The Problem of Divine Violence in the Bible (as vs. Marcionism)

Pete Enns, like many of us, have some very real doubts about what many Christians mean when they say that "God is in control." Just what kind of control are we advocating that God must have in our lives when seeing our loved ones die? Or when reading of unjust murders of community members in the daily papers? Or  in watching the everyday violence that goes on around us in this world through news reports and videos? Are these events the kinds of events that can tell us who God is? Or whether this God is really in control of a sinful, wicked world gone out-of-control?

No, I don't think so. It makes the all-too-common mistake of misreading events surrounding our lives as telling characteristics of a God we claim to see through those events. And like the biblical stories written by latter day observers of God, ethics, events, and creation, we make the all-too-common mistake of forming opinions about God based upon our casual observations about life as we think it is, and what it may mean to us based upon this information. It is a very subjective approach to theological study and not one especially filled with theological insight when done in such a cavalier, off-the-cuff, opining of the person of God, or the nature of the universe that we live in.

Preachers make this same mistake when reflecting upon the horrific circumstances of this life and then filling in what they think they know with a "interpretive system" that they think best describes the bible's God they would proclaim. "If not a butcher, than a hedonist. Or a God who is apathetic and callous." Perhaps a God who lost control, or never had control (to use a word that I personally would never use again when speaking of God). A God who is far from us and not near. Who has left us callously in the throes of sin and evil. Who is helpless to protect and save. Who cannot be a refuge for His people. Who is vengeful and wicked Himself as divine judge and dictator.

In all these ways, and many more, we would do the God of the Bible an injustice when not rightly dividing the Bible by throwing our own personal views and outlooks of life into its very seams and pages. As good theology and good hermeneutics go hand-in-hand, so does a good biblical system that may be holistic and more helpful to the postmodern contemporist's of our generation who think that the older biblical systems (and doctrines) of the Bible may not be as helpful as they once were thought to be (if ever they were).

Of course, I'm referring to the older Calvinist system and its ragged theological edges, having used the countering balances and arguments of Arminianism (not Armenian, which is a Eastern European people) to help re-weight (or re-balance) our ideas of God, free will, man, sin and evil. Or of a creation gone "wild" - as many mistakenly think - when in itself it is acting out its own sets of natural laws across the spectrums of biology, geology, cosmology, and so forth.

Or to reconsider love-based theologies like relational theology built around the subtler themes of open theology and process thought, which give to us a God who is present with us in the throes of sin and evil. Who walks with us. Who is there to help as He can against the evil that would harm us at the hands of others or by a universe "perceived" to be in chaos and disorder. Hence, we aren't looking for a God who is in control but for a God who is Sovereign. And to know the difference between these terms.

Even as we are to know the difference between what it means to divide the Scriptures in a way that allows for its own internal theological continuities and discontinuities. Or, to allow it to speak of God through the mouths of the ancients struggling with the very same issues we struggle with today (divine ethics v. human morality; divine purpose v. the human dilemma). Who wrote and spoke within their own, very human, contexts of society, inflecting a variety of literary devices or guiles that might use a triumphalist-conquest narrative context to speak against the very atrocities that were claimed of God by its priesthood and citizenry. In effect, saying "our God is bigger than your God. He can do more horrible things than your God can!" And in so doing, perhaps drive home the more salient point that the "bigness" of God is not found in military war and atrocities, but in the antecedal affects of tolerance, communication, loving, and the meting of justice across all spectrums of human lust and greed, violence and hate.

The ancient Near-Eastern (ANE) subtleties of writing are hard for us to perceive, removed so many centuries and millenias from the events and attitudes of their day. On first reading of a biblical passage, what seems so obvious becomes less obvious in hindsight and in theological conjecture (dependent upon the system you're using, grew up with, or may be schooled within). All of a sudden we begin to doubt ourselves and begin to ask God's Spirit for help in trying to understand what we think we understand but don't really understand. Sure, its easy to fall in with a particular (bible) school of thought that is popular, but eventually that attitude begins to ring a bit hollow when reflecting upon the questions of our lives. It's dilemmas, mysteries, provocations, and riddles.

