Unapologetic - Francis Spufford

This is an utterly remarkable book. Here's part of Spufford's explanation of what the book is for:

You can read any number of defences of Christian ideas. This, however, is a defence of Christian emotions – of their intelligibility, of their grown-up dignity. The book is called Unapologetic because it isn't giving an 'apologia', the technical term for a defence of the ideas.

And also because I'm not sorry.

Spufford is a novelist and lecturer in creative writing, and it shows. The book is incredibly well written and saturated in knowing references to modern highbrow culture – not in a showing-off sort of way, but in a way that shows utter familiarity with the Guardian-reading arts scene and much prefers knowing allusions to quotes or references.

He says he seeks to be utterly honest, and that shows too, in a kind of fearless way. He isn't afraid to describe God as a “sky fairy” in a way that gently takes the mick out of those who do, or to explain where his ideas diverge from either popular orthodoxy or Christian orthodoxy (of which more later). It isn't a book of tightly-argued logic; it's a description of how his emotions work as a Christian, written in complete non-Christianese.

Spufford's explanation of sin is just about the best I've ever read for the non-Christian reader. Some of his phrases - “Human Propensity to F*** things Up” (or HptFtU) for sin, or “International League of the Guilty” for church are brilliant, and there are some important ideas he's clearly got a better grip of than many Christian writers, if you aren't offended by the language (and that's only coarse-Anglo Saxonisms, not swearing).

There are some significant weaknesses though. I think the root one is that the church Spufford goes to doesn't seem to believe in the verbal inspiration of Scripture – I'd guess it's fairly liberal catholic C of E. So while Spufford affirms the physical resurrection of Jesus, he's unsure about eternal life for the rest of us, and doesn't believe in Hell. I'd love to sit down and have a chat with him about that – I suspect that the kind of hell he doesn't believe in is a kind I don't believe in either.

The same problem shines through in a number of other areas. There isn't really the idea of a propositional grounding for ethics, his take on the cross seems to be vaguely Girardian. Perplexingly in a book about emotions, the Holy Spirit doesn't get a look in and there isn't really a sense of the exciting growth in experience and knowledge of the love of Christ that you get in Eph 3:14-21.

I'd love to chat to him. On the basis of this book, he's clearly a Christian; he's got a wonderful way with words, a great sense of humour and such a clear understanding of the nature of sin. But there's so much more which God has for those who love him, and I can't help feeling he's missing out on it.

Oh, and whether you're a Christian wanting a fresh look at things, or a non-Christian wanting to understand why Christianity makes sense, as long as you're willing to engage with something you'll disagree with, this book is a great read.

Did the "Carol Service" Census Really Happen?

If you ask an educated atheist to show that the events described in the New Testament didn't really happen, the number one place they pick is the "carol service" census described in Luke 2.

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
Luke 2:1-5, NIV

Bock identifies five problems people cite when it comes to this passage.

1. There was no known empire-wide census under Augustus
2. No Roman census would have required Joseph to go to Bethlehem to register
3. Israel under Herod wasn't officially part of the Roman Empire until Herod died in 4BC
4. Josephus wrote that the first Roman census was under Quirinius in AD6, and that caused a revolt
5. Quirinius wasn't governor of Syria until 10 years after Herod died. Herod died in 4BC, Quirinius became governor of Syria in AD6.

(It's worth noting in passing that pretty much everyone agrees Jesus was born in 5 or 6 BC - the chap who invented the BC/AD dating system guessed a date for Jesus' birth and got it close, but a few years out).

Some Answers...

Here are some answers to those problems, again adapted from Bock...

1) The Romans liked doing censuses because they liked taxing people. We know there was ongoing census activity across the Roman Empire at the time of Herod.

3) We also know that vassal kings (like Herod) did censuses too when Rome told them to. There's even evidence that Jews under Herod were paying Roman taxes (and hence had been censused).

If there was a census for Roman taxation and at Roman command under Herod, it makes sense that...

2 & 4) If Herod did a census (before 4BC), he might have done it Jewish-style rather than Roman-style. A Jewish-style census could well involve going to ancestral towns, especially if Joseph owned land in Bethlehem as he might well do if descended from David. Jewish land ownership was tied to who your ancestors were. A Jewish-style census wouldn't have caused riots like the Roman-style one in AD6 and so is less likely to be mentioned by Josephus, who is the only non-Biblical historian describing Palestine in that period.

