Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News

by Brian Zahnd

make the Old Testament univocal. The Old Testament is a chorus of voices, and they’re not always in perfect harmony. The Old Testament is often a theological debate with both sides making their case. Proverbs and Job have differing stories to tell. Proverbs says if you fear God and do what is right, good things will happen to you. And there’s truth in that. But Job says that’s not always the whole story by telling his tragic tale showing how bad things can happen to good people. Then there’s this question: Does God require animal sacrifice? The priests and Levites say yes, and that’s what we find in the Torah. But eventually the psalmists and prophets begin to challenge this. David says, “Sacrifice and offering you do not desire….Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required.”*15 In this psalm David brashly contradicts the Torah’s unambiguous laws requiring animal sacrifice! Later Hosea claims that God doesn’t want sacrifice but mercy.*16 Eventually Jesus will weigh in and affirm the position of Hosea.*17 Does that mean that the Torah is wrong about animal sacrifice? That would be to put too fine a point on it. Rather, the Old Testament is a journey of discovery. The Bible doesn’t stand above the story it tells, but is fully enmeshed in it. The Bible itself is on the quest to discover the Word of God. What we find in the Old Testament is a progression of revelation. The Old Testament begins with a primitive assumption that God requires ritual sacrifice but eventual...