Book Review: "The Widening of God’s Mercy" by Christopher B. Hays and Richard B. Hays
Summary
I didn’t know it needed widening…
Misapplied at best, deliberately heretical at worst.
Detailed Breakdown of the Book
Introduction
The Introduction is trying to do more than preview the later chapters. It is attempting to hand the reader a lens. And this lens is a sweeping claim about the biblical story: God’s mercy “widens” across time, and the way that the Bible talks about God “changing His mind” becomes a key mechanism for that widening. From there, the introduction moves quickly from narrative tensions to ethical implications, espeically around sexuality and the inclusion of people who are LGBTQ. What’s found, rather than a careful analysis of the text, are the authors making small interpretive choices at the front end, that become big theological conclusions by the end.
“God Changes His Mind” in 1 Sam. 15 as a Controlling Idea
The Introduction leans hard on 1 Samuel 15 as a framing text. It sets the tension between 1 Samuel 15:29 (God “does not…change his mind”) and 1 Samuel 15:11, 35 (“I regret…” and “the LORD regretted…”). It then argues that the same Hebrew verb, nacham, stands behind both “change his mind” and “regret,” and it suggests that English translations can hide that connection. On that basis, the Introduction proposes a broader theme: God “repeatedly changes his mind” in ways that expand mercy, preserve relationship, and protect people.
There is real biblical material that supports part of this. Scripture does sometimes describe God as “relenting” in response to intercession or repentance, and it does so in ways that highlight God’s personal engagement with people, not detachment. Exodus 32:14, Jonah 3:10, and Jeremiah 18:7–10 are straightforward examples where God’s announced action is conditioned by human response, and the narrative presents God as responsive and relational. The Psalms also routinely describe God as compassionate and attentive to human weakness (Psalm 103:13–14), which fits the broader picture of God’s personal nearness.
Where the Introduction overreaches is in turning the tension in 1 Samuel 15 into a simple model of divine fickleness, or into a rhetorical hammer against the idea of God’s constancy. The point of 1 Samuel 15 is not that God is unstable. The chapter is pressing the opposite: God’s judgment on Saul is firm, and Saul’s disobedience will not be managed with partial repentance and political spin. When 1 Samuel 15:28–29 says God will not “change his mind,” it is speaking to the finality of God’s decision to remove Saul from kingship, not denying that Scripture sometimes uses accommodated language such as “regret” to describe God’s real opposition to sin and his real involvement in history. The same verb can carry different shades in different contexts. The theological task is not merely to observe lexical overlap, but to read how the author is using the language to communicate God’s settled purpose in the face of Saul’s manipulation.
This is where the wider canon also matters. Scripture repeatedly teaches God’s unchanging character and purposes (Numbers 23:19; Malachi 3:6; James 1:17; Isaiah 46:10). So any appeal to narrative “relenting” language has to be integrated with those claims, not used to relativize them. The category distinction you identified is important: God’s relational dealings in time are real, and the Bible speaks of them in vivid terms, but they are not the same thing as God’s moral will shifting with culture, or God’s character evolving.
The verdict here is not that the Introduction has no textual basis. It does. The verdict is that it uses a real narrative feature of Scripture as a theological engine in a way that risks doing more than the text authorizes. The frame is plausible, but overstated, and it creates pressure to treat “God changes his mind” as the controlling key for later ethical revision.
“Biblical Law is Under Constant Negotiation and Revision”
A second major move in the Introduction is its portrayal of Torah law as repeatedly renegotiated and revised. It highlights differences among Torah collections and speaks as if the biblical story normalizes the idea that law itself is in ongoing revision. It also cites Ezekiel 20:25 (“I gave them statutes that were not good”) in a way that can sound like God himself is admitting that his own commands were morally defective.
Again, there is genuine biblical support for a careful version of what they are gesturing toward. Scripture does show covenantal development and changes in boundary markers as redemptive history unfolds. Food laws and purity boundaries are handled differently under the new covenant (Mark 7:19; Acts 10), and Hebrews 9–10 explicitly frames major aspects of the Mosaic system as typological and fulfilled in Christ. The prophets also apply Torah to fresh situations, exposing how Israel can keep the letter while abandoning the heart of covenant faithfulness. And Moses’ intercession in Exodus 32 shows that the covenant relationship includes real pleading, real warning, and real mercy.
