Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Commentary - Greg Boyd. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commentary - Greg Boyd. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Greg Boyd - The Crucifixion of the Warrior God (to Biblical Violence)



My one comment when reading of the violence in the bible is that we see God through our own images. It is no less different now than it was then - even the biblical writers, prophets, priests, and kings saw God through their own thoughts and beliefs. When God speaks to us it is always disruptive to ourselves, our way of looking at others, and even how we move through life. But disruption does not mean that its "100% correcting" or can homogenize all the peccadilloes we carry within us. As any penitent Christian will tell you, God will spend a "lifetime" bringing us into Christ's image on the Cross but it must first begin with our submission to His Spirit.

No, to encounter the disruption of God is to begin a series of disruptions throughout one's life. Some ginormous and some hardly worth noticing. But to be a person inhabiting change is to be a person open to change, relearning, and retelling the Jesus story to ourselves, our family and friends, and throughout our missional lives.


And so, we hear God through our own images. We write, pray, and sing of God through our own images. The Bible's revelations and messages transform over the ages - even now! - but God's people might not unless they are committed to His Spirit to be transformed. Ironically, even during our more "enlightened" church periods since the 1600's the church still preaches "the Cross in one hand while lifting up the sword in the other." How curious when Jesus Himself used no sword except the sword of the Spirit. No angelic military to bend the world to His way of thinking but the cruciformed lives of His church. No thunder and lightening except that which flashed about His head on the eve of His crucifixion.

Nay, the problem is us. It lies with us and in us. Not God. Us. Not the Bible. Us. It's writers and preachers and listeners. It's interpreters. Even as we come to the book of Revelation the church would rather see God in dynamic militarism against mankind rather than as the One Coming to cease our wars and quiet our murderous hearts. But perhaps it all started with unrepentent believers refusing to bow heart and knee to the peace of Christ in mission, livelihood, and communion with one another. And so we pray dear God this simple prayer, "Save us from ourselves. Save us to do the work of the Spirit by your Cross of love and grace. Amen."

R.E. Slater
January 25, 2017





* * * * * * * *

The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Volumes 1 & 2


Renowned pastor-theologian Gregory A. Boyd proposes a revolutionary way to read the Bible in this epic but accessible study. His "cruciform hermeneutic" stands as a challenge to the field of biblical studies and to all thoughtful Christians.

A dramatic tension confronts every Christian believer and interpreter of Scripture: on the one hand, we encounter Old Testament stories of God commanding horrendous violence. On the other hand, we read the unequivocally nonviolent teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. Reconciling these two has challenged Christians and theologians for two millennia.

Throughout Christian history, various answers have been proposed, ranging from the long-rejected explanation that these contrasting depictions are of two entirely different "gods" to recent social, cultural, and literary theories that attempt to dispel the conflict.

The Crucifixion of the Warrior God takes up this dramatic tension and the range of proposed answers in an ambitious constructive investigation. Over two volumes, Gregory A. Boyd argues that we must take seriously the full range of Scripture as inspired, including its violent depictions of God. At the same time, he affirms the absolute centrality of the crucified and risen Christ as the supreme revelation of God.

Developing a theological interpretation of Scripture that he labels a "cruciform hermeneutic," Boyd demonstrates how the Bible's violent images of God are reframed and their violence subverted when interpreted through the lens of the cross and resurrection. Indeed, when read in this way, Boyd argues that these violent depictions bear witness to the same self-sacrificial nature of God that was ultimately revealed on the cross.



Sunday, November 3, 2013

Pacifism's Ideals Against "Just War" and "Measured Response," Part I

To previous posts about the ideals of pacifism I must also allow Greg Boyd's understanding of God's rightful judgment upon sin and sinners. Though his interpretation meets more with the spirit of the book of Revelation it alas argues for a complete withdraw of God's church from human oppression by giving up, and allowing the wickedness of man to slay it, if I follow his conclusions correctly. For myself, I cannot make the same argument. As such, Christian fatalism is not the answer.
 
I see in this kind of pacifist thinking a warrant for submission to the totality of human anarchy which would no longer hold back the hands of the wicked by works of charity, an active judicial process, nor enforcement through measured responses to evil. But a complete, and total relinquish of any kind of protection, or self-regard for preservation, thus allowing a fullness of wickedness to occur against any form of judicious response. Of course, this position speculates that the wicked will then see their own injustice and evil by turning from it as promised in Boyd's optimistic reading of Revelation.
 
Of course, I am less hopeful to this type of pacifist interpretation, and certainly more committed to doubling-down and attempting a reclaim of the heavens and earth through the church's more active submission to God's Kingdom rule in hopes that an Armageddon may be avoided till at last it cannot be. However, can we, as the church of God, actually say that we have provided a consistent response to our ethical responsibilities to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount? No, I don't think so. Given the church's historical responses since the first century, our record has shown it to either have given up, and died; or, to have massively exterminated our enemies claiming rightness of cause (which has been as great an hypocrisy in itself). In my estimation neither have been acceptable responses, nor appropriately undertaken in Jesus' name. And so, must advocate a more serious response at living out the Christian ideals of sacrifice, service, and selflessness. Let's call it the tension of Kingdom rule reflective of God's renewal, restoration, and resurrection of His cosmos.
 
To bring in the Kingdom of God takes two things - an obedient church committed to repentance, grace and forgiveness; and, the Lord Jesus Christ in resurrected power and reclaim. For myself how this process occurs is a mystery I don't understand. But I don't particularly like the idea of religious wars because of the injustice they bring upon those unlike its majority group holding power. Nor do I like the idea of just giving up and allowing anarchy to rule... that seems to oppose everything we seem to read in the Bible from the OT to the NT. Alas, even the Lord Himself misthought this deed at Noah's flood before finally relenting to the challenge He originally had determined by His pre-creative councils of selfless, sacrificial, redemption. Whether Christian or not, we've seen too many instances of evil oppression and its nasty, horrible burdens and oppressions brought upon too many innocents (think child molesters, serial killers, thieves, and rogues). For God to give up now seems unthinkable in the long view of His continued evolvement of redemptive rule and Spirit-led sacrifice.
 
