Everyone seems to be talking about William Young's, "The Shack" right now, so I thought it would be fun to join the conversation. There are a handful of topics presented in the book that Theologs are discussing. For the sake of time and space, I'll just stick to one issue: The Trinity. Specifically, what are the strengths and weaknesses of Young's portrayal of the Trinity throughout the book, and what are the positive and negative effects this may have on the church?
I'd love to hear feedback from every point of view, but please, let's keep it clean.
With this first post we'll examine "Papa." For the remainder of the discussion I will refer to "Papa" interchangibly with "God" meaning the figure of the Trinity traditionally called "God the Father."
How is he/she portrayed and what are the implications of this portrayal? I'll list a few observations, you can post your responses.
1)
God is a woman named "Papa": See p.86 and 91. The average Christian thinks of God as a man, even the Lord's prayer refers to "Our Father," but a number of scholar's conclude that God is genderless. What are your thoughts?
2)
God has scars from the cross: On p.95-96 Papa reveals her scarred wrists to Mack. "We were there (on the cross) together." (p.96) Mack asks about Matt.27:46 - "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (NIV) Papa responds with "you didn't understand the mystery." So was God crucified with Christ, or was Christ forsaken, or both? One step further, was the Holy Spirit crucified too? ("
We were there...")
3)
God became human with Christ: See p. 99: "When we three spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of god, we became fully human. We also chose to embrace all the limitations that this entailed. Even though we have always been present in this created universe, we now became flesh and blood." Despite the pronoun and tense confusion in this paragraph, what does this say of the incarnation? Were all three human? Or was only Christ human with the other two present in him? Can this question really be answered definitvely?
BBH will be hosting a panel discussion on William P. Young's runaway hit book, The Shack. The panelists are author Beverly Van Kampen (GodSense, The Bible Study Teacher's Guide), Dr. Rex Rogers (Gambling: Don't Bet On It) and BBH Academic buyer, Louis McBride.
Author and speaker, Beverly Van Kampen will be participating in the BBH book discussion on The Shack. Mrs. Van Kampen will be joined by other panelists (check back for details) and William P. Young via phone.
William P. Young, author of "The Shack," will be participating in the BBH book discussion via phone! At a recent Christian retail conference he offered to participate after hearing about the event. Thanks William!
Everyone seems to be talking about William Young's, "The Shack" right now, so I thought it would be fun to join the conversation. There are a handful of topics presented in the book that Theologs are discussing. For the sake of time and space, I'll just stick to one issue: The Trinity. Specifically, what are the strengths and weaknesses of Young's portrayal of the Trinity throughout the book, and what are the positive and negative effects this may have on the church?