But “development” is not the same as “revision” in the sense of the community rewriting God’s moral will to fit new social realities. Scripture warns against adding to or subtracting from God’s commands (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; Proverbs 30:6). Those warnings do not mean God never brings new covenant administrations or new applications, but they do mean that the people of God are not authorized to edit God’s moral claims as though moral truth is plastic.
Ezekiel 20:25 is the key stress point. It is a notoriously difficult text with a long history of careful interpretation. Many orthodox readings take it as God giving Israel over to punitive consequences, or to the corrupt statutes they chose, rather than God confessing that his Torah was “not good.” In other words, the text is often read as judicial abandonment: God hands them over, in judgment, to what they have demanded, and the result is destructive. Using Ezekiel 20:25 as a quick proof that God’s laws were morally bad is not a stable foundation for anything weighty, and it risks flattening a complex prophetic argument into a slogan.
The New Testament’s covenantal shifts also do not occur because Israel or the church revised the ethic. They occur because God fulfills his promises and restructures covenant life in the Messiah (Matthew 5:17–20; Hebrews 8). That is a crucial difference. Fulfillment is a redemptive act of God; revision implies human authority over what God has spoken.
The verdict, then, is that the Introduction is at best imprecise and at worst setting a trajectory. A careful account of covenantal development is biblically warranted. The way the Introduction frames it, especially with Ezekiel 20:25 as a proof-text, leans toward “we can revise this, too,” and that is exactly the instinct that the Bible repeatedly resists.
“The Spirit Will Lead Into New Truths” as Warrant for New Sexual Ethics
The Introduction also leans on John 16:12–13 to argue that the Spirit continues to lead the community into new and surprising truths, and it characterizes the Bible as an “ongoing conversation” where rules and boundaries get rethought. The rhetorical implication is that, if the Spirit continued to lead beyond the moment of Jesus’ earthly ministry, the same Spirit may be leading the church beyond traditional conclusions today.
A biblical account of the Spirit’s guidance is real and necessary. John 16 does teach that the Spirit guides into truth, and Romans 8 speaks of the Spirit’s leading in the life of believers. Acts 15 shows the church wrestling faithfully with a live controversy, listening, arguing, and discerning what faithfulness looks like in a new moment. There is nothing anti-biblical about saying the Spirit helps the church apply Scripture wisely amid changing cultural circumstances.
The problem is how John 16 is being used. In John’s farewell discourse, the Spirit’s ministry is tethered to Jesus: the Spirit will not speak on his own authority, will bring Jesus’ words to remembrance, and will glorify Jesus (John 14:26; 16:13–14). That is not a blank check to overturn apostolic teaching. It is a promise that Jesus’ revelation will be carried forward, clarified, and applied as the apostolic witness is established.
The New Testament treats the apostolic witness as foundational and binding (Ephesians 2:20; 2 Thessalonians 2:15; Jude 3). Paul explicitly rejects “new” messages that contradict what has already been delivered (Galatians 1:8–9). So if “the Spirit is doing a new thing” becomes the argument for setting aside clear apostolic instruction later in the book, the method would clash with the Bible’s own account of Spirit-led truth.
Similar to the earlier points: this is plausible in part, but drastically overstated in the way it is framed, and dependent on how the Introduction cashes it out later. The Spirit leads, but never as a rival authority to Christ and his apostles. Any use of John 16 that functions like an override switch is a theological misuse, even if it is dressed in spiritual language.
“The Contested Passages Were Not Envisioning LGBTQ Christians Today”
Another key claim is that the “contested” texts do not directly address the reality of modern LGBTQ Christians, particularly those who display the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). The Introduction signals that anachronism is the great danger, and it suggests that many debates are about importing modern categories into ancient texts.
There is very limited but important biblical support here. Responsible interpretation does require historical context. It is true that the biblical writers were not using modern acronyms, modern psychological frameworks, or the current categories of identity. The church should be allergic to sloppy arguments that ignore genre, context, and authorial intent. And it is also true that spiritual fruit matters. Jesus teaches that fruit is a meaningful category for discernment (Matthew 7:16–20), and Galatians 5 does treat Spirit-shaped character as a real marker of spiritual life.