Even so, the entirety of this website has long advocated a steady repentance by the church of God to sinful self-righteousness, religious pride, and blinded legalism, while also seeking a faithful church that actively loves consciously with a strength provided by the Holy Spirit of God. A love that knows how to stand against the abusiveness of those toxic Christians and societal elements that would misuse, or misthink, the church's meekness as a form of self-servient weakness instead of the resilient strength it evokes and must abide in the love of Christ. It is a strong meekness that learns to challenge those miscreants and toxic people amongst us misbelieving that their slanders, lies, idle gossip, and wickedness goes unchallenged or unnoticed. Love judges and does not tolerate fools, charlatans, or selfish behavior. If it had, the church would've been extinguished long ago by the hands of wicked man as even by the Lord Himself. But it hasn't gone away and does even now stand against all wrong and injustice.

As parents we try to teach our children both the gentleness of love and well as its measured judgment upon their behalf. We stumble, we fall, we fail as parents. But we do not have the option to stop parenting. Nor do I think do we have the option as Christians to stop living to Jesus' commands and simply allow our children, our communities, nor our societies to become imperiled simply because we have become convicted fatalists who have chosen to "scrub the whole mess" in hopes that God will come all the sooner. Anarchy is not the answer.

So unless I can find better arguments than I'm seeing, for now I intend to chose the messier paths of uncertainty believing that the Lord provided both His Son and His Word to enact His rule and not to burn-up, nor give up, to any illicit forms of predetermined Christian fatalism. As for Boyd's astute interpretation of Revelation, and knowing a bit about Roman history, the apostle John's advice to the church was sound... the Romans only-and-ever wished for domination, and where resistance was found so was found their armies and iron governance which always resulted in slavery, death, and destruction. Against a foe of immeasurable power John advised cautious submission against fighting in the hopes of a day when the Lord returned to set things right. It was a choice between two evils. An ethical dilemma which we all seem to face in this life regardless of historical era or period. This doesn't discount Jesus' return. But it does say that Jesus' return will occur both through the church and by His election at some later date. A date we call the Parousia. A date that cannot be predicted and which is imminent at all times and dates of human history.
 
To that end, I believe Christian martyrs like Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled to watched his church of disciples flounder powerless against a great wickedness he could not stop without the outside help of nations committed to stopping strong German aggression. And so, I think the church must advocate into these ethical areas today, protecting and saving the lives of orphans and widows, the helpless and unfriended, the downtrodden and dispossessed from land and property, family and friends, from abusive tyrants and warlords, pimps and criminals, thieves and natural disaster. Even so is the church challenged to enter into the face of a great evil with the shield and sword of justice and freedom by measured hand and mind, conscience and will, blessing and unity. Ushering in the Kingdom of God through the able bodies of the church by God's grace and the Spirit's help. If not, then let all missionary work and benevolent giving cease. Let all charitable works stop. Let all governments quit and dissolve into anarchy. And let us submit our necks to the heavy yoke of the ungodly in their evil and wickedness. But for myself, I do not see God giving up in the struggle to reclaim His creation. He's given up too much, and invested too long, to simply say, "Aye, verily, the devil wins."
 
So what do you think? Should we continue to vacillate between the extremes of Christian fatalism, and Christian aggression, or attempt a serious response to the Cross of Calvary, claiming this world, and it's creation, for our Lord and Savior? Using all our resources at hand: from creating good schools and benevolent societies, to providing humanitarian agencies and non-profits, to judicious enforcement and equitable laws. It's the harder choice - and harder route - to take, but one that compels us forward even as our Lord now undertakes in bringing His Kingdom rule to earth through both church and human society by His gracious rule and wise jurisprudence. I thus chose not to give up. Nor to succumb to sin's never-ending story. But to stand against it. To train great teachers, honest businessmen and women, wise policemen and judges, and loving moms and dads. We are compelled to do this. If not for ourselves, than for our next generation of youth now entering into this world of pride and prejudice, anger and hate, sin and destruction. Otherwise Jesus' words to His church have become futile. His death for creational reclaim meaningless. His resurrection without sufficient power. And His wish to go to the ends of the world with the gospel but folly. Nay, we resist all charges of giving up and proceed valiantly forward by the power of the gospel of our Lord. Amen.
 
R.E. Slater
November 3, 2013
 
continue to Part II -
 
 
 
 
 


Responding to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?”
Part I

by Greg Boyd
24 Oct 2013

I’m sure many of you have read Mark Driscoll’s recent blog titled “Is God a Pacifist?” in which he argues against Christian pacifism. I’ve decided to address this in a series of three posts, not because I think Driscoll’s arguments are particularly noteworthy, but because it provides me with an opportunity to make a case against what I’ve come to see is probably the most common way that Christians try to get around the pacifist implications of Jesus'  (and the rest of the NT’s) teachings on loving enemies. It centers on the allegedly violent Jesus of the book of Revelation.

Driscoll begins by pointing out that some have used the sixth commandment – “thou shalt not kill” (Ex 20:13) — to “promote pacifism, an ideology that sometimes goes so far as to argue that no violence is ever justified.” (Note: pacifism isn’t an ideology that “sometimes” argues that violence is never justified: this is rather what “pacifism” means.) Against this, Driscoll cites some Hebrew scholars who argue that the word for “kill” in this passage is better translated “murder.” He then offers several other arguments to demonstrate that the Bible distinguishes between “killing” and “murder,” and he therefore concludes that the sixth commandment is “not intended to apply to the lawful taking of life, such as self-defense, capital punishment, and just war.”

