A Book of Love for Everyone: Part 3, Surprises for Progressives

As I said in the last post, Part 1 of The Book of Love is mainly speaking to readers who, for anxious reasons, resist stepping into hermeneutical self-awareness. But as I've shared, I wrote The Book of Love for both progressives and conservatives. I want the Bible to be a book of love for everyone.

Progressives see themselves as already reading Scripture as a book of love. So what could I possibly say to them? Lots, it turns out.

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, progressives have their own "Ostrich Option," which I called "Everything But Jesus Is Problematic." So one of the things I tried to do in The Book of Love is rehabilitate those parts of Scripture that progressives tend to avoid. Some of those topics and texts include (and I highlight the chapters in which I talk about these):

Science and Genesis ("In the Beginning")

The Fall and, downstream, the problem of evil and suffering ("The Catastrophe")

The violence in the Old Testament ("Mercy, Not Sacrifice")

Exclusionary texts in Leviticus ("Mercy, Not Sacrifice")

The atonement ("Loved from the Foundation of the World")

Judgment Day and hell ("When the Man Comes Around")

End-times beliefs and the violence in Revelation ("The War of the Lamb")

Reading the Old Testament over against the New Testament ("The Vow" and "Saved by Difference")

As you can see, there's a whole lot in the book for progressives. And here's the biggest thing:

The Apostle Paul

As I expect you know, progressives tend to be hard on Paul. They love Jesus. Paul, not so much. But in The Book of Love I devote three whole chapters to Paul: "The Revolution of Grace," "How to Be a Human Being," and "The Shape of Love." Three chapters might seem like a lot, but if you add up the words devoted to Paul in Acts and the words Paul himself wrote, he accounts for about 70% of the New Testament. So my chapter allocation seems appropriate.

To be clear, my three Paul chapters are good medicine for conservative readers of the Bible as well, perhaps even more so. Still, I think showing how Paul has proven so epochal in how progressives, theists and atheists alike, define the word "love" will be a surprise for many.