It's also clear that the census Luke is talking about isn't the one in AD6. For example, a census after 4BC wouldn't have required Joseph to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem - after 4BC they were in different provinces. Luke also knows about the AD6 census - he mentions it and the rebellion in Acts 5:37.

So what about Quirinius? Luke 2:2 reads "This was the first census that took place whilea Quirinius was governor of Syria." But the NIV has a footnote saying “Or this census took place before...” The word in question is πρωτος (protos) - dictionaries define it as “first, before, greatest”. So it could be talking about the census BEFORE the one where Quirinius was governor of Syria (the one in AD6 which caused all the trouble). We've got the same issue in English with the word "prototype", which is from πρωτος. Was the prototype of the Jaguar XF the first one, or was it something they made before they made the XF?

Literally, the verse reads “this was the first census of Quirinius, governor of Syria.” Qurinius may well have been asked to administer the census by Herod, even though he wasn't governor of Syria yet. In the same way, we might say "President George W Bush was a notorious drunkard as a young man", even though he wasn't president when he was a young man.

In conclusion, it looks like the difficulties with these verses might well cancel out. There isn't enough historical evidence to say "these verses are definitely right", but there isn't enough evidence to say they're definitely wrong either. That's one of the problems with ancient history - we often don't have enough evidence to check whether written accounts are true or not. On the other hand, we do have that evidence to check lots of other things that Luke wrote, and he gets it right time after time, so chances are he's right this time too.

Incidentally, if this is the best the sceptics can do when it comes to attacking the reliability of the New Testament, what does that say about the rest of their arguments?

On Jehovah's Witnesses

We've got lots to learn from the Jehovah's Witnesses. One important thing we can learn is how easy it is to be sincerely wrong, and then misinterpret utterly obvious evidence in the light of your initial wrong conclusions.

JWs believe that God should usually be referred to as "Jehovah". This despite the fact it's a combination of a dodgy transliteration of the consonants of one Hebrew word ("YHWH" = God's name in Hebrew) into English via Latin combined with the vowels of another Hebrew word ("Adonay" = Lord). They also claim that Jesus wasn't God. This leads them into significant problems when it comes to the New Testament, for the following reasons:

• Jesus almost always addresses God as "Father". He never addresses God as "Jehovah". When he teaches his disciples to pray, he teaches them to say "Our Father".
• The New Testament was written in Greek; the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. YHWH, which is what "Jehovah" is trying to represent, is a Hebrew word. Greek doesn't have an H or a W, and it doesn't really have a Y either, or a J or V for that matter. Hence it would be kind of tricky to say either YHWH or Jehovah if you only spoke Greek.
• The New Testament follows the convention of the standard Greek translation of the Old Testament and translates YHWH as kurios (Lord). While in a few cases in the NT kurios means "master", in most cases it refers to God. Most English Bible translations follow this convention as well - they translate YHWH as "LORD" and adonay or kurios as "Lord".
• The standard confession of faith in the New Testament is "Jesus is Lord" - Jesus is kurios, which can pretty clearly be understood to be claiming Jesus as God.

That all adds together to make things look pretty bleak for the JWs. However, they have a cunning theory to deal with this. They claim that when the NT was originally written, the authors included a lot of YHWHs (using Hebrew lettering of course), and that they were then expunged and replaced with kurios at the Council of Nicea, which then decided to announce that Jesus was God when up until that point the Bible had been clear he wasn't.

There are all kinds of problems with this theory. Notably, we've got a lot of writings from before the Council of Nicea where leaders in the church claim that the Bible is clear that Jesus was God. We've also got a lot of partial New Testament manuscripts from before the Council of Nicea, when there were meant to be all these YHWHs in the text, and they just aren't there. The JWs make claims that are testable on the basis of manuscript evidence, and those claims are demonstrably false.

The JWs of course don't worry about this much. Their Bible translator (conveniently anonymous) decided for himself which "Lord" was a YHWH and which wasn't, and he did so on the basis of their theology. So their theology claims to be entirely based on their translation of the Bible, but their translation was badly done in order that it could give that theology. I wonder if their Bible translators worry that they're being dishonest.