So far I actually have no qualms with Driscoll’ s argument. My problem is rather that I don’t see how any of this is relevant to the question of whether or not a follower of Jesus should think that “God is a pacifist.” After all, Jesus didn’t hesitate to place his teachings above various teachings of the OT, and the use of violence is a classic case in point. For example, at one point Jesus said, “You have heard it was said, ’Eye for eye, 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. (Mt 5:38-9) Some have argued that Jesus is not repudiating Scripture, but merely human traditions, in his famous “but I say to you” teachings in Matthew 5. This is arguably true for all his other repudiations, but not for this one. The “eye for eye” command is given three times in the OT (Ex 21:24; Lev 24:19-20;Deut 19:21), and in both Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the instruction is not merely about violence that is permitted, as I’ve heard many argue, but about violence that is required.

In fact, this “eye for eye” principle is called the lex tallionis (law of retaliation), and it’s at the foundation of all the laws of the OT that require violence against perpetrators. Yet Jesus repudiates this principle and replaces it with his teaching to never “resist [anthistēmi] an evil person” (which, by the way, means that we aren’t to respond to aggression with aggression, not that we’re to do nothing).

What makes this even more amazing is that Jesus goes on to expound on his command on how to treat aggressors by saying, "I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Mt 5:44-45, emphasis added; cf. Lk 6:29-36)

While the OT allowed for, and even required, retaliation, Jesus commands us to instead love and pray for our enemies. (In Luke 6 he adds “and do good to those who hate you” [vs 27]). Rather than to ever respond to violence with violence, we’re to instead love like the sun shines and like the rain falls – namely, indiscriminately. Whether the person is a friend or life-threatening enemy, we’re to love and bless them. And Jesus makes our willingness to love like this a precondition for being considered a child of our Father in heaven – “that you may be.”  By the standards of Jesus’ teaching, therefore, anyone who obeyed the OT laws requiring violence could not be considered a child of the Father in heaven.

It’s also important we notice that Jesus never qualifies who the “enemies” we’re to love are (nor does Paul in Rom 12:14-21). Indeed, his instruction to love indiscriminately rules out any possible qualifications. What makes Jesus’ teachings even more radical is that any talk about “enemies” to a Jewish audience in first century Palestine would immediate call to mind the Romans – the one’s who unjustly oppressed, abused, and often randomly killed the Jewish people. Jesus’ command to love enemies and to never respond violently to them thus includes the very worst kind of enemies we can imagine: the kind that threaten us, our country, and/or our loved ones. It includes the kind of enemies people naturally feel most “justified” killing, if they need to, in order to protect themselves. But these are precisely the kinds of enemies we’re to always love and never retaliate against.

As radical as this teaching might sound to us, however, I don’t believe it should surprise us that we’re commanded to love this way. For God loved us to the point of death when we “were yet enemies,” (Rom 5:10), and we are commanded to “imitate God” by living in this same kind of love, “just as Christ loved us and gave his life for us” (Eph. 5:1-2).

To sum it all up, in this passage Jesus is doing nothing less than telling us that our willingness to set aside a violent OT law in order to obey his new command to love and refrain from violence toward even the worst kind of life-threatening enemies is a precondition for being considered a child of God. And this, folks, is why I don’t believe Driscoll’s argument about the sixth commandment allowing for some forms of killing is relevant to followers of Jesus.

I am a bit puzzled as to why Driscoll didn’t address any of this material in his attempt to refute the idea that “God is a pacifist.” One might have thought it would be relevant since Driscoll is, after all, a Christian pastor, and he’s addressing a Christian audience.  Instead, to prove that “Jesus is not a pansy or a pacifist” (one wonders if the two are not synonymous for Driscoll), he cites one passage from the book of Revelation (14:14-20). To address this, I will offer some reflections on the nature of this book in my next post, and I’ll then conclude my response in a third post by addressing the specific passage Driscoll cites.

See more at:




Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist?”
Part II

by Greg Boyd
28 Oct 2013

To prove that “Jesus is not a pansy or a pacifist,” Driscoll by-passes the Gospels (understandably, given what Jesus has to say about the use of violence) and instead cites a passage from Revelation. This is a strategy Driscoll has used before. In an interview in Relevant Magazine several years ago, Driscoll argued that,  “[i]n Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed.” He went on record as saying that he could worship this image of Jesus because “I could never worship a guy I could beat up.” (Didn’t he already crucify him?)

Before addressing the specific passage in question (in my next post), I want to outline four aspects of the book of Revelation that Driscoll overlooks as he uses this book to ground his violent view of Jesus.

First, it can’t be denied that if you interpret Revelation as a literal snapshot of what is going to take place the last couple years of world history, you’ll find a Jesus who appears violent. But it’s also true that the apocalyptic genre of this book completely rules out a literal reading, as virtually all NT scholars acknowledge. And if a person nevertheless insists on reading Revelation this way, they’ll find they quickly run into problems.

To give one small example, as a new Christian in a fundamentalist church who was taught to interpret Revelation (and everything else in Scripture) literally, I recall becoming deeply puzzled when I read that stars at one point fell from the sky “to the earth, like figs” (6:13).  How those enormous balls of burning gas could fall to the earth at all, let alone like figs, was problematic, but not nearly as problematic as when I discovered they had somehow gotten back into the sky two chapters later when a third were darkened (8:12). My bewilderment only increased when I found several chapters later that the stars were all back up there again, but a third were once again wiped out by the tail of a dragon (12:4). If taken literally, we find contradictions such as this permeate this book. If we instead interpret Revelation in ways that are appropriate to the apocalyptic genre, realizing that it uses highly symbolic images for an emotive effect, these sorts of contradictions are not only not problematic, they are to be expected.

As an analogy to the importance of paying attention to the genre of Revelation, consider the way we interpret political cartoons. Imagine if someone from another culture who was completely unfamiliar with this genre of writing happened to come upon one of these. Without an understanding of the way this genre of writing employs talking animals (e.g. Donkeys and Elephants) and exaggerated body types as satirical devices, they might assume that the artist actually thought animals talked and that President Obama actually had ears bigger than his head! Interpreting Revelation as though it is a straightforward preview of a future period of time distorts its meaning no less than this person was misunderstanding the political cartoon. Unfortunately, Driscoll’s use of Revelation, at least when he’s trying to prove “Jesus was not a pansy or a pacifist,” is premised on just this misunderstanding. I would encourage him to familiarize himself with this genre before basing any further public arguments on it.

