I submit it is incredibly inaccurate to lump together the authors and commentators over 2000 years of Christian history as “White Males”. Consider the African Bishop, the Jewish Author, the Roman Historian, the Arabic translation. Our Black/White categories mean nothing and cannot be applied to history more than 200 years ago, or so, I would think.

In my experience the White Male argument is often used by those who disagree with conservative theology (I’m not sure if this is true in your case). Yet the places where conservative theology is strong in this century is Black Africa, South Korea etc. The White West is far more liberal than the Black South. “White Male” does not accurately describe, explain or discredit conservative theology.

Your thinking will never be free of your own bias until you can stop worrying about what colour or sex the author is and interact with their arguments, their actual words and test them against the God inspired Scriptures.

Michael Hutton, Ariah Park (White Male – but should it be relevant?)

Thanks for your helpful review. I actually read it both before and after reading The Shack, and do agree with what you have to say about the book. On point that I want to take to task is the way in which the female God-figure was clearly disregarding what the Bible says on certain issues, telling half-truths, twisting words and meanings, and taking things to extremes.

For example, on p96, “[God said,] “Don’t ever think that what my son chose to do didn’t cost us dearly. Love always leaves a significant mark… We were there together”
Mack was surprised. “At the cross? Now wait, I thought you left him – you know – ‘My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?’” …
[God said,] “You misunderstand the mystery there. Regardless of what he felt at that moment, I never left him.”"

As far as my limited understanding of the situation went, I thought that God the Father did indeed abandon Jesus at that moment, because He, as a Holy God, could not look upon the sin that Christ was bearing. It also seems that Young is verging on saying that Jesus was delusional or wrong in saying that the presence of the Father had left Him. It almost is in denial of the truth of Scripture.

Throughout the book I found multiple other instances of questionable doctrine – as you mentioned. One of these was the portrayal of God’s characteristic of love which I do not at all deny. However in portraying God as only a God of love, Young has missed the full picture of Yahweh. This only confuses the picture, and brings up more questions. For example, why would a God of love destroy all the people in the world by flood? Or how could a God of love punish sin? If God’s holy nature is removed, then God fails to be Yahweh, and becomes a ‘friendly’ and ‘nice’ construct of our imagination.

As for the message of loving needing to get to people, I think a lot of people really don’t know what God is like. People seem to know that God loves them, but don’t believe He is holy and can’t tolerate sin, so live the way they want, thinking that they are fine because God loves them! I think that what my generation, a generation educated largely without doctrine, needs more is to realise that God is Holy, and that He calls us to be Holy likewise.

Thanks again for all your hard work Bill. I really appreciate reading your writing. I find it insightful and thoughtful, well-written and God-honouring.

Jessica Dornan

From a review of Bruce Almighty:

Of concern to families may be the fairly vulgar and sexual language and references peppered throughout some sections (about average for films these days), including: The name “God” is used in exclamations several times, “Jesus” (once or twice), “Holy Hell,” a few uses of the s-word, a–hole, and cr-p, pr-ck, and one use of a f-word (as mentioned above). The later is also represented repeatedly in one comic scene with Bruce’s middle finger. Bruce uses his “divine” powers from another room to pleasure his girlfriend into obvious sexual ecstasy. Bruce passionately kisses a co-worker in a bedroom. A song called “Bruce So Horny” is briefly mentioned in a TV commercial. A monkey comically pops out of (and then into) a mugger’s anus (not graphic).

From a review of Evan Almighty a large part of the plot being that Evan is commanded to build an Ark (as in Noah’s Ark):

I cringed when Morgan Freeman acting as God negates the word of God by saying that people are afraid that God is a judge and that this is not why Noah built the ark. Well, here I am having to explain to my kids that this is wrong, that God WAS judging the earth for sin.

If these movies are “great” and contain a “clear understanding of the nature of God”, then perhaps The Shack is a great work containing accurate theology after all.

Ewan McDonald.

But can I respectfully suggest that your remarks reflect far more of the spirit of the age and our postmodern culture than they do the Bible? You say that doctrine is unimportant or cannot really be known anyway. Yet your closing remarks are all about doctrine: God, love, holiness, judgment, etc.

The Bible overwhelmingly affirms and insists upon the importance of doctrine, and that we can know what sound doctrine is. But according to your view, any old belief will do. So maybe the God of Islam or the New Agers will do, if we cannot know what right doctrine is.

And what in the world is this silliness about “white males” all about? Are you actually suggesting that only coloured females can discuss doctrine? But if your idea that doctrine is really unknowable or undiscernible is true, why should we then believe the words of coloured females? Indeed, why should we even believe you?

Sorry, but I again respectfully submit that your remarks seem to reflect a rather sad trend in the church of biblical illiteracy, relativism, and fuzzy thinking, which is really not very helpful.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

“he Word” – that is, Jesus, was a living, breathing thing being. The ‘word”..that is, scripture,is also living and active. we need much more flexibility in how we approach it.

I was delighted with The Shack simply because it focused squarely on the message that God is love. those who believ you can’t emphasise judgement strongly enough cannot have really experienced love…becaseu god;s love and his holiness are inextricably linked. When we are transformed by his love there is no need to flog outselves or others with notions of righteousness – we reflect it naturally and far more powerfully that if simply try to moderate behaviour because we fear god.

Kimberley Gaskin

Sorry if I appeared to be over-reacting. I did not mean to be. I was just somewhat taken back by the sentence I quoted. And given that it immediately followed your sentence about theologians, it seemed only obvious to me – and I would think most readers – that the sentence in question was describing Western theology and theologians.

