Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God
The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News
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15
The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News
Ratings3
Average rating4
Pastor Brian Zahnd began "to question the theology of a wrathful God who delights in punishing sinners, and has started to explore the real nature of Jesus and His Father. The book isn’t only an interesting look at the context of some modern theological ideas; it’s also offers some profound insight into God’s love and eternal plan." —Relevant Magazine (Named one of the Top 10 Books of 2017) God is wrath? Or God is Love? In his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Puritan revivalist Jonathan Edwards shaped predominating American theology with a vision of God as angry, violent, and retributive. Three centuries later, Brian Zahnd was both mesmerized and terrified by Edwards’s wrathful God. Haunted by fear that crippled his relationship with God, Zahnd spent years praying for a divine experience of hell. What Zahnd experienced instead was the Father’s love—revealed perfectly through Jesus Christ—for all prodigal sons and daughters. In Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, Zahnd asks important questions like: Is seeing God primarily as wrathful towards sinners true or biblical? Is fearing God a normal expected behavior? And where might the natural implications of this theological framework lead us? Thoughtfully wrestling with subjects like Old Testament genocide, the crucifixion of Jesus, eternal punishment in hell, and the final judgment in Revelation, Zanhd maintains that the summit of divine revelation for sinners is not God is wrath, but God is love.
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If I were to choose one or two books that sum up a lot of my theology right now, I would put this one at the top of the list. I can't tell you how refreshing and life-giving it was to read this after having wrestled with all of these questions myself, refusing to settle for the surface-level explanations, for the last several years. It's been my favorite read of the year thus far and I highly recommend it. If you have access to Hoopla through your library card, I found the audiobook on there (it's free to listen to through Hoopla) and it's a reasonably short listen. If the book resonates with you, I think you'll also like Love Wins by Rob Bell and Original Blessing by Danielle Shroyer.
I have come to most of the same “conclusions” (I hold that word loosely these days) the author shares in this book on my own over time but had not heard anyone else speak about having similar views / values until very recently. I found this a thoroughly encouraging read.
Short Review: This book is designed to counter the concept of God as primarily wrathful as illustrated by Edwards sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Zahnd charts a course through scripture to counter the idea, briefly looking at Old Testament genocide passages before two long sections on the Crucifixion and the book of Revelation. Broadly Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God is trying to help the reader re-imagine God. This is done very differently, but to similar effect as James Bryan Smith's The Good and Beautiful God.
My favorite insight of the book is Zahnd's phrase literalizing metaphors about God. We all know what a metaphor is and that the bible uses them frequently to talk about God. Zahnd thinks our problem is that we lose the concept of metaphor and literalize those metaphors to make God into a concrete form of the metaphor. We do not do that with some metaphors, God as chicken or God as castle, but we do literalize the metaphors in other places.
This is not fundamentally different from a number of progressive Evangelical books. There are places I have issues, but broadly this is a helpful book. I think part of the importance of books like this is 1) to popularize more academic theology and 2) for me personally to read from a variety of streams of Christianity.
My full review, about 1200 words, is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/sinners/
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