Second, the most ingenious aspect of this book is the manner in which John takes familiar violent images from the OT (as well as some from other apocalyptic literature) and turns them on their head to reverse their original meaning. The most important example of this is when John introduces the Messiah, who alone is “worthy to open the scroll,” as a “lion” (Rev 5:5, from Gen. 49:9; Isa 11:1-5). This image brings to mind the violent, militaristic, triumphalist image of a Messiah who would defeat enemies by ripping them apart – along the lines of Driscoll’s “pride fighter.” Yet, when John looks again, he sees that the lion has become “a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain.” (5:6). By identifying the lion as a slain Lamb, John has transformed a “symbol of power and domination” into a “symbol of vulnerability and nonviolence.”[1] And from this point on, it is the slain Lamb, not the lion, who does all the fighting, and if you read this book carefully, you’ll see he always does it in a slain-Lamb-like way, triumphing through “vulnerability and nonviolence.”

At every turn, John transforms violent images into images of anti-violence. As a second example, consider the scene of the final (and bloodiest) battle in this book (Rev. 19:11-12). We find the Messiah “dressed in a robe, dipped in blood” (Rev. 19:13). This is a classic warrior image of a valiant warrior who comes riding home from battle soaked in the blood of all those he’s slain (e.g Isa 63:1-3). The interesting thing is that Jesus is soaked in blood as he rides into battle! What kind of warrior is soaked in blood before he fights? The kind of warrior who fights in a slain-lamb-way! John is revealing that the Lamb defeats foes not by shedding his enemies blood, but by shedding his own blood on behalf of his enemies.

A third important symbol that John transforms in a non-violent direction is the sword. Driscoll was right to claim that the Jesus of Revelation carries a sword, but he was very mistaken in claiming he carried it in his hand. The sword that the slain Lamb carries as he rides into battle on a horse is one that comes out of his mouth (19:15, 21; cf. 1:16; 2:12,16;). Taken literally, the image is of course comical. (One would also wonder why Jesus and his army would fight a 21st [or later] century battle on horses instead of (say) military Hummers.) If we embrace the image in all of its symbolism, however, the meaning is profound. By placing the sword in the mouth of the slain Lamb, John is reversing its violent meaning. He is signifying that the Lamb warrior fights not by shedding blood, but simply by speaking the truth of God, thereby slaying the lies of the “deceiver” who had held these nations in bondage (19:20). This is why John states that the name of this warrior was “the Word of God” (19:13).



Along similar lines, it’s obvious that Jesus didn’t kill anyone with his sword, for immediately after saying Jesus struck down the nations, John proclaims that Jesus was now going to “rule them with an iron scepter” (Rev. 19: 15). Moreover, we later find these “slain nations” walking by the light of the Lamb, with their kings bringing the splendor of their nations into the heavenly city (Rev 21:24). Having slain the nations that were deceived by Satan’s lies, the Lamb had set them free to see the truth. This is the kind of warfare the Lamb engages in.



In fact, the battle that runs throughout Revelation is a battle between the Lamb who is “faithful and true” (14:5; cf. 3:14), manifesting the truth of God’s loving, self-sacrificial character and way of defeating evil, and Satan, “the deceiver” who “leads the whole world astray” with the lie that the coercive power of the empire (Babylon) will win the day (Rev. 12:9, cf. 20:2-3, 7-8). And the central purpose of Revelation is to call God’s people, who are facing immanent persecution, to remain faithful to God’s Lamb-like character, despite the appearance that this way of living loses in the face of the coercive power of Babylon (e.g. "Rome").



This relates to the final violent image that John transforms. The slain Lamb has an army, which is, of course, his church. But it’s a most peculiar kind of army, just as the Lamb is a most peculiar kind of warrior. For this army conquers by “following the Lamb wherever he goes” as they are “offered as first fruits to God and the Lamb”(14:8). So too, this army is victorious because they “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb”(7:14), which Bauckham and others interpret to mean “they are martyrs, who have triumphed by participating, through their own deaths, in the sacrificial death of the Lamb. [2] And this

peculiar army triumphs over the devil “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony,” for “they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” (Rev. 12:10).

In short, this army fights and wins the exact same way the slain Lamb who leads them fights and wins: not by slaying foes, but by remaining faithful to the point of laying down their lives for others. This is why martyrdom is such a pervasive theme throughout this book (e.g. 6.9-10; 7:14; 12:11; 13:15; 18:12). By means of imitating the Lamb – “following [him] wherever he goes,” God’s people bear witness to the truth of God’s self-sacrificial character and his loving way of overcoming evil, just as the Lamb does. And in this way they vanquish the lie of Satan that leads the whole world astray, deceiving them to place their trust in the empire’s coercive kind of power.

In this light, I think it’s clear that Driscoll’s misguided literal reading of Revelation has caused him to ascribe to John’s imagery the exact opposite meaning that John intends. And the reason is that Driscoll has grasped the violent images while completely overlooking the masterful way John reverses their meaning. And it’s for this reason that Driscoll concludes that Revelation depicts Jesus as “a pride fighter with a…sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed” rather than a slain Lamb with the sword of truth coming out of his mouth and a commitment to shed his own blood on behalf of others.

In the final post in this three part series we’ll explore the way Driscoll’s literalistic approach causes him to once again read the exact opposite meaning into Revelation 14: 14-20.

---

[1] L. L Johns, The Lamb Christology of the Apocalypse of John, (Mohr Sieback : Tübingen, 2003), 170 .

[2] R. Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 77.

