Divine accommodations and progressive revelation

I have been having my mind blown by Greg Boyd's book 'Cross Vision: How The Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence.' I'm reading it on my Kindle, so the process of getting used to notes and bookmarks is taking some time. Yet my reading yesterday was worth thinking about more.

Chapter 5 is entitled, "Building on Tradition ," and he puts forth four defenses for his proposal. Two of these arguments are the theory of Divine Accommodations and Progressive Revelation. I'm sure I have probably heard of these things before, but they didn't quite sink in (or I've simply not paid attention). At any rate... here are a few quotes I gleaned from my reading yesterday.

From p. 66:

"The second way my proposal builds upon church tradition centers on my conviction that we should interpret the OT through the lens of the cross instead of restricting ourselves to the authors' originally intended meaning. To many readers this will sound new, for it conflicts with the widespread conservative assumption that the only meaning a text should have for us today is the meaning that it had for the original audience.

Interestingly enough, the authors of the NT didn't share this assumption. They read the OT in the light of Christ and found meaning in passages that the original authors could not have dreamed of. For example, Matthew said that Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt to fulfill 'what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'Out of Egypt I called my son' (Mt. 2:15). This is just one of the many ways Jesus 'fulfilled' the OT according to the Gospels...."

From p.70

"Throughout church history theologians have agreed that many of the portraits of God in Scripture reflect divine accommodations. And they've agreed that to the degree that any portrait is an accommodation, it reflects not the way God ACTUALLY is, but merely the way God APPEARS TO US, given our limitations."

From p. 73

"At its heart, my proposal is nothing more than this. As I argued in the previous chapter, I hold that God has always revealed his true character and will AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE while stooping to accommodate the fallen and culturally conditioned state of his people AS MUCH AS NECESSARY. In his love, God was willing to allow his people to think of him along the lines of an ANE warrior deity, to the degree this was necessary, in order to progressively influence them to the point where they eventually would be capable of receiving the truth that he is actually radically unlike these violent ANE dieties.

In this sense, I could agree with Gregory and say that, by making gradual changes, God beguiled his people into the gospel, wherein it was revealed that God would rather be killed by enemies than kill them."

Whew... After writing out just these few sections, I realize there is so much more I have left out. But, dang, this is some interesting stuff to think about! In fact, I'm not sure I can even comment on it yet... So I will stop here, and read some more.

Good day.