Is God a Vindictive Bully?: Reconciling Portrayals of God in the Old and New Testaments

"Old Testament violence continues to be a thorny, painful, and faith-damaging issue for many Christians today. Among the voices attempting to address the questions, one of the most prominent is that of Paul Copan. We can expect anything that comes from his desk to be serious, rigorous, and honest. Is God a Vindictive Bully? is no exception. It will be helpful—even redemptive—for many who wrestle with these questions. And while not all will wholly agree with him, it will be one of the go-to books on the subject for years to come."

—Helen Paynter, Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence, Bristol Baptist College

Serious criticisms are often made of the Old Testament in general and of its portrayal of God in particular. These criticisms come both from within the church and from without. Copan here subjects these criticisms to careful scrutiny, testing them against the claims of the Old Testament. He finds that when we read the Old Testament with attention to its time and context, these criticisms are misplaced. Rather, the Old Testament is consistent with the New in revealing a God who is prepared to get involved with the mess of life and bring redemption. A careful and reflective work, this is important reading for thinking Christians who want to understand why the Old Testament matters for their faith.

—David G. Firth, Trinity College, Bristol

In this very important and much-needed volume, Copan does a marvelous job of dealing with arguments that would introduce a separation between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. With erudition he skillfully answers ‘critics from without’ and, unfortunately, ‘critics from within’ who advocate for this harmful dichotomy. I am extremely grateful for this faithful defense of the repeated affirmation in the New Testament that the God portrayed in the Old Testament is, indeed, ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.’

—Jerry E. Shepherd, Taylor Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta (emeritus)

Can a God of love command an adulterer’s execution? Copan explores this and many other objections to biblical texts. By careful reading he shows how biblical writings consistently present a single God, gracious and just. Questions and doubts current today are often superficial and unbalanced. Here are clear, well-founded answers for Christian believers.

—Alan Millard, University of Liverpool (emeritus)

Many recent studies on the Bible’s portrayal of divine violence attempt to resolve the canon’s dissonances with categorical templates or through hermeneutical sleight of hand. Copan, however, refuses the path of least interpretive resistance and opts instead to take the tensive thickness of the Bible’s testimony head on. Informed by careful reading and with due attention to contexts and nuances, he offers a study on the topic that is both encyclopedic in scope and thorough in its treatment of particularly problematic texts. Readers will find much to ponder in this important contribution to an urgent conversation.

—L. Daniel Hawk, Ashland Theological Seminary

At a time when the credibility of the Bible and the character of God are being questioned by critics outside of the Christian community and by some within it, this book offers thoughtful, biblically credible, and theologically convincing answers. Furthermore, Copan exposes the fallacies of the Bible’s detractors, as well as the flaws of their readings of the Bible and the ignorance of their conclusions.

—James K. Hoffmeier, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (emeritus)

Do you have a problem with something, or a lot of things, in the Old Testament? Copan has provided a virtual encyclopedia of helpful answers to frequently asked questions that trouble many readers. He tackles a whole range of objections that arise both from those who claim broad Christian allegiance to the Bible as a whole and from those who make no such claim whatsoever and use the Old Testament as a major reason for their hostility. This is a thoroughly detailed reference work that those of us who teach or preach the Old Testament will turn to frequently, or point others to, when such questions are aired. An excellent resource indeed!

—Christopher J. H. Wright, Langham Partnership; author of Old Testament Ethics for the People of God

Copan’s work speaks to current voices that assert the Old Testament’s depiction of God is highly problematic or at odds with the New Testament. He engages critics from outside the faith who with vindictive glee mischaracterize the Old Testament’s presentation of God. He addresses critics from within who jettison the hard parts of the Old Testament or assert its depiction of God is in error. God’s people are often confused by and suspicious of the Old Testament, wondering how it aligns with Jesus; these conversations are pressing for my seminary students and for local pastors and congregations. Copan provides a valuable resource in accessible language that speaks with informed conviction and with grace. In a time when the Old Testament’s necessary role in Christian faith is attacked and undermined, Copan’s work serves the good of the church. I highly recommend it for all whose faith seeks understanding.

—Lissa M. Wray Beal, Providence Theological Seminary, Otterburne, Manitoba

© 2022 by Paul Copan

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Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org

Scripture quotations labeled ESV are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2016

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To William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland,

whose friendship, scholarship,

dedication, and collaboration

have inspired, encouraged,

and strengthened me over the years.

Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.

—Hebrews 13:7

Contents

Cover

Endorsements    i

Half Title Page    iii

Title Page    v

Copyright Page    vi

Dedication    vii

Preface    xiii

Part 1 | The Great Divorce    1

How Wide the Divide between the Old and New Testaments?

1. The Old Testament God: Critics from Without and from Within    3

2. Is the God of the Old Testament the Same as the God of the New? (1): Marcion versus Moses    10

3. Is the God of the Old Testament the Same as the God of the New? (2): Moses versus Jesus?    19

4. Is the God of the Old Testament the Same as the God of the New? (3): Moses versus Jesus? (Continued)    25

Part 2 | Lex Rex (the Law, the King)    33

What Makes the Law of Moses So Special?   

5. From Heaven or from Human Origin? Is the Mosaic Law Just Another Ancient Law Code?     35

6. Multiple Sources and Late Dates? Does the Mosaic Law Have Multiple Authors? Was Fighting the Canaanites a Fiction from the Sixth Century BC?    40

7. Differences between the Law of Moses and Ancient Near Eastern Laws (1): The Biblical Vision and Worldview    50

8. Differences between the Law of Moses and Ancient Near Eastern Laws (2): Human Dignity, Relationship, and Equality    56

9. Differences between the Law of Moses and Ancient Near Eastern Laws (3): Poverty and Wealth    64

Part 3 | Crime and Punishment    69

Violations and Penalties in Old Testament Law

10. A Bit of Ancient Near Eastern Context    71

11. Israel’s Punishments as Nonliteral in the Pentateuch    74

12. Israel’s Punishments as Nonliteral in Old Testament History    82

Part 4 | For Whom the Bell Tolls    87

Harsh Texts and Difficult Old Testament Questions

13. How Was David a Man after God’s Own Heart?    89

14. Why Does God Harden People’s Hearts?    96

15. Divine Smitings (1): Noah’s Flood, Egypt’s Firstborn, Uzzah’s Death    104

16. Divine Smitings (2): Elisha and the Bears, and Punishing Children to the Third and Fourth Generations    113

17. Bashing Babies against the Rock? Imprecatory Psalms in the Old Testament    122

18. Let His Homestead Be Made Desolate: Imprecatory Psalms in the New Testament    131

19. Loving Jacob, Hating Esau? Putting Divine and Human Hatred in Perspective    140

Part 5 | Of Human Bondage    147

Women and Servants in Israelite Society

20. Is the Old Testament Really Misogynistic and Patriarchal?    149

21. Espousing Multiple Wives? Revisiting the Matter of Polygamy    155

22. Other Troubling Texts about Women: The Nameless Concubine, the Question of War Rape    161

23. Servants in Israel: Persons or Property?    166

24. The Acquisition of Foreign Slaves (1): A Deeper Dive into Leviticus 25    173

25. The Acquisition of Foreign Slaves (2): Two Objections and the Runaway Option    181

Part 6 | War and Peace    187

Warfare and Violence in the Old Testament (and the New)

26. Jesus Loves Canaanites—and Israelites Too: Jesus 101 and the Old Testament’s "Dark Texts"    189

27. We Left No Survivors: Exaggeration Rhetoric in Israel’s War Texts    200

28. Revisiting the Translation of Herem: Utter Destruction, Consecration, Identity Removal, Removal from Ordinary Use?    207

29. Deuteronomy’s Intensified Rhetoric and the Use of Haram    211

30. Did the Israelites Cruelly Invade the Land of Canaan?    222

31. The Actual God in Old Testament Warfare    227

Part 7 | The Heart of the Matter    237

The Summing Up of All Things in Christ   

32. God Is Christlike, and in Him There Is No Un-Christlikeness at All: Our Critics from Within    239

33. Our Critics from Without (1): Two Important Questions    248

34. Our Critics from Without (2): Five Big Steps    254

Questions for Small Groups    261

Notes    263

Subject Index    289

Scripture Index    297

Back Cover    305

Preface

This book is a companion volume to my 2011 Baker book, Is God a Moral Monster? (hereafter, Moral Monster).1 It is the natural overflow of my earlier work—including my coauthored book with Matthew Flannagan, Did God Really Command Genocide? (hereafter, Genocide).2 Given the strong interest in these books, their translation into a number of languages, the ongoing opportunities I’ve had to speak on Old Testament topics, and the steady stream of Moral Monster– and Genocide-related questions, this follow-up book seemed fitting. It not only addresses additional challenging Old Testament topics. It also fills in gaps and makes some tweaks. That said, Genocide in its own right provides a wide-ranging, in-depth, cross-disciplinary treatment of Old Testament warfare.