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Greg’s Response to Driscoll’s “Is God a Pacifist”
Part III

by Greg Boyd
29 Oct 2013

This is the last of a three-part response to Mark Driscoll’s post, “Is God a Pacifist?” We’ve seen that, to prove that Jesus was not “a pansy or a pacifist” (meaning that Jesus was okay with justified killing), Mark Driscoll skips over what Jesus actually taught and modeled in the Gospels and instead appeals to Jesus’ alleged violent behavior in Revelation. In Part I of my response to his argument, I demonstrated that Jesus calls disciples to unconditionally love enemies and to therefore refrain from violence against them. This, in fact, is a precondition for being considered “a child of your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:44-45). In Part II I demonstrated that in Revelation, John masterfully takes traditional violent imagery from the OT and other apocalyptic literature and turns it on its head, thereby reversing its meaning. What remains is for me to address the particular passage that Driscoll appeals to in support of his “pride fighter” Jesus: namely, Revelation 14:14-20. It goes as follows:

"I looked, and there before me was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man with a crown of gold on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, “Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” So he who was seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.

"Another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. Still another angel, who had charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, “Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth’s vine, because its grapes are ripe.” The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia."

This image of the “great winepress of God’s wrath” is yet another one of those well-known violent images that John appropriates and transforms (cf. Isa 63:2-3; Lam 1:15; Joel 3:13). It depicts Yahweh as a warrior who crushes his enemies under his feet the way a person crushes grapes in a winepress to make wine. The crushing of the grapes and the blood flowing out of the winepress are symbols of the warrior’s complete and total conquest of his opponents. In Isaiah 63 this gory image is fused with the imagery of the warrior soaked in the blood of his enemies, and in my previous post I noted how John reverses the violence of this image by depicting the Lamb being soaked in blood before he even goes into battle. By this means he is expressing the profound truth that the Lamb wages war not by shedding the blood of others, but by shedding his own blood on behalf of others. We’ll now see that John ingeniously reverses the violent meaning of the winepress imagery as well.

To see how John does this, we first need to notice that, whenever the winepress imagery is used in the OT, the grapes that are crushed are sinners, and they’re crushed because of their wickedness. This is not who the crushed grapes are in Revelation 14, however. Nor is this the reason the grapes are crushed. In Revelation 14 the grapes are crushed simply because they are ready to be harvested (vss. 15, 18). Related to this, in the OT, the wrath of God is poured out on sinners by crushing them like grapes. But in Revelation 14, the wrath of God is poured out when sinners are made to drink the wine that is formed by the crushed grapes (14:10; cf.14: 8-9; 16:6; 17:6).  In other words, it’s not the grapes that are being judged by being crushed, as it is in the OT; it is instead sinners who are made to drink the wine that is formed by the crushed grapes. So too, God’s wrath is not directed toward the grapes in Revelation 14, but toward the unrepentant that are made to drink from the cup that holds the wine that results from the grapes being crushed.

So who are the grapes that are crushed? An increasing number of scholars are now arguing that, since the blood that flows from the winepress clearly isn’t the blood of the Lamb’s enemies, it can only be the blood of the Lamb’s followers. [1] This fits perfectly with the central motif that runs throughout Revelation. The followers of the Lamb overcome the same way the Lamb overcame: not by resorting to physical weapons, but “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” They are victorious because “they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” (Rev. 12:11). They triumph, in other words, by faithfully imitating the Lamb they follow and therefore by actively bearing witness to the truth of God’s lamb-like character. So, while the traditional violent imagery of the winepress expressed the victory of God by identifying the juice that flowed from the winepress as the blood of God’s enemies, John has once again turned the imagery upside down so that it now expresses the victory of the Lamb and his followers by identifying the juice the flows from the winepress as the blood of the Lamb’s followers.

Why does Revelation 14 speak about the harvest being ready? The answer becomes apparent when we compare this passage with Revelation 6:10-11. Here we find that the time for God’s judgment was reached, and the cry of the martyred saints for God to vindicate himself and them was finally answered, when “the full number of their fellow servants and brothers and sisters were killed, just as they had been.” This is precisely what John is communicating when he proclaims that the “grapes” were ready to be “harvested.” And the judgment of those who had martyred them takes place when they are made to drink the blood of their innocent victims, a ghoulish image that conveys the truth that the wicked must now ingest “the murderous consequences of [their] wicked life…”[2]  As happens throughout Revelation (and, in fact, throughout the whole Bible), the wicked are judged when God allows the consequences of their wickedness and violence to ricochet back on them (e.g. Rev. 11.18; 13:10; 16.6; 18.6; 22.18-19).[3] Indeed, the self-destructive nature of sin is ingeniously captured by John in the ironic fact that the drinking of the blood of the martyrs is at one and the same time a symbol of the rebels’ sin (14:8; 17:6; 18:3) and a symbol of their judgment (14:10; 16:6). In other words, it communicates that, in the end, sinners are vanquished by the destruction that is inherent in their own sin. For God to judge sinners, therefore, he need do nothing more than withdraw his merciful protection and allow evil to run its self-destructive course.[4]

We gain one further insight into the winepress imagery if we look at how it is used in Revelation 19:15. As I discussed in my previous post, in this curious battle scene, the Lamb rides into battle soaked in his own blood, revealing that he fights by shedding his own blood, and he fights with a sword coming out of his mouth, revealing that he slays nations insofar as they are defined by “the deceiver” (Rev. 12:9, cf. 20:2-3, 7-8) by speaking God’s truth. We are then told that the Lamb “will rule them with an iron scepter” and that “He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty” (vs. 13-15). What’s most interesting about this passage is that, while the “ruling” (or better, “shepherding,” poimainō) is in the future tense, his treading (pate) on grapes is in the present, matching it with the present tense of his use of the sword coming out of his mouth. This means that Christ’s treading on grapes doesn’t come after he smites deceived nations with his word of truth. He rather treads on grapes while he slays these deceived nations with truth.