And the pedigree of a particular theological position is not the real issue here. There are many strands of recent theological thought that converge on some of these criticisms you raise about Western theology: that it is too dependent on Greek thinking, too legal/judicial, etc.

I was just trying to place all this in its theological home. Thus Krueger, along with the openness of God theologians (or freewill theists, eg., Boyd, Pinnock, Sanders, etc.), and The Shack author all share in this theological persuasion.

As I say, I have problems with much of this way of thinking, and hope to write it up at some point. As I said about The Shack in particular, I say about this theological perspective in general: it certainly has some good to offer. But it also contains elements which I find quite unhelpful and unbiblical. But that will have to be teased out in another piece.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts Richard.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

You’ve made three wrong assumptions. Firstly, I do not strongly endorse the theology of Baxter Kruger, although I have been working through the issues it raises. Secondly, the views expressed were mine, argued from the Scriptures I quoted but which you ignored. Thirdly, the author of The Shack said recently that he first heard of Kruger after he had published the book.

I didn’t make it clear when referring to “the west” that I meant western civilisation. Brilliant western minds, like Sir Isaac Newton, that have read theology have too often ended up as deists. In my view there is a spiritual reason for this. The “king of Greece” has a field day when people (including theologians) bring a Greek mindset to Scripture.

A search for the universals and an abiding concern for the particulars has served our civilisation well in many respects – science, law, history, etc. But when we approach God’s Word we must first allow our mind to be renewed by believing the Holy Spirit’s revelation. Only after that do we begin to experience the glory of the mind of Christ, which is perfectly logical, but only to the mind that has adopted biblical presuppositions.

Richard Eason

You state well the perichoresis theology of C. Baxter Krueger, which both you and Lou so strongly endorse – and which The Shack more or less runs with. Needless to say, I do have some problems with this view, but I will not enter into my concerns here. I might however suggest that making rather reckless claims does not help much. To suggest that 2,000 years of Western theology has simply presented God as “a powerful, remote and singular being who, having set the world in motion, is largely uninterested in it and whose only real relationship with mankind is that of our final and terrifying judge” is quite a silly charge to be making. You are more or less describing deism, rather than the Western picture of God that runs from Paul through to Packer. But perhaps a future article will deal with Krueger’s theology.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Of all the responses, Lou d’Alpuget seems to be raising the most important theological questions.

In my view, “The Shack” will go a long way to correct the western view of God that has been so distorted by Augustine’s Platonism and Aquinas’ Aristotelianism. Unbiblical attributes – indivisible, inscrutible, impassible, etc etc.- are ascribed to God by too many theologians. Hence, the “God” of the West is twisted beyond recognition into a powerful, remote and singular being who, having set the world in motion, is largely uninterested in it and whose only real relationship with mankind is that of our final and terrifying judge.

Our gospel also is distorted because it was framed in Greco-Roman legal terms by the early church father Tertullian – a Roman lawyer. It gives most people the impression that Jesus is the friendly person in the Godhead who changed the Father’s wrath towards us by paying the penalty for our sins.

Jesus did not change the Father. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them” we are told in 2 Cor 5:19. So Jesus did not change the Father – He changed us!

The gospel has a legal aspect, but we have allowed that to obscure, even obliterate, the Father’s declared purpose in Christ. At the very heart of every gospel message should be the Father’s purpose in Christ from before the foundation of the world – namely, to adopt mankind as His Sons (Eph 1:3-10). Sin was dealt with at the cross as one part of achieving that profoundly inclusive purpose of our loving Father.

Nor is Jesus a sort of Plan B – the plan to fix sin after creation went awry. Jesus was always the centre of the Father’s creative purposes. As Col 1:15-17 shows all things were created in Him, through Him and for Him. The astonishingly good news (the gospel) is that the whole creation has been created, decreated (2 Cor 5:14) and recreated (2 Cor 5:17-21) in Christ and is now awaiting “the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom 8:19).

So we don’t receive Jesus into our life. He has received us into His life to share the glory of His intimate relationship with the Father. That is why Jesus told His disciples in John 14:20 that when the Holy Spirit had come “You will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.”

It is universal in scope, but not universalism. In John 5:28-29 Jesus says: “Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.”

Even that judgment, however, overflows with grace. John 5:22 says “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son” – i.e. to the God-man who has experience all our temptations. But the Son does not judge us, because He says in John 12:47-48 “If any one hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day.”

The Shack shatters the Greek philosophical view of God presented in so much theology and puts a very effective spotlight on the flawless love-based character of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Richard Eason

I’m really grateful that in the land where the Book of Job is thought to be a political paper on work choices, a voice of theological comfort is available to the suffering. But I wonder if the author has stepped too easily into the circle of Job’s friends, and ends up in breach of the famous “Regulation 42.7”.

I’m really grateful that theological discussion has been provoked in a spiritually indifferent culture, but hesitant to commend the method employed. Preparing the mind for a new theological paradigm by first assaulting it with an absolute tear-jerker needs to be so carefully handled. It’s not for nothing that only two chapters are allocated to the description of the assault on Job, and even then, with little recourse to an emotional roller-coaster.

I am grateful that The Shack paints large the incredible love of the Trinitarian God of the Bible, but do wish that my God wasn’t soooo American. I will be commending The Shack to others, but with the rider that Job is perquisite reading.

Rev David McDougall