When the Bible is Wrong about God

There are several places in Scripture where we find worshipers of God ascribing rather shocking things to him.(1) Consider a few examples:

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?" (Ps 22:1)

"O LORD, you have seduced me, and I am seduced;
you have raped me, and I am overcome." (Jer 20:7; see my blog on this verse, here)

"You [Yahweh] are to me like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails." (Jer 15:18)

The Psalmist says God abandoned him; Jeremiah says God seduced and raped him, and elsewhere says God is deceptive and fails him.

In many other places in the Hebrew Bible, however, we are told that Yahweh's "steadfast love endures forever." We are told, "the LORD will not reject his people; he will never forsake his inheritance" (Ps. 94:14), and "he will not abandon you" (Deut 4:31). Not only will he never forsake or reject his people, but they cannot escape his presence. He is always near:

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you. (Ps 139:7-12)

This is just a brief sampling. So much of the Bible claims that God does not forsake his people. Furthermore, the Bible claims that God cannot lie or fail or do wrong. Jeremiah says Yahweh is "like a deceptive brook, like a spring that fails," but we are told elsewhere that Yahweh "does no wrong," "he does not fail" (Zeph 3:5), and "he does not lie" (Num 23:19; 1 Sam 15:29).

We don't even need these verses to know that God does not abandon, lie, fail, or do wrong. We understand that it may often seem like he has done so, but we know that we should recognize his unfailing steadfast love and faithfulness. As 2 Timothy 2:13 says, "If we are faithless, [God] remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself."

We can abandon God, lie to him, fail him, do wrong to him, but not the other way around. And yet some of God's followers stood before him and accused him of doing so.

When we encounter such passages, we instantly know what's going on. They feel like God has abandoned them. It seems like he failed them or lied to them. It seems like he did them wrong. That was their experience, and they were being honest about that experience. They weren't going to tone down their inner turmoil.

Those who lament in the Bible show us that doing so is not unfaithful to God, or sinful, but genuine and good. That said, in those examples we can see that their theology wasn't always 100%, especially when they started making claims about God that we know from other parts of Scripture (and they probably knew as well) were flawed.

I suggest this is how we should think about the violent portraits of God in the Bible.

Consider the following passages:

"When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations . . . and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy." (Deut 7:1-2)

"The LORD our God delivered [Sihon] before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain." (Deut 2:33-34)

"Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the south, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings: he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded." (Josh 10:28-29)

"This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” (1 Sam 15:2-3)

These are just a few examples. There is plenty more divine violence all throughout the Hebrew Bible.

When we think of God speaking in the Bible, we think of it as an audible voice penetrating the world and being heard by whoever God is speaking to. In reality, it was probably much more like it is depicted in Darren Aronofsky's Noah. That is, servants of God interpreting events and/or dreams, feeling and thinking certain things as a response, feeling nudged in one direction or another, but ultimately following a mysterious God whose ways, plans, and thoughts are ambiguous and unclear.

As Walter Brueggemann says, "I do not make a distinction between the two modes of speech [speech about God and that which is spoken by God in the OT], because even where God speaks, the text is Israel's testimony that God has spoken so."(2)

We Christians take for granted the special revelation that we believe was given through Jesus. Jesus is God revealed. Jews do not have that. To the Jews, God is very mysterious and ambiguous. As Rabbi A.J. Heschel said, "God was concealed even when He revealed, [so] that even while his voice became manifest His essence remained hidden."(3)

Thus, the Bible to Jews is not clear and unambiguous full-disclosure of who God is. For Jews, one seeks to know God through what Brueggemann calls "ongoing disputatious interpretation" of events, of experience, of tradition, and of biblical texts.(4) This allows for the possibility that certain interpretations of such things are wrong.

It is my contention that the ancient Israelites were wrong when they ascribed violent commands and actions to God. As Peter Enns claims, "God never told the Israelites to kill the Canaanites. The Israelites believed that God told them to kill the Canaanites."(5)

Ezekiel 33:11 says God takes "no pleasure in the death of the wicked." Jesus said, "it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that any of these little ones should perish" (Matt 18:14). 2 Peter 2:9 says the Lord does not want anyone to perish.

There are many verses we could go through, but the main point is that other parts of Scripture say God is not violent, that God is not one who would enact genocide, killing men, women, children and animals. A lot of Scripture, especially Jesus, points to God as an agent of peace, condemning violence and challenging people to commit to peacemaking as he does.

Because of this testimony--and especially because it is central to the teaching of Jesus, who reveals what God is like for Christians--I suggest that we read the texts that ascribe violence to God the same way we read the texts that ascribe lies, failure, abandonment, and wrong-doing to God, acknowledging their flawed nature.

We should not feel like we are being unfaithful, heretical, or un-Christian to engage in such disputatious interpretation. Jesus did the same thing:

"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also." (Matt 5:38-39; cf. Deut 19:21; Lev 24:20; Ex 21:24)

"He sent messengers on ahead of him, and they went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for him. But they did not receive him, because he was traveling toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw this, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?' But he turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them." (Luke 9:52-56; cf. 2 Kings 1)(6)

We would do well to follow St. Augustine's advice to reinterpret anything in the Bible that cannot honestly be deemed good and true:

Anything in the divine writings that cannot be referred either to good, honest morals, or to the truth of the faith, you must know is said allegorically. . . . Those things . . . which appear to the inexperienced to be sinful, and which are ascribed to God, or to men whose holiness is put before us as an example, are wholly allegorical, and the hidden kernel of meaning they contain is to be picked out as food for the nourishment of charity.(7)

While his allegorical interpretation of the violent texts has been found wanting, his point here is that we should engage in disputatious interpretation with the biblical texts, so that if they ascribe horrible things to God, we shouldn't just accept them as right and true but should find another way of looking at them.

It is quite challenging to begin to read the Bible this way, but I think we must. If we don't, we have an unsolvable problem on our hands, the problem of a God who can be as violent, atrocious and obscene as some of the worst sinners in human history. As Heschel said, "there are a few passages in the Bible which lead one to feel that God is not present in them; passages either too commonplace or too harsh to reflect the spirit of God."(8)

God does not forsake us, deceive us, rape us, fail us, or do wrong to us. And God is not violent; he does not command genocide or kill people. God is always with us, always trying to guide us to the truth, always faithful, always good. God is always love and is always seeking peace and trying to lead us to peace (1 Cor 14:33).

Anything in or out of the Bible that suggests otherwise should be recognized as products of the flawed and sinful world in which we live, and in which interpreting God's actions is difficult, often resulting in conclusions that reveal our flawed and sinful nature more than they reveal the nature of God.(9)

"Now may the God of peace . . . equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." (Heb 13:21)

Notes:
(1) I don't like referring to God as 'he', but it's easiest and we don't have a widely used gender-neutral pronoun. 
(2) Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 117.
(3) Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955), 193.
(4) Walter Brueggemann, Divine Presence Amid Violence: Contextualizing the Book of Joshua (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2009), 10.
(5) Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture has Made Us Unable to Read It (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 54.
(6) On this passage, see Dale C. Allison, "Rejecting Violent Judgment: Luke 9:52-56 and its Relatives," Journal of Biblical Literature 121, no. 3 (2002), 459-478.
(7) St. Augustine, quoted in Kenton L. Sparks, Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority & the Dark Side of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2012), 47-48.
(8) Heschel, 266.
(9) For more along these lines, see Sparks, Sacred Word, Broken Word.

What God Cannot Do

There's an old saying, "If there is no God, everything is permitted."(1) This statement follows the train of thought provided by those like C.S. Lewis who claim that our sense of morality points to the existence of a moral God. Without such a God determining what is moral, we can have no moral compass and so "everything is permitted."