In fact, I strongly suspect that these two symbols – viz. smiting nations with truth and treading on grapes in the winepress — denote one and the same activity. For the unrepentant nations to drink the blood of the Lamb’s followers whom they have slain is synonymous with these nations being slain with the word of truth. By suffering the death-consequences of their own evil, in other words, the nations are being freed from their deceptive trust in Babylon’s coercive power. And this is why these nations, once slain by truth, can now be shepherded by the Lamb. By ingeniously subverting the meaning of traditional violent images, John is proclaiming that the age-long cycle of escalating violence between nations, each deceived into thinking that the power of the sword can bring lasting peace, will finally come to an end.

In the end, all will embrace Jesus’ truth that those who live by the sword eventually die by the sword. As the nations under the deception of Satan are destroyed, their trust in the sword-power of Babylon is replaced with a trust in the power of the slain Lamb. Hence, “the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of the Lord and his Messiah”(Rev. 11:15). Freed from deception, these nations now come under the strong (“iron scepter”) shepherding of the Lamb’s loving rule (another great reversal of imagery! vs. 15). For this reason, these same smitten nations end up in the heavenly city! They now “walk by [the Lamb’s] light,” and “the kings of the earth” – repeatedly spoken of in evil terms throughout Revelation – now bring “the glory and honor of the nations” into the city (Rev. 21: 24, 26).

From this it should be clear that, when the Lamb and his followers overcome by shedding their own blood, by speaking the truth that only Lamb-power wins in the end, and by having enemies drink the blood of martyrs they killed, it’s not because their opponents have finally all been killed. It’s because their opponents have finally been redeemed. And even for those individuals who continue to resist the truth and embrace the lie, John tells us that the gates of the heavenly city are never shut (21:25).[5]

In light of all this, I trust it is clear that there is no basis to claim that Jesus in the book of Revelation is “a pride fighter with a tattoo running down his leg, a sword in his hand with a commitment to make someone bleed,” as Driscoll sadly claims. Rather, the Jesus that wins in the end is the same Jesus we find in the Gospels, and he wins in the end the same way he won in the Gospels: namely, by offering up his life on behalf of others. In fact, Revelation indicates that this present age will be brought to a close, and the new and everlasting age of the Lamb’s loving reign will begin, simply by having the victory that the cross has already achieved manifested throughout the cosmos. In that day it will be clear that those who have placed their trust in “pride fighter” power have bet on the wrong horse. In that day it will be clear to all – as it should already be clear to all followers of Jesus – that the power that overcomes is, in fact, the “pansy” and “pacifist” power that was perfectly displayed in the foolishness and weakness of the cross.

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[1] See e.g. G. B. Caird, The Revelation of St. John (Hendrickson, rev.ed. 1993, 188-95; M. Bredin, Jesus, Revolutionary of Peace: A Nonviolent Christology in the Book of Revelation (Carlisle, U.K/ Waynesboro, GA.: Paternoster Press, 2003), 209-16; R. Schwager, Must there be Scapegoats? Violence and Redemption in the Bible. tran. M.L. Assad (New York: Crossroad Publishing Comp./ Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 3d ed. 2000), 219.

[2] Bredin, Jesus, 210

[3] See ibid., , 213, cf. 216). In my forthcoming book, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, I demonstrate that God used an “Aikido” strategy to defeat evil on the cross. That is, rather than acting violently, God wisely turned evil back on itself, causing it to self-destruct. Because Satan and other fallen powers couldn’t understand the love-motivated wisdom of God at work when Jesus came to earth, they foolishly orchestrated the crucifixion, thereby bringing about their own defeat [see e.g. I Cor. 2:6-8; Col. 2:14-15]). I contend that when we read Scripture through the lens of the cross, we can see that this is the way God always defeats evil. And this is precisely what Revelation reveals at every turn. Several others who discuss the self-destructive nature of evil in Revelation are S. K. Tonstad, Saving God’s Reputation: The Theological Function of Pistis Iesou in the Cosmic Narratives of Revelation (Edinburgh: T & T Clark), (passim, but esp.142); L. L Johns, The Lamb Christology of the Apocalypse of John, (Mohr Sieback : Tübingen, 2003), 190-1; R. Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and S.Travis, Christ and the Judgment of God: The Limits of Divine Retribution in New Testament Thought (Milton Keynes/Colorado Springs: Paternoster/ Hendrickson 2008), 297-98.

[4] Notice, for example, that John depicts God and his holy angels as needing to hold agents of destruction at bay to restrict their activity and protect his people from them (e.g. 6:6; 7:1-3; 9:4; 14:1). See V. Eller, The Most Revealing Book of the Bible: Making Sense out of Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, rpt 1982 [1974]), 86, 95-96. Related to this, Tonstad notes that John’s frequently used phrase “was given” (edóthe ) – as when the power to afflict the earth or people “was given” to various agents (e.g. Rev. 6:2, 4 (x2), 8, 11; 7:2; 8:3; 9:1, 3, 5; 11:1, 2; 13:5 (x2), 7 (x2), 14, 15; 16:8; 19:8; 20:4.), doesn’t mean that God was commanding agents to act violently, only that he was now withdrawing his protection and allowing them to carry out the destruction they already wanted to carry out (Tonstad, Reputation, 108-111; 135 -146).

[5] Some scholars argue that, despite all of his graphic imagery of God’s judgments, John ends up espousing universal salvation (at least for humans). Most, however, argue that there is an unresolved (and probably intentional) tension in Revelation between depictions of those (humans and angelic beings) who are incorrigibly unrepentant being destroyed, on the one hand, and an at least hoped-for universal salvation, on the other. My own view is in this second camp.

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The Spiritual Tether of Gravity We Cling To Against Our Own Tether Of Helplessness

 
 
  
 
 
Gravity - Official Main Trailer [2K HD]
 
 
 
 
 
Gravity: You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Until It’s Gone
 
by Greg Boyd
October 14, 2013
 
I had read a number of reviews about the movie “Gravity,” so when Shelley and I decided to enjoy a mid-week date night at the movies, I entered the theater with some pretty high expectations. The movie more than exceeded all those expectations.
 
