Undeception

I’d like to point out a new contribution to the recent conversation in the blogosphere on the topic of the OT vs. NT depictions of God’s disposition — and not just because my blog is referenced! Arni makes some excellent statements, including the following:

Jesus not only preaches non-violence and lives non-violently when there was ample opportunity to do the opposite – he lays his life down in solidarity with those who suffer at the hands of violent power. Jesus is love and God is love, not violence.

Luther said somewhere that Jesus is the sun of the Bible. It is thus in the light of Jesus that the Bible should be read. Just like when the sun rises over a landscape, not all parts of the Bible receive as much light as other parts. There are mountains and valleys, the former receiving more light than the former.

via A “solution” to divine violence: Jesus as the sun of the Bible

I used to have a knee-jerk reaction to Christocentric interpretations of Scripture under the mistaken assumption that they all read Christ into the OT where he was not yet revealed and thus inaccurately portray the original meaning of the OT. But now I see the wisdom and importance of the type of Christocentrism that allows his testimony and example to stand in judgment over the views of God seen in various places in the Old Testament.

Please read and lend your contribution to the discussion!

Apologist Matt Flannagan once again defends God against the charge of commanding the Israelites to commit genocide against the Canaanites. Not including the final sentence, his concluding statement articulates a very important reminder about the importance of recognizing the Bible as a product of ANE literature:

Consequently, if one does not read the texts in isolation and is sensitive to the genre of Ancient Near-Eastern writings then a literal reading is far from obvious. As Egyptologist James K. Hoffmeier notes, such a reading commits “the fallacy of misplaced literalism … the misconstruction of a statement-in-evidence so that it carries a literal meaning when a symbolic or hyperbolic or figurative meaning was intended.” This underscores an obvious but often neglected point, the bible is not written in accord with the conventions of 21st century English. It was written in ancient foreign languages and in the conventions that governed historical, legal, epic, etc writings of that time. To understand what it teaches accurately one needs to ask what it teaches given these factors. When one does this, it seems probably that the Old Testament does not teach that God commanded or that Israel carried out, the genocide or extermination of the Canaanites.

Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?

He evinces several parallels to other ANE hyperbolic descriptions of victory. But because they are all ex post facto commemorations of campaigns, either to immortalize or ameliorate prior events, there is certainly an argument to be made that they fit a somewhat different genre (in the generic sense) than the prescriptive “annihilate” commands from God that we find in the Hexateuch.

But no matter. Let’s just say God did not command genocide or the extermination of the Canaanites after all. Let’s grant that He only commanded them to subjugate, or, in Plantinga’s words, “attack them, defeat them, drive them out.” What does that buy us?

To my mind, little is gained by this sort of reasoning, however well defended. Those who have a problem with divinely mandated genocide are not likely to think much differently of this counter-assertion that He instead “merely” commanded war, killing, and the forcible removal of multiple peoples established in a homeland for centuries or more beforehand. The latter isn’t even a “just war” according to Augustine.

How likely is it that the God who we as Christians claim was exemplified in His self-sacrificial servant Jesus of Nazareth demanded as a non-negotiable act of obedience and faithfulness that His people wage a full-scale assault of an entire region populated by several civilizations — whether or not the method was “total war” or marginally more kid-friendly? That’s the question that needs to be addressed.

At very best, this proposed solution can be nothing but a first step along a long, long apologetics path. Until that path is plotted out and begun to be trod convincingly, especially since even the faintest historicity of the events in question has been challenged by competent ANE scholars, I’m infinitely more content to chalk it all up to retroactive history than to argue that God actually commissioned the Conquest of Canaan as depicted in the Old Testament. And I’m pretty sure God will forgive me if I’m wrong.

It seems every time I hear Ravi Zacharias he’s either (or both) quoting Malcom Muggeridge or telling the story of going to a college campus and stumping a questioner by giving the following exchange (approximately):

Atheist: “If the Christian God exists, why is there evil in the universe?”

Christian: “The very fact that you believe there is evil shows that you are acknowledging a moral law, which itself requires a Lawgiver. So what’s your question again?”

Atheist: “. . .”

Every time he tells this story, which probably is just recounting the same incident that gave the best result, the questioner is said to be dumbfounded, essentially conceding the point, while Ravi’s current audience laughs and applauds as though it’s the first time they’ve seen the woman apparently sawed in half emerge from the box in one piece.

This silly gotcha game bothers me every time I hear it. It’s clear what the questioner is asking: “If, as Christians claim, evil is defined and despised by the Christian God who made the universe, then why would that Christian God allow evil as Christians define it?” What is being pointed out is a perceived lack of consistency in the Christian conception of good/evil and God’s nature. The questioner can be thought of as saying something like, “The idea of God offends my moral sense, which is evolutionary and emergent rather than absolute so long as He does not exist but is hopelessly self-contradictory if He does.”

It is a legitimate but entirely separate issue to ask someone who intuits and whose beliefs and attitudes presuppose an absolute moral law if they will acknowledge that there is no absolute basis for any of his/her ethical/moral preferences. There is some potential value in making them lie in the bed they make. But this is not what is being done in the shell game above. Instead, they’re asking Christians to lie in a bed we’ve made. What’s good for the goose, etc.

The tack above that Ravi and many other apologists have taken amounts to changing the subject and hoping they won’t notice. This does not mean that we as Christians are the only ones with hard questions to answer, but when answering this good question this way we should be aware that we are avoiding rather than doing theodicy. The problem of evil is the biggest hangup unbelievers and believers alike have; just try not to be so coy when you ignore it, please.