Has anyone here read Christ: Crisis in the Life of God by Jack Miles? He has a very interesting take on the gospels. He says that God incarnated because he failed with Israel and probably mankind, so he comes to live among us and die an essentially suicide’s death, as a penance. God is sorry for the state of the world so he dies with us as an apology.
Intriguing.
Yikes!! Jack Miles posits a very disturbing thought.
No nothing about the book but your synompsis contains two sentences that I am not comfortable with:
The idea that Israel was God’s plan A and Jesus plan B is in my view ludricrous. God knew man would fall before creating man. Jesus knew he would the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world.
Amazon explains it a bit better than me.
Maybe God did in a sense fail, because it was impossible to win via law and force.
If you look carefully into the play by play between God and Israel during the Exodus, and especially as they hear Him speak to them from Sinai, you’ll notice something interesting.
God tells them they will be His special possession; a kingdom of priests. Now a priest is someone who goes to God on behalf of others. Israel would be, God told them, a kingdom of priests, presumably going before God on behalf of the rest of the nations.
However the idea of going before this God, this consuming fire, terrified them and they said to Moses, “You speak to God and come back and tell us what He said and we’ll do it, but let not God speak directly to us any more lest we die.” (or something to that effect) So Israel requested the law. They didn’t want the relationship because it scared them. And yes, they would die. Just as Jesus tells us, “Whoever would follow Me must take up his cross and come after Me.” So that is the place of death. We do have to die – to this world’s system – in order be be made free of it and to be enabled to be under the authority of the King, Jesus.
So God said that the thing they had requested was good, and He complied. Paul says the law is a tutor to bring us to Christ, and so I don’t think God was surprised that Israel rejected the relationship. He said, “Okay, they’ve asked for a good thing,” and He gave them the law. He knew that it was necessary in order to prepare the world for the true King.
So . . . I guess I would have to disagree with the concept that God was apologizing to the Jews for letting them down. I don’t see that He DID let them down. He fulfilled His side of the bargain, and they had theirs to fulfill (obeying the law, as they had requested and promised). I believe that if Israel had accepted Jesus’ Messiah-ship, that perhaps the Messianic Reign would have begun for them right there and then. (Of course God knew that wouldn’t happen, but it was an option for them.)
However if it’s the idea of a different theory of the atonement that you find attractive, I’m right there with you. So is nearly everyone on this forum from whom I’ve heard. For most of us the concept of penal substitution, which is the prevalent theory of choice today is hard to swallow. Here’s a thread where we discussed different atonement theories: [Poll: What’s Your Theory of Atonement?) And if you search “atonement theory,” you’ll find quite a lot more.
Blessings, Cindy
I haven’t read his book, but that doesn’t sound necessarily like God was failing and then came up with the Passion as a last-ditch expedient (much less to say He’s sorry about failing them previously. Although I could see the Passion being “apology” in another more positive sense, as an explanation of what is really going on. 
)
The broken promise in the scriptures is always attributed to sinners (and logically so), not to God: God remains faithful even when people are faithless.
And to expand a little bit on Cindy’s interesting observation (about Israel having effectively rejected from the outset the offer to be a kingdom of priests), Deuteronomy (at least, maybe other Pentateuch books as well) shows God revealing from the outset that Israel is going to break their side of the covenant, and break it epically hard, over and over, until God finally destroys them to the point where they are neither slave nor free. After which they will finally repent and be vinidcated and restored by God to the blessings and role they ought to have had from the beginning.
But like I said, I haven’t read Jack’s book, so maybe he does try to argue that God failed Israel and offered the Passion to make up for it somehow. I’m very much against that idea, even though I’m very much for the idea of God voluntarily suffering with the innocent in their victimization, and with the guilty in their punishment for victimizing.
That isn’t suicide.
That’s martyrdom!–a witness to the truth, and to the good news.
(Still a good thread and conversation, though, ‘Andre’–thanks! )
I too find it hard to accept that God messed up or that things got out of hand (though isn’t that what Christianity teaches about “the fall”?). To tell the truth, I really doubt that God was involved in many of the accounts of the OT, like the Canaanite massacre. I guess I’m a de facto Marcionite. However, I do find the idea of God apologizing for how messed up the world is intriguing. And you have to admit it it messed up. For most of humanity it has been a nightmare. An apology from God would be an acknowledgment of this and a declaration of total solidarity with humanity. This would more than anything inspire trust in God. I know to even speak though of God apologizing is anathema to most people.
Well, not that God messed up. And it only teaches that things ‘got out of hand’ in the sense that God opened His hand and allowed His children to stay there or to jump.
After which God catches them. But He has to catch them in a way sacrificially commisserate with their jumping, or it wouldn’t have been a real jump. In that sense, God is also in control the whole time: they aren’t taking Him by surprise or overpowering God against His will.
(True, falling into the hands of the Living God can be a terrifying thing, particularly for the impenitent. But it’s the only hope for salvation from sin, even for the impenitent. )
There are various options even if God actually told them to go do that. I’m not married to any of the theories myself, except that whatever happened God did authoritatively allow it and (one way or another) insists upon responsibility for it.
The cross would be part of that insistence upon taking responsibility and paying the price for the sins of God’s creatures. That would be quite the reverse of an apology about a mistake on God’s part, though.