If I held opinions about a field of academic study that not one respectable scholar in that field agreed with, it would worry me. It worries me that it doesn't worry the Jehovah's Witnesses I chat to. I take it their belief is based on their membership in the group rather than reason and evidence...

How Can We Know God?

There are four possible answers to that question.

Some people claim that great thinkers – Plato, Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Dawkins and so on can give us insight into God and what he is like. Some of what they say is right, some of what they say isn't, but as mere mortals we can never fully understand God, so whatever we say will always be incomplete. Because of this, the wiser followers of great thinkers are always open to add new ideas into what they already believe.

Others claim that we can know God because he has been revealed, often by angels, visions and so on to specific prophets – particular people in history like Moses, Mohammed or Joseph Smith. But when we look at what those prophets say, they agree on some important ideas like God being powerful, but disagree dramatically on others, like who God's chosen people are.

It therefore seems that the wisest course is agnosticism - the belief that we just can't know; we don't have enough information to make a good decision. That's pretty much David Mitchell's view...

But the apostle John tells us another way.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.
1 John 1:1-3

John makes the startling and incredible claim that he can speak about the ultimate reality – the one from the beginning, the one who is eternal life - because he has known him not as an abstract concept or a vision or a trance, but as a man he had seen and touched and eaten with and followed.

The incredible claim at the heart of Christianity is that the God who made everything became a man – Jesus Christ – so that we could know him. And it is attested to by eye witnesses – people like Matthew who knew Jesus, like John and Peter who were close friends with him, like Luke the Greek historian who researched carefully and even Jesus' mum Mary became convinced that he was god. Not just a god in some kind of trendy manifestation of the spiritual, but the one true God, uniquely become human.

How good do you have to be to convince your best friends and even your mum that you are God? Even when they've watched you die?

Brian couldn't do it in Monty Python's mostly magnificent satire, because his mum knew that he wasn't the Messiah; he was a very naughty boy.

The Roman Emperor Caligula couldn't do it, even though he tried to convince everyone he was a god. His own bodyguard assassinated him.

But Jesus convinced his friends and family that he really was God, so much so that they travelled around the world and were willing to give their own lives to say that he really is and that therefore we can know God as he reveals himself to us in Jesus.

Sword and Scimitar - Simon Scarrow

I'm usually quite a fan of violent historical fiction, of which Simon Scarrow is one of the leading exponents. This book undoubtedly gets two out of those three very well.

It's set around the siege of Malta in 1565, which was one of the key battles between the Ottoman Turks and the European powers. It was also one of the most viciously fought battles in history; but it's the history that lets Scarrow down badly.

The fictional side of it is done well – it's grippingly written and I wanted to keep on reading even though the eventual outcome of the battle is obvious from the fact that Europe did not turn Muslim in the late 1500s and Malta's capital city shares a name with the commander of the defending garrison. Yes, there's very little characterisation, but if you want historical fiction with romances and more than one developed character, read Philippa Gregory or Hilary Mantel rather than Simon Scarrow or Bernard Cornwell.

I expect he's probably right on most of the military details, including one scene which was almost too much even for me with the level of violence (think a few armoured Turks versus a horde of women and children). If anything, the violence is overdone – I'm pretty sure that being shot with a primitive musket does not make someone's “head explode like an overripe watermelon”. I'm willing to believe that the Turks deliberately desecrated one of the altars by killing a knight on it; I'm less willing to believe they'd have been ordered to do that with the line “Slaughter him like a pig!” Muslims don't kill pigs at all; still less sacrifice them on altars.

What really got on my nerves was the main character's thought life. The book includes some Q&A with Scarrow at the back – here's an extract.

Authors want to reproduce the era they are depicting with the greatest possible fidelity. That is part of the unwritten contract with the reader and it is why we spend so much time on research to get the details (large and small) correct. Readers, myself included, like to be immersed in the everyday apparatus of the past.

... By modern standards our ancestors would be considered a thoroughly cruel, sexist, racist and religiously fanatic bunch and we would find it pretty tough to empathise with them, let alone actually like them.

Isn't that therefore the job of the historical fiction writer – to help us to understand and empathise with characters (real or fictional) from the past? It's what Mantel does so well. It's what Richard Harris does in his Julius Caesar series. Past people are still people, and a good historical writer helps us feel that we understand them better.