Slavoj Žižek, on the other hand, turns this around. He says, "It is precisely if there is a God that everything is permitted."(2) He says this because the concept of God gives people something beyond themselves to appeal to in order to justify their actions. As "the instruments of God's will," they "practice a perverted version of what Kierkegaard called the religious suspension of the ethical: on a mission from God, one is allowed to kill thousands of innocents."(3) He explains,

The vast majority of people are spontaneously moral: torturing or killing another human being is deeply traumatic for them. So, in order to make them do it, a larger "sacred" Cause is needed, one which makes petty individual concerns about killing seem trivial . . . : without it, we would have to feel all the burden of what we did, with no Absolute upon whom to off-load our ultimate responsibility.(4)

We all know this happens. The crusades, the inquisitions, executions of heretics, the list goes on. And is it not the rationale for justifying the darker sides of Calvinism? "Yes, it sounds horrible to us that God would create billions of people just to damn them to hell for ever and ever; yes, it sounds horrible to us that God would raise up Hitler and Stalin to torture and kill thousands, or to bring about 9/11--but it's what the Bible says and we just have to trust God. Who are we to question him?"

This rationale is also used when evangelical Christians talk about the violent actions attributed to God in the Bible. When asked if it was moral for the ancient Israelites to enact genocide, Tremper Longman said, "Yes, by definition it was moral. I may struggle with it, but God defines morality--what is right and what is wrong. If it is initiated by God, it is moral. God defines morality."(5)

Along the same lines, Daniel Heimbach says, "because God defines morality for us and not the other way around, it must therefore be that God acting as a bloodthirsty warrior is sometimes morally justified; and it must also be that at those times fighting on God's side on crusade terms, allowing no surrender, showing no mercy and sparing no one, is also entirely justified."(6)

I cannot overstate how dangerous this thinking is. Not only has it been used throughout history to justify atrocities, but it can and will be used again.

If God is our standard for morality, then it must be an actual standard. If killing a child is morally wrong, it shouldn't be morally right just because God does it. Relativising morality in such a way not only makes morality meaningless, but the answer to the question "What is moral?" becomes up for grabs. Suddenly, whether or not killing children is moral becomes a matter of interpretation. Suddenly, everything is permitted. If Christians really want to claim God as a moral standard, it has to be consistent.

Rather than saying "God determines morality so even if he does something evil, it is good because he does it," we should say, God cannot do anything evil, but only does what is good. There is a standard of morality that God cannot violate, precisely because it is in God's nature to be good, and God cannot be something God is not. Goodness is necessarily part of God so that God's actions cannot contradict it. Thus, if an action is evil, it is evil for God as well and God cannot do it.(7)

Is everything permitted if God exists? No, not if the God we serve cannot possibly initiate atrocities.

How do we avoid the moral relativism often associated with theism? Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the moral standard, and even more, Jesus reveals to us who God is, so that if Jesus wouldn't do it, neither would God. Christian theology should start and end with the question, "What kind of God does Jesus reveal?"

Would Jesus command people to kill men, women and children? Would Jesus create millions of people just to damn them to hell forever and ever? Would Jesus cause Hitler and Stalin to do what they did? Would Jesus bring about 9/11?

Many verses could be cited in response to these questions, but I will just leave you with this simple one: "it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that any of these little ones should perish" (Matt 18:14).

Notes:
(1) According to Žižek, the statement "is usually traced back to The Brothers Karamazov, [but] Dostoyevsky never in fact made it (the first to attribute it to him was Sartre in Being and Nothingness)." Slavoj Žižek and Boris Gunjević, God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012), 43.
(2) This quote is from the film The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012), directed by Sophie Fiennes. He makes a similar statement in God in Pain, 46.
(3) Žižek and Gunjević, 44-45.
(4) Ibid., 45.

(5) Tremper Longman, III, quoted in William L. Lyons, A History of Modern Scholarship on the Biblical Word Herem (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010), 153-154.

(6) Daniel R. Heimbach, "Crusade in the Old Testament and Today," in Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem, eds. Heath A. Thomas, Jeremy Evans, and Paul Copan (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 190.
(7) For more along these lines, see Thomas Jay Oord, The Nature of Love: A Theology (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2010), particularly chapter 5.

Book Review: "Holy War in the Bible," Edited by Heath Thomas, Jeremy Evans and Paul Copan

Thomas, Heath A., Jeremy Evans and Paul Copan. Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013. pp.9-352. ISBN 978-0-8308-3995-7. ★★★★★

There are 13 contributions in this collection of essays on divine war in the Old Testament, providing a solid, comprehensive treatment of this difficult and important topic. While I could write a review of all 13 contributions individually, such a task would not only be incredibly time-consuming, but perhaps also completely uninteresting to you. Thus, I am forced to summarize each contribution and respond briefly.

Douglas Earl's first contribution, "Joshua and the Crusades," suggests that the book of Joshua has not been used in church history as a proof text for crusading, despite the claims of those like Roland Bainton.(1) He goes through a host of pro-crusade literature, showing that the book of Joshua is almost never used as support for the crusades, while other ancient Hebrew texts are. He says this is due in large part to the popular allegorical reading of the war passages presented by Origen.(2) While this is interesting, one wonders what exactly it contributes to the discussion. After all, while Joshua wasn't really used to support the crusades, Earl did find use of passages from Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Habakkuk, and Haggai in support of crusading.(3) Given this, I can't help but ask, "So what?" Furthermore, that Joshua wasn't used to support crusades doesn't make any less horrendous the war activity in the book of Joshua.

Stephen Chapman's chapter, "Martial Memory, Peaceable Vision," is helpful and well-informed. He makes a good case for the rejection of the term "holy war" to describe the OT's war narratives, opting instead to use terms like "divine war" or "Yahweh war" (most of the contributors to the collection express agreement). About the war material itself, he emphasizes that the wars were not enacted "out of vengeance, rage or ethnic hated but self-protection."(4) While he recognizes that this take away all the horror, it does show that the purpose of the war material was not "to glorify vengeful slaughter . . . but to confess God as the sole source of Israel's deliverance."(5) Furthermore, he says that the OT does not suggest war is ever holy, but only that God "is willing to participate in what is profane and wicked in order to bring about what is good." War, he says, "is always evil."(6) Ultimately, the Bible moves toward peace and a rejection of war, and so Christians should do the same. While Chapman's treatment of the topic is helpful, he doesn't quite solve the theological problem at hand. He seems to imply that God sometimes wills evil. A good and holy God cannot will evil, even if it is supposedly for the purpose of a greater good.

Heath Thomas approaches the topic differently in his contribution, "A Neglected Witness to 'Holy War' in the Writings." Essentially, he says that we have in Lamentations an example of the people of God contending God's warrior activity, providing us with a model for a faith that wrestles with God, a faith that refuses to positivistically accept divine violence, but autonomously questions and challenges God, though not without reverence and a commitment to return to trust and praise. While I applaud Thomas' comments on lament, I don't think what we have in Lamentations can be properly described as wrestling with the warrior activity of God. He says Lamentation provides "a radically different response to the issue of YHWH war as one finds, say, in Deuteronomy or Joshua."(7) Well, sure, but this is because war in Lamentations is against Israel and not her enemies. It is easy to be anti-war and upset by God's actions when the war God wages is against your own people! Had God been fighting for Israel, I highly doubt the author of Lamentations would have been so negative.

While Timothy Gombis, in his contribution "The Rhetoric of Divine Warfare in Ephesians," does not contribute much to a response of the theological problem of divine war in the Bible, he nevertheless provides a fantastic study of warfare in Ephesians. He highlights the counter-imperial, subversive nature of Paul's teaching, which describes a war that is fought through self-sacrifice and becoming a justice-seeking community. He says, "The church's warfare involves resisting [imperial] influences, transforming corrupted practices and replacing them with life-giving patterns of conduct that draw upon and radiate the resurrection power of God. The church's warfare, then, involves purposefully growing into communities that become more faithful corporate embodiments of Jesus on earth."(8) To that, and to the rest of his overview of Ephesians, I give a wholehearted "Amen!"

