Why did God command human sacrifice? (Part 2)

So for the Christian discontent with residing in mystery, what are the options for understanding the Canaanite genocide? We can wade into the turbid waters by asking the following question:

        Did the Canaanite genocide (and related divinely-mandated atrocities) occur?

Many Old Testament scholars (though not typically evangelical ones) interpret much of the Torah, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings as collections of legendary folktales about the founding of the nation of Israel. (A mixture of straightforward myth like Paul Bunyan and his blue ox along with historically embellished legend like George Washington's felling of the cherry tree.) Thus, on this view, these acts may never have happened at all. (Simon Atavax suggested this in a response to my previous post.)

But even if one took that position, one would still face the fact that the text portrays the Israelites as carrying out these acts under divine command. In this case, one could simply rephrase the question: why did God allow texts which portray divinely mandated acts of violence to come to be held as inspired and authoritative by the community of faith?

The "folktale" response pushes us back to this fundamental question:

        Did God command the Canaanite genocide (and related divinely-mandated atrocities)?

Let's say that you can't bring yourself to affirm this. On your view God simply could not have commanded the killing of babies. What are the implications? To put it bluntly: must you cease to be a Christian?

Fortunately you do not need to cease to be a Christian (contrary to what many atheists seem to think). However, your conclusion will have implications for the way you understand scripture. One potential casualty is the inerrancy of scripture. Although the text may say that God commanded certain actions, you will conclude that God did not command these actions. They were falsely attributed to God. Thus, you will concede that scripture has some significant errors.

Evangelicals have long wrestled with the question of whether there is any error in scripture. Back in the 1970s debate over inerrancy reached a fever pitch. Some evangelicals claimed that the Bible must be inerrant in all its affirmations. Others defended "partial" or "limited" inerrancy according to which scripture could have errors in matters of science and history, even though it must retain inerrancy in matters of faith and morals. Could one invoke that distinction here? Perhaps scripture has errors in matters of the historical recounting of events (God never actually commanded these actions) but it retains inerrancy in faith and morals.

Unfortunately limited inerrancy as traditionally defined cannot be invoked in the present case since the divinely-mandated directions for genocide are not merely historical in nature: they spill over into faith and morals. Thus the person who accepted the errancy of the text here could remain a Christian, but they would have to concede that scripture makes errors of a moral or theological nature. In terms of one's doctrine of scripture, this places one at the top of a very slippery slope.

That said, I would prefer that the Christian who cannot reconcile their conscience to the texts conclude that the Bible is errant rather than that Christianity is false.

More alternative responses are to come...