(10) S1E10 Rebuttal: Violence in the Bible Disproves Nonviolence #2

Episode Transcript
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Derek (00:05):
Welcome back to the Fourth Way Podcast. In this
episode, we are looking at asecond non violent view for
interpreting the violence of theOld Testament. In the last
episode, we talked about thefirst view, which says that God
has the authority to allowviolence, since God is the
author and sustainer of life. Hecan either directly do violence

(00:26):
or He can give others permissionto do it. The view that we're
gonna talk about today, however,is going to say that God does
not do violence, nor does Hepermit others to do it.
He doesn't have others do it forHim. And this is an important,
this view will will say, becauseif Jesus truly depicts the
Father to us you know, as Jesustells Philip, I believe, He

(00:48):
says, if you have seen me,you've seen the Father. And
Hebrews talks all about howJesus is the perfect image of
God, how we see clearly now inChrist, whereas we used to see
dimly. Right? If everything isis enlightened, and that
enlightened image is Christ,then to avoid Marcionism and

(01:09):
this this idea that we, let'ssay, have have a God of the Old
Testament who's mad and angryand mean and kills people, and
then Jesus, the God of the NewTestament, who's nice and
peaceful and loving, even hisenemies, if we're gonna avoid
that sharp distinction, thenwe're gonna have to believe that

(01:29):
the Father is like Christ.
And, not just in the NewTestament, but He's always like
Christ. And, the last view waspretty easy, because we pretty
easy to explain because wedidn't really have to explain
that much. We just kind ofpresented a view of authority.
This view is gonna be quite abit more complex because we are

(01:51):
going to have to deal with otherproblems that that come up,
because we're we're kind ofshifting a lot of paradigms
here. There are essentially twolines of reasoning that
individuals who adhere to thisview are going to use to support
it.
In the first one, I'm going to,as I explain it, I'm going to

(02:11):
draw largely from Greg Boyd andTim Mackey. Greg Boyd has
written a an extremely extensivebook titled The Crucifixion of
the Warrior God, which I'llprovide a link to. He also has a
a simpler version. I don'tremember the name of that book,
but you can you can look thatup. Greg Boyd.
The second resource I'm gonnause, Tim Mackey. He has a he's

(02:36):
the creator of The BibleProject, and he also has a
podcast, which is which isawesome because he it's kind of
a it's a podcast where they gothrough their thoughts and and
discussions as they prepare tomake, you know, their little 5
or 10 minute videos. But theymight have a a 6 part podcast
series as they're kind ofhashing things out in
preparation for it, so that theycan get clear thinking and

(02:59):
figure out how to succinctlydeliver information accurately.
So, Tim Mackey, Greg Boyd, goodresources here. And, the first
line of reasoning then, is goingto be that the Bible doesn't
really show God as being violentor wrathful, but rather, when it

(03:20):
talks about God being wrathfulor violent, it's usually
withdraw.
It's God's withdraw. Or if thereis violence, it is not God doing
the violence. And Mackie makes avery, very good argument for
this, and I will link his his,podcast series here, where he he
gives example after exampleafter example, and we'll go

(03:43):
through some of of what I thinkare are the best. But he gives
examples of how God's wrathisn't really the way that that
we usually think of it. AndMackie says that he he's
estimating here, because therethere are a lot of instances, he
hasn't tallied them all, Buthe's guessing that 80% of the
time, we see violence from Godor wrath from God.

(04:04):
Either God is not doing theviolence or this wrath is a
wrath of withdrawal. So take,for example, Zedekiah's alliance
with Egypt. K? He did that. Theking of Israel did that, made
this alliance with Egypt to totry to protect him from Babylon.
And God didn't like that. Andall of the prophets are saying,

(04:28):
God judges you. God sends thisupon you, and, you know, it's
terrible terrible terrible. Butwhen we see what actually
happens, Babylon comes in anddoes terrible things to Israel,
but it's it's not really God.And what we see is that, yeah,
God is sovereign over thosesituations.