This book’s structure and content center on the Old Testament’s relationship to the New. In light of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, how should we understand troubling texts from the Hebrew Scriptures? Does the New Testament reject all violence, wrath, and severity now that Jesus has come on the scene? How do turning the other cheek and loving your enemies square with commands to drive out the Canaanites or the Old Testament’s harsh punishments and pronouncements? Did God truly command capital punishment and order the dispossession of the Canaanites? Or was that just the misrepresentation of God’s message by fallen, violence-prone prophets or biblical narrators?

In the present work, I’ll be addressing these new questions, in addition to others:

Should the Old Testament be unhinged from the New?

How should we think about certain contemporary, theologically revisionist claims that Moses, Joshua, and other prophets were seriously misguided and even issuing demonic commands?

Did Moses borrow legislation from other ancient Near Eastern law collections? And if he did, does this suggest that the Mosaic law is just another ancient law collection?

Does the law of Moses express significant worldview differences from other ancient Near Eastern law collections, or are they roughly approximate?

Are the harsh punishments in Israelite legislation (e.g., stoning and burning to death) intended to be followed literally? What do the actual history of Israel and the ancient Near Eastern setting reveal?

Why would God harden Pharaoh’s heart?

How could David be a man after God’s own heart?

How do we make sense of the vindictive imprecatory (prayer-curse) psalms?

Is divinely approved coercive physical force (violence)3 found in the New Testament too?

Were Israelite soldiers allowed to engage in battlefield rape?

In addition to tackling these new issues, I clarify, expand on, and—in some places—modify previous Moral Monster material:

Does the term patriarchal adequately describe Israelite society? How much power did women in Israel really have?

Are modern versions accurate in using the term slave and slavery in the Old Testament?

Does Leviticus 25 support the treatment of foreign slaves as mere property?

When it comes to the Canaanites, is the rendering utterly destroy (haram) an accurate or a potentially misleading translation? What about women, children, and the elderly?

How much overlap do we have between the Old and New Testament portrayals of God?

In all of this, the goal is to add fresh material without significant overlap in content. Some overlap and recapping of themes will be necessary, though, to provide proper context. Thus, this book is a companion volume to Moral Monster and Genocide, all of which attempt to present a unified portrayal of the kind and severe God of both testaments.

By popular request, I’ve included subject and Scripture indexes in this volume—something not included in Moral Monster. However, thanks to Peter J. Vorster Sr., the Scripture index for Moral Monster is available at my website (www.paulcopan.com).

Unless otherwise indicated, I use the New American Standard Bible 1995. Italics that appear in biblical quotations are my additions for emphasis. When citing a Hebrew poetic text, I use lowercase letters rather than the NASB’s capitalizations at the start of each line. In addition, I use textual forms in my Greek transliterations, though I stick primarily with the lexical forms of Hebrew words.

Heartfelt thanks to my longtime Baker editor Robert Hosack, whose friendship and encouragement I have appreciated over the years. I am very grateful to Tremper Longman III and Jerry Shepherd for their very helpful comments. Thanks to Professor Alan Millard, who offered detailed and immensely helpful insights to my previous Genocide book and this book as well. Thanks also to my Baker support team—James Korsmo and freelancer Kathy Noftsinger, who are stellar editors, as well as Sarah Gombis, Shelly MacNaughton, Lydia Koning, Anna English, and Rayce Patterson—for the labors behind the scenes. Thanks, too, to Old Testament scholars Claude Mariottini and Charlie Trimm, who kindly sent me prepublication copies of their books on Old Testament violence and the character of God, which I cite in this volume.

My beloved wife, Jacqueline, deserves special thanks for her thorough support and partnership through this and so many other book endeavors.

I dedicate this book with heartfelt gratitude to my decades-long philosophical mentors and partners in ministry, William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland.

PART 1

The Great Divorce

How Wide the Divide between the Old and New Testaments?