But “context” cannot be used as a pre-emptive dismissal of what the texts actually say. The New Testament does not ground sexual ethics merely in shifting cultural assumptions. It repeatedly grounds them in creation, in the meaning of male-female union, and in a theological account of the body (Genesis 1–2; Matthew 19:4–6; Romans 1:26–27). Even when Paul is addressing a Greco-Roman world, he anchors his argument in creation logic, not merely in local custom. And likewise, “fruit” cannot become a trump card over the teachings of Scripture. Jesus warns that religious appearance is not the same as final approval (Matthew 7:21–23). Further, John ties love and obedience together rather than pitting them against each other (1 John 2:3–6). This does not mean the church should ignore spiritual struggle, complexity, or the reality that sanctification can be slow. What it does mean, is that the church cannot redefine sin simply because someone appears sincere or because their community experience feels spiritually rich.
Passages like 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 is important precisely because it holds two realities together: real welcome, real cleansing, real new life, and a real moral boundary that is not treated as disposable. The pastoral path forward must hold dignity and discipleship together. A method that sidelines the relevant texts before doing careful exegesis is not compassion or love; it is a way of ensuring the conclusion before the argument is ever formed in the first place.
This claim, as a controlling premise, is in tension with Scripture. Careful contextual reading is definitely required. But the Introduction’s framing risks becoming a mechanism for functionally emptying apostolic texts of authority.
Inclusion, Dignity, and the Harm Done by the Church
The Introduction’s strongest material is its insistence that the church has often done real harm, and that cruelty, partiality, and self-righteousness have no place among the people of God. It argues for explicit inclusion of those excluded by “traditional expectations” around sexual orientation, and it frames this as consistent with God’s widening mercy. The Bible clearly supports much of the moral diagnosis. Every person bears God’s image (Genesis 1:27), and the tongue sins against image-bearers when it curses or dehumanizes (James 3:9). Jesus rebukes self-righteous religion that uses moral standing as a weapon (Luke 18:9–14), and James condemns partiality in the assembly (James 2:1–9). The church should repent where it has mocked, rejected, or treated people as projects rather than neighbors.
At the same time, “inclusion” is not a self-defining term in the New Testament. Jesus welcomes sinners, but He also repeatedly calls sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32). Paul’s pastoral letters hold together tenderness and moral formation, and 1 Thessalonians 4:3–8 is explicit that holiness includes sexual holiness, framed not as mere rulekeeping but as life under God’s call. And further, the New Testament’s inclusion is never “no moral boundaries.” The church is given real boundaries for membership and discipline (Matthew 18:15–20; 1 Corinthians 5). While those passages are often (and easily) mishandled, their existence means we cannot define love as boundaryless affirmation. The task is to hold “welcome” and “discipleship” together in a way that is neither harsh nor hollow.
The call to dignity and repentance from mistreatment is thoroughly biblical and should be received as correction where needed. The question mark with this topic brought up in the introduction, is what “inclusion” is made to mean. Simply put, the authors should have clearly defined what they mean with this term. If it means belonging, hospitality, protection from cruelty, and patient shepherding toward holiness, it can fit the New Testament. If it means affirming what Scripture calls sin, then the Introduction is setting up a collision with the Bible that it will not be able to reconcile.
“God is Not Male” and Pronouns for God
The Introduction includes a section on pronouns for God that states, plainly, that God is not male and is beyond human male and female identities. It observes that Scripture predominantly uses masculine pronouns and that “Father” and “Son” are primary images, while also highlighting feminine imagery for God (Isaiah 42:14; 49:14–15; Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34). It then argues that one can avoid pronouns altogether or use gender-neutral pronouns, but it chooses to keep traditional masculine pronouns for readability while urging readers not to constrain their understanding of God to human masculinity.
This can be affirmed, but with careful theological verbiage.
God is spirit (John 4:24).
God is not a creature with a male body.
Scripture does use both masculine titles and feminine metaphors, and the feminine metaphors should not be treated as embarrassing or off-limits, since the Bible itself uses them.
The caution is that “Father” and “Son” language is not optional in historic Trinitarian Christianity. It is revealed biblical naming (Matthew 28:19; John 1:18). Feminine metaphors can enrich our understanding of God’s care without rewriting God’s self-naming. The thing to watch from from here on out is whether the book moves from “God is not male” (true, He is Spirit that revealed himself through masculine verbiage) to treating Father-Son language as merely a cultural artifact that can be replaced (and therefore not consistent with the Bible’s own pattern of revelation).
Comparing Yahweh’s Warrior Imagery to the goddess Anat
Lastly, the Introduction makes a comparative move: it notes that imagery of the Lord as a warrior (Isaiah 63:1–6) is commonly read as masculine, but claims its closest analogy in the ancient West Semitic world is a story about the warrior goddess Anat of Ugarit. I’m cautious here, but at this point, I’ll say that this is not automatically heresy. That is because conducting comparative background studies can illuminate how images would have landed in the ancient Near East.
