Imagine that one day while getting ready to take your son or daughter to school, God came to you with a serious task. He tells you that he wants you to kill your child before leaving the house. Would you obey him? I mean, this is God we’re talking about here. You should probably listen to him, right? Technically, he owns your child anyway, so doesn’t he have the right to take that child’s life in whatsoever fashion he chooses? After all, he is God.
This disturbing illustration is similar to ones that atheists often invoke to challenge Christians regarding the loving character of God–at least, the God we see in the Old Testament. And because Christians ought to believe that the God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament, we should probably get a better understanding of seemingly troubling passages that concern many non-believers and believers alike!
One story that often presents such a concern is the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22. Here we see God give a command to Abraham to kill his son, Isaac. At first glance, this seems very odd and something a good God should not do, but when we look closer at the passage and reflect on the nature of God, it becomes clear on what is really going on.
The Binding
The problem of God commanding Abraham to kill Isaac has been debated for centuries. Some great Christian thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas and Soren Kierkegaard thought that God could modify his general will for specific circumstances such as this. Regarding Aquinas’ position, philosophers Craig Boyd and Don Thorsen note,
“Thomas held that God could command the sacrifice of Isaac since all people are guilty of sin and sin is punishable by death. Thus, Abraham was merely executing a form of divine justice.”[1]
But is that what was truly going on?
Could God really command someone to kill their own child? Wasn’t God the one who created the 10 commandments with one of them being, Thou Shalt Not Murder? Yet, here in Genesis 22, it appears that God is commanding the very thing he said not to do! Also, God makes it explicitly clear that he does not condone child sacrifice, in fact, he hates it (Deuteronomy 12:30-31). Is God contradicting himself? Does he arbitrarily make horrifying commands when he feels like it? How do we reconcile this?
Criticism of the Binding
Some scholars have attempted to reconcile it by outright rejecting these stories as being historically authentic, claiming they never really happened. Biblical scholar Eric Seibert is one of them. He says there are two problems with the binding of Isaac story, stating,
“First and foremost is the depiction of God as one who orders child sacrifice. Second, this passage suggests that God is willing to inflict serious psychological trauma on one person (Isaac) in order to ‘test’ another (Abraham).”[2]
Seibert, and many others, have suggested that this story does not accurately portray the character of God that Jesus reveals to us in the New Testament, and that God would never order someone to kill their child in order to test their loyalty. Seibert believes we should take a Christocentric hermeneutic to interpreting the entirety of Scripture.
In other words, if God is perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ (since Jesus is God), then we should look through a Christ-like lens while interpreting Scripture, and therefore reject anything that is contrary to what we see in Jesus’s life. Seibert says Jesus would never condone such an action, and although this story may have some theological insights that we can glean from, it does not represent what actually happened historically.
This is a minimalist view[3] of the Bible in which some scholars will discredit certain portions of the Old Testament that they believe have become distorted. Siebert says,
“Old Testament portrayals that correspond to the God Jesus reveals should be regarded as trustworthy and reliable reflections of God’s character, while those that do not measure up should be regarded as distortions.”[4]
I believe that Christians should not adopt this view because it seems to be in conflict with the promises that God gave concerning the preservation of his Word (Isaiah 40:8; Matthew 24:35). Why would God directly inspire individuals to express his divine truths (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21), just to have them corrupted and distorted later on?[5]
If you begin denying uncomfortable stories in the Bible that you don’t like, then it can be argued that other portions of Scripture can be thrown out. If we aren’t careful, we become the ones susceptible to distorting God’s Word by interpreting it in such a way that seeks to gain the approval of ourselves or others.
A Proper Biblical Interpretation
There are other ways to understand this difficult narrative in Genesis 22 which correlates well with the character of an all-loving and all-good God. Although Seibert does admit there are theological truths that can be extrapolated from this story regarding our loyalty to God and his ownership of all things[6], I believe there are ways to hold on to the essential historicity of this story and harmonize it with God’s character in addition to the theological truths Seibert affirms.
Besides, if this story was merely allegorical and fictitious, why would it be affirmed in the New Testament? The writer of Hebrews commends the actions of Abraham. Hebrews 11:17 says, “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son.”[7]
James 2:21 says, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?” Christopher J. H. Wright reminds us that
“neither Jesus or any of the New Testament writers critique the words or actions of God in the Old Testament or suggest that the stories were immoral in their own context.” [8]
Renowned Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman III also disagrees with Seibert’s interpretation of difficult Old Testament passages, stating,
“I challenge Seibert’s Christocentric hermeneutic, which ends up pitting Christ against the rest of the canon and producing a canon within a canon. Jesus himself never disowns the Old Testament, and Seibert’s portrait from the New Testament is selective.”[9]
In other words, because Jesus (i.e., God) appeared to believe that this story was historically true, then so should we!
Let’s take a closer look at this biblical “dilemma.” Why would God make a promise to Abraham in Genesis 12 that Abraham’s offspring would eventually bring forth a great nation and be a blessing to all nations, but then turn around in Genesis 22 and tell Abraham to annihilate the very instrument in which the blessings would come from? That doesn’t make any sense on a superficial reading, so there must be something deeper going on here.