Instead of that, Scarrow imports a very modern (and uninformed) set of thoughts. So the main character, Sir Thomas Barrett, spends much of the book thinking how silly religion is and how it causes lots of wars. Granted, most of the wars in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s had religious motives. But the 1300s and 1400s were no less bloody, and those wars (e.g. War of the Roses, Hundred Years War) tended to be to do with dynastic succession. To a knight in 1565, wars in Europe being caused by religion would be a new idea. By the 1700s and 1800s, people by and large didn't care about religion as much, and there were no fewer wars – they just tended to be about empire rather than religion. The fact is that wars are caused by people, and people find excuses for their wars, whether to do with dynasty, religion, empire, politics or whatever.

All in all, not as good as I was hoping. Not one of his best, and anachronistically anti-Christian.

Unbelievable - the Slaughter of the Amalekites

As you may have noticed, I've been blogging quite a bit about the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15. That's because I've been doing a bit of work on them because I'm in a debate on the radio tomorrow - on Justin Brierley's show Unbelievable. It's at 2:30pm, on Premier Christian Radio.

For those who are interested in reading a bit more about the Amalekites and where I'm at with understanding them at the moment, I've created a dedicated page to pull together stuff I've written on the issue.

God and Suffering talk by Glen Scrivener

Review - Gunning for God by John Lennox

I recently finished reading Gunning for God - why the new atheists are missing the target by John Lennox. Lennox has already written quite a bit on the scientific arguments against Christianity - notably in God's Undertaker. So in Gunning for God, Lennox tackles the non-scientific arguments - "Is Religion Poisonous?", "Can we be Good Without God?" and so on.

John Lennox spends a lot of time thinking about and working on these questions, and it really comes across. He understands the arguments in detail, how they fit into the wider context of Western history and philosophy and so on. He's got the depth of knowledge and reading that a non-expert just couldn't develop without a lot of work.

I don't necessarily agree with him on everything though. For example, when discussing morality, he points out that atheists do not have a consistent basis for absolute morality, and hence they cannot claim that Christianity is immoral. However, I don't think that's quite true. It is still possible to claim that Christianity is internally inconsistent by judging it by its own morality even if one struggles with the problem of morality oneself. The counter to that argument is partly to demonstrate the internal consistency of the Christian worldview and partly to point out that there isn't any consistent alternative morality proposed, but I don't think the argument is quite as strong as Lennox tries to make it. That aside, it's still a very good handling of a difficult question.

Lennox isn't just reactive though - he spends a while thinking about related questions such as "Is Atheism Poisonous?" and "Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?" I've read quite a few books dealing with the arguments for and against God, and this is one of the best. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to understand the area in more detail, whether they are a committed Christian looking to explain their faith more clearly or a non-Christian wanting to find out the truth.

Pablo Martinez - Praying with the Grain

I've read quite a few books on prayer, and this is one of the most unusual. It has five chapters and a Q&A section, and maybe it's best to comment on them individually.

Chapter 1 - Different Prayers for Different People. Martinez looks at basic Jungian typology - thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition, and then applies it to what styles and types of prayer suit each. He takes care to say that we should work on the areas we aren't so good on as well as enjoying the areas that we are more comfortable with. Pretty good.

Chapter 2 - Overcoming Difficulties. He goes through a list of common reasons people find it difficult to pray - "God feels so distant" and so on, and deals with them with a lot of pastoral wisdom coming from his decades as a counsellor and psychiatrist. Stunningly good.

Chapter 3 - The Therapeutic Value of Prayer. The focus here is on how prayer can be key for dealing with various psychiatric difficulties (guilt, depression, etc) and for good mental health. Very good.

Q&A on Prayer - Some questions he's obviously been asked - answers are good and psychologically insightful.

Chapter 4 - Prayer: Psychological Illusion? This is the best treatment I've read of the apologetics question as to whether prayer is a psychological illusion. The answer is no...

Chapter 5 - Are All Prayers Alike? Martinez discusses the question of the relationship between Christian prayer, Christian meditation, Eastern meditation, Platonic ecstasy and magic. Helpful.

I guess the unifying theme between all these chapters is something like "Things Dr Martinez has learnt about prayer in many years of being a Christian, a counsellor and a psychiatrist." An odd collection, but one well worth reading, if only for chapter 2. Definitely worth keeping on the shelf to refer to in the future.