But it is a severe methodological risk because it can easily become more than a comparative background study. If the argument shifts from “this helps us understand the cultural world of the imagery” to “Israel derived its understanding of God from pagan sources,” the result can undercut Scripture’s insistence on Yahweh’s uniqueness and self-revelation (Isaiah 45:5–7), which therefore is heretical. There is also a difference between polemical engagement and theological borrowing. The prophets routinely mock the nations’ gods, and biblical theology often positions Yahweh as categorically distinct. Any appeal to Ugaritic parallels has to be handled with that Biblical posture in mind.
Ultimately, this method can be used responsibly, but it needs careful guardrails, and the Introduction does not pause long enough to build them.
Is anything in the Introduction “outright heresy”?
If we define heresy strictly in historic terms, the Introduction does not explicitly deny the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the resurrection, or salvation by grace through faith. On that standard, it is not openly/deliberately heretical.
What it does do is set trajectories that often end in conflict with Scripture, depending on how consistently they are pursued. The main risks are these:
treating biblical sexual ethics as culturally bound in a way that empties apostolic texts of authority
using “the Spirit is doing something new” to justify reversing clear commands
making “the story” override direct moral teaching rather than letting narrative, law, wisdom, and apostolic instruction speak together in a coherent way.
The Introduction contains true and needed calls to repentance and dignity, but it also plants interpretive stakes that can function as a method for an attempt at revising Biblical ethics. After examining this introduction, the burden of proof, if the book takes that route, will be extraordinarily high, because it will be asking readers to believe that faithfulness means setting aside moral instruction the New Testament treats as binding.
Chapter 1: Widening Through Creation
“Genesis Doesn’t Really Tell Why Anything Exists”
This chapter is right that Genesis does not open with an explicit claim like, “God created because ____.” It also makes a fair point that whether Genesis 1:1 is read as creation “from nothing” or as God ordering preexisting matter, that grammar question by itself does not automatically answer the motive question, either.
But it pushes the point too far when it implies, then, that Genesis has little to offer on “why.” Genesis 1 gives purpose in the form of commission and telos: God creates a world ordered for life, blesses humanity, and assigns vocation (“be fruitful… fill… have dominion,” Gen. 1:28). That is not the whole “why",” but it is not silence, either. And canonically, Scripture repeatedly does give motive language, often in terms of God’s glory and pleasure (for example, creation’s role in displaying God’s power and glory in Ps. 19:1; Ps. 104; Isaiah 43:7; Rev. 4:11). So the chapter is framing a question that is understandably being asked, but the rhetoric in the chapter risks setting up a stronger contrast than the Bible itself requires.
“The Bible’s Creation Story is in Dialogue with Ancient Near Eastern Stories Where Humans Exists to do the God’s Labor”
On the substance part of this: yes, many Mesopotamian accounts explicitly explain humanity’s purpose as relieving divine beings of toil, bearing “the yoke,” or taking over work so the gods can rest. That basic point is also well supported in academia and in accessible summaries and in primary-text citations that are commonly used in scholarship.
Where some caution should have been exercised by the authors, is in how they stack their argument. The chapter blends:
A theological observation (Genesis is different)
A historical-critical claim about the Old Testament’s composition timeline and assumptions about the original audience
Modern scientific claims about human antiquity
None of those pieces are identical in authority or in relevance. You can affirm the useful contextual contrast without binding yourself to every historical-critical claim or to a particular account of human origins. Put simply, the chapter’s contextual move can be helpful, but readers should notice when it quitly moves from “context clarifies” and into “context controls.”
“Genesis Presents Humans as God’s Image-Bearers, Sharing Rule and Vocation, Not As Disposable Labor”
This is section is refreshingly solid in terms of being Biblically grounded. In the sense that it emphasizes image, blessing, and vocation. Genesis 1 explicitly ties “image/likeness” to dominion and to a world arranged for flourishing (Gen. 1:26-31). Psalm 8 likewise frames human vocation and calling as a bestowed honor on us by the Lord: crowned, entrusted, and responsible (Ps. 8:4-8). The chapter’s instinct to read creation as generous delegation rather than God’s neediness fits the Bible’s direction.
