Daniel

God’s dealings with men [and women]

Whoops- old habits die hard.

Perhaps this is a false dichotomy etc

I don’t quite follow your argument here.

The way I see it is this. The advantage of interpreting the bible as a story of what people think about God is that it avoids the need to take at face value what we now find objectionable about God’s character and behaviour: that’s all put down to the primitive and savage minds of those who wrote the stories. This allows us to retain our image of God as unchanging goodness but it turns the text on its head. My view is that we have to take the text at is own estimation which is that it is a history of God’s dealing with His creatures. If we conclude that that account is morally repugnant and cannot command our assent then that is the conclusion we should accept. Anything else seems like a rescue mission aimed at retrieving something from the wreckage and smacks of intellectual dishonesty.

Here I think that the traditional vision of an ‘omnipotent’ God who ‘intervenes’ at certain points in history according to his whims is entirely unhelpful (a point Wright makes quite frequently I take it). …. And this is precisely what’s remarkable about Christianity, in my opinion, is that our doctrine of God has at its very heart a self-emptying God, a servant, who washes the feet of his disciples.

I agree entirely about the Christian conception of God and it is via this understanding that we can come to grips with the evil and suffering in the world.

My point is that Jahweh of the OT is nothing like this: he is a bellicose warrior who is quick to anger and very ready to punish and a puppeteer in the affairs of nations.

 Paul