Alan Bandy's contribution deals with "Vengeance, Wrath and Warfare as Images of Divine Justice in John's Apocaylpse." The title provides a pretty good summary of the argument in his chapter: in Revelation the implementation of justice is manifested in vengeance, wrath and warfare. I have mixed feelings about Bandy's treatment. He highlights well that God's "vengeance" and "wrath" in Revelation really just mean the wicked will reap what they sow, and do not imply excessive or retaliatory action. Furthermore, he shows that "the way to victory for believers [in Revelation] is the way of the Lamb via martyrdom," so that Christian warfare is a.k.a. self-sacrifice.(9) However, when he gets to the section "The Returning Warrior King and Judge," his respect for nuance and rich understanding of John's imagery almost go completely out the window, as he offers a face-value reading of Jesus' return, here understood as a very violent war. What happened to victory via martyrdom? While his footnotes show that he has read several Revelation scholars that offer nonviolent readings of Rev. 19, he not only shares none of their insights, but he does not even dialogue with their arguments. That being said, it is otherwise a good discussion of justice in Revelation.

"Compassion and Wrath as Motivations for Divine Warfare," by David Lamb, is another essay the title of which provides the summary of the argument. Lamb does not deal with the morality of God's warrior activity in the Bible, but merely the motivation for such action, which he says is rooted in God's compassion and a strict commitment to justice. Because of this, Lamb says, God's warriorship should actually be praised. While Lamb's analysis of compassion and wrath in the Bible is insightful, his response to the war material in the Bible is positivistic and amounts to an insufficient response to the problem.

Douglas Earl returns for a second contribution with "Holy War and חרם," which contributes more to the discussion than his first. He makes a strong case for a symbolic (as opposed to a literal/historical) understanding of the herem passages of the Hebrew Bible (see here, my review of Niditch's book on war in the Hebrew Bible, for a discussion of herem). While he essentially suggests the same thing Jerome Creach does in his book Violence in Scripture (see my review, here), I was much more convinced by Earl. Space does not permit me to go over his argument, so I am forced to merely say that it is quite compelling. Though I still think the OT contains some theology that Jesus would have us shed, Earl's treatment of the subject has left me with a lot to ponder.

Daniel Heimbach provided my least favorite contribution in this collection: "Crusade in the Old Testament and Today." After a long discussion comparing just war and crusades, he states that a crusade cannot be considered as morally wrong in itself, because for God, "allowing no surrender, showing no mercy and sparing no one, [can be] entirely justified." Furthermore, God "owes no explanation for anything that he does." He evaluates us "and we have no standing to evaluate him."(10) It seems to me that Heimbach isn't all that familiar with the OT if that is his conclusion. Jeremiah, to use one example of many, evaluated God and accused him of betraying and violating him (see Jer. 20, and my discussion, here). Fortunately for Christian ethics, Heimbach says crusades can only be justified if they are initiated by God and led by God in a way that could be verified.(11) Still left is the immense theological problem posed by the crusading activity of God in the OT, a problem Heimbach flippantly and unfairly dismisses.

Insight returns with Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan's contribution, "The Ethics of 'Holy War' for Christian Morality and Theology," which analyses the OT literature in comparison with other ancient Near Eastern literature and concludes that the battle stories are hyperbolic in nature. Thus, for example, the author of Joshua didn't really mean to suggest that the Israelites literally "left no survivors" (10:28, 30, 34, 37, 39, 40), but was merely utilizing a typical ANE hyperbolic literary device. They convincingly show this based on examples from ANE literature, as well as the biblical narrative, which often seems to contradict itself as Israelites often encounter survivors of peoples they supposedly destroyed completely. While this doesn't solve the theological problem of a violent God, it successfully makes the war material not as bad as it seems...but it's still pretty bad.

Glen Stassen (R.I.P.) also contributed to this collection, with a chapter entitled, "The Prophets' Call for Peacemaking Practices." I have to say, I was a little disappointed by his essay. I am an advocate for Stassen's Just Peacemaking initiative and an admirer of him and his work, but this chapter was a little underwhelming. It's really more of an overview of Norman Gottwald's book All the Kingdoms of the Earth.(12) Don't get me wrong, I love Gottwald, and Stassen provides some grade A quotes, but the title of the chapter is a little misleading, as it is mostly an overview of the prophetic vision of justice and peace over against imperial systems; it is not so much about peacemaking practices. I was disappointed because peacemaking practices are what Stassen usually offers so well. For this reason, I would suggest the reader supplement Stassen's contribution here with his contribution to War in the Bible & Terrorism in the 21st Century,(13) or his book Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace.(14) And please do! His assertion that regardless of whether you're a just war theorist or a pacifist, Jesus has called us to seek peace--and that despite popular opinion there are practical ways governments can seek peace--is urgently needed.

Robert Stewart brings the discussion into new territory with his, "'Holy War,' Divine Action and the New Atheism." He responds primarily to Richard Dawkins, suggesting that OT holy war is not an argument against belief in God. While he does this convincingly, he does not sufficiently dispel OT holy war as an argument against biblical inerrancy. He asks, "is it the case that God, who created all other living beings, does not have the right to take back the life that he has given?"(15) God may have the right to take back the life that he has given, but that does not mean that to do such a thing is loving and morally right. I have the right to kill someone who attacks me and threatens my life, but that does not mean killing someone in self-defense is loving and morally right (in fact, I would say it's not). Furthermore, taking back life is not the only problem, nor is it all God is said to have done in the OT. Violence on the part of God is the problem. For example, God is depicted as responsible for mass rape in Num. 31:18, Deut. 20:14, and 2 Sam 12:11. While his discussion is humble and fair, Stewart's insistence on biblical inerrancy is its weakness.

Murray Rae's contribution, "The Unholy Notion of 'Holy War'," is, unsurprisingly, one of my favorites. In his first section, he talks about the pacifism of the early church, providing several quotes from early church fathers, and then discusses the reasons for the church's widespread change of heart (Constantine's "conversion," the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, and Augustine's influence). The second section deals with objections to pacifism from Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Barth, who essentially said that pacifism is unrealistic because every once in a while coercion is necessary. He responds to them in the third section by appealing to the teaching and example of Jesus, whose self-sacrifice and resurrection provide the model for Christian ethics. Jesus, he says, "refused the temptation of political or armed power and accepted that it would cost him his life." Furthermore, this example "is to be followed not because a more satisfactory outcome is thereby assured [in human history] but because it is not our will but God's that should be done." Thus, to think in terms of war being sometimes necessary is to think in strictly human terms, which amounts to "the abandonment of Christian ethics."(16) On divine war in the Bible, Rae says, "Christians must take more seriously" the new commandment which Jesus introduced which is "more stringent than the old," and in which "war waged with the implements of violence and destruction is always a failure . . . [and] can never be holy."(17) Altogether, I found this to be one of the strongest and most compelling contributions.

The final contribution is "'Holy War' and the New Atheism" by Stephen Williams. Approaching new atheism from a different angle than that of Stewart, Williams highlights several problems with New Atheist thinking, which is guilty of the same kinds of errors as those of Christian fundamentalism; namely, they are based on straw men, sweeping generalizations, caricatures, and simplistic literal readings of Scripture. One example is the New Atheist reading of the "holy war" passages in Scripture, which Williams says are pre-Christian.(18) A nuanced reading, he says, would "seek to understanding the ways of God in the Old Testament," utterly defined by pathos and which respond to violence with grief.(19) So at the very least, divine war was an accommodation that God made with sorrow for the sake of preserving Israel in order for Jesus to penetrate our violent world with his message of peace. While he is often insightful, Williams' line of thinking is sometimes hard to follow and his chapter lacks focus. His assertion at the end that New Atheism is a "holy war" against religion is odd and I couldn't help but feel like I missed the point.

