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Next week I’ll attempt a defense of divine violence in Revelation, arguing for a certain integrity/consistency in God’s use of violence throughout the Old and New Testaments. But first, to start a conversation, here are some of the questions I find most interesting on the topic. Feel free to pick one and run with it: Does Scripture ever indicate that killing is evil in and of itself, or is its claim only that we are not allowed to kill (i.e., at our own initiative)? Can/does God live by different standards of morality than humans? If so, is something right just because God does it, or does God have to live according to standards? Can we be more moral than God (or, at least, the God described in Scripture)? If so, what standard do we base that on? Is human pain evil, or morally neutral? Can violent death ever be a just punishment? Was the flood just? If the flood tells us something theologically true about God (whether you believe it was an historical event or not), then how does it impact our understanding of God, humans, and sin? What are the implications if we refuse to worship the “kind of God” who would do that? Is the flood (people killed directly by God) a different kind of violence from the conquest of Canaan (people killed by people at God’s command)? If we believe the actual God practices this kind of violence but we disapprove, can we nevertheless (morally) follow him –– whether for a heavenly reward, or out of obligation for creating us, or simply because we believe that God, as God, is worthy of service –– even if we think he is, in some sense, wicked in his use of violence? Can the Bible be understood apart from violence (the flood, the plagues on Egypt, the conquest of Canaan, the punishment and exile of Israel, Jesus’ death on the cross, Jesus as a conquering warrior in Revelation)? Can we argue that the violence described in the Old Testament was not divinely sanctioned and yet read the Old Testament as the Word of God? How should Christians understand the acts of genocide around the world in light of the teachings of, e.g., Joshua? What about acts that are considered divinely-commanded violence, such as Islamic extremists, or lynchings by the kkk? Is the cross a condemnation of human violence, an act of divine violence, or both (or neither)? |
May 24th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Are we supposed to converse now?
May 24th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Yeah, that was my intention; I should have made it clearer. Thanks for asking, Matt.
May 25th, 2006 at 4:45 pm
Scoots said:
Yeah, that was my intention; I should have made it clearer.
Eh, I think I just got to the end of the post and was unsure of what to do. Easily confused.
I think a very important question is:
1.is something right just because God does it, or does God have to live according to standards?
If so, then at a minimum, we have to suppose that the concepts of good and evil are co-eternal with, but external to, God. If, on the other hand, God is beyond good and evil, then the concept of God’s goodness becomes meaningless.
One foundational question that may have been left out was:
2. Do human beings naturally tend toward utterly wicked behavior, perfectly good behavior, or something in between?
I expect our opinions on these two questions will largely determine which side we take on the more detailed questions.
BTW, I just sic’d a bunch of combative pacifists from kendallball.net on you. You’re welcome! =)
May 25th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
The world is as just as we make it.
There is a God of Just Is and not of justice.
God tried to tell Job about that from out of the whirlwind, but then somebody had to tack on that “happy ending” a few centuries later.
May 26th, 2006 at 10:43 am
scoots said:
Is the cross a condemnation of human violence, an act of divine violence, or both (or neither)?
I’d say a condemnation of human violence, and not an act of divine violence. The “sacrificial lamb” metaphor shouldn’t be pushed too far, and probably wasn’t meant for 21st century gentiles, anyway.
May 26th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
matthew said:
The “sacrificial lamb” metaphor shouldn’t be pushed too far, and probably wasn’t meant for 21st century gentiles, anyway.
I don’t really get the whole “loving” God needed his wrath to be appeased with a perfect sacrifice either, but this seems to be central to many if not most Christians today.
May 26th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Human beings tending towards utterly wicked behavior?
My word young man, Oscar Wilde summed it up brilliantly when he said that people aren’t good or bad, they are either CHARMING or TEDIOUS.
Hats off to Darius and the God of Just Is.
If GOD does something it is because He not only is the I Am That I Am but logically the I Can ‘Cause I Can!
Who is there to judge HIm????
He invented/created evil didn’t He?
In Nature there is no wicked there is survival and adaptation. Wicked is a human invention.
PS combatitive pacifists is an oxymoron.
May 26th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
homo escapeons said:
PS combatitive pacifists is an oxymoron.
Thanks, I was afraid no one would notice.
May 28th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
Is there anywhere in the old/new testament or any other “breath of God” type literature where God assigns the value of “right” or the value of “wrong” to something? I’d be interested to see that there was. I can only think of one, “good” and “evil”, and as the creation story goes, we mucked that one up pretty good right from the start. My guess is there there is “good” and there is “evil”, but we don’t have the presence of spirit to be able to discern the two, we took hold of the concept and tried to internalize before we were taught how or were ready. Thus, I don’t think its a really good idea to say something is “right” or something is “wrong” in any sense. Otherwise we’d be hard pressed to say that Any steps Abraham took towards klling his only son were in any way good or right. We’d be hard pressed to justify any divine sanctioned genocide under any moral code. The best we can do is toss it up and trust that God’s doing what he’s knows is the right thing, assuming that he has a better grasp on the knolwedge of good and evil than we do, and we should stick to sinful and not sinful. Cause that’s really the only direction he’s ever given us. At the same time, we come up with the problem of whether or not Christians shold be worldly bystanders, paying no attention to what seem to be evil things and injustices going on every day. Even Bonhoffer (sorry about my inability to Spell his name) seemed to have wrestled with this one. Of course, this whole thing presupposes a certain perspective on reality itself, which ya’ll might not find agreeable or even pallatable. So, it would seem that your perspective would really define what you think of divine violence.
May 30th, 2006 at 10:55 am
Anonymous said:
we should stick to sinful and not sinful
So I assume this means that you think that there is some cosmic Good and Evil, but that we should regard them as inaccessible and instead do whatever God commands us to do.
I guess my first question is: why? What moral justification is there for obeying an apparently evil God? May we obey an apparently evil God out of some sense of obligation, or to avoid punishment? (Scoots mentioned this in his post.)
Our moral sense tells us no. We feel that the Nazi subordinate who operates the gas chamber should not do so, regardless of obligation to a superior or for fear of punishment. And if we believe that, in some way, our moral sense comes from God, then it’s simply bizarre to suggest that God would claim to be good and command us to obey, while also providing a moral sense that occasionally pings God as someone evil whom we ought not obey.
June 5th, 2006 at 11:30 am
You put too much faith in your own moral sense. Does your moral sense “ping” when you buy a pair of sneakers? Becuase when you do your providing more resources to factories that engage in what would probably amount to torture of infants. Adn comparing a nazi obeying a superior officer is absolutely no metaphor of anyone obeying God, or, a supreme being. Its not about superiority, its about limitations of pure humanity. As far as doing whatever God commands us to do, yes, we should. Otherwise, we judge God under a human and imperfect standard of good and evil. One mights say that you’re position sounds similair to one of the civilizations that Joshua was commanded to destroy. But only you can’t entirely reach thier subjective point of view. If God says “kill all the amelichites…or some other strange sounding word…I have to assume that he knows why he’s telling me to do so. To the amelichite, I say, I know god enough to say that if you turn from whatever reason it is that he wants to kill you, he probably won’t. And why he wants to kill them, well, I assume that God’s given them a chance to stop, probably even pointed it out to them somehow. Indeed he even shows us that with Noah. But in any way to try and judge God’s actions or commands as good or evil is to impose upon God an imperfect standard of good and evil from a finite, imperfect perspective. It’s not a good idea. Fairly dangerous, even, I might say. So, probably a much better idea to take the advice of Mr. Beaver, Aslan is indeed, not a tame lion. He’s not safe, but he’s good.