1

The Old Testament God

Critics from Without and from Within

Critics from Without: From A. A. Milne to Richard Dawkins

Yahweh or Jehovah—the God of the Old Testament—has plenty of critics. One such was A. A. Milne, creator of the Winnie the Pooh stories. He claimed: The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief—call it what you will—than any book ever written.1

What are their criticisms? The world’s most outspoken atheist, Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, gives them to us in a nutshell: The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.2 No wonder Dawkins advises parents not to use the Old Testament to teach morals to our children.

Dawkins is one of several New Atheists who rose to prominence in the wake of the September 11 attacks. They lashed out in condemnation not just of Islam but of all religion as poisonous and evil. Actually, my Moral Monster book uses these atheists’ descriptions of the Old Testament God (Yahweh) as chapter headings. And the titles of that previous book and of this one are taken from Dawkins.

These particular atheists created a negative reputation for themselves, even among secular academics. They were utterly tone-deaf to widespread criticisms of their rhetoric, caricatures, and arguments.3 One former New Atheist, P. Z. Myers, called this movement a train wreck.4

Even so, the bold challenge New Atheists presented has prompted many Christians to take a closer look at Scripture and reexamine texts that seemed much less troublesome to earlier generations of believers. Those are some of the critics from without.

Critics from Within: Not the Textual God but the Actual God

The Old Testament’s portrayal of God has critics from within the Christian community as well. These include theologian and pastor Greg Boyd, Old Testament scholars Eric Seibert and Peter Enns, and others. On the one hand, they would largely agree with Dawkins’s description of the God of the Old Testament as genocidal, vindictive, and so on. On the other hand, these critics from within don’t think the true God is like this. The portrayal of the most unpleasant character in all fiction is not the actual God but the textual God.5

So, what’s the difference between the actual God and the textual God? As these scholars see it, when Scripture says that God gave David the victory over Goliath (1 Sam. 17:45–47) or that God promised to drive out the Canaanites from the promised land (Josh. 13:6), that wasn’t the actual God. The actual God is nonviolent, enemy-loving, self-sacrificing, and forgiving—especially as revealed in Jesus on the cross: Father, forgive them (Luke 23:34).

So the 415 mentions of Thus says the LORD often don’t come from the actual God—as you might think—but come from just the textual God. Who or what is this textual God? This is the literary depiction of God by a fallen, violence-prone, culturally conditioned ancient Near Eastern biblical narrator or prophet. That is, the textual God is just a fictitious and flawed representation.

According to Boyd, in the cross of Christ the actual God exposes and repudiates the false, idolatrous, blasphemous falsehoods of this textual God.6 The enemy-loving Jesus reveals a God who could never command or engage in violence. The true God hides behind an ugly mask of violence and genocide.

Table 1.1. The Actual God versus the Textual God

Some of these critics from within also reject the doctrine of penal substitution. Often behind this critique are popular but outrageous caricatures and misrepresentations that no notable theologian defending this doctrine would endorse. For example, a train switchman allows a train full of passengers to run over his young son playing on the track so that they won’t be killed by an oncoming train on the other set of tracks. Such phony analogies tend to present three parties in this drama: an angry, wrathful God the Father; a loving but hapless Jesus forced onto the cross (cosmic child abuse); and sinful humanity. Rather than sinners in the hands of an angry God, they think we should see the atonement only in terms of sinners in the hands of a loving God.7

Why not both? A proper understanding of penal substitution has two parties in view—the loving and just triune God, and sinful humanity. Furthermore, God loves the world (John 3:16), and Jesus himself is also wrathful against sin (Rev. 6:16). Yet Jesus voluntarily lays down his life for lost human beings (John 10:17). The triune God’s wrath against our sinful record is averted because the righteous Christ’s accomplishment is legally imputed to our record if we receive this gift.

Consider how innocent, guilt-free parents legally represent their teenager, who has been the responsible party in an auto accident. They take care of the legal responsibility, paying the insurance costs (the legal penalty or punishment) for their guilty teenager, thus allaying the potential wrath of the law. Though we can’t get into this topic here, the doctrine of penal substitution is both robustly biblical and philosophically defensible.8

We’re getting somewhat sidetracked, though. These critics from within claim that Old Testament prophets and narrators were simply wrong in much of what they said and did. After all, this was inevitable given all of the baggage of their ancient Near Eastern worldview.9

God’s Kindness, God’s Severity, and Human Honesty

The apostle Paul writes, Behold then the kindness and severity of God (Rom. 11:22). As we’ll see in this book, severity, toughness, or harshness is a theme in both Old Testament and New alike. That is, severity is a description not just of the textual God but of the actual God. That doesn’t mean, though, that severity or wrath is central to the triune God’s nature. As we’ll see, love is God’s central attribute, and God’s severity flows out of his love. God desires the ultimate well-being of humans, but he will sometimes have to say, Enough is enough. He will have to act in judgment to stop dehumanization and other evils that undermine human flourishing.

