Canada’s equivalent to Christianity Today is a magazine called Faith Today and they just published a review of Jesus Loves Canaanites in their Jan/Feb issue. The brief print review includes two outright falsehoods about the book and a strawman summary of the argument.
Faith Today has since posted a slightly longer review. That review is slightly better than the print review, though as it is online it will likely reach only a fraction of those who read the print review, so you can call that cold comfort.
In addition, it also still has the inaccuracies and uncharity of the print review. The review falsely says I endorse a specific theory when I do not. The reviewer describes me as saying God is “intentionally placing errors”, a statement that is misleading at best. Rather, the proper description is that God has morally sufficient reasons to allow errant perspectives in the text (e.g. by way of accommodation). The reviewer says nothing about the implications of accepting that God commanded the mass slaughter of non-combatants including women, children, and the elderly when a moral response to such actions is precisely what under-girds the strength of the moral analysis. And the reviewer says nothing about my hermeneutical principles centered on Christ and love which guide the reading and interpretation of Scripture. As a result, the review presents the book as a reckless trigger response to half-baked emotions. I can’t imagine any conservative Christian thinking the book is of value after this review, and yet those are the people who most need to read the book.
In the book, I cite this famous Sherlock Holmes quote: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Thus, when you recognize the moral equivalence between Rwanda and Canaan, and you know God could not have commanded Rwanda then you can know that God could not have commanded an equivalent slaughter in Canaan. The point of the book is to clear the field of the worst interpretive options so we may explore other interpretive possibilities.
The goal of the book is to open space to recognize that Christians should not be forced to sacrifice their most basic moral convictions on good and evil when reading the Bible. Christianity does not require assent to the notion of divinely commanded genocide.