“Gravity” is an off-the-charts intense thriller, made all the more exciting because the fate the two main characters (played by Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) must constantly fight is the horrifying prospect of floating off alone into deep space with nothing else to do but watch their oxygen level slowly run out – pretty much like being buried alive in slow motion! Yet, this was one of those rare nail-biters that managed to leave emotional space for some truly poignant moments, sprinkled in with several splendid moments of comedic release.
 
On top of this, I thought the cinematography was absolutely Oscar worthy. It’s not just that the backdrop of the earth and an endless star-filled sky throughout the movie is breath taking. Even more impressive was the remarkably realistic way that people and objects are depicted as violently interacting with each other in zero-gravity space. So too, the use of distance and silence to draw you into Ryan’s feeling of lonely despair as she twirls helplessly out into deep space was nothing short of brilliant. (By the way, this is a movie you must see in 3D. More than half the thrill will be lost otherwise). And, finally, while both Clooney and Bullock were great, I felt that Bullock in particular knocked it out of the park! This was by far her best performance. Bullock masterfully pulls you into the depth of the darkness her character experiences as she faces the likelihood of dying alone, as well as the darkness she has been enveloped in since the tragically random death of her beloved four-year-old daughter years ago.
 
Which brings me to the aspect of this movie that I felt outshined everything I’ve said so far. The most profound aspect of this movie was the way it wove together two stories, the first about two astronauts struggling to survive against all odds after suffering a catastrophe in space, the second about a woman trying against all odds to find a reason to go on living after suffering a catastrophe on earth. And the thing that made this weaving so brilliant was that, at every turn, the first story symbolized the second. And the thematic cord that tied them together was gravity.
 
Interesting title, especially when you consider that the whole movie is without it. And that, you’ll find, is the point. Every problem the two astronauts confront is because they lack gravity. Without gravity, we humans are vulnerable to random chaos flung at us by forces much greater than ourselves. Without gravity, we are threatened with the possibility of floating off into nothingness. Without gravity, we desperately cling to anything, or anyone, to save us from the infinite void. (The intensity of almost every thrill scene is due to the tenuous nature of the grasp that keeps the astronauts from floating away – or not). We learn that this is precisely the condition Ryan has been living in since her daughter’s death. Lacking any foundation to hold her in place, her grasp on life is tenuous, with the void threatening to sweep her away. As she spins helplessly into the void, in one scene, we are watching a woman whose external environment perfectly reflects the state of her soul. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll find the symbolism runs throughout, and it’s powerful.
 
Finally, and most interesting of all from my perspective, there is a theological dimension to the way these two stories are woven together. I felt the question of God’s existence was already being raised by the way this movie repeatedly depicted horrendously destructive events by forces that were utterly indifferent to the welfare of humans taking place against the backdrop of the breathtaking beauty of the earth and stars. But the question becomes much more explicit as the astronauts continue to talk into their radios in the unlikely hope that someone “out there” can hear them. Here too the story of the plight of Ryan in space symbolizes the story of Ryan’s soul, for we are again seeing into the soul of a woman who has always wanted to cry out for “someone out there.” She just didn’t know how, and didn’t know if it would do any good even if she did.
 
On both a physical and spiritual level, Ryan longs for gravity. As to whether she finds it or not, that will be for you to decide.

See more at: http://reknew.org/2013/10/gravity-you-dont-know-what-youve-got-until-its-gone/#sthash.k6lD07uw.dpuf
 
 
 
 
Gravity - "I've Got You" [HD]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Greg Boyd's Take on "Violence in the OT"

 
the prophecy / skulls & bones.

Getting Honest about the Dark Side of the Bible
http://reknew.org/2013/03/getting-honest-about-the-dark-side-of-the-bible/

by Greg Boyd
March 7, 2013

While most of the Bible exhibits a “God-breathed” quality, reflecting a magnificently beautiful God that is consistent with God’s definitive revelation on the cross, we must honestly acknowledge that some depictions of God in Scripture are simply horrific. They are included in what is sometimes called “the dark side of the Bible.” To give just a small sampling, we find God portrayed as doing things such as:
 
  • causing parents to cannibalize their own children (Lev. 26:29; Jer. 19:9; Lam. 2:20; Ezek. 5:10)
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  • causing pregnant women to having their wombs ripped open and their children dashed on the ground (Hos. 13: 16)
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  • refusing to allow any compassion to keep him from smashing parents and children together (Jer. 13:16)
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  • commanding the Israelites to slaughter every man, woman, child, infant and even animals – “everything that breathes” – though they are not to harm trees, for “trees are not your enemy” (though babies are?) (e.g. Deut. 7:1-2; 20:16-20)
  •  
  • telling Israelite men that, while everyone else in a region is to be mercilessly slaughtered, they may spare women they find attractive and marry them. However, if they later “find no delight in her,” they may turn them out on the street (Deut. 21:10-14)
  •  
  • commanding parents and others to stone to death children who are stubborn or who strike a parent (Ex. 21:15, 17; Lev. 20:9; Deut. 21:18-21)
 
In my forthcoming book, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, I have an entire chapter of material such this. It is not easy reading! Now, out of obedience to Christ, who consistently spoke of the Hebrew Bible as divinely inspired, and in solidarity with the historic orthodox Church, I feel obliged to confess all Scripture, including horrific material such as this, is “God-breathed” (theopneustos, 2 Tim. 3:16). At the same time, I believe it is also vitally important that we remain ruthlessly honest with ourselves and others and God about this material. How else can we describe material such as this as anything other than horrific, macabre, grotesque, and even revolting? If a portrait of God commanding people to slaughter babies and causing mothers to eat them doesn’t qualify as revolting, what would? If you found material like this in any other ancient or modern text, would you hesitate for a moment from labeling it as macabre, revolting, or some such phrase? If we are honest, we cannot deny it. So how does horrific material like what I just reviewed suddenly become less revolting by virtue of being found in our sacred text rather than someone else’s?
 