Genesis clearly states that God was testing Abraham, and therefore never planned on actualizing the death of Isaac. Moreover, the text even says that Abraham planned on returning with Isaac from the mountain. Abraham said, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you” (Genesis 22:5).
Undoubtedly, Abraham knew the Almighty God could easily resurrect his son (Hebrews 11:19). Old Testament scholar Kenneth Mathews notes,
“The writer to the Hebrews recognized that Abraham believed the boy would return (22:5), which can only mean that Abraham trusted the Lord to raise him from the dead to fulfill his promise (21:12).”[10]
So, either Abraham knew God was going to provide another sacrifice so Isaac wouldn’t die, or he knew that Almighty God would bring his son back to life. Abraham even said that a lamb would be provided by God, so some have argued that Abraham believed God would intervene at some point, which is precisely what God planned on doing (Gen. 22:8).
Christian philosopher Paul Copan researched a few other ideas that make this narrative more palatable, focusing on the Hebrew meaning behind certain aspects of God’s test to Abraham. Copan references prominent Old Testament scholars who have pointed out that God didn’t actually “command” Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but rather gently nudges and pleads with Abraham to do this difficult task, so much so, that it could be inferred that Abraham would not have been guilty of declining God’s request.[11]
Philosophical Evaluations of the Binding
Theologian Randall Rouser believes that because God is a morally perfect being, then by his very nature, God could not issue this command to Abraham. Moreover, he thinks the primary concern here is that we could somehow believe that a morally perfect being could issue a command such as child sacrifice.[12]
Rouser thinks we’ve become desensitized to this killing scenario, so he provides a thought experiment telling us to imagine instead that God commanded Abraham to take his daughter into the wilderness to be raped by a Philistine.
He explains that even if God prevents the act, and could have restored her virginity physically if she were raped (in a similar way to restoring Isaac’s life), we should still be bothered by this command and that it doesn’t reflect the commands of a morally perfect being.
He concludes that if we admit that murder and rape are moral atrocities, then it would be astonishing to believe that a morally perfect being could command heinous actions as a morally laudable test of faith.[13]
Rouser says God could issue other monstrous commands of unspeakable horror. So, if we say that God could not issue such commands, then we have powerful extra-biblical reasons to interpret the binding of Isaac in a different way, whatever way that might be.[14]
Now, I personally did not think this was a convincing thought experiment and that Rouser’s attempt to parallel these two scenarios seemed unsatisfactory. So, I did some digging and found Theologian Matthew Flannagan’s response to Rouser’s rape example. Flannagan explains,
“When you kill someone who immediately comes back to life, the property central to making killing wrong has been removed from the act – the person is not dead. When someone is raped and their virginity is restored the property that makes rape wrong is still there.”[15]
Being raped and having virginity restored has additional features that seem to make it much worse than being killed and having your life restored.
I think Flannagan is on to something here, but regardless, I don’t think that admitting to a morally perfect being issuing this kind of command is problematic. Remember, we must evaluate these situations on a case-by-case basis with an understanding of the background context and purpose of the event.
God cannot go around making bizarre and evil commands that Rouser imagines. I believe God could issue such a command as this, because God knew the command would never be actualized. Maybe we can label these types of commands as soft, while labeling commands that are actualized as hard. This was a soft command.
The late, great philosopher Phil Quinn argued that a distinction is to be made between the realms of God’s divine goodness and his moral goodness, and that because God is perfectly good, he could have made a divine command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but at the same time, because Isaac was an innocent child, Abraham had a moral requirement by God not to kill him which could not be overridden; therefore, both of these divine and moral requirements established by God are compossible.[16] Quinn notes,
“Because the requirement indefeasibly imposed by God’s command to Abraham is a religious requirement rooted outside the moral realm and not just a particularly stringent moral requirement, it does not override the supremely urgent moral requirement that Abraham refrain from killing Isaac imposed by the fact that Isaac is an innocent child.”[17]
In other words, it seems that the realms of divine goodness and morality are different in such a way that both requirements from God still hold. Abraham had a divine requirement to perform the command, but also had a non-overriding moral duty to refrain from performing it.
Copan demonstrates that God’s command for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is still consistent with God’s perfect nature, which is Goodness itself, and that God has morally sufficient reasons to give this command to Abraham because of the following: The unique underlying context of the event and the purpose of Isaac’s life to bless all nations, God’s ability to raise Isaac from the dead, and the confidence that God certainly would have done so to fulfil his promise which he cannot break (Hebrews 6:18) and that he cannot lie about (Titus 1:2). Abraham was completely aware of God’s ability to do so; thus, it would have been morally permissible for Abraham to take this innocent life.[18] Recall that Abraham planned on returning with a living Isaac from the mountain.
Furthermore, we can justify innocent lives being taken for greater goods in certain situations. For example, in order to prevent greater moral atrocities by Nazi Germany, other nations had to intervene which resulted in innocent lives being taken to prevent more innocent lives from being destroyed. Either way, we know from the text that this was never God’s intentions to begin with!