Hence, Pete Enns does a good job here in stepping outside what we think we know about God - especially as it is popularized (perhaps quite innocently) by preachers and media - by asking the harder questions of observation and subtlety. Questions that demand better questions to help guide and direct us based upon our own contemporary, postmodern reading of previously engaging sciences, philosophies, theologies, psychologies, and sociological studies. The question is not whether "God is in control." But perhaps the better question is to ask whether we are in control. Whether we are looking for a God who might control life's ebbs and flows like we would. Who would answer its vexing pains and sufferings as we might.... Now that's an awesome question. And a much better telling insight as to what we may wish to avoid in future searches and explanations of the Bible. Its passages and phrases, thoughts and concerns, rhetorics and speeches.

Why? Because by seeing God as unlike ourselves might be the beginning of seeing God aright for the first time. Someone who is like us. But unlike us in significant ways. And that's a theology that might have a broader vision for the God we read of in the Bible. A theology which might allow for a God we think we know to be beyond what we think or imagine in the depths of our faithless hearts. A God whose ways are mysterious. Whose thoughts are beyond our own. Who loves us with the ferocity of a mother and father. With mercies that are new everyday. With wisdom beyond our own. Who forgives. Grants hope. Brings peace to our broken lives. Here is a God that is full of passion for us and not lost in the heavens out of earshot and uncaring. Who gives to us an open future with meaningful spiritual promise against the misery of our souls and lostness of our being. Against the hatreds we bear and the wrongs suffered. Who is our Shepherd. Our Guide. Our Father. Our Counselor and Prince of Peace. Our Redeemer. This is the kind of God that is far greater than we can imagine when so callously reading the Old Testament for its judgments and imprecations upon a sinful and lost mankind.

R.E. Slater

January 19, 2013

God as Sovereign

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Is Pete Enns a Marcionite?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/01/is-pete-enns-a-marcionite/

by Peter Enns

January 17, 2014

Comments

Marvin the Marcionite

I’ve been hearing this question–a thinly veiled accusation–for quite a while now, and I find it utterly ridiculous and irresponsible.

If my accusers would bother to do some research, like look into my birth records, they would see that I was born on this planet like everyone else–in Passaic, NJ, to be exact. This insinuated accusation assumes an inconceivably elaborate 24-esque terrorist conspiracy scheme involving forged birth records, which would require my German immigrant parents, who knew little English, to have deep government connections. Give me a break.

I hope we can put this to rest so we can move on and…

Oh wait…. I just Googled it….

OK. I see.

Apparently being a Marcionite means adhering to the teachings of the 2nd c. heretic Marcion, who saw in the Bible two different Gods: the wrathful God of the Old Testament and the happy gracious God of the New.

Which brings me to God’s violence in the Old Testament vis-a-vis Jesus’ non-violence in the New.

My view, as I’ve articulated roughly 47 billion times on this blog (see next article directly below), is that the New Testament leaves behind the violent, tribal, insider-outsider, rhetoric of a significant portion of the Old Testament. Instead, the character of the people of God–now made up of Jew and Gentile–is dominated by such behaviors as faith in Christ working itself out in love, self-sacrifice, praying for one’s enemies and persecutors. You know, Jesus 101.

Definitely not killing off a people group or one’s enemies to acquire land or hold on to it.

To speak this way is not Marcionism–not even quasi, latent, or incipient Marcionism, but an articulation of a perennial theological problem of Christian doctrine: the very real presence of both the continuity and discontinuity between the Testaments.

The Old Testament rhetoric of God sanctioned (or at least God tolerated) plundering of towns and taking captive children and virgin women is, I would dare to suggest, an area of profound discontinuity.

To suggest, even remotely, that this view is Marcionite in any sense of the word is only slightly less ridiculous and theologically irresponsible than the thought that I or others who think this way were born on Mars.

I don’t think the Gospel permits, condones, or supports the rhetoric of tribal violence in the Old Testament. But this does not mean I believe the Old and New Testaments give us different Gods. They give us, rather, [two] different portrayals of God.

Different portrayals of the one God are not simply seen between the two Testaments. They are also seen within each Testament. Israel’s Scripture does not present God in one way, but various ways–depending on who is writing, when, and for what reason. Same with the New. This is what keeps theologians so busy, trying to make that diversity fit into a system of some sort.

