousness of many concerning the vindictive nature of God’s punishment. Was Christ’s death the once and for all atoning act that covered the sins of the world? Or does God also require the eternal suffering of most of his creation to make some sort of extreme cosmic point about justice?

It is even more complicated than that. The “New Testament” was not even conceived of in such terms as we would when this statement was written in 2 Timothy, but the Old Testament itself was also a matter of considerable debate. There were many wide-ranging opinions in Judaism regarding the shape of the “Scriptures”, especially outside of the Torah.

Besides, 2Timothy 3:15–16 is not even about the range or even the quality of Scripture. The emphasis on the passage is upon Scripture’s usefulness; hardly an emphatic endorsement of its exclusivity or its inerrency.

However, I am not crazy about more cherry picking either. If we are to go with sola scriptura (a concept which is not in the Bible) we can only read the Old Testament since the New Testament had not yet been codified when Paul wrote II Timothy.

Problem One: A Rejection of Traditional Christianity…“one might question whether it is Christianity that needs revision or Christians that need to be revitalized…”

It is a good question, but it is one for which there is little agreement among Christians. Dr. Geisler insinuates that Christianity is a religion that has remained intact from its inception, and experienced little or no discernible change, when in fact the very nature of Christianity—like its predecessors in Jewish religion—is conditioned for adaptibility. One of the reasons the Church has prevailed and succeeded as it has is because of it’s tendency to adapt. Albeit, too often, change in the church is slow, and Geisler is representative of a movement that believes it ought not change at all. Yet change is inevitable; as certain as it is that the many expressions of Christian faith that are practiced now are almost unrecognizable descendants of the religion of the Early Church and the Apostolic Fathers; to say nothing of the Second Temple Judaisms from which Jesus of Nazareth emerged.