The main theological pressure point in this section is the word “partners.” It would have been nice for the authors to do a better job defining this term. If “partners” means “vice-regents under the King,” then this idea works. If “partners” suggests shared sovereignty or an almost peer relationship, then it starts to blur the Creator-creature distinction. That distinction, also, is not a simple side-issue; it is the backbone of biblical worship and obedience. A helpful passage here is Psalm 8:5, where the Hebrew ‘elohim can be rendered “God” or “heavenly beings,” and Hebrews 2 reads that same passage with the word, “angels.” This doesn’t undo the vocation that God has bestowed upon us, rather, it reinforces that the honor of our vocation is granted and bounded.
“Theologians Fill Genesis’ ‘Silence’ with Philosophy; Jonathan Edwards Makes Creation Logically Necessary”
The authors in this chapter bring up a serious doctrinal issue: if God “must” create in the sense of compulsion, then God’s freedom is compromised. Classic Christian doctrine insists that God is free in creation, not needy, not compelled, and not completed by the world. The “why create?” question, therefore, must be answered in a way that preserves God’s aseity and the fullness of God’s being without creation.
Jonathan Edwards does use “diffusive” language (as the authors’ claim) about Gods fullness and speaks of God communicating goodness outwardly. The authors aren’t inventing that emphasis here. But the key question is what kind of “necessity” is meant (again, the simple defining of terms would do a great deal of heavy lifting in this book). Some theologians distinguish “coercive necessity” from “moral necessity” (acting consistently with one’s nature while still acting freely). If the authors’ desire is to charge Edwards with collapsing into coercion, then they should demonstrate that, not just assert it. Still, as a reader, you are right to flag this as a potential drifting point in the authors’ argument: if the argument lands in “God had to create so God could be God,” then that is not a biblical conclusion, and it will create downstream problems for grace, providence, and worship.
“Jonathan Edwards’ ‘Philosopher’s God’ Loses the Personal God of Scripture”
The best point being made in this chapter is methodological. Theology can become and abstraction machine. You can produce internally consistent statements about God while shrinking the Bible’s thick personal portrayal of God, including the way that God talks about covenants, God’s patience, God’s grief over sin, and God’s compassionate action toward those who suffer. That is something that is worth saying, regardless of where you land on Edwards as a theologian.
Yet another area where the chapter takes liberties, however, is by using Edwards as a foil in a way that risks caricature. Edwards wrote far more than this treatise being cited, and many of his works are intensely pastoral and spiritually observational. So the more accurate conclusion that should have been made is probably this: “This treatise lands in a direction that can feel impersonal and can be misused,” rather than “Edwards’ God has no personality.” Because that just simply isn’t true (based on his writings, sermons, etc). Therefore, while evaluating this book for it’s biblical fidelity, this matters because overstated critiques can weaken an otherwise valid caution.
“The Edwards History Cluster: Suicids, ‘Sinners,’ Dismissal, and Slavery”
There are several historical pieces here that are verifiable:
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was preached at Enfield on July 8, 1741.
A prominent suicide (Joseph Hawley) in June 1735 is frequently discussed as a traumatic moment connected to the collapse of the Northampton revival.
Edwards was dismissed from Northampton in 1750 after intense controversy.
Edwards owned enslaved people.
Where I’d press on the authors here, is in how they rhetorically link these facts. That’s because the text can leave the reader with the impression that Edwards’s theologically straightforwardly generated suicidal despair, or that “strictness” explains the harm in a simple line. That may be possible in specific, particular cases, but it isn’t demonstrated here in the chapter. What I mean by that is this: pastoral harm can be real without the simplistic conclusion that “fire-and-brimstone preaching causes suicide.” If you’re reading this book for Biblical discernment, then you should slow down here, because the authors are mixing lament (which is appropriate) with insinuation (which requires specific and careful evidence).
“Genesis 1:31 is Emphatic: ‘And Behold, It Was Very Good’”
The chapter is right that Genesis 1 repeatedly calls creation “good,” with the main claim in Genesis 1:31 with an attention marker plus the intensified evaluation of “and behold” (hinneh) and “very good” (tov me’od). The note about hinneh functioning like “look” or “behold,” drawing attention, is indeed consistent with standard lexicon-style summaries.
On the notes that the claim “very good” is unusually rare is plausible, too. Beyond Genesis 1:31, you can find “very good” language in Judges 18:9 (land described as “very good”) and Jeremiah 24:2 (figs described as “very good”), which supports the authors’ claim that the phrase is not everywhere.