(04:48):
But, really, what happened isinstead of God protecting
Israel, which he would have donehad they not allied with Egypt,
He said, look, you wanna go withEgypt, you go with Egypt. I'm
holding back, and Babylon'sgonna come, and they're they're
gonna get you. So, in in onesense, yeah, we could say that
God was wrathful, but that wrathwas not God doing violence, but

(05:11):
but God giving people over totheir their sin and their
choices. We see it again in the,the death of the firstborn in
Egypt. In Exodus, God is justtalking about how He's gonna
kill the firstborn, He's gonnadestroy, He's gonna destroy.
And what happens when the timecomes? Well, God doesn't do it.
An angel comes through and killsthe children. In Isaiah 10, we

(05:35):
see an example where God saysHe's, He's using Assyria to
judge Israel, but Assyria is theone doing the slaughtering. It
isn't God, it's it's Godremoving His protection.
David's census. God says He'sgoing to punish him and and,
destroy, but we end up seeing anangel, or the destroyer, who

(05:58):
comes through and does this. Andeven in a place like, say,
Korah's rebellion in the OldTestament, where, I believe the
earth opens up and and, and hisgroup, Korah's group, falls in
to their deaths. And it mentionsnothing of anyone but God doing
the judging. It seems like Godopens up the earth, God kills

(06:19):
them.
That's Him. But, when we see inPaul, in 1st Corinthians 10,
Paul reinterprets that passage.Nowhere do we see anywhere in
the Bible where it says that itwas anybody other than God who
was responsible for Korah'sdeath. Yet, what we see in 1st
Corinthians 10 is that Paul saysthe destroyer did it. You know,

(06:40):
who's this destroyer?
I don't know. But God does notattribute the killing to God. He
attributes it to somebody else.He reinterprets it. And, you
know, Mackie is kind of sayingthat it may be, he's not saying
it is for sure, but it may bethat, look, Paul recognizes that
God is like Jesus, and Jesus isa certain way, and Paul

(07:04):
recognizes the way the OldTestament is written, and
violence isn't really attributedto God.
There's always, some other beingor force doing some doing the
violence. And so Paul says,well, you know, I know that
wasn't God. We all know that,and that's what may be behind
Paul's reinterpretation. So thevast majority of texts where God

(07:26):
seems to do violence are donethrough other means, and if even
Paul is able to reinterpretbiblical stories, assuming that
in in those stories of violence,it wasn't really God who did the
violence, then maybe that shouldlead us to to think that maybe
the other 20% of the remainingpassages where God seems to be

(07:48):
directly violent really, fallinto the the same framework as
the 80%, where God's not doingit, because that's not His
character. You know, the 80%should form the character of God
in our minds, not the 20%.
Scripture interprets Scripture,and we generally are going to go

(08:08):
with the clearer consensus, andnot the, you know, the the 20%,
the thing that we're less sureabout. Whereas in the the
authoritative view we talkedabout in the last podcast, would
say that, look, God can allowkilling and God can do killing
Himself, because He's the authorand sustainer of life, so of
course He can do do killing.But, this view is going to say,

(08:31):
now the reason that God we wealmost never see God directly
doing the killing, and we onlysee withdrawal from God, is
because God's the author oflife. He's not the author of
death. God does not createdeath.
You see that in the the systemof ancient Israel, where you
even touch a dead body and youhad to go and do crazy

(08:55):
ceremonies and things to becomeclean again. Death was something
that is is so far removed fromGod that how could you then
attribute death to God? God'sthe author of life. He's not the
author of death. So for God toto pause death, it seems like
that is something that's anantithesis of God.