The afterward, written by Jeremy Evans and Heath Thomas and entitled "Old Testament 'Holy War' and Christian Morality: Where do we go from here?" seeks to wrap things up by providing what needs to be considered in future discussions of this pressing issue: 1) we shouldn't confuse an "is" with an "ought" in Scripture, meaning we shouldn't see all the violence in the Bible as divinely ordained, but should distinguish what is divine violence from what is not; 2) we need to distinguish between objective and absolute commands, meaning we should set apart commands that were for a specific time, situation, and people and not for all followers of God; 3) we need to pay attention to the vital role of Scripture (see here for a recent blog in which I posit that the issue of divine violence is primarily an issue of the authority of Scripture). While I agree with all of these, their discussion of them includes conservative assumptions that do not apply to progressive Christians, including certain contributors to this collection. For example, they say at one point "God indeed commanded 'holy war'," which begs the question, "What about the many Christians who don't believe he did?"

Overall, Holy War in the Bible is perhaps the best introduction to the topic of divine war in the Bible that one could read. It would have been even better if they included a chapter on war in Revelation (the one on wrath and vengeance doesn't quite cover it), and if they included a contribution from a more liberal perspective. Notwithstanding, I highly recommend it, as it offers several differing viewpoints, all of which are presented with sophistication. It also includes a tremendous bibliography, and each chapter has a ton of footnotes with other great sources to check out. For the thoughtful Christian, for the student or teacher of the Bible, for the Pastor, for whoever interested in this topic, get this book. It's probably the best place to start.

Notes:
(1) See Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-evaluation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1960).
(2) See Earl, "Joshua and the Crusades," 39.
(3) See Ibid., 29-34. 
(4) Chapman, "Martial Memory, Peaceable Vision," 57.
(5) Ibid., 63.
(6) Ibid., 65.
(7) Thomas, "A Neglected Witness to 'Holy War' in the Writings," 82. Holy war is put in quotes throughout the book, because several contributors note the invalidity of the phrase for referring to the Bible's war material. One wonders why they didn't just call the book "Divine War in the Bible" or something else, so that all the contributors didn't have to put "holy way" in quotes all the time.
(8) Gombis, "The Rhetoric of Divine Warfare in Ephesians," 100. Emphasis his.
(9) Bandy, "Vengeance, Wrath and Warfare as Images of Divine Justice in John's Apocaylpse," 114.
(10) Heimbach, "Crusade in the Old Testament and Today," 190.
(11) See Ibid., 196.
(12) Norman Gottwald, All the Kingdoms of the Earth: Israelite Prophecy and International Relations in the Ancient Near east (New York: Harper & Row, 1964).
(13) Glen H. Stassen, "Just Peacemaking Reduces Terrorism between Palestine and Israel," in War in the Bible & Terrorism in the 21st Century, eds. Richard S. Hess and Elmer A. Martens (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 127-148.
(14) Glen H. Stassen, Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace (Lousville: Westminster John KNox Press, 1992).
(15) Stewart, "'Holy War,' Divine Action and the New Atheism," 273. Emphasis his.
(16) Rae, "The Unholy Notion of 'Holy War'," 306.
(17) Ibid., 310-311.
(18) Williams, "'Holy War' and the New Atheism," 323.
(19) Ibid., 324.

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3 Things You Need to Know About Divine Violence in the Bible

For the past 8 months now I have been reading every book I can get about divine violence in the Bible. So far, I've read about 20, and I have 5 more to go. In my reading I have been noticing a trend that I think is important to acknowledge when framing one's discussion of this topic. I think the issue centers around 3 vital components, which often go unnoticed in debates (see, for example, my review of 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide, here).

1. This is first and foremost an issue of the authority of Scripture

Is all of Scripture God's self revelation? Does every portrait of God painted in Scripture perfectly depict his true nature? Does Jesus repudiate any Old Testament theologies? Did the Israelites get anything wrong about God? These questions need to be dealt with first. How you answer them will determine what the rest of your approach is going to look like.

If Scripture is infallible, then that means none of Scripture's depictions of God are flawed. If you believe Scripture has God as its ultimate author, that every part of Scripture was willed and determined by God, then that means all of Scripture's theology is really God's self-description, and none of it is wrong. What is your view of Scripture? That will be the biggest deciding factor in your understanding of the issue of divine violence in the Bible. As Thom Stark has said, "In the end, the way one looks at these things and the manner in which one interprets these matters depends completely on one's theology of sacred scripture" (The Human Faces of God, 2011, p.150).

Too often biblical scholars have neglected this issue in their discussions of Scripture's violent portrayals of God. None of the contributors to 4 Views on God & Canaanite Genocide, for example, discussed this aspect of the problem in their respective chapters.

2. This is an issue of the historicity of certain biblical books

Related to the authority of Scripture aspect of this problem is the issue of whether or not the OT books are historically accurate. Did God flood the entire earth, killing most of its inhabitants? Did God toss the Egyptian warriors into the Red Sea? Did God deliver Jericho into the hands of the Israelites so that when they marched around the city and shouted its walls miraculously came crumbling down? Did God hand the Canaanites over to the Israelites so that they could defeat them in battle? How reliable is the OT history? If it is indeed historically reliable, and the battles happened exactly the way the texts say they happened, then it seems that we would have to say that God actually did do those things.

Furthermore, when the OT says, "Thus says the Lord," does it reflect what God actually said? Are such speeches of God historical? If so, we would have to admit that God did command Saul through Samuel, "Go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys" (1 Sam. 15:3).

Are all the battle stories in the OT accounts of actual historical events? How you answer this question will be a significant determining factor in your understanding of the larger issue.

3. This is an issue of how to interpret the book of Revelation

Often in their arguments for the continuity between the theology of the OT and that of Jesus, Evangelical scholars will refer to the book of Revelation, which seems to portray Jesus in the same violent manner in which God is portrayed in the OT.

I think this one is so important because if we were to base our understanding of the God revealed in Jesus solely on his teachings and example described in the Gospels, I think most Christians would recognize a discontinuity between the theology of Jesus and that of certain parts of the OT.

For example, when his disciples suggest that they pray for God to strike fire on the Samaritans for refusing to let them into their village, Jesus rebukes them and says, "You know not what spirit you are of, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the lives of human beings but to save them" (Luke 9:55). Also, Jesus repudiates the OT teaching of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" (Deut 19:21; Ex 21:24; Lev 24:20) and taught that we shouldn't be violent but should rather engage people peacefully (Matt 5:38-39). Rejecting the way the Israelites dehumanized and hated their enemies (for example, Ps 139:21), Jesus taught that we should love our enemies and pray for them (Matt 5:43-44). Indeed, I think the dominant Christian consensus would be that Jesus rejected the violent theologies of the OT, if it were not for passages in the book of Revelation like this one:

I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. . . . He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. "He will rule them with an iron scepter." He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. . . . Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to wage war against the rider on the horse and his army. But the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed the signs on its behalf. . . . The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. The rest were killed with the sword coming out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh. 

Revelation 19:11-21

How do we interpret this passage? Do we take it at face value and interpret it to mean that Jesus is the same as the warrior God in the OT? How you interpret passages in Revelation like this will determine whether or not you think Jesus affirmed the violent theologies of the OT.

Recommended reading:
On the authority of Scripture with regard to divine violence, see Kenton Sparks, Sacred Word, Broken Word (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2012). See my review, here. Also see Wesley Morrison, "Did God Command Genocide?: A Challenge to the Biblical Inerrantist," Philosophia Christi, 11, no. 1 (2009). Finally, see my blog, "God-Breathed: The Authority of Scripture According to the Greek Word θεόπνευστος," http://jdhollowayiii.blogspot.com/2013/11/god-breathed-authority-of-scripture.html

On the historicity of the Old Testament, see K. Lawson Younger, Jr., Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing (Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 1990). Also see Victor R. Matthews, A Brief History of Ancient Israel (Lousville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002).