Not only this, but if we refrain from calling this material what it is and instead gloss over it in order to sound more pious, we are in effect condoning its violence. And as I mentioned in a previous blog, there is now a wealth of research demonstrating that violence in literature that is considered sacred is a powerful force in motivating religious violence. It can only be negated by being renounced.
 
I know it sounds impious to describe any of God’s inspired Word to be horrific or revolting, but I am actually in good company in speaking this way. No less an authority than John Calvin was willing to describe some of the portraits of God in the OT as “utterly barbaric,” “crude” and “savage” as he affirmed that God had to condescend to give such brute laws because his people’s hearts were so “hard,” “incorrigible” and “depraved.”[1] So too, Calvin admits that God’s command to destroy “everything that breathes” in Jericho “would have been savagery” (immanis) and would have been “a deed of atrocious and barbaric ferocity” (quad atrociter et barbara saevitia) were it not God who commanded it.[2] Elsewhere Calvin describes some of God’s commands and actions as “harsh,” “savage” and “barbaric’” (durum, immane, barbarum) as well as “savage and fierce” (saevi et atroces), as involving “execrable savagery” (detestabilis immanitas), and as constituting a “barbaric atrocity” (barbara atrocitas).[3] I appreciate Calvin’s candor!
 
Of course, once we acknowledge that some portraits of God in Scripture are horrifically violent, it forces the question of how we can nevertheless continue to affirm this material as “God-breathed.” Calvin tried to resolve the dilemma by arguing that God accommodates himself to human sin and by insisting that God is not subject to our sense of morality.[4] This view is highly problematic for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it undermines the analogical basis of referring to God’s “goodness” and “love” etc. Unless what we mean by “good” as applied to God is analogous to what “good” means in other contexts, then the “goodness” we ascribe to God is devoid of content. The idea that God utterly transcends our moral categories also unwittingly ascribes to God a Nietzschian ethic in which morality is reduced to nothing more than the preferences of whoever is in power. If God says that it was “good” in a particular instance to cause pregnant woman to have their unborn children ripped out of their wombs, then in this view, it was in fact “good,” because he has the power to send you to hell if you disagree.
 
These problems with Calvin’s view aside, the more fundamental problem is that the dilemma we’re facing isn’t first and foremost about the clash between horrific portraits of God in Scripture and our moral intuitions. It’s rather about the clash between these portraits and God’s own self-revelation in the crucified Christ. On the cross he reveals his eternal nature to be self-sacrificial, enemy-loving, non-violent love. God is love (1 Jn.4:8), and this love is defined by the cross (1 Jn. 3:16). This love doesn’t seem compatible with God committing himself to mercilessly smashing families together, and that is the core problem. In fact, not only would we expect all material in Scripture to be consistent with what we learn about God in Christ, but on Jesus’ own authority as well as the uniform witness of Church history, all material in Scripture bears witness to Christ (Jn 5:39-45; Lk 24:25-278, 32, 44). It’s not self-evident how a portrait of God committing himself to mercilessly smash families together and causing parents to eat their children bears witness to Christ. That is the real problem, and nothing Calvin says has any bearing on this issue.
 
I will say more about this in blogs to come, and much more to say in my forthcoming book. For right now I will just leave you with this. I only began to discern a way to understand how horrific depictions of God in Scripture bear witness to the crucified Christ when I finally stopped trying to deny these depictions were horrific. So long as we try to tidy up, sanitize, minimize and piously gloss over material that we honestly know in our hearts is macabre and revolting, the best case scenario is that we will succeed at finding a slightly less revolting deity in these portraits than we initially found. This is what standard evangelical apologetic approaches accomplish, on a good day. It is in essence the approach I adopted five years ago when I began this present project. But I came to see that even the very best of these approaches are of no value when it comes to disclosing how this material bears witness to the self-sacrificial, enemy-loving, non-violent love of God on Calvary. And to make matters worse, all the while we are tidying up our macabre depictions of God, we are bearing some responsibility for the way this material continues to serve as a precedent for people to appeal to in order to justify their hatred and violence, as it has served throughout history.
 
To be clear, in obedience to Jesus, I adamantly affirm that all this material is inspired by God. In my book I argue against the many scholars today who try to resolve the problem this material poses by dismissing the text, whether on historical or theological grounds. But to say it is God-breathed says nothing about how it is God-breathed. Nor does it say anything about how this material is to be interpreted such that it bears witness to God’s unfathomable love revealed on Calvary.
 
As with all matters of faith, the place to start is by getting honest with ourselves, each other, and God by admitting the obvious. It was when I got to this point that the clouds began to lift and I began to discern that something else is going on in these horrific portraits that I hadn’t noticed before. So can we be honest? Can we agree that causing babies to be viciously ripped out of wombs, causing babies to be dashed on the ground, and causing mothers to eat them is horrific, macabre, and revolting, regardless of where the divine portrait is found, and regardless of the deity this behavior is ascribed to? As we admit this, let us hold fast to the conviction that this material, in all of its ghoulish detail, is “God-breathed.” And now begin to prayerful ask – how might this depth of depravity point us to the cross?
 
Lord bless our honest ponderings!
 
 


[1] For discussions of this material, see D. F. Wright, “Accommodation and Barbarity in John Calvin’s Old Testament Commentaries,” in Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson, A. G. Auld, ed. (JSOT, Supp. 152: 413-27; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 413-27; item., “Calvin’s Pentateuchal Criticism: Equity, Hardness of Hart, and Divine Accommodation in the Mosaic Harmony commentary,” Calvin Theological Journal, 21 (1986), 33-50. There is, of course, a “paradox” running throughout all Calvin’s work – shared by all other Calvinists – that the hardness that God must condescend to work through and that God ultimately punishes people for was all predestined. But that issue is for another time.

[2] Wright, “Accommodation,” 417.

[3] Ibid., 417-18.

[4] He says, for example, “let us remember that the court of heaven is not one whit subject to our laws.” Ibid., 418.