Jesus and Canaanite Genocide - Part 4

4. How can the God of Joshua be the God of Jesus?

And so we get back to the key question – how can the God of Joshua also be the God of Jesus? A few thoughts.

• Jesus is the one who takes the punishment that we deserve so that we don't suffer the same fate as the Canaanites. He is the solution to the problem of how there can be any hope for those who commit treason against the rightful and righteous rule of God. And he solves it by being God and bearing God's own righteous anger against our sin.
• Some people say that God could not order the destruction of the Canaanites. But if that is so, why did Jesus need to die? If the punishment that we all deserve for our sin was any less than death, God need not have paid that price for us. But he did.
• What happened with the Canaanites shows us where the natural trajectory of our lives leads. Jesus offers us transformation that leads away from cosmic treason and judgement and into following the Prince of Peace.
• Jesus is the one who will ultimately judge the world. He will return in glory to judge the living and dead, as the Creed says. Longman points out that those who have a problem with the Canaanite genocide are likely to have far more of a problem with the Last Judgement. But as the last judgement is something carried out by Jesus, the problem is not in reconciling the God of Joshua with the God of Jesus, but reconciling Christ as Saviour and Christ as Judge.
• Christ can be Judge precisely because he is also Saviour. He has offered us salvation; he has paid the immense price for that salvation. And so if we reject that salvation, we have offended him. The God most of the Canaanites rejected is the same God who died to redeem the few who turned to him, and is the same God who judged them for their rejection of his offer of salvation.

[intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4]

Jesus and Canaanite Genocide - Part 3

3. How do we know we aren't going to be called to something like that today?

The key point in answering this question is made in the book by Gard. He points out that the God's people today – the church – are a theological entity, not a political one. There isn't a country now that is “God's country” more than another, so wars like the one in Joshua can't happen today.

This means, among other things, that fighting for God isn't physical fighting any more. Longman points to Ephesians 6.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.
(Ephesians 6:10-20, NIV)

Christian warfare is fought by praying, with weapons like truth, faith, righteousness and God's Word. It isn't about physical political battles any more, because God's people are a spiritual unity rather than a political one and our enemies are spiritual rather than physical.

And though there are battles in the book of Revelation, God's people don't fight them. When they win, they do so by speaking about Jesus, and not running away from death (Rev 12:11). The description of the great final battle is of a huge army coming against God's people to fight against them, “but fire came down from heaven and devoured them.” (Rev 20:9). God's people don't have to fight.

There's a different debate here about whether it's appropriate for Christians to serve in the armed forces. That's not the question here – the point is that “holy war” is no longer fought with the weapons of this world, because God's kingdom is not of this world.

[intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4]

Jesus and Canaanite Genocide - Part 2

2. Why Isn't It Really Genocide?

The so-called “Canannite Genocide” mostly takes place in the book of Joshua. I'd like to look at three short stories from the book of Joshua to show that not everything is as we might expect.

a) The Story of Rahab

Rahab is a Canaanite prostitute, who starts out living in Jericho. Right at the start of the conquest, before anyone dies, Joshua sends some spies out to investigate the land. They comes to Jericho, and meet Rahab, but are spotted. In one of the most remarkable turnarounds in the Bible, Rahab then lies to her own people to protect the Israelite spies, then says this:

“I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction. And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that, as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's house, and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.” (Joshua 2:9-13, ESV)

The spies escape; Jericho is destroyed; Rahab and her family are saved.

There are several remarkable things about this as we consider the Canaanite genocide.

• Rahab was a Canaanite, but she decided to side with the Israelites.
• She is spared. No-one even questions whether it was wrong to make an agreement with her or whether they should go back on it (both arguments are used later with the Gibeonites).
• God approves of her being spared. As we will see in the second story, God punishes all of Israel because Achan kept some of the plunder from Jericho, but he does not mention Rahab and her family being spared as a problem at all.
• Rahab is not subsequently treated as a Canaanite. According to Matthew 1:5, she is the mother of Boaz and hence an ancestor of both David and Jesus. None of the laws against intermarriage apply to her (e.g. Deut 7:3); none of the laws against her descendants being allowed into the temple apply to her. The same is true of her Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth. Why not? I suggest it is because her profession of faith in the God of the Israelites means that she is no longer treated as a foreigner but as one of God's people.