For a fantastic bibliography on the book of Revelation, see Greg Boyd, "Revelation and the Violent 'Pride-Fighting' Jesus," Reknew.org, http://reknew.org/2010/09/revelation-and-the-violent-prize-fighting-jesus/

Book Review: "Violence in Scripture" by Jerome Creach

Creach, Jerome F. D. Violence in Scripture. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013. pp.xi-286. ISBN 978-0-664-23145-3. ★★★★★

After WJK Press completed their Interpretation commentary series, dedicated to providing "Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church," they jump-started a special themes series to go along with it. Jerome Creach's Violence in Scripture is part of that series, and after reading it I am looking forward to reading the others. Creach is a well-rounded scholar whose study is enriched by early church fathers as well as the best of modern biblical studies, which he brings together quite nicely in his treatment of violence in Scripture.

With regard to the flood story, in chapter 1 Creach posits that, given its genre, it "was not meant to be read as an historical account. . . . [So], although the story portrays God making 'an end to all flesh' (Gen 6:13), it does not intend to say that God actually made an end to all flesh."(1) He says the flood narrative "is really about God's struggle to maintain creation in the face of humanity's spread of violence. . . . [D]ivine judgment amounts to the return of the precreation state in an attempt to correct creation and reestablish the order necessary for life."(2)

He essentially says the same thing of the narrative of the plagues. He follows Terence Fretheim in saying that Pharaoh is the "anticreator" who with his violent oppression is destroying God's creation and moving it towards a state of chaos.(3) He also follows Fretheim's analysis of the plagues, which he reads "as 'signs' of creation's rebellion against the Egyptians."(4)

In chapter 2, Creach addresses the warrior theology of several Old Testament texts. He says, "the image of God as warrior . . . is closely related to the picture of God as judge and arbiter of justice."(5) Therefore, war is understood as one of the ways God establishes justice in the world. Furthermore, Creach says that by "assigning war to God, as part of God's judicial actions, war is taken out of the hands of humans as a tool at their disposal. Any use of war for selfish purposes then becomes illegitimate. If this perspective is taken seriously it makes war extremely difficult to justify."(6) But doesn't that leave it open for war to be justified at times as the necessary action against a people that are moving God's creation towards chaos and rebelling against God's justice? For such scenarios, it seems that there would be no reason to reject the use of war. Yet Creach still maintains that, "Far from empowering any human being to engage in war, [the Bible] denies humans the right to fight. The battle is left to God."(7) Lori Rowlett rightfully asks, "Why would a deity who commands pacifism for his people engage himself in the slaughter of thousands of other people?"(8)

It is when Creach talks about herem in the OT in chapters 3 and 4 that his argument starts to become pretty unique. Of the Israelite war with the Amalekites, he says,

Whatever "history" lies behind the story in 1 Samuel 15, that history is now used for a larger religious purpose. The Amalekites do not represent so much real historical foes as the forces of disorder that threaten to undo God's creation. Thus the promise to eradicate the memory of Amalek must be understood against the backdrop of order and chaos.(9)

Elsewhere he says the Amalekites are "a prototypical enemy that represent the forces of evil."(10) So, the emphasis in 1 Samuel is not on a historical people that have to be destroyed, but the spirit and way that those people represented which Yahweh will not tolerate. Creach quotes Avi Sagi who said that the "war against Amalek is waged with the book," the implication being that it was not waged with actual weapons and violence.(11) Furthermore, Sagi says, "the 'remembrance' of Amalek [that must be destroyed refers to] a memory that encourages a way of relating to and controlling others through violence."(12) 

While I certainly see the value of this interpretation--and I think this is the message that should be drawn from the story--I don't think it can reflect the actual purpose of the text, nor do I think it properly addresses the theological problem--that is, that Yahweh is the kind of God that commands the death of "women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys" (1 Sam. 15:3). Creach resurrects the allegorical approach of early church fathers like Origen in a sophisticated and well-informed manner. Unfortunately, it still comes off as a weak way of dealing with the issue.

He does the same sort of thing with the account of Canaanite genocide in Joshua.

The story of placing the people of the land under the ban seems to have served [Josiah's] reform movement largely as an emblem of purification, but was not meant to be taken literally.(13) 

Josiah was not dealing with Canaanites in the land, but with his own people, who often practiced the worship of their God with elements of the worship of Baal and other deities (2 Kgs. 23).(14) 

"Canaanite" in Judges is a code word for the kind of society that works against God's intentions for shalom. Thus the charge for the Israelites to drive the Canaanites out of the land is really a charge to establish justice and to reject the death-producing society the Canaanites represent.(15)

This reading is more plausible than his reading of the Amalekite story, but it still falls short in my mind. Though he's right when he says that the purpose of the story was to support Josiah's reform and not necessarily to record actual historical events, the text still reflects an ideology of war and a theology of a divine warrior.(16) Gerhard von Rad denied historical reality to the so-called "holy war" narratives, but he still maintained that something like holy war went on in ancient Israel.(17)

I think the messages Creach draws from these narratives should be embraced, but only alongside of an acknowledgement of the incomplete theology within them. I think it is still necessary to reject certain elements of the text's theology, but Creach is reluctant to do so. He speaks of those who "separate the presentation of God as a warrior in the text from the real God . . . [understanding] the text as a flawed work, a relic of the past that naturally presents God in ways that are imprecise and culturally conditioned." Of such people, he says that "the complete separation of the real God from the textually embodied God seems misguided. Such an approach also overlooks the potentially positive role [the image of God as warrior] plays in Scripture and in Christian theology."(18)

This is somewhat of a straw man. Fretheim distinguishes between the "textual God" and the "actual God,"(19) but he doesn't then say that the image of God as warrior never plays a positive role in Scripture or theology. There is nothing wrong with imaging God as a warrior, as long as we say he is a warrior "against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms," and not against flesh and blood (Eph. 6:12). Indeed, I follow Greg Boyd's "warfare worldview" in which Christ is always working as a warrior against evil,(20) but that doesn't mean I embrace all the images of God as a warrior in the Bible, particularly those which depict God as violent.

Creach's reluctance to reject certain OT theologies is made clearer when he talks about Jesus and the New Testament in chapter 7. He says, "Jesus did not offer a corrective to Old Testament ideas . . . , it is most accurate to say that Jesus presents for Christians a normative interpretation of the Old Testament, not a repudiation of it."(21) However, he seems to contradict himself on this point. He has a great discussion in chapter 6 about the relationship between 2 Kings 1:9-12, in which Elijah calls down fire from heaven upon his enemies, and Luke 9:51-55, in which Jesus rebuked his disciples for suggesting that they call to God to send fire to consume the Samaritans. He says that Jesus' message in Luke 9 is unambiguous: "Jesus seems clearly to repudiate Elijah's actions" (emphasis mine).(22) But 2 Kings 1 does not merely describe Elijah's actions, it describes God's actions as well. So for Creach to make this claim, he has to admit that Jesus is calling for his disciples to reject a certain OT theology. Creach instead claims at the end of the book that the OT does not contain "instructions and stories that have values that Jesus then rejected."(23) These are conflicting claims.

I wish I had space to cover some of the other topics Creach covers in the book. For example, he includes a phenomenal discussion of hell in chapter 6. In a well-rounded and nuanced manner, he makes the case that the Bible leaves the door open to the possibility that hell is not forever, and that Jesus will seek the reconciliation of its inhabitants after death. His presentation is not only compelling but also much-needed.

