…but as a UR, YOU deny traditional interpretations of biblical texts…
i think a UR view of God committing genocide “but its ok becuase he saves everyone” is quite suspect. im thankful that mclaren uses his writing (not just a contextless quote) to question, build upon, and shore up biblical inspiration against ultra-literalists.
Yes, I do deny some traditional interpretation of a few texts. But I have studied them and found, what I believe to be a very reasonable explanations. I don’t think it is “ultra literalist” to think that the flood really happened. When you read the bible, it is presented in numerous places in a non poetic way, in plain language, as if it really happened.
It says that the people in Noah’s time were continually committing evil. It presents a people who were corrupted to the core. If God wants to give the death penalty to those people, then I am OK with it. I’m assuming that they were doing more than cheating on their taxes (think: child sacrifice, child prostitution, murder, torture, etc.) I am completely comfortable with a God who can take the life of another person as a punishment for extreme corruption by sin.
I’ve said on other posts: there are many types of universalism. I know there are some folks who don’t like the bible very much and would be much more comfortable without it. They don’t like how God is presented, especially in the old testament. There are types of universalism out there that don’t even include the bible, except in the vaguest of manners. Then there are types of biblical universalism that are more classically “liberal” in their theology. However this is about the book The Evangelical Universalist and it is about Evangelical Universalism. I’m an example of a guy who has Calvinist books on his shelves, but is here now. I’m here because I think that the scriptural arguments are strong. I know there are some who don’t care whether it can be “proven” from the bible or not. They simply “know it in their heart”. I don’t trust my own heart enough to be completely comfortable with that. I’m not to proud to say that.
In regards to the flood, the people destroyed - I would like to point out a few of my thoughts on the matter.
Firstly; the people destroyed had to have been in a constant, consistent, and vicious sort of wickedness - as a whole humanity, an age of wickedness so violent and so constant that it caused God himself to feel regret for having made Mankind. The wickedness of today’s current age of darkness must have paled in comparison; even despite all of our horrible evils.
The Bible states that man’s heart thought nothing but evil thoughts, and thought them constantly. It stands to reason then, that the culture of the time was of the supremest kind of evil. The time of the “Anti-Christ” is said to be like Noah’s day.
In other words; the most wretched state of humanity, an age of the “Homo Malus” ad absurdum (Evil Humanity to the extreme) such as was found in Noah’s day, and in the days yet to come (should Christ’s prophecies about the End Time be as is traditionally thought; Armageddon) then it always brings with it the inevitable, swift, and terrible judgement of God against such extreme evil, with an equally extreme love expressing wrath against the sins that cause it.
From a Universalistic perspective, the evil was so great in Humanity that the long suffering God could no longer suffer it, and felt regret for the very Mankind subject to the evil, and expressing it. He would have to destroy them, wipe them from the face of the Earth “so their spirits might be saved in the end”. It was an act of Mercy, the flood. Just as it is an act of Mercy that the End of Time shall come.
God’s wrath, mercy, and love, and grace - are One, as God is One.
If the sin, and wickedness was so great that it made God regret, then it might be that if God did not cut the stem at the root; killing the wicked so their wickedness could not progress - then it may have become a virulent destruction of the very individuals themselves, or else prolonged their stay in the remedial fire to unbearable lengths of time, unbearable in the sense that the person suffering under it could not bear the conviction, and would suffer too much in God’s redemptive work. The torment would be too much to be borne. The silver melt away with the dross.
“No flesh would survive, for the elect’s sake the days are shortened.”
It was not genocide, but a sweeping destruction of a humanity on the brink of total loss, whose hearts were almost completely over-run with evil. It would be like God wiping a planet clean of a race of Reavers (or this link), in order to redeem them at a later point. With this in mind, it is not a genocide - but a pre-requisite extermination before redemption, and infact to assure that Redemption were even possible (at least in God’s timeline, or for what ever purposes were involved to bring Christ in, at the point he was brought in); since it is only through Christ that redemption is even possible.
If the whole race became evil, and even Noah’s lineage destroyed or dead - then Redemption in the current means of it would be either impeded significantly, or impossible, speculatively speaking anyway - I am not sure if God would have another plan or if he would have needed one. But the point I am trying to make is, if the Flood did not occur, the evil would have progressed and obliterated the last thread and vestige of Redemption, and all that Christ fulfills - Christ’s very coming may have been at stake. It is through Noah’s line that Christ came. And through Christ that those who died in the flood are redeemed from the evil that caused the very flood’s necessity. There were only eight who went into the ark, and animals. Such was the amount of long suffering God had, that of all of humanity’s evil - he did not destroy them all until only eight in the myriads of the population were of respectable righteousness before God. What would have happened if those eight did not survive? Or if their children became just as evil as their neighbors? The coming of Christ might not have occurred, and their deaths would render them hopelessly lost in Hades. Or if Christ came at all, the redemption might have had to have been exceedingly different. He might have had to come as the cherub wrapped warrior, simply to keep himself from being murdered or knifed in the back the very second he tried to mention repenting, instead of fulfilling The Cross. It is probably only by the grace of God that Noah’s family survived…
Those are my thoughts anyway.