(09:18):
It is not who God is. It's notpart of His character. And so,
we shouldn't be able to expectthat from God. Certainly, that
first part might be somewhatcontroversial, but you can go
back and look at Mackie's work,and you can look at Boyd's work,
and you can see tons and tonsand tons and tons and tons of
examples where it might seemlike God at first, but then you

(09:41):
just read a little bit farther,you really read another passage
or another prophet who expoundson it, and you say, Oh, no, it
wasn't really God, it was someother force or being. I mean,
that makes a lot of sense, andthat that doesn't really change
a ton, but it does certainlymake us question some some
passages, especially in the Westwhere we've got this,

(10:03):
substitutionary atonement, penalsubstitutionary atonement, and
you've got the wrath of Godcoming on Jesus.
You know, what does that mean?And, and it brings up really
important questions. If you'regonna take this view on, you
really need to work through. Howdo you deal with the wrath of
God on Jesus? You're gonna haveto to figure that out.
Nevertheless, overall, there'snot that much to argue with

(10:27):
there. The, really, the onlything you could kind of hang
your hat on if you're not apacifist is, there are 20% of
verses where it does seem likeGod does violence and prescribes
violence. So, that's still asignificant amount of passages,
and maybe God doesn't prefer todo violence, but every once in a
while, He will. Let's move on tothe second point then, and this

(10:48):
is going to be the part where itbecomes quite a bit more murky.
And, that is especially thisthis was the hard part for me as
a conservative evangelical.
You know, you talk aboutinfallibility and an errancy.
This, the second part was reallyhard for me to to be gracious

(11:09):
about when I was hearing out thecase. So, I am going to try to
do my best to give you what Ithink their answers would be
here, their case would be here,but you're gonna want to listen
to Boyd on this one if you wannahear out the case better than I
can make it, because, he's gonnabe able to to make it from

(11:31):
somebody who holds this positionand has held it for for quite a
while. Boyd views the Bible asinfallible, but not inerrant.
Let's talk about what those twowords mean.
Infallible just means that themessage that God wants to get
across, gets across. The he hegets what he wants out of the

(11:53):
Bible. An inerrant Bible wouldbe a Bible that has absolutely
zero errors. And now, theimportant aspect to understand
about inerrancy is that, peoplesay the original copies were
inerrant. Because we know thatthe current copies we have are
errant.
There are differences in numbersand and, passages that may or

(12:17):
may not have been in theoriginal, and we we know that
there are errors in the and seewhat the and see what the range
of possibilities is. But theoriginal manuscripts were
inerrant. Boyd would not saythat. Boyd would say, no,

(12:40):
they're infallible, notinerrant. The reason Boyd is
going to say this is because heis a big fan of progressive
revelation, and that's the ideathat God doesn't just zap
people.
He doesn't, take a profit andjust dictate to them what
they're gonna write down. Heuses individuals in their
cultures, their experiences,their ideas, their

(13:04):
personalities, and he revealshimself to them. And they're
gonna take their best shot at,portraying what what God is
saying and what God is like, andGod is going to guide that
process. But because there'sstill a human element to it,
those authors are gonnasometimes get some things, are

(13:26):
going to skew some things. AndBoyd gives many, many, many
examples, of this kind of thing.
You know, one that is kind ofcommon is, in the Old Testament,
the Messiah is is viewed as somepolitical warrior who who comes
conquering and everything. Butwhen we get to the New
Testament, we see Jesus, he'she's a sacrifice. And we get

(13:49):
glimpses of that a little bit inIsaiah, And, but really, the
Jews didn't expect Jesus theirMessiah to be like Jesus. Nobody
did. And that's for a reason.
That's because in the OldTestament, they didn't paint the
Messiah as that kind of anindividual. And that's something
that God progressively preparedIsrael for and pro and

(14:11):
eventually accomplished. We seeGod's progressive revelation and
and grace with things likedivorce. You know, Jesus in the
New Testament says, look,divorce is not something that
should have ever been. God justallowed it because of your
hardness of hearts.
So God works with people wherethey are and doesn't expect them

