Ever wonder why a loving God would ever ask someone to kill/sacrifice their child? Has the story of Abraham and Isaac ever turned you off to the things of God? Well, this 30-minute video featuring Dr. Greg Boyd and I will help you to look at the story a little differently than what you may have been taught in Sunday school!
Dr. Greg Boyd has authored over a dozen books and is accompanied with plenty of academic credentials. To my benefit he is one of the teaching pastors as Woodland Hills Church in Maplewood, MN where I have been spending the majority of my time in recent years partnering together in ministry. In 2021 they began offering an 3-year, online Seminary for Everyday Missions (SEM) program where I along with 11 others took up their invitation to go through the program. Part of the curriculum has students read chapters from Greg’s various books and then summarize the content along with our own reflection on the chapter.
For one of my presentations I picked the last chapter in Greg’s 2018 book, “Cross Vision”, which offers up an explanation why God would have commanded Abraham to sacrifice his own son Isaac. Since I had already published three vlog videos on this topic on this site in 2020 stating my own view I was eager to dissect Greg’s view and challenge him in a little friendly iron-sharpens-iron discourse.
Greg’s view is certainly compelling given the Ancient Near East practices of child sacrifice, however much of Greg’s view is argued from what is silent in scripture—scripture does not show Abraham objecting to God’s commandment in Genesis 22 as it shows Abraham doing in Genesis 18 with Sodom and Gomorrah because Abraham was culturally conditioned to believe it was quite normal for the gods to ask for a child sacrifice to show ultimate submission. For Greg, God was intentionally bringing Abraham to an emotional crisis moment as a way of dramatically putting an end to any notion that He wanted child sacrifice. An emotional crisis so great that afterwards Abraham would be left with no doubt that God did not want child sacrifice thus putting to any notion of the idea. Whereas my view affirms what scripture already lays out in two places (Genesis 22:5 and Hebrews 11:17-19)— at no time did Abraham believe that He would lose Isaac forever in sacrificing him because he had faith in God’s promise that all nations would be blessed through Isaac specifically, the very son who was to be sacrificed. Abraham’s faith in the promise of God was so rock solid that Abraham believed that even if he sacrificed and killed Isaac God was trustworthy enough that He would raise Isaac back from the dead in order to honor His promise. God was testing Abraham if he truly had the unwavering heart-faith to build a faith-nation that would be able to bring forth the savior of the world, Jesus.
Either way you fall on this issue you will definitely enjoy my presentation of Greg’s view, challenging Greg with my view, and Greg’s excellent rebuttal and discussion. ENJOY!
The Flowage 