Where extreme caution should be exercised here is in what the chapter builds on top of that. “God delighted” is an inference from the repeated “God saw that it was good” pattern. It’s not a crazy inference, but it’s is still an inference. Biblically, you can absolutely affirm: creation is good as created, and God’s evaluation is not embarrassed. But you also have to keep Genesis 3 in view as well: “good creation” does not equal “every desire I experience is morally good.” This matters, and is a dangerous theological point to be making, because the chapter is clearly laying track for it’s later sexuality arguments by conflating and inference with biblical text where it isn’t supported.
The Pivot Toward Sexuality: “God Don’t Make No Junk” as a Moral Conclusion
There is a biblical core that the chapter is rightfully trying to protect: every human being bears God’s image and therefore must be treated with honor, not disgust (Genesis 1:26-27; James 3:9). The Church should not train people to hate themselves as creatures, and it most not wield shame as a tool of control. The “no junk” instinct that the authors have is aiming at that premise, and that can be made biblically faithful when it is directly and specifically tied to image-bearing, God’s care, and the gift of embodied life.
But the chapter’s logic is lacking and under-argued if it subtly turns “created good” into “therefore my internal sense of self is morally authoritative.” That’s because the BIble distinguishes between created goodness and disordered desires that arise in a fallen world (Gen. 3; James 1:14-15). The Bible also distinguishes between welcoming people, and affirming every desire as righteous. If a later chapter in this book argues for moral approval of same-sex sexual behavior, the you (as the reader) should watch for whether the book deals seriously with the texts that directly address sexual practice and with the broader biblical storyline of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation.
So far, this chapter is setting an emotional and theological mood, but it has not yet done the exegetical work that is needed to justify the moral conclusions that it is aiming toward.
Overall Analysis of Chapter 1
This chapter functions like a stage-setter. It starts with wonder and the basic “why exist?” question, critiques shallow catechetical answers as sufficiently mysterious, and then moves into two contrasts:
The contrast between Genesis and surrounding ancient stories about why humans exist;
The contrast between a “personal” biblical God, and a more abstracted philosophical way of speaking about God, illustrated through the authors’ reading of Jonathan Edwards.
From there, it returns to Genesis 1’s repeated “good” culminating in “and behold, very good” and finally it pivots toward sexuality with an anecdote meant to lodge the idea that the Church should not communicate disgust toward people who are LGBTQ.
The strengths of the chapter are indeed there. It insists that creation is not an accident, that the Bible portrays the world as meaningful, and that humans have a vocation that is dignifying. It also brings up a needed pastoral concern: theological speech about God can become detached from the way the Bible depicts God acting, speaking, and relating. And it refuses to accept the idea that the Church’s witness is strengthened by training people into self-loathing. Those are all good things.
However, the chapter also uses rhetorical shortcuts that you should keep flagged in your mind (or in your notes) as you read through the rest of the book. It overstates Genesis’s “silence” about purpose, it bundles contested historical claims with theological conclusions, and it risks caricaturing theological tradition by using Edwards as a representative example. These moves should be noted because they can lead toward a feeling of inevitability: “Since Genesis does not answer, and since traditional theology tends toward abstraction and harm, the ‘widening’ conclusion is therefore the faithful one.” Logically, this argument isn’t sound because it treats a set of impressions and associations as if they were a valid inference. More specifically, the chapter is sliding from:
“Genesis doesn’t explicitly state God’s motive,” and
“Some traditional theological rhetoric can feel abstract or has been misapplied in harmful manners,” to
“Therefore the moral widening the authors advocate is the faithful biblical conclusion.”
That is a non sequitur.
A lack of an explicit motive statement in Genesis does not grant us permission to therefore supply any motive we prefer, and the existence of wrongful applications or rhetoric in a theological tradition does not determine whether or not the tradition’s actual doctrinal conclusions are right or wrong. You still have to do the exegetical work on the relevant texts, and you still have to show how the canonical storyline authorizes the specific ethical move being proposed. The non sequitur thought process can be a persuasive arc, but it is not yet a demonstrated biblical argument. Again, if you’re reading this book looking for discernment from the author, the big question that Chapter 1 leaves hanging out in the air is this: will the later chapters actually do the hard work of exegesis on the passages that address sexual behavior, and will they integrate those passages into the same canonical storyline that is being brought up here? Because this chapter builds a theology of goodness and dignity. That is necessary, and good. But it is not sufficient to settle questions of holiness, sexual ethics, repentance, and sanctification.