(14:33):
to change 100%. He's gonna kindof bring them up, and he's going
to be patient with them, andhe's gonna work with them. Now,
if we understand that there'sprogressive revelation in other
areas, then why not withsomething like violence? The
ancient Near East authors viewedthe attribution of slaughter and
and extreme violence as what thegods wanted, and Israel wasn't

(14:57):
really any different. They theyviewed, attribution of violence
to God as something that wouldglorify God, that would up
uplift His name among thenations.
Matthew Flanagan, I I heard himat a an apologetics conference,
and it was it was reallyfascinating. He talked about the
slaughter of the Canaanites. Hehe looked at, a bunch of

(15:19):
different things, and inparticular, he showed some of
the biblical texts rightalongside the ancient Near East
texts from other countries. And,I mean, they used the same
language, like, utterly destroyand and all those kinds of
things. And they're just usingthe same language all all over
the place.
And, he did a really good job ofof showing that, we need to be

(15:45):
really careful. All of thethings that we try to take
literally, historically, assomething that, that's imposing
onto the way that they talked.You know, like, if somebody
would read our our newspapers1000 years into the future, and
they would read the headlineslike, The Yankees Slaughtered
the Mets. They'd be like, wow,their sports used to be really

(16:07):
serious back then. Well, no.
That's that's the language thatwe use. Well, utterly destroy is
is, one example of those. And wesee this with the Canaanites.
There are some times where itsays that that these groups were
utterly destroyed to the last,yet we see those same groups pop
up again later, like, in theDavidic era or or sometime

(16:29):
later. You know, like, I thoughtthose guys were were all
destroyed, but here they areagain.
So what happened? They weren'tutterly destroyed? We see this
also with, King Agag.Supposedly, you know, when when
Saul refuses to kill Agag and hehe chooses to save some of the
the herd to sacrifice to God,you know, Samuel comes and he's

(16:51):
ticked. He's like, you shouldhave obeyed God.
What are you doing? And then hehe finishes the job. He kills
Agag and his family. Yet, whenyou get over to Esther, you see
that Haman is an Agagite. He isa descendant of Agag.
And you're like, wait a second.I thought that Samuel took care

(17:11):
of Agag and his family. What'sup? You you get lots of those
sorts of things throughout theBible where this language can't
really mean what we in the 20first century think that it
means literally. It it's more ofan expression from the ancient
Near East.
Nevertheless, those expressionskinda show you what's valued,

(17:32):
and what's valued is, hey, look,our God wants us to glory in the
slaughter of of our enemies. Sowe are going to compound that,
we're gonna exaggerate that, andwe're gonna just say, we just
utterly destroyed everybody.There was so much blood. And
Boyd would argue that this makessense that we'd see that even if

(17:56):
it's not from God. Because ifGod is working within an ancient
Near East group who glories inslaughter of enemies, and that's
what they think is worshipful,then God is going to have to
work through that.
You know, if they are puttingHim as God, and if they are,

(18:16):
getting rid of their idols, andthey're they're pursuing God,
but they've they've got thesethese blind spots and and this
violence that God is working on,you know, God is is patient, and
He's He's working on it. Theseauthors don't yet have a full
view of Christ, and we canexpect that they're going to

(18:36):
errantly ascribe violence to Godbecause they think it's good.
Because they don't they don'tknow better yet. God's working
on it. Boyd, then, is going toview any violence that we see,
portraying portraying Goddirectly as violent, or saying
that God told the Israelites tobe violent.
Boyd is going to say, nope.Those those authors, you know,

(19:00):
they they don't have the fullpicture yet. They're getting
those things wrong. And thereason that we know that they're
getting those things wrong isbecause Jesus said, look, I'm
the image, the true image ofGod. You see me, you see the
Father, this is what God's like.
And, when we, when we take thecross and we look at everything