Overall, this is an incredibly informative book for a Christian studying violence in the Bible, particularly the OT. While the title is "Violence in Scripture," I was disappointed to find that it includes very little discussion of violence in the NT. Notwithstanding, I definitely recommend the book to those interested in the topic. It is a good resource for all readers--student, pastor, scholar, whatever--and its insights go beyond the topic of violence, as Creach supplies important and illuminating discussions of a number of biblical topics, accompanied by a fantastic bibliography.

Notes:
(1) Creach, 36.
(2) Ibid., 34.
(3) See Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991).
(4) Creach, 82. Also see, Terence E. Fretheim, "The Plagues as Ecological Signs of Historical Disaster," Journal of Biblical Literature 110, no. 3 (1991), 385-396.
(5) Creach, 56.
(6) Ibid., 58.
(7) Ibid., 238.
(8) Lori L. Rowlett, Joshua and the Rhetoric of Violence (Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 1996), 68.
(9) Creach, 93.
(10) Ibid., 89.
(11) Avi Sagi, quoted in Ibid., 95.
(12) Sagi, quoted in Ibid., 96.
(13) Ibid., 98.
(14) Ibid., 108.
(15) Ibid., 131.
(16) See Niels P. Lemche, The Canaanites and Their Land: The Tradition of the Canaanites (Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 1991), for the case that "Canaanite" is code for "Assyrian."
(17) See Gerhard von Rad, Holy War in Ancient Israel, trans. and ed. Marva J. Dawn (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1991).
(18) Creach, 48.
(19) See Terence E. Fretheim, "Is the Biblical Portrayal of God Always Trustworthy?" in The Bible as Word of God in a Postmodern Age (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 97-111.
(20) See Gregory A. Boyd, God at War: The Bible & Spiritual Conflict (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997).
(21) Creach, 229.
(22) Ibid., 159.
(23) Ibid., 238.

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Book Review: "Joshua and the Rhetoric of Violence" by Lori Rowlett

Rowlett, Lori L.  Joshua and the Rhetoric of Violence: A New Historicist Analysis. Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 1996. pp.8-195. ISBN 1-85075-627-9. ★★★★☆

In this work, Lori Rowlett set out to deconstruct the Joshua literature from a new historicist perspective; that is, by assessing the historical context in which the text was conceived. Rowlett goes along with the widely accepted theory that the Deuteronomic History (Joshua-Kings) was formed largely in the era of King Josiah's reign. With this, she says "the DH was written as propaganda for Josiah's reform."(1) The propaganda found in the book of Joshua, she says, uses a rhetoric of violence "to serve as a warning to the people of Josiah's kingdom that the post-imperial power of the central government could and would be unleashed upon any who resisted its assertion of control."(2) In this, Josiah was "adopting the violent ideology of [Israel's] oppressors. The same ideology that had undermined their identity was now being used to exert their identity. The rhetoric of violence appropriated from the oppressor is turned by the oppressed into a vehicle of self-reconstitution."(3)

This understanding of Joshua runs contrary to the reading posed by Walter Brueggemann and Norman Gottwald. Brueggemann says, "Following the general analysis of Gottwald, the city-states [like Canaan] are to be understood as monopolies of socioeconomic, political power that are managed in hierarchal and oppressive ways."(4) Furthermore, early Israel was "an antimonarchic, peasant movement hostile to every concentration, surplus, and monopoly."(5) So then, in Joshua, "Yahweh is allied with the marginalized, oppressed peasants against the monopoly of the city-state."(6)

K. Lawson Younger critiques this understanding, saying that Joshua

utilizes a common transmission code observable in numerous ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts, employing the same ideology. Since the ideology which lies behind the text of Joshua is one like that underlying other ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts--namely, imperalistic--, then 'egalitarian, peasant' Israel is employing a transmission code (a 'communicative mode') which is self-contradictory.(7)

Younger's analysis lines up well with Rowlett's claims. However, one wonders how much the use of a certain transmission code (by which he is referring to the literary form of the text) can say about the ideology of the author. Could it be that the use of a common ANE transmission code says only that the transmission code was common and not that it carries with it an imperialist ideology?

Furthermore, it seems to me that Rowlett's approach to Joshua/King Josiah is unnecessarily negative. Yes, an ideology of 'otherness' permeates the book of Joshua, but it seems to me that her assertion that the book utilizes a rhetoric of violence to keep King Josiah's people in check goes beyond what the data provides. The small kingdom of Judah does not strike one as an oppressive imperial system, especially given Israel's reputation for being "always in the shadow of the empire."(8)

Jerome Creach offers a different approach to Joshua:

Josiah sponsored the writing of the first draft of the history in order to support his religious and political reforms that focused mainly on purifying worship and limiting the cult to the Jerusalem temple. The story came into its final form while Israel was in exile in Babylon. In other words, the story of Israel's sweeping conquest of Canaan was told by people who themselves had no land and who were powerless before the great empires of their day.(9)

While Creach is more confident about the book's composition than I think is warranted, his more positive view of the book's purpose is valid. Throughout Israel's history, surrounding empires posed as threats to their existence. Israel was always a vulnerable people, even in their periods of autonomy. This small people, as Gottwald says, "had achieved something by combining forces under the aegis of their empowering deity."(10) Thus, devotion to Yahweh, the sovereign ruler of all of creation, was absolutely necessary in order for them to compete with the surrounding empires.(11) This could provide a viable reason for the texts associated with King Josiah's reign.

However, Rowlett is also negative about the theology of the book of Joshua, claiming that it has more to do with divine sanction of King Josiah than it does King Josiah's devotion to Yahweh. She says,

in the text of Joshua, the sovereign is really Yahweh. Therefore, Joshua, King Josiah's stand-in, can appear to be motivated only by loyalty and obedience to the deity, rather than by an attempt to assert his own power. This is one of the rhetorical devices employed to mystify the inequities of the social order and to advance the power of the monarchy. The rhetoric depends upon the evocation of sentiment by employing a kind of false modesty: Yahweh is really in charge. Joshua (and by extension Josiah) poses merely as Yahweh's humble servant, acting as his proxy. However, since Joshua is functioning as the deity's proxy, Joshua happens to be the most powerful of all human beings since he and only he has been chosen by Yahweh . . . as an instrument of the deity's sovereignty. Furthermore . . . the discourse of and within the text is politically self-serving and not quite as selflessly pious as it appears on the surface. The things that Joshua and King Josiah do in apparently humble servitude for Yahweh, the sovereign, happen to enhance their own power and sovereignty immeasurably.(12)

While this reading is plausible, it is not the necessary conclusion that it is presented as. It could just as well be said that the book of Joshua is an anti-imperial script designed to inspire devotion to Yahweh in order to stand up against the powers of the empire. Their 'rhetoric of violence' could have been "part of the struggle to build and defend a [subversive] communitarian society" in the midst of a world of empires.(13)

Overall, Rowlett brings some very interesting claims to the table. While I think some of her conclusions are examples of the tendency in modern biblical scholarship to choose the more negative conclusion under the mistaken impression that the negative conclusion is always right, I do think she has a lot to offer, and her claims should be weighed and measured with further study. I definitely recommend Rowlett's book to the serious student of the Hebrew Bible.

Notes:
(1) Rowlett, 44.
(2) Ibid., 183.
(3) Ibid.
(4) Walter Brueggemann, Divine Presence Amid Violence: Contextualizing the Book of Joshua (Eugene: Cascade Book, 2009), 15.
(5) Ibid., 20.
(6) Ibid., 24.
(7) K. Lawson Younger, Jr., Ancient Conquest Accounts (Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 1990), 255.
(8) See Walter Brueggemann, "Always in the Shadow of the Empire," in The Church as Counterculture, eds. Michael L. Budde and Robert W. Brimlow (New York: State University of New York Press, 2000), 39-58.
(9) Jerome F.D. Creach, Violence in Scripture, ed. Patrick D. Miller (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), 113.
(10) Norman Gottwald, "The Biblical Prophetic Critique of Political Economy: Its Ground and Import," in The Hebrew Bible in its Social World and in Ours (Atlanta: The Society of Biblical Literature, 1993), 358.
(11) Creach, 113-114.
(12) Rowlett, 174-175.
(13) Gottwald, 358.