What can we therefore learn about the “Canaanite Genocide”? Simply this – it's about punishment and idolatry. If people repent and decide to worship the true God, they can be spared. It might mean treason against their own people – it does for Rahab - but it means loyalty to the higher and more legitimate authority of God.

b) The Story of Achan

Achan stands in stark contrast to Rahab. She was the Canaanite who became part of God's people; he was the Israelite who was excluded from God's people and suffered the same fate as the Canaanites. We read about him in Joshua 7.

When Jericho was destroyed, the Israelites were not allowed to take any of the plunder for themselves – it was all to be destroyed or put into God's treasury. But Achan stole some and hid it under his tent. As a result, God was angry with Israel and they lost their next battle. Achan's actions come to light, and he is treated the same way as Jericho was (Josh 7:15 c.f. Josh 6:24).

What do we learn from this?

• The division between those whom God destroys and those whom God spares is not ethnic. It is to do with whether or not they serve him. So rebellious Israelites are put outside, and obedient Canaanites are included. Echoes of Romans 11...

c) The Story of the Gibeonites

After the next battle, at Ai, Joshua has some more visitors. These visitors have a confession of faith that sounds like Rahab's, and they claim not to be Canaanites.

From a very distant country your servants have come, because of the name of the LORD your God. For we have heard a report of him, and all that he did in Egypt, and all that he did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon the king of Heshbon, and to Og king of Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth. (Joshua 9:9-10, ESV)

Joshua doesn't check it out with God, but makes peace with them. Of course, it turns out that they are actually from a nearby city. Squabbling ensues, but the Gibeonites join the list of Canaanites who are safe.

On the rare occasions when this passage is preached, it is usually applied by pointing out Joshua's foolishness in not asking God before signing the treaty. And that is there, but what is more striking to me is the Gibeonites' cunning in wanting to be part of God's people. It's a great illustration of Matthew 11:12. This is thrown into even clearer focus a couple of chapters later when the prophetic author of Joshua comments on the other Canaanites.

There was not a city that made peace with the people of Israel except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. They took them all in battle. For it was the LORD's doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the LORD commanded Moses. (Joshua 11:19-20, ESV)

In the Bible, when God hardens people's hearts, it always describes the same process as them hardening their own hearts against him. The Canaanites harden their own hearts, but God is sovereign over it and uses their hard-hearted rejection of him to bring them to destruction.

But the crucial implication of that passage is that God approved of the Gibeonites trying to avoid destruction. It was the right thing for them to do, and stemmed from hearts that hadn't been hardened. Despite their lies, it seems that they really believed what they said about God. When Joshua confronts them with their lies, they reply:

“Because it was told to your servants for a certainty that the LORD your God had commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you--so we feared greatly for our lives because of you and did this thing. And now, behold, we are in your hand. Whatever seems good and right in your sight to do to us, do it.”

So he did this to them and delivered them out of the hand of the people of Israel, and they did not kill them. But Joshua made them that day cutters of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the LORD, to this day, in the place that he should choose.

(Joshua 9:24-27, ESV)

What can we learn from the Gibeonites?

• Where the Canaanites were not hard-hearted towards God, it was quite possible for them to remain in the land and escape destruction. All that they needed to do was strive for it and be willing to serve God rather than their idols.

Three short stories set during the conquest of Canaan, and each of them radically changes our perspective on what happened.

[intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4]

Jesus and Canaanite Genocide - Introduction

I recently finished reading Show Them No Mercy – Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide in the excellent Counterpoints series (Zondervan, 2003). For anyone not familiar with the series, they find a controversial topic – in this case the Canaanite genocide partially carried out in the book of Joshua – and ask 4±1 scholars to write an essay on it. The scholars are selected because of the fact they hold differing views on the topic, and they get a chance to write responses to each others' essays as well. The result is a book that does a good job of presenting the different points of view on a difficult topic, which can be very useful as a starting point either for understanding the debate or for formulating one's own views.