(19:22):
else in the Bible, in the OldTestament, which is dim Hebrews
says the Old Testament is dim,and now that we have Christ,
He's our lens. So, when we lookthrough the lens of Christ,
that's what helps us todetermine where the Old
Testament authors are errant.And, if you shine the lens of
Christ, or if you put the lensof Christ over a part of the Old

(19:43):
Testament, and it doesn't looklike Christ, then that part is
errant. And the glory in that,you know, some people are going
to be kind of worried that,well, if if there are errors,
how do I how do I ever knowwhat's right? Well, because of
Christ.
Right? Christ is the lens. And,the glory in that is that God
works through flawedindividuals. And, when we put

(20:06):
the whole case together, thewhole Bible together, and we see
the picture of where God bringsHis people, and and how God
unravels the story, it's justglorious that God could bring a
violent, a violent ancient NearEast people, become a people of
absolute peace, even peace toenemies. And, I I'm sure,

(20:30):
especially for anyconservatives, like me, this
this whole inerrancy thing isgoing to be a a really big hang
up.
And that's okay. Right? We weoffered another view that would
would fit fit more for the theconservatives. But I do wanna
help you to try to be a littlebit more gracious to those who

(20:52):
do believe in errancy, that theBible is errant. I wanna help
you to understand how we canstill fellowship with them, and
how they can they can be holdingto to a very high view of
scripture, which I think Boyddoes, even though they believe
in an errant scripture.
And I'll start off by sayingthat the reason I think we
should be so gracious isbecause, really, all

(21:14):
conservatives do believe thatthe Bible is an error, at least
in a particular way. So, webelieve that God has a perfect
plan. Right? God, from thebeginning, knows how the world's
gonna end, how the world's gonnashape up, and He has an
absolutely perfect plan. Yet,God works through evil, or that

(21:35):
errant.
Right? Evil is an error. Heworks through errant humans to
accomplish His perfect plan. Wesee this with Joseph. Right?
The brothers intended Joseph'sslavery for evil. It was a bad
act. It was an error. It was notsomething that God would do,
that God would want. It is bad.

(21:55):
Yet, God intended it for good.Jesus, who crucified Jesus,
well, wicked men put Him on thecross. But, it was plan of God.
Romans 8 tells us that allthings work together for good.
And we we all believe that Godhas this inerrant or or, this

(22:17):
infallible plan.
Right? This plan that willsucceed, this overarching,
ultimate, it it will be good. Itit, evil will be resolved. It
will be good. It doesn't matterwhat people do.
God will succeed. And so Goduses error all the time. He uses
errancy all the time. You canlook at just time and time

(22:40):
again, evil things happen. God'speople do evil things, but God's
plan is not thwarted.
It's perfect. In Boyd's view,that the Bible is infallible but
not inerrant, simply applies thesame concepts to God's plan for
His infallible message. So Godhas a particular message, a
particular plan that He wants toaccomplish with His message. And

(23:03):
God will get His message across,and that message will work, and
it will be readable, and it willbe the way that He wants it.
But, that doesn't mean in itthere will not be any errors.
The presence of errors in in aplan or in a work does not
negate the whole work, but itcan actually work to amplify the

(23:25):
glory of God who is able toaccomplish His perfect plan
through human errancy, humanevil. And I know that that the
reason I have struggled withwith being gracious to to those
who claim that the Bible iserrant, is because it always
seems to me that I lose a lot ofconfidence in the Bible if I

(23:48):
think that there are errors. Howdo I know where the errors are?
Or, if they say this one thingabout God, and it is true, and
this other thing, and it's nottrue, how do I know? How do I
know it's not all untrue?
And I really do understand that.But at the same time, nobody
believes we have an inerrantBible today, because only the

(24:11):
original manuscripts were wereinerrant. So we're we're already
dealing with this idea of oferrancy anyway. We already
believe in errancy and God'sGod's plan and the people in
God's plan because we believethat there's evil that happens,
yet God brings His His goodwillout of it. We know that we have
the lens of Christ, and readingthe Bible shouldn't just be a a

