Some people say that the revelation in Jesus can be accepted along with everything else biblical writers say. However, that view is implausible. There are biblical accounts of God doing things that just don’t fit with the kind of God Jesus talked about. There are teachings of Jesus about matters such as loving your enemies that don’t fit with the vengeance biblical writers sometimes represent as appropriate in responding to enemies. It is a futile task to treat all biblical teachings as being on the same level and think that you have to reconcile them into a single whole.

Christians from the earliest centuries who recognized that some biblical accounts were problematic tended to suggest that some accounts should not be understood literally, but should be taken as conveying allegorical meanings. Modern readers are generally not inclined to take this approach, but does that mean they have to acknowledge that God does terrible things?