Abraham and Isaac

(posted on my blog too)

Gen 22:1 Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
Gen 22:2 He said, "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you."

...

Gen 22:5 Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you."

...

Gen 22:7 Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, "My father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." And he said, "Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
Gen 22:8 Abraham said, "God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." So the two of them walked on together.

...

Gen 22:10 Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
Gen 22:11 But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
Gen 22:12 He said, "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me."
Gen 22:13 Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind {him} a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son.
Gen 22:14 Abraham called the name of that place The LORD Will Provide, as it is said to this day, "In the mount of the LORD it will be provided."

(Source)


No need really to go over the story again in my own words; the historical account is plain.

Some argue that God is evil or unjust to order Abraham to murder his son. There are a few defenses against that statement, and I will touch on a couple before moving on to a more central point that I haven't ever heard made, though I'm sure better men than I have made it before.

Point 1) God didn't command that Abraham kill Isaac. He commanded him to "offer him as a sacrifice". Not the same thing.

Point 2) Abraham himself didn't think that God meant that he should actually kill Isaac.
See the boldfaced comment in verses 5 and 8 - why say "we will return"? Why state that the lamb will be provided?

But Abraham was just trying to keep Isaac from panicking and running away! (as has been said before)

Perhaps, but there's no indication from the text that this is so.
And why didn't Isaac run away, if he was so fearful, when Abraham got the stuff and all was ready and the lamb was still not there?

Point 3) Abraham also believed that, even if the sacrifice were to go all the way thru to Isaac's death, God would resurrect Isaac. B/c he was a man of faith.

Hbr 11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten {son;}
Hbr 11:18 {it was he} to whom it was said, "IN ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS SHALL BE CALLED."
Hbr 11:19 He considered that God is able to raise {people} even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type.
(Source)

Point 4) See Hebrews 11:19 - this sacrifice of a ram instead of a sinful human to atone for sin foreshadows the Mosaic Law to come, and each are foremost a type of the final and complete sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
Interestingly (and hat tip to Tim Staples of Catholic Answers, ironically, who I heard point this out), Abraham refers to a "lamb" that God will provide. Yet mere minutes later, God provides - not a lamb, but a ram. What of the lamb? It is yet another type of Christ, the spotless Passover Lamb, the Lamb of God, still to come in the future, in whom faith is expressed by Abraham the first Hebrew. God thus had a vested interest in taking a human to the brink of death yet substituting another in his place.

Point 5) As James 1 and 2 tells us, God was testing Abraham's faith in the fire of adversity. Would he trust God, that which is eternal and authoritative, or what he saw, which is temporal and seems authoritative and "normal"?

Point 6) I preface this point with 2 warnings, to apply to comments.

1. If you perform an internal critique, you must do so in accord with Christian presuppositions.
2. If you perform an external critique, you must provide a basis for morality that will extend to individuals who are not you. For a guide to what questions you need to answer in order to accomplish that, see my blogalogue with the atheist ChooseDoubt.
3. I suggest you at least skim my major points in this thread, culminating in this comment, to see what's gone before.
   

My central point - God has the right to kill anyone or that command anyone be killed at any time.
People die every second of every day. Man is fallen and sinful, and the penalty for sin is death - Romans 3:23 and following through the end of chapter 5. It is only thru God's forbearance and mercy that I or any other person draw the next breath. And the next, and the next. And of course, it is only thru His mercy in Christ's death and resurrection that eternal Hell is not everyone's final destination.

Murder is defined as the unjustified taking of human life.
Yet, as every man, woman, and child is sinful and bears the guilt of the sin of Adam, all are subject to the death penalty. This includes Isaac. This also includes the various peoples of Canaan, whom God commanded the OT Hebrews to put to death after hundreds of years of giving them time to repent of their perversions. This includes the millions of babies that die every year in the womb (re: Sam Harris' correct and yet wrongheaded and amazingly morally blind assertion that God is the greatest living abortionist). God is fully justified in putting anyone to death at any time thru any manner or agency He chooses.
Thus, even if God did not intervene before Abraham's knife swept downward, He would be fully justified.

So why does God set Himself apart as the God Who does not demand child sacrifice as Molech did? Why does He also call out as sinful the foreign deities that call on their people to sacrifice and the actions of child sacrifice in the Old Testament Canaanite societies?

A few possibilities:
1) Those deities are false. They don't exist qua deity.
2) Therefore, the origin of those ideas to sacrifice children is (either) human and/or demonic in nature. Neither human nor demon has the right to kill a(nother) human in anything close to this circumstance.
3) Such practices further idolatry and worship of false gods, which of course are no gods at all. Which of course violates the 1st Commandment.

So, God could conceivably demand child sacrifice and be justified in doing so, but does not demand such. God thus creates yet more space for distinguishing between Himself and the false gods to which these pagans held. That is a merciful thing to do. He also wrote into His Law that no one is to put their child to death. That is a merciful thing to do. He wrote it on the hearts of humanity in general (Romans 2:13-15) such things. That is a merciful thing to do. To set God, the true God, apart from false gods in His ability and authority to give life and take it, to set up authority to take life under certain conditions (ie, the gov't in cases of capital crimes), and to define how He will and will not be worshiped.

What is amazing is that, despite the obvious horror, and despite their knowledge that God is the only true God (Romans 1:18-26), some societies throughout history have nevertheless turned away to these invented foreign deities that demanded satisfaction thru child sacrifice. The story of evil here is, once again, man, not God.