Chapter 2: Mercy for God’s People
Eden and the “Death on the Day” Warning
The beginning of chapter 2 sets up a tension between Genesis 2:17 (“in the day you eat of it you shall die”) and the narrative outcome (Adam does not drop dead that day). It then surveys a few interpretive options:
Maybe “day” is elastic (appealing to the creation “days” and Psalm 90:4)
Maybe “death” means “beginning to die”
Maybe something about threatened immortality is in view (Gen. 3:22)
The honest part in this is the authors’ admission of, “the text does not say.” That’s true, it doesn’t. And it is a helpful reminder that some later interpretive traditions fill in details that are not explicit in Genesis itself.
But then the chapter pivots.
“Perhaps God has simply changed his mind.” That conclusion is not demanded by the text. The narrative can preserve the seriousness of the warning while still accounting for delayed physical death, spiritual death (alienation, exile, the rupture of communion), and the inauguration of mortality. It can also treat “in the day” as an idiom meaning “when,” rather than a strict stopwatch set to 24 hours. In short, the chapter is correct to resist glib answers, but it is dangerously trading one glibness for another when it then jumps from interpretive difficulty to “God changed his mind.”
Garmins of Skin: Mercy That Does Not Erase Consequences
Here the chapter remarkably is on solid biblical ground. Genesis 3 ends with exile and loss, but also with God clothing Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:21). The chapter’s “parent sending kids off to school” analogy is not exegesis, but it is a well-formed analogy in that God’s care is not absent even when discipline is real. That is an important guardrail for the later ethical arguments to follow, too, because it keeps mercy from becoming “nothing is wrong” and keeps judgment from becoming “God is disgusted with you.”
What you should watch for is how this gets used later. If the authors treat “mercy” as “God relaxing moral reality,” then they’re flattening what Genesis is holding together (and what they have noted in this section): sin has consequences that are not negotiated away, and yet God’s care persists in the midst of them.
Cain: Protection and Restraint
Here, the chapter correctly notices that Cain receives both judgment (exile, curse-language) and protection (the mark, guarded from immediate vengeance). That combination is theologically important, because it shows that God’s justice is not identical to human retaliation, and that God can restrain escalation even while holding guilt accountable.
However, the framing, “change his mind and reconsider his judgments,” risks misleading the reader about what happened in Genesis 4. The judgment was never revoked. Cain is still driven out and bears the consequences. What changes is that God addresses Cain’s fear about being killed, which is a completely different question than whether Cain is guilty. So yes, mercy is present, but is mercy within judgment, not mercy instead of judgment.
The authors also say the phrasing, “cursed from the ground” suggests a kind of cause-and-effect curse rather than a decree. This is at least arguable as a literary move, but it is far from a slam dunk. The Hebrew אָרוּר אַתָּה מִן־הָאֲדָמָה (’arur attah min-ha’adamah, Gen 4:11) can still be a direct pronouncement, even if it highlights the polluted ground as the theater of the consequence. This is another pattern you will see throughout this book: a plausible observation pushed into a more definitive conclusion than the text can bear.
“Nacham” in Genesis 6: Grief, Relenting, and the “Mistake” Claim
“We met the Hebrew verb nacham in the Introduction, in the story of God changing his mind about Sauls’ kingship. The first time that verb appears is in Genesis 6:6-7: ‘And the LORD was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created-people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.’ Nacham has two primary meanings: It can refer to a change of mind and to have a feeling of regret. Both of those are implied here: God not only regrets creating humankind, but he has also a change of mind and decided to wipe them out. After the auspicious start to creation, things have not worked out the way they were supposed to. The whole thing has been a mistake.”
This is one of the most important pressure points in the entire chapter. The authors are right that nacham (נָחַם) carries a range of glosses that includes being sorry, relenting, and also comforting. In fact, standard lexicon summaries and BDB-style listings reflect that same kind of breadth. The chapter is also right that Genesis 6 portrays God as grieved and that the flood narrative is framed as judgment on real wickedness (Gen. 6:5-7).
But the authors then interpret this as: “things have not worked out the way they were supposed to” and “the whole thing has been a mistake.” That is not a necessary inference from either the word nacham (נָחַם) or the passage being referenced. Genesis 6 can be read as God’s real grief over human corruption and God’s decisive judgment, without implying that God lacked foreknowledge, miscalculated, or discovered new information. In fact, the broader canon pushes you to avoid “God made a mistake” as your theological landing point, because it collides with God’s wise purposefulness and with texts that deny creaturely limitations in God’s knowledge and counsel.