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Book Review: "Show Them No Mercy: 4 Views on God & Canaanite Genocide"

Show Them No Mercy: Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide. Edited by Stanley Gundry. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003. pp.7-218. ISBN 978-0-310-24568-1. ★★★☆☆

Stanley Gundry's Counterpoints in Bible & Theology series offers a lot of helpful introductions to various biblical and theological issues. Usually, the Counterpoints books are well-rounded and consist of multiple viewpoints. Given the series' reputation for providing several different viewpoints, I was disappointed and a little confused by this collection of arguments, which would be more properly titled "Two Views on God and Canaanite Genocide." There doesn't seem to be much of a difference between the approaches of Eugene Merrill, Daniel Gard, and Tremper Longman. All three are conservative scholars and, despite the curious [misleading] titles of their views (moderate discontinuity, eschatalogical continuity, and spiritual continuity), they all basically have the same understanding of how to interpret the violent material in the Bible; that is, all three affirm the infallibility (and probably also the inerrancy) of Scripture, that God did exactly as the text suggests, and that all of the violent actions attributed to him are moral and just. So then, the book consists of one liberal view (that of C.S. Cowles) against three equally conservative views. This is very odd, since there are clearly many more approaches than just these two. Roger Olson highlights nine in his article "Every Known Theistic Approach to Old Testament 'Texts of Terror'" (although, I think his use of 'every' is an overstatement).(1) One wonders if this set-up was purposeful, that Gundry wanted three conservative views against one liberal view to discourage readers from adopting the liberal view.

Since three of the views in this book are so similar, the conservative scholars' responses to each other consist of an unnecessary overview of the argument they're responding to, a pat on the back, and a struggle to find things with which to disagree. For example, in Gard's response to Merrill, one of his few critiques is that Merrill takes the 1000 years referred to Revelation literally, a point of difference which has nothing to do with God and Canaanite genocide. For this reason, one could just read Cowles' responses to the conservative approaches and skip the others.

What is also unfortunate about this book is that I doubt it will help much in the divide between Christians on this issue. The reason I say this is because the most crucial aspects of this issue were not given ample focus. I think the problem of divine violence in the Bible centers around two things: the authority of Scripture and how to interpret Revelation. Obviously, there are more factors at play, but I do think these two carry the most weight.

Most Christians will say that the Bible's violent depictions of God are at least troubling. The problem is, most Christians regard all of Scripture as infallible and as God's self-revelation. So when the Bible says God did something, there is no question, he definitely did it. Thus, it is first and foremast an issue of the authority of Scripture and how we are to read/interpret Scripture. The fact that all three conservative scholars mentioned the authority of Scripture in response to Cowles supports this understanding.

Also at the center of this issue is how we interpret Revelation. A central argument for those like Cowles who say that the violent depictions of God in the Old Testament do not reflect what he actually did or his actual nature, is that Jesus in his life and teaching presents a very different portrait of God, one who loves enemies, rejects using violence and reprimands those who use violence. At the end of the day, the only major element that complicates this understanding of Jesus is the book of Revelation, which seems to depict Jesus as the same kind of violent warrior that Yahweh is depicted as in the OT. This argument is used by all three conservative scholars in their responses to Cowles.

One can only really discuss divine violence in the Bible if one deals with how to interpret the disturbing parts of the Bible while maintaining its divine inspiration, and also by explaining how the depictions of Jesus in Revelation don't imply that he is a violent warrior. While I agreed wholeheartedly with most of what Cowles had to say, he unfortunately did not dedicate much time to addressing these core issues. He didn't discuss the authority of Scripture at all, and he limited his discussion of Revelation to a single quote from a scholar of Revelation in a footnote not even in his main contribution but in one of his responses to the others. Quite inadequate.

Overall, while I have highlighted the deficiencies of this collection of arguments, the book isn't altogether inadequate. It can still serve as a good introduction to the war material in the Bible and how we Christians should respond to it. That being said, I don't think it properly served its purpose, and I hope that a more comprehensive book that similarly focuses on the dialogue of opposing views will be put together in the future. If it does, hopefully it will represent more than two views, and hopefully it will include a much-needed discussion of the authority of Scripture and of the book of Revelation.

Notes:
(1) Roger Olson,  "Every Known Theistic Approach to Old Testament 'Texts of Terror," Patheos blog, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/07/every-known-theistic-approach-to-old-testament-texts-of-terror/

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Book Review: "A History of Modern Scholarship on the Biblical Word Herem" by William Lyons

Lyons, William L. A History of Modern Scholarship on the Biblical Word Herem: The Contributions of Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Peter C. Craigie, and Tremper Longman, III. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010. pp.i-219. ISBN 978-0-7734-3834-7. ★★★★☆

I should begin this review by stating that Dr. Lyons was a professor of mine at Regent University. I had four classes with him, and he was my favorite professor. Beyond that, he has counseled me on academic papers, as well as on the next steps of my academic career, and we have maintained a friendship since my first semester at Regent, one that continues to strengthen. He even guided my wife and I through marriage counseling and officiated our wedding. Given our relationship, it would be very easy for me to just sit here and pat him on the back with a 5-star review singing his praises. However, if you know me, you know that I can have a close relationship with people while also being openly, even harshly, critical of their views. And I think you'll find that Dr. Lyons--though his teaching was a milestone in my life and was monumental to the development of my thinking, my research and my writing as a student--is no exception to the honest scrutiny and criticism that I put into my analysis.

The purpose of Lyons' book is to provide an overview of the work of three evangelical Old Testament scholars, Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Peter C. Craigie, and Tremper Longman, III on the issue of warfare in the OT, particularly that of herem. Their work, as well as the work of scholarly evangelicals in general, has largely gone overlooked, and so Lyons lends focus to them and their claims, as he himself is an evangelical OT scholar.

He starts the book by outlining the major claims of evangelicals, one of which is the unapologetic belief in the Bible as the infallible word of God. For example, Longman refers to "the fact that the divine Author stands behind all of Scripture" (emphasis mine).(1) Lyons also quotes Mark Noll, who said that for evangelicals, "where the Bible speaks, God speaks."(2) In this, all of Scripture is God's self-revelation, which leads Longman and other evangelicals to see the whole Bible "as a single writing that presents an internally consistent message."(3) I would like to ask him what leads him to think that the Bible has God as its author, since such a claim is not made anywhere in Scripture.

What I find problematic about the divine authorship understanding of Scripture is that by embracing it, a multitude of conclusions are automatically made about the text before dealing with the evidence. For example, when the Bible says that God told Saul, "attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys" (1 Sam 15:1-3), before studying, say, the other ancient near eastern cultures that claimed their wars were also divinely commanded, an evangelical will say that God did indeed command such horror, because he/she is already committed to that view of Scripture. The God revealed in Jesus Christ has to be exactly like he is described by the authors of the OT, because the Bible was written by God and offers a single, consistent theology. Thus, conclusions are made before examining the evidence (which probably has something to do with why evangelical scholarship has been overlooked).

Not only is this, to me, flawed investigation, but it also creates problems for the evangelical mind, as evidenced by the fact that Kaiser, Craigie, Longman, and Lyons all inadequately address the theological problem of divine violence. They all provide what I consider to be pat answers, as they essentially appeal to either mystery, God's wisdom and righteousness, or the evil of the victims of his violence. But what other response could they provide given their view of Scripture?

