#5293
Anonymous
Inactive

The Marcionite reading attempts to answer the question of why there are so many awful stories in the Old Testament by concluding there must be another god other than the God of Jesus. James considers this a mistake because it fails to allow for progressive revelation and to see that in reality even the very ugly stories like the stoning of Achan are a great advance over mythology in the light of the Forgiving Victim whom they prophetically glimpse.
I have been exposed to various people who use a Fundamentalist viewpoint to read Scripture. They want to answer the question how can God be the same at the beginning, middle, end of Scripture.Unfortunately demanding this requires rigorous mental gymnastics to explain the nastiness of God’s behavior, denies at times what is written and leads to a twisted view of atonement. For me it instills fear and paralysis.
If we can take the option of reading the text through the eyes of the Forgiving Victim, in one “Building Up to Now” Testament and interpretative key then many things begin to make sense and reading Scripture becomes freer and richer. The voice of the victims finally emerges.