Biblical scholar N. T. Wright declares that to deny God’s wrath is to deny his love:

Face it: to deny God’s wrath is, at bottom, to deny God’s love. When God sees humans being enslaved . . . if God doesn’t hate it, he is not a loving God. . . . When God sees innocent people being bombed because of someone’s political agenda, if God doesn’t hate it, he isn’t a loving God. When God sees people lying and cheating and abusing one another, exploiting and grifting and preying on one another, if God were to say, Never mind, I love you all anyway, he is neither good nor loving. The Bible doesn’t speak of a God of generalized benevolence. It speaks of the God who made the world and loves it so passionately that he must and does hate everything that distorts and defaces the world and particularly his human creatures.10

We should expect this of the loving Cosmic Authority, whose severity cuts across the testaments.

The Old Testament as a Friend

Charitability and the Golden Rule of Interpretation

As biblical scholar Bruce Birch wrote, Old Testament texts are rooted in a cultural context utterly unlike our own with an outlook that is often alien and in some cases repugnant to our modern sensibilities.11 In light of such concerns, author Mathew Richard Schlimm asks: What if we approached the Old Testament’s laws and historical narratives with charity rather than suspicion? That is, we show a willingness to understand them in their historical context and allow them to speak. It’s like wanting to learn from an old friend who is introducing a different culture and country to us.12 What if we sought first to give the benefit of the doubt?

Consider a golden rule of interpretation: treat another’s writing as you yourself would want your own writing to be treated. This doesn’t mean being naive or uncritical; it does mean being charitable and fair as we honestly examine challenges in the text.

As traditional, Bible-believing Christians, one problem we readily see with some of our critics from without—who may be non-Christians, but particularly those of the New Atheist variety—is that they tend to pounce on any biblical text that strikes them as harsh or wrathful or strange. They aren’t too concerned about nuance or context, nor are they very open to reasoned explanation or discussion. For example, they may ignore references to God’s patience with stubborn Israelites or his sorrow at human sin. Or they latch on to the word slave in the Old Testament—an unfortunate rendering, as we’ll see—and they automatically assume this is identical to Southern slavery.

On the other side, critics from within—that is, within the church—may recoil at biblical references to God’s severity and forcefulness (violence); they emphasize God’s kindness and love, as displayed in Jesus on the cross. These insider critics consider this Old Testament severity to be a mistaken portrayal of God by fallen, violence-prone biblical authors and prophets. Yet we’ll see that New Testament authorities—and even Jesus himself—carry on the severity that most people restrict to the Old Testament. Jesus viewed himself as carrying on the calling and task of those prophets.

In light of the dual biblical affirmation of God’s kindness and severity (Rom. 11:22), for our critics from without, we want to emphasize that God is far more loving, kind, patient, tender, and merciful than we could ever know. Throughout the Old Testament we see language of God attempting to woo his people back to himself (Hosea 2:14), being hurt by their rebellious hearts (Ezek. 6:9), longing to show mercy (Isa. 30:18) and to provide for them (Ps. 81:10–16), and pleading with them to return to him (2 Chron. 36:16). He patiently waits half a millennium (from the time of Abraham to the time of Joshua) to bring judgment on the disobedient Canaanites (Gen. 15:16; Heb. 11:31), and he is willing to relent in judgment if any people turn from their wickedness (Jer. 18:7–8; Jon. 4:2).

And for our critics from within, we emphasize that God is more severe and harsh and unsafe than they suggest. For those who oppress, dehumanize, defraud, mislead, and live hypocritically, divine wrath is the appropriate, just response, as it is to other objective moral evils. Thankfully, the God-created world we inhabit is one that guarantees cosmic justice will be done.