Philosophers David Baggett and Jerry Walls also remind us that because God’s nature is the Ultimate Good, and because God’s commands are a direct reflection of that Good nature, then God cannot issue evil commands.[19] So we know this command wasn’t morally evil.
The Bible makes it clear that God is the greatest conceivable being (Revelation 5:13); who sustains everything in existence (Colossians 1:17); who cannot sin or deviate from his perfect character (2 Timothy 2:13); who cannot change (James 1:17); and is defined as Love (1 John 4:8). We can be confident that God would never command us to commit moral atrocities.
Focus on the Big Picture!
Finally, we must look beyond the ropes that bound Isaac and remember the whole point of the story. This symbolic act, no matter how unpleasant we may feel about it, was worth having taken place (yes, even if it was me instead of Isaac). God was using this situation to signify the forthcoming and greatest event of human civilization. Just as Isaac’s life was spared by a substitutionary figure (ram), our lives would be spared by the Lamb’s.
This future sacrifice at Calvary would occur for the redemption of all mankind. Except this time, it wasn’t Abraham’s “only” son–it was God’s, and there would not be an animal to take his place. God demonstrated his unfathomable and unconditional love toward humanity by offering his only Son, Jesus, who never sinned, to become that sacrifice for the world. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16).
Because God is omniscient (all-knowing), he already knows the outcome of every decision that we are going to make. God was allowing this to play out to test Abraham’s faith, to represent the significance that Isaac’s sacrifice portrayed, and the ability for the world to hear about God’s progressive plan for redeeming humanity.
Throughout Scripture, we see God asking his servants to do challenging things, but these challenges symbolize something extremely significant that God plans on performing in a much greater way. Another example is when God told Hosea to marry a prostitute.
This offered an incredible depiction of unconditional love and mercy that God had toward Israel. Sometimes we need to exercise caution so we don’t lose sight of what God is showing us through these commands, rather than becoming fixated on why he is commanding them.
Your Quick Answer to the Skeptic
Although God is the giver of life and has the right to take away that which he has given, he is going to do so in such a way that is consistent with his perfect and good nature. So, if a skeptic ever asks you: “Would you kill your child if God asked you to?” I would say something like: “That question is irrational and assumes God could do evil, which he can’t. Therefore, your question is like asking what if 2 + 2 = 5?”
The reason is because God would never give this command to anyone else because there would be no purpose behind it. Abraham’s test was more than just a test of faith; it was a unique event foreshadowing the greatest one-time event to ever happen. If the skeptic pushes further and asks it again in a different way, such as, “Okay, but let’s pretend God could ask it. What-if God commanded you to?” The answer would remain the same because that is entertaining a non-sensical idea. It would be like asking, “what if God could make a married bachelor?” Remember, God cannot do the logically impossible or anything that is contrary to his perfectly good nature.
Mine and your child’s life have nothing to do with symbolizing God’s future promise of salvation to all humanity, and is therefore irrelevant to these types of what-if scenarios concocted by skeptics.
God’s character is perfect and good, and God would not give such commands outside of a unique event such as the binding of Isaac. It would be a sin to do so, and that is something God cannot do. His commands will reflect his character. Lastly, God never planned on having Isaac kill his son.
Blessings,
Andrew Drinkard
[1] Craig A. Boyd and Don Thorsen, Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy: An Introduction to Issues and Approaches (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 62.
[2] Eric A. Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 217.
[3] Minimalism says that the Bible cannot be considered as a historically reliable source of information in regards to ancient Israel.
[4] Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior, 185.
[5] Nevertheless, if stories like the binding of Isaac were fictional in the historical sense, they could still be construed as “true” stories that convey theological truths which do not undermine our Christian faith, nor do they negate other truths in God’s Word, especially the most important historical truth of all–Jesus dying for our sins and being resurrected to provide us new and eternal life. Moreover, this does not imply that Jesus held false beliefs, because Jesus could have been referencing stories that he knew were not true in the historical sense. Biblical inspiration and preservation, although very important, are not prerequisites for one to obtain redemption and salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ (I, however, reject minimalism).
[6] Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior, 219-220.
[7] Unless otherwise noted, all biblical passages referenced are in the English Standard Version.
[8] Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 81.
[9] Tremper Longman III, Confronting Old Testament Controversies: Pressing Questions about Evolution, Sexuality, History, and Violence (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 2019), 154.
[10] Kenneth Mathews, Genesis 11:27-50:26 (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2005), 255.
[11] Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 2011), 47-48.
[12] Randal Rauser, “The Problem with the Offering of Isaac,” The Tentative Apologist, October 10, 2020, accessed November 15, 2020, https://randalrauser.com/2020/10/the-problem-with-the-offering-of-isaac/.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Matthew Flannagan, “Abraham, Isaac, Virginity, Rape and Child Killing: Another Old Testament Ethics Post,” MandM, January 23, 2011, accessed November 24, 2020, http://www.mandm.org.nz/2011/01/abraham-isaac-virginity-rape-and-child-killing-another-old-testament-ethics-post.html.
[16] Philip L. Quinn, Essays in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. Christian B. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 83-90.
[17] Ibid., 85.
[18] Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, 49-50.
[19] David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 92-93.