To say that there are two Gods, one of the Old Testament and one of the New, is Marcionism. To say that the one God is portrayed in various–even conflicting–ways is simply a matter of reading the Bible in English with both eyes open.

My big concern in all this is that the charge of Marcionism simply deflects from the real theological-hermeneutical problem of divine violence by giving a false sense of having solved the problem.

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John Piper, Preacher, Theologian

John Piper on Why “It’s Right for God to Slaughter Women and Children Anytime He Pleases” and Why I Have Some Major Problems with That
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/07/john-piper-on-why-its-right-for-god-to-slaughter-women-and-children-anytime-he-pleases-and-why-i-have-some-major-problems-with-that/

by Peter Enns

July 17, 2012

Comments

Author and pastor John Piper, in a relatively recent interview on his website Desiring God: God-Centered Resources from the Ministry of John Piper, discusses the vexing problem of God ordering the mass killing of every Canaanite man, woman, and child.

Here is the opening quote.

“It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.”

Words fail me. Apparently, Piper sees no problem.

What’s more, Piper feels his thinking applies to all deaths everywhere.

“God is taking life every day. He will take 50,000 lives today. Life is in God’s hand. God decides when your last heartbeat will be, and whether it ends through cancer or a bullet wound. God governs….

If I were to drop dead right now, or a suicide bomber downstairs were to blow this building up and I were blown into smithereens, God would have done me no wrong. He does no wrong to anybody when he takes their life, whether at 2 weeks or at age 92.

God is not beholden to us at all. He doesn’t owe us anything.”

Words fail me even more.

Certainly everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion (and what would the internet be without it), and people are always free to accept or reject what others say.

Actually, on one level, it is helpful that Piper is willing to offer his views so clearly in a public forum. Characterizing God this way is, in my estimation, its own refutation, and in the end will serve the truth more than obscure it.

But still, Piper’s position raises some serious issues that won’t stay buried for long, and are worth drawing out–at the very least so people can to work through the issue themselves and not be swayed by a public figure taking such a strong stand, or conclude that Piper represents the only option before us.

Each of these issues outlined below, to be sure, engenders it’s own discussion–and I can only be very brief here–but they are part and parcel of the broader discussion of God’s violence in the Old Testament.

1. It is unguarded to make a general principle of God’s character on the basis of the treatment of the Canaanites in the Old Testament. Of course, Piper would likely retort that all of Scripture is God-breathed, does not mislead us, and reveals the character of God. But then he would need to address squarely Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that “death to our enemies” is no longer valid.

The "insider-outsider premise" that undergirds Canaanite slaughter (and the killing of many of Israel’s enemies in the Old Testament–see #3) is the very thing Jesus squashed: “My kingdom is not of this world.” That alone should give Piper pause from venturing forward with his assessment of God’s character on the basis of how Canaanites are dealt with.

2. Following on #1, “the Bible said it, that settles it” answer to God’s violence in the Old Testament not only runs into problems with respect to the New Testament but the Old Testament as well. There is a fair amount of theological diversity in the Old Testament regarding the nature of God’s judgment on the nations that would need to be taken into account. (For example, compare Jonah and Nahum on the fate of Assyria; the glorious fate of Egypt in Isaiah 19:23-25.) To make one view on such a thorny issue the model for how God acts throughout time runs the danger of privileging certain texts that support one’s theology.

3. Related to #s 1 and 2, Piper would also need to address the historical reality of the ancient tribal setting of these Old Testament stories. I realize that for a literalist like Piper, this point is wholly out of bounds, for it requires that we allow what we have learned [from outside the Bible] archaeologically about the ancient world of the Bible to influence how we understand the Bible.

Still, for those interested, we know that the rhetoric of a patron high god fighting for his people and insuring their military successes (and failures if they are unfaithful) is a common ancient manner of envisioning the activity of the divine realm vis-a-vis politics. I suspect Piper may not have much use for such information, but placing the biblical accounts of military conquests next to those of other ancient peoples leads to the following reasonable and commonly accepted conclusion:  how Israel described God’s activities was influenced by cultural givens and therefore not to be applied willy-nilly for all time and places.