(24:35):
manual where we just readeverything verbatim and don't
think about it.
But, understanding that that Godused people like us who are
errant, and trying to put thelens of Christ over it to try to
figure out what's right andwhat's not. And then, at the
same time, seeing how howgracious God was to those errant

(24:58):
people can be encouraging to us.So, whether or not you agree
with Boyd, I think we can we canstill be gracious to him and
others like him, because they'renot throwing the Bible out. They
just have a way of understandinghow everything has has
unraveled, and the way that Godis able to use His sovereignty

(25:19):
to control His plan and Hismessage. So in the end, what are
the the positives of adoptingthis view?
Why might you consider adoptingthis view over the other one
laid out in the previousepisode? Well, first of all, it
really helps with a consistent,immutable God. If Jesus is the
true image of God, and He comes,and He's super peaceful, and

(25:40):
loves enemies, and lays down Hislife, and in the Old Testament,
He seems pretty pretty wrathful.That makes it, that makes it
really difficult to argue thatwe truly do have the same God.
It makes it a lot lesspalatable.
2nd, adopting this view helps usto avoid some really problematic

(26:02):
passages. And, and Boyd pointsout some of these problematic
passages, like in some of theprophets where it says that, you
know, God just gets so angrythat He comes in and He's gonna
destroy the just along with theunjust. It's like, really? God
God is so angry that He can'tcontrol Himself, and He's gonna
come in, and He doesn't care ifyou're innocent or not. He's

(26:22):
just gonna wipe you off the faceof the Earth.
That's I don't know. That'sthat's hard to that's hard to
handle when you when you seeother passages where, one of the
7 deadly sins where, like, feetthat are quick to shed blood or,
where where if you shed theblood of innocence. And, okay,
yeah, everybody's guilty in thesense that, we're all sinners.

(26:46):
But how could God ever prescribesomebody, not kill innocents if
you're gonna try to argue thatGod can kill anybody because
nobody's innocent. Well, thenthe passages where God is is
saying, hey, don't killinnocents, wouldn't work because
nobody's innocent.
No. God God is saying in thesepassages in in the prophets that

(27:07):
he's gonna kill innocent peoplebecause he's just so angry. And
there are there are all kinds ofpassages. You'll have to read
Boyd's book. But you can avoidthose problematic passages if if
you say, hey, look.
The prophets, they get they geta lot of things right. But,
look, when they're talking aboutthis violence and the way God's
going to deal with, withjudgment, they miss some things.

(27:29):
God's wrath is withdrawal ofprotection. There might be some
plagues that come, somethinglike that. But God is is long
suffering, not willing for anyto perish, and when He does
withdraw, does it sorrowfully.
And He's He's not gonna come andjust slaughter innocent people,
and He's not gonna take glory inthat. In the end, whether you

(27:52):
agree with Boyd or not, andwhether you agree with with
Mackie on the first part, Ithink that it's something that
you really have to deal with.Boyd's book is is fantastic, and
Mackie's, Mackie's work isamazing, but especially this
podcast on the wrath of God isis very interesting. And I think

(28:13):
it's something that that notmany people, in my circles at
least, really deal with. And,they just kind of dismiss it as,
oh, those liberals who believethat the Bible is errant.
And that's not what you gethere. You get people who are
really wrestling throughscripture, who are trying to
make sense of it, who aren'ttrying to ignore problems, but

(28:33):
trying to deal with them. And,and I think we need to do the
same if we disagree with them.We need to deal with that work,
and we need to deal with theproblems that they bring up, for
the opposing side. Anyway,that's all for now.
To peace, because I'm apacifist, and when I say it, I
mean it.

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(10) S1E10 Rebuttal: Violence in the Bible Disproves Nonviolence #2

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