I find Longman's approach in particular to be troubling, as he seems to dehumanize the war narratives of the OT. Lyons criticizes him for not addressing the problem of divine violence in his book God is a Warrior (see my review here). Longman addressed this to Lyons by saying that the book was "an exercise in biblical theology, not ethics,"(4) as if God commanding genocide isn't a theological issue! What is troubling to me is that when he was asked by Lyons "Is herem moral?" he responded in the affirmative, because "If it is initiated and directed by God, it is moral. God defines morality."(5) If something is immoral, it shouldn't be moral just because God does it (I think of Nixon's words to David Frost: "If the president does it, it's not illegal"). Such a definition of morality makes morality completely relative, and thus meaningless. If we cannot say that something as terrible as genocide is immoral, then what can we say is immoral? Lyons would probably describe my assessment as a desire for a "kinder, gentle God." Sure, if all it takes to be a kinder, gentler God is to not kill women and children, then, yes, I do believe in a kinder, gentler God!

My favorite of the three scholars Lyons discussed is Peter Craigie, who acknowledged the unholy nature of war in the OT: "Can the ruthless requirement for the extermination of the enemy--men, women, and children--in anyway be regarded as holy? I think that it can not!"(6) Unfortunately, rather than letting this lead to questioning his expectations of Scripture, he settles for a strange dualism between God's activity and God's moral being, that essentially amounts to saying that God did and did not participate in the violence that is ascribed to him.(7) Lyons is right to critique his approach.(8)

With his book, Lyons points out what is being ignored in the OT academic community, that is, the scholarship of evangelicals. His overview is comprehensive and informative, and he includes insightful appendices and footnotes. For the evangelical studying the OT's war material, or for those interested in the overlooked sides of the topic of war in the OT, this is a great resource.

Notes:
(1) William L. Lyons, A History of Modern Scholarship on the Biblical Word Herem: The Contributions of Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Peter C. Craigie, and Tremper Longman, III (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010), 128.
(2) Ibid., 13.
(3) Ibid., 134.
(4) Ibid., 158.
(5) Ibid., 154.
(6) Ibid., 107.
(7) Ibid., 117.
(8) See Ibid., 174.

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Book Review: "War in the Hebrew Bible" by Susan Niditch

Nidith, Susan. War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. pp.3-180. ISBN 978-0-19-509840-4. ★★★★★

In War in the Hebrew Bible, Susan Niditch provides an overview of the diversity of ideologies and practices of war in the Hebrew Bible. Specifically, she goes over seven types of Israelite warfare:

the herem (placing under the ban, devoting to total destruction) as God's portion, in which total annihilation of the enemy is practiced as a sacrifice to God; 

the herem as God's justice, in which total annihilation of the enemy is necessary for the preservation of holiness in Israel due to the evil of the enemy; 

the priestly ideology of war in Numbers 31, in which virgin women are spared because they haven't been defiled/marked by the enemy; 

the bardic tradition of war, in which war and warriors are glorified as noble, and a kind of chivalry and respect towards enemies is developed; 

the ideology of tricksterism, in which the weaker community of Israelites use deception to outwit the more powerful enemy; 

the ideology of expediency, used by Israel when they possessed considerable power, is a more brutal war tradition in which violence knows no bounds and emphasis is placed on going to whatever lengths to get the job done; 

and finally, the ideology of nonparticipation is that in which the Israelites do no fighting, but Yahweh is the sole agent warring and bringing victory on behalf of Israel.

With these categories, Niditch offers a helpful schema for studying the Hebrew Bible's war traditions. Although, it might have been better arranged in a somewhat more chronological order, with regard to Israel's history. While I understand the difficulties of developing a timeline for Israel's development, and while the arrangement she has provided flows well ideologically, it might have been more helpful if Niditch provided a progression of thought in Israel's history. For example, she places the ideology of nonparticipation (in which the Israelites sit back and watch as God does all the fighting for them) at the end of her book, even though this war tradition is the kind found in the earliest textual example of war in ancient Israel, that of the victory at the Red Sea in Exodus 15.

While the book's sub-title is "A Study in the Ethics of Violence," it might have been better as, "A Study in the Israelite Ethics of Violence." I would have appreciated more input from Niditich's own approach to the ethics of violence. Hints of it are present in the text, but it mainly consists of Israelite approaches to the ethics of violence--which, of course, is absolutely necessary to the book, but I don't think it should have taken focus away from Niditch's own views.

That being said, this is an essential study for the student of the Hebrew Bible, and definitely the student of the Hebrew Bible's war material. Niditch's analysis offers a very informative and helpful overview of the war traditions of ancient Israel. While an even more thorough analysis would have been even more informative and helpful, what I found with War in the Hebrew Bible is the best overview on the subject I have read so far.

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Book Review: "God is a Warrior" by Tremper Longman & Daniel Reid

Longman, III, Tremper and Daniel G. Reid. God is a Warrior. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995. pp.7-224. ISBN 978-0-310-49461-3. ★★☆☆☆

In God is a Warrior, Tremper Longman, III and Daniel G. Reid provide an overview of the warrior theology in the Bible, particularly geared toward evangelical Bible students. The first half of the book is dedicated to describing the Old Testament's warrior theology, and the second describes the warrior theology of the New Testament. One has to read between the lines to get at what Longman and Reid are suggesting, but what one finds is a conservative evangelical take on the Bible's depiction of God as a warrior. Essentially, Longman and Reid provide that all of the Old Testament's claims about God's militant nature are echoed in the New Testament: "the Lord of the second covenant is the same as the Lord of the first" (p.188).

The most pervasive problem with the book is its lack of dialogue with opposing or alternative views. This is most likely due to the fact that the purpose of the book is to inform evangelical students about the Bible's depiction of God as a warrior. Even so, one should not teach by telling the learner what to think. In order for students to actually learn, they have to be presented with differing viewpoints.

An alternate view which Longman and Reid could have benefited from entertaining is that of T.R. Hobbs in his book A Time for War. He affirms that the New Testament echoes in a lot of ways the warrior theology of the Old Testament. The main difference is that Hobbs understands the New testament as transforming that theology, instead of simply affirming it: "the key to understanding [Jesus'] ministry, his message and his death and eventual resurrection, is the transformation which popular and traditional concepts undergo in his teachings."(1) To say that the New Testament utilizes a lot of the same warrior language that the Old Testament used is not to say that the NT affirms everything about the OT's warrior theology. As Hobbs suggests, it would be better to see the transformation that the warrior theology undergoes in the NT.

Ironically, Longman and Reid outline quite well the transformation, without acknowledging that it is indeed a transformation. In most of the discussion of the OT warrior God material, Longman and Reid go over the enemies of Israel that become God's enemies. In the OT, God was a warrior against flesh and blood. However, in all of their discussion of the NT warrior God material, God is a warrior against the principalities and powers, against evil, against chaos. I think an essential and radical claim that the NT dares to make is that Yahweh is not a warrior "against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 6:12).

Another essential element that Longman and Reid miss is the new way of doing battle revealed in the NT. In the NT, victory is achieved through self-sacrifice, not coercive force. The Cross reveals the true nature of God's warrior activity, and it is echoed in Revelation, in which, "The Messiah has certainly won a victory, but he has done so by sacrifice . . . [and] the people of the Messiah . . . share in his victory, but do so similarly, by sacrificial death rather than by military violence."(2)

As an overview of the Bible's warrior theology, Longman and Reid's book is informative, but no more-so than other books on the subject. Furthermore, their lack of dialogue with opposing views, and their argument's (perhaps consequent) lack of nuance makes this book second-rate.

Notes:
(1) T.R. Hobbs, A Time for War: A Study of Warfare in the Old Testament (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1989), 230.
(2) Richard Bauckham, "The Victory of the Lamb and His Followers," in The Theology of the Book of Revelation, ed. James D.G. Dunn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 74, 77.

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