A few days ago I linked to a an article that addressed the “evil” god found in the Old Testament. Throughout history different Christians have dealt with the sanctioned genocides and murder of infants etcetera in a variety of different ways. Some people say God can kill anyone he wants and have anyone kill anyone he wants because he is lord over all. Others say that god as portrayed in the Old Testament is a different god than the God in the New Testament. Quite a few Christian groups during the first few centuries after the resurrection were attracted to this idea. Other people use this issue to deconstruct, discredit, and ridicule Christianity, constructing Christianity as a fragile house of cards as if criticizing one or several things throughout the 4000+ year history/literary development of our faith negates everything else. With that said though, we Christians need to wade through these issues because we risk becoming that house of cards if we ignore or gloss over this problem.
Over the last few months, Greg Boyd’s has started to look at these issues. Tom alerted me to Boyd’s project yesterday; here is Greg’s description of the problem and his aims:
What intensifies this problem even more is that it’s not like Psalms 137 is an isolated case of celebrated violence in the Old Testament. It’s found all over the place! The worst episodes happened when the Israelites enter the promised land. As they approached certain cities, the Israelites were commanded — by God — to slaughter men, women, children and even the animals! Yahweh is aiming at complete genocide of the Canaanite people. Could anything be more antithetical to what we learn about God in Jesus Christ? Honestly (we’ve got to be honest here, even if it hurts) doesn’t this depiction of God look more like the God of Osama Bin Laden than the Father of Jesus Christ?
In my opinion, this is the most challenging objection to the Christian faith and most difficult theological question of the Christian faith. It’s a problem I want to wrestle with in my next few posts. But I want you to be forewarned: If you think I’m going to have nice and tidy answers to this question, you’re going to be disappointed. I don’t. I’m still in process, entertaining a number of possibilities.
So far Boyd has written thirteen posts exploring this topic. I look forward to reading through them in the near future.
- Divinely Inspired Infanticide and Genocide?
- What’s at Stake in Trying to Explain the Violent God of the Old Testament?
- The Violent Strand of the Old Testament and Our Picture of God
- OT Violence and Christian Behavior
- Could Old Testament Warriors Have Been Mistaken?
- A Defense of Eller’s Thesis
- A Critique of Eller’s Thesis
- Craigie: The Problem of War in the Old Testament, Part I
- Revealing the Horror of War: Review of Craigie, Part II.
- A Negative Object Lesson: Review of Craigie III
- “Shadow” and “Reality”
- Review of Ehrman’s "God’s Problem"
- The Teleological Exegetical Principle and O.T. Violence
2 Comments
The topic is fantastic but, I can’t get into it. The writing/story telling doesn’t appeal to me.
Has anybody else read the posts?
And most importantly, I’m wondering how the folks here would deal with the violence in the OT.
What do I think on the issue? I think its a problem we need to deal with. I have no conceptual problems with the moral failings of the humans in the Bible. But seemingly immoral laws given to Israel and the commands to do things (like killing entire people-groups) that Jesus would seemingly abhor (see the “but I tell you”s) pose a problem for conservative readers. I see the following possibilities:
1. God’s moral capacity developed over time. (God “grew up”)
2. The Bible’s God was “made up.”
3. Some of the stuff in the Old Testament is more indicative of what the Israelites were doing than pure commands from God.
4. The Bible is 100% written by God and 100% written by humans. God was slowly working in/with Israel to move them to better moral standards.
5. God is fickle and unjustified - he wants to kill, He’ll kill (or have you kill for him).
6. God is fickle and justified - he wants to kill, He’ll kill (or have you kill for him).
There are problems with each of those approaches: #6 offends our moral sentiments, #5 makes him a tyrant, #2 reduces our faith to ashes in the wind, #1 severely screws with our idea of a God we should look to, #3 and 4 are messy - how to sort out the wheat and the chaff.
Me? I don’t know the answer. I reject #2 and #5 and I am playing around with the others. I really don’t want #1 or #6 to be the case and #3 and #4 are almost too messy - but they might be the best way to look at this.
What do I ultimately think? I think I need to finish my master’s degree so I can start looking at moral and theological issues again - I need to get on to seminary!