The theologian Stanley Hauerwas has offered this critique of someone’s unorthodox view of God: One of the things that bothers me about [his] God is that she is just too damned nice!13 Putting it another way, Garret Keizer writes, The Lord my God is a jealous God and an angry God, as well as a loving God and a merciful God. I am unable to imagine one without the other. I am unable to commit to any messiah who doesn’t knock over tables.14

The former nun Karen Armstrong wrote rather simplistically: It is wonderful not to have to cower before a vengeful deity, who threatens us with eternal damnation if we do not abide by his rules.15 Conor Cunningham—a religious scholar—responded: Imagine if Hitler rather than an ex-nun had written those words.16 To stress either divine kindness or divine severity at the expense of the other results in a skewed moral picture. Neither the critic from without (like Armstrong) nor the critic from within strikes the right balance.

Not that I myself presume to have attained the perfect balance with all moral questions tidily resolved. But as we look especially at the critics from within, I find too many inconsistencies and a good deal of selectivity to affirm the direction they take. I wish things were as easily resolved as they suggest!

EXCURSUS:

A Quick Word on God and Violence

Before getting further underway, we should note that the Old Testament does not ascribe violence (hamas) to God or to righteous humans or nations using physical force in a righteous cause. Rather, that word is associated with wicked, law-breaking, oppressive human beings; they injure, wrong, or harm physically or nonphysically. Without creaturely sin and violence, divine wrath and judgment wouldn’t occur.

We could say that God uses just coercive physical force in response to human violence and oppression.17 So even though we make reference to divine violence or divine counterviolence in response to human sin, keep in mind that such language is a concession to a conventional way of speaking. Scripture itself doesn’t refer to God as violent.

Table 1.2. Responding to Critics from Without and Within

Ragged Edges and Rough Pathways

In this book, we walk with the Old Testament as a friend—but over rough terrain and through slime pits. It reveals both an idealism of hoped-for peace and order and a realism about its ancient Near Eastern setting.18 Thus, some of these Old Testament laws will push society as far as it could go at that time without creating more damage than good, even if it can and should ultimately go further.19

Another matter: we shouldn’t be surprised if some people may simply disagree about certain moral assumptions about what a good God once commanded under certain conditions and at a certain time and for certain reasons perhaps known only to him. This doesn’t mean reversing good and evil altogether. It does mean a divine command from a good God may still be very difficult and severe even if it isn’t intrinsically evil. To command intrinsic evil would be impossible for God (Jer. 19:5).

Some critics from within may hold that certain divine commands are merely difficult, not impossible—while others may consider those commands just plain impossible. Kenton Sparks admits that he’s not sure if God really commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.20 Greg Boyd says God did issue this command, even if the command seems troubling when taken on its own without any additional historical context.21 Randal Rauser says God couldn’t have done so,22 even though the New Testament itself takes for granted that this was God’s command (Heb. 11:17–18; James 2:21–23).

EXCURSUS:

Moral Intuitions and Harsh Divine Commands

Let’s briefly examine Rauser’s denial that God issued this command to Abraham. Rauser appeals to our basic moral intuitions to justify this claim: we just have this basic instinct that such a command is immoral. Although Matthew Flannagan and I deal with this objection in detail elsewhere,23 I would say here that I readily agree that, in general, we ought to pay attention to these intuitions. However, a good, wise God may make rare, highly specified, authorized exceptions for morally justifiable reasons. Such exceptions don’t imply that good and evil are utterly reversed or that we should therefore abandon those basic intuitions.

Rauser appeals to the Christian legal philosopher J. Budziszewski’s fine work on conscience and moral intuitions to support his claim.24 However, even Budziszewski makes room for certain divinely authorized exceptions, including both the sacrifice of Isaac and the driving out the Canaanites. If a supremely good God, who is the author of life, has morally sufficient reasons for issuing this unusual, difficult command to Abraham, then God is not commanding Abraham to commit murder.25 This God is the source of moral duties, but he himself doesn’t have duties. Further, he can make certain exceptions concerning the laws of human nature that don’t destroy the integrity of the larger truth that he has ordained—namely, the created order. That is, God can issue these commands without acting contrary to his own nature or overturning the created natural order. In addition, Budziszewski, following Thomas Aquinas, recognizes overriding exceptions to these general operations must be based on clear divine revelation, which is what we indeed have in Scripture.26

Isaiah notes that God, in his severity, rises up to do his deed—strange is his deed! and to work his work—alien is his work! (Isa. 28:21 ESV). God will sometimes resort to strange and alien things—deviations from his heart’s desire and from how things normally operate. And as the Christian novelist Flannery O’Connor maintained, such divine severity turns out to be a subversive means of redemption.27

In the midst of all of these questions, remember that ultimately God will do what is good and just. He will not do otherwise. A perfectly good, all-wise Cosmic Authority will have justifiable reasons for commanding or permitting certain actions—reasons for which we don’t always have access.

