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: "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: "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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