4. Following on #3, Piper would need to take seriously the conclusion drawn overwhelmingly by archaeologists that the systematic slaughter of the population of Canaan around 1200 BC did not happen. As with many issues surrounding archaeology, there is further discussion to be had, and I am guessing that Piper will not be swayed by what archaeologists say.

Nevertheless, there were likely only a few small battles in a few places (like Hazor). The stories of mass extermination of Canaanites that God ordered (Deuteronomy 7:1-5 and 20:10-20) do not depict brute historical events, but Israel’s culturally influenced way of making an important  theological statement (see #5). If that is true, it complicates Piper’s assumption that one can point to the book of Joshua and say “God is like this.”

5. It is not at all clear that these biblical stories were even written to depict “what God did.” Recent work has made the case that the book of Joshua is not a “conquest narrative.” Rather, using conquest as a narrative setting, Joshua is a statement about what it means to be an insider or an outsider to their community.

The conquest stories are symbolic narratives that point to a theological truth. For example, the fact that Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute, is spared but the Israelite family man Achan and his family are treated as Canaanites (Joshua 6-7) is designed to make people think long and hard about what [the concepts of] insider and outsider even means. (See Douglas S. Earl The Joshua Delusion?: Rethinking Genocide in the Bible and Daniel Hawk Every Promise Fulfilled: Contesting Plots in Joshua.)

6. More practically speaking–and without intending to implicate Piper–history bears witness that those who envision God the way Piper does are only one small step away from forming their own Christian Taliban to be God’s agents of wrath in this life.

Some [Such proponents would] kill abortion doctors and gays, but more commonly the end result of such thinking is a brand of Christianity that is agitated, judgmental, suspicious, and ready to draw blood whenever a perceived offense to God is committed. A faith in God that is governed by such a posture toward others is something Jesus clearly taught against.

7. Piper would need to engage the common response that the killing of a population to take their land is resolutely condemned not only in modern culture but among Christians around the world. In other words, Piper would need to address the ethical implications of a God who does what every fiber of our being and shared experience says is wrong–shedding innocent blood to take their land and resources.

8. According to Deuteronomy 20:10-20, God orders the Israelites to kill every living thing within the borders of  Canaan, but that is only half the marching order. An equally disturbing fate awaits those in cites outside of the borders of Canaan.

First Israel is to offer terms of peace. If they accept, the people are enslaved. If they refuse, the men are to be killed but the women, children, livestock, and anything else are kept as booty. To be consistent, one would need to think that, “God is enslaving people every day. He will make 50,000 slaves today. Slavery and freedom are in God’s hand. God decides whether you will be slave or free.” [Thus, the question of ethics and God].

9. How does Piper or anyone know, really, that all deaths are “willed” by God? Nothing in the Bible can compellingly be interpreted this way, and the whole matter seems to be more a matter of mystery than theological certitude. I suspect that perhaps Piper is pre-committed to this view by virtue of a Calvinist premise of God’s “sovereignty.” But sovereignty, even in a Calvinist sense, does not imply that God is necessarily “taking life everyday.”

10. Finally, I am not sure how this sort of view of God translates into effective ministry. I don’t think it is pastorally effective (not to mention theologically sound) to tell people: “God is the sovereign God of the universe and he may snuff out your life - or the life of your loved ones - at any time by cancer, a bullet, kidnap/murder, slow starvation, a plane flying into a building, etc. He isn’t beholden to you. He doesn’t owe you anything if you drop dead.”

Piper’s hyper-literalistic defense of Canaanite genocide may score some points (temporarily) against atheist attacks on the Bible, but how will this play with real people who are struggling to find ways to make it through life day to day? Is not “God is love… the very hairs of your head are numbered… cast your cares on him… he desires that no one perish… you are his sheep” more in keeping with building up God’s people?

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The morality of God killing Canaanites has been joyfully thrown in the face of Christians in recent years by such prominent atheists as Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, which is what Piper is reacting to. 

But Canaanite genocide has been a topic of concern ever since the earliest theologians of the church began to wrestle with it in the 2nd century. It has always been and remains a tough issue for anyone who takes the Bible seriously.

I feel that Piper’s comments in his interview obscure the genuine complexities of this important conversation and leave us with a God that, at the end of the day, I contend is not the God of the gospel but the very caricature of God we should avoid.

- Pete