A Brief Postscript on the Critic from Without

Through social media, a Christian asked me if atheists had been convinced by previous arguments in Moral Monster and Genocide. I replied that, speaking anecdotally, I’ve found that various atheists have indeed been persuaded to see that Old Testament laws on slavery were a far cry from what was practiced in the antebellum South and that Old Testament warfare texts utilize exaggeration or hyperbole and can’t in any way be considered genocide or ethnic cleansing. At any rate, those books—and this one too—are the type of book that may at least give helpful perspective to critics and questioners outside the Christian faith. They can help one put difficult Old Testament texts into a more understandable context, as well as minimize a number of common misunderstandings and barriers to belief.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. We should begin with the clear and then move to the unclear—rather than the other way around. Though I’ve written about this elsewhere,28 in brief, begin with the Big Bang, which implies theism, and go to the historicity of Jesus’s bodily resurrection, which confirms the truth of the Christian faith—and then work out any of the difficulties or murky details from there. I’ll come back to these themes in the last couple of chapters.

2

Is the God of the Old Testament the Same as the God of the New? (1)

Marcion versus Moses

Paul writes that Christians are no longer under the law of Moses but under grace (Rom. 6:14–15). That doesn’t mean that Old Testament saints were saved by following the law. No, they were still saved by God’s grace through faith. That includes Abraham, who lived well before the Mosaic law was even given. He believed God’s promise (faith), and he was declared righteous by God’s grace (Gen. 15:6). And that was before he was even circumcised (Gen. 17; cf. Rom. 4:1–14).

In fact, Genesis 26:5 uses the Mosaic law language of Deuteronomy, affirming that Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws. To be saved by grace enables you to keep God’s law—to live an obedient life that’s pleasing to God. Hebrews 11 emphasizes the centrality of faith—trust in and allegiance to God—throughout the Old Testament.

This raises questions: Does the Christian then disregard the law of Moses and the rest of the Old Testament’s ethical demands? What is the carryover to the New Testament?

This and the following chapters will examine the specific theme of the identity of the Old Testament portrayal of God compared to that of the New Testament. The present chapter looks at the ancient heretic Marcion’s attempt to discredit Moses and the God of Israel. It concludes that he was seriously mistaken. What’s more, the moral themes in the law of Moses—and the larger story of Israel—are woven into the New Testament’s moral picture.

The next two chapters compare Moses and Jesus. Some of our critics from within will pit Moses against Jesus to create a wide moral gap between them. This is a misrepresentation. Moses and Jesus actually have much in common with each other, and the New Testament refers to Moses in highly approving terms.

Unhitching the Old Testament from the New?

Pastor and author Andy Stanley’s book Irresistible claims that the New Testament must be unhitched from the Old. After all, the Old advocates misogyny (hatred of women) and treating women as property (commodities). It portrays God as angry while the New portrays him as brokenhearted. In the Old you could hate your enemy, but Jesus tells us to love our enemies. So if we don’t unhitch the Old, this will lead to all kinds of terrible things such as the prosperity gospel, the crusades, anti-Semitism, legalism, exclusivism, judgmentalism, and so on.1 The Old Testament is the culprit here—a stumbling block to faith because people have used it to justify all kinds of abuses.2 The solution Stanley advocates is basic: disregard all Old Testament commands, and stick with Jesus’s command to love. If we had followed Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7), this hornet’s nest of Old Testament problems wouldn’t have arisen within Christendom.

Well, that’s both a sweeping and inaccurate statement. Consider, for instance, the Crusades and the various modern myths associated with them. (In Genocide, we mention five of them.)3 Contrary to Stanley’s assumption, the Crusades were largely a defensive just war—a protective response to long-standing and ongoing Islamic aggression. What’s more, it was in fact Jesus’s own words—loving your neighbor, laying down your life for a friend—most often quoted to rally the troops to fight. It wasn’t Old Testament war texts.

What about anti-Semitism? The late distinguished Yale historian of theology Jaroslav Pelikan claims the opposite: anti-Semitism in the West is the result of unhitching the New Testament from its very Jewish roots.4 Author and pastor Fleming Rutledge offers a similar counterpoint: "Many Christians continue, unthinkingly, to speak of