So the correction that should be made here is this: keep the emotional reality of the text (grief is real language in Genesis 6), keep the moral seriousness (judgment is real), but refuse the slide into “mistake,” which is doing some heavy philosophical work that the passage itself doesn’t require.
Flood as “Uncreation” and the Post-Flood Commitment
“It is significant that God destroys by undoing the divisions between dry and wet that he had made in creation. In Genesis 1:7-10, before there could be vegetation and animal life, it was necessary for God to set limits on the watery chaos of the uncreated world:
‘So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.
And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear. And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
The flood, then, is the retraction of these barriers that had made life possible: ‘the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened’ (Gen. 7:11).””
Their “uncreation” reading is one of the chapter’s best moves. Genesis 1 is full of separations (waters, land, etc.). Genesis 7’s flood imagery is naturally read as those boundaries collapsing. That helps you see that judgment is not random violence, but a creation-order reversal tied to human wickedness.
“Of course, the story does not end with this change of mind, or with the uncreation of the divine order. After flooding the earth, God has yet another change of mind, though this one is not marked by the same verb. He smells the ‘pleasing odor’ of Noah’s sacrifices. Therefore, ‘the LORD said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth;’”
Genesis 8:21 is incredibly striking as a reader: God commits not to curse the ground in the same way again even while acknowledging the persistent bent of the human heart. The chapter reads this as God reconsidering. A better biblical synthesis is that this is a covenantal commitment to govern a fallen world with patience and stability, not a reversal forced by surprise. The “pleasing odor” language functions narratively to indicate acceptance, but it should not be treated as if God is manipulable or newly persuaded by information he lacked.
If the authors keep using “God changes his mind” as their master key for later conclusions, they will be tempted to read every later moral boundary as something God eventually loosens. The problem with this, is that Genesis 8 does not actually teach that. It teaches patience in sustaining the world despite ongoing sin.
Israel’s Story and Moses: Intercession Without Making God Morally Improvable
The chapter then links creation to Israel’s story and then highlights Moses’ intercession (Exodus 32, Numbers 14). It’s true that the narratives depict Moses appealing to God’s reputation among the nations and to God’s own self-revelation (Ex. 34:5-7 is echoed in later texts; Num. 14 explicitly draws on that language). It is also true that the narratives include “relenting” language (Ex. 32:14 is a classic example often discussed in theology of accomodation).
Where you should be extra careful in reading here is when the chapter implies that Moses is reminding God of who God is in a way that makes God sound morally at risk of acting beneath His own character. Within the storyline, Moses’ prayer is part of how God’s purposes unfold, not a rescue operation from God’s impulsiveness. God isn’t learning basic ethics from Moses. The narrative is showing the seriousness of sin, the real threat of judgment, and the role of a mediator pleading for mercy, all while affirming God’s steadfast character. So, yes, the chapter is right to emphasize mercy and intercession, but its framing can subtly train the reader to think: “God’s justice is a first impulse, and mercy is what persuades God away from it.” Biblically, God’s mercy isn’t an afterthought, and portraying it as such is theologically, pastorally, and morally dangerous.
God’s mercy is part of who God is.
“The LORD,” YHWH, and Exodus 3:14
This is in reference to note 5. A few pieces in this note are reasonable. It is true that the Greek tradition often renders the name YHWH with κύριος (kyrios, “Lord). It is also true that the meaning and origin of the name are debated, and that Exodus 3:14 אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (’ehyeh ’asher ’ehyeh) has multiple plausible translations in scholarship, including future-leaning renderings like, "I will be…”. So the the caution here of, “scholars do not fully understand it,” is not crazy as a general statement about etymology and specific nuance.
However, two things:
“κύριος is the ancient tradition” is true, but not the whole story. Some early Jewish Greek biblical manuscripts preserve the name in Hebrew letters within the Greek text (Papyrus Fouad 266 is often discussed here), which shows the practice was not monolithic and that “Lord” language has a complex transmission history.
“Yahweh is derived from ‘to be’” is common, but it isn’t certain. Many translations relate YHWH to the Hebrew verb for being, and Exodus 3:14 clearly plays with אֶהְיֶה (’ehyeh “I am/I will be”). Yet responsible scholarship often presents this as debated, not settled, and it’s incredibly easy to overstate how direct the derivation is.
Finally, notice what the note is doing rhetorically: it suggests that translating YHWH