Show Them No Mercy is a slightly unusual volume in the series because three of the four scholars end up in substantial agreement with each other, with only C.S. Cowles dissenting. Cowles kicks off the book with an essay where he argues that “love as it is revealed by God in Christ [should be] our criterion for interpreting Scripture”1. The difficult question is then this “Given that God has revealed himself supremely in the person of Jesus Christ, what does it mean for Scripture to record him commanding genocide in the case of the Canaanites?” Having raised the issue well, Cowles doesn't answer it anywhere near as convincingly. He tries a fusion of Origenistic allegorical interpretation and arguing that the Biblical authors' understanding of the nature of God develops with time, essentially saying “God didn't command it; God wouldn't command it; but Moses, Joshua and so on thought that he did because they didn't know God as well as we do now.”

Cowles' problem is that his understanding of Scripture doesn't hold together. He keeps appealing to Jesus, but ignores Jesus' understanding of the Old Testament passages as literal, and especially his claim that they are fundamentally about him (e.g. Luke 24:27). He ends up ignoring large swathes of the Bible (including Revelation and most of the OT) because they don't fit with his picture of what God is like. The three other authors rightly take him to task for this, and go on to make some very good and important points about how God could permit and even command the Canaanite genocide. And Cowles keeps coming back, saying “What about Jesus? Isn't Christianity meant to be centred on the cross?” He never really gets to grips with his own understanding of Scripture but I don't think the others ever really get to grips with his main point either. How can the God of Joshua be the God of Jesus?

Over the next few days, I'm going to try to post some of my thoughts about God and the Canaanite genocide. They lean massively on the authors of Show Them No Mercy, especially Tremper Longman III, but I'm adding some bits of my own thought too. I'm aiming to answer the following questions:

1. How can God's instructions about the Canaanites possibly be justified?
2. Why isn't it really genocide?
3. How do we know we aren't going to be called to something like that today?
4. How can the God of Joshua be the God of Jesus?

[intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4]

Quirinius and the Census

I did a talk today on "Has History Disproved Christmas?" The answer, of course, was "No!" But here are a few of my notes about the census problem.

1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.
Luke 2:1-5, NIV 2010

Bock identifies five problems people cite when it comes to this passage.

1. There was no known empire-wide census under Augustus
2. No Roman census would have required Joseph to go to Bethlehem to register
3. Israel under Herod wasn't officially part of the Roman Empire until Herod died in 4BC
4. Josephus wrote that the first Roman census was under Quirinius in AD6, and that caused a revolt
5. Quirinius wasn't governor of Syria until 10 years after Herod died. Herod died in 4BC, Quirinius became governor of Syria in AD6.

Here are some answers to those problems, adapted from Bock...

1) The Romans liked doing censuses because they liked taxing people. We know there was ongoing census activity across the Roman Empire at the time of Herod.

3) We also know that vassal kings (like Herod) did censuses too when Rome told them to. There's even evidence that Jews under Herod were paying Roman taxes (and hence had been censused).

If there was a census for Roman taxation and at Roman command under Herod, it makes sense that...

2 & 4) If Herod did a census (before 4BC), he might have done it Jewish-style rather than Roman-style. A Jewish-style census could well involve going to ancestral towns, especially if Joseph owned land in Bethlehem as he might well do if descended from David. A Jewish-style census wouldn't have caused riots like the Roman-style one in AD6 and so is less likely to be mentioned by Josephus, who is the only non-Biblical historian describing Palestine in that period.

It's also clear that the census Luke is talking about isn't the one in AD6. For example, a census after 4BC wouldn't have required Joseph to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem - after 4BC they were in different provinces. Luke also knows about the AD6 census - he mentions it and the rebellion in Acts 5:37.

So what about Quirinius? Luke 2:2 reads "This was the first census that took place whilea Quirinius was governor of Syria." But the 2010 NIV has a footnote saying “Or this census took place before...”

The word in question is πρωτος - dictionaries define it as “first, before, greatest”. So it could be talking about the census BEFORE the one where Quirinius was governor of Syria (the one in AD6 which caused all the trouble). We've got the same issue in English with the word "prototype", which is from πρωτος. Is the prototype of a new car before that car, or the first one?

Literally, the verse reads “this was the first census of Quirinius, governor of Syria.” Qurinius may well have been asked to administer the census by Herod, even though he wasn't governor of Syria yet. In the same way, we might say "President George W Bush was a notorious drunkard as a young man", even though he wasn't president when he was a young man.

In conclusion, these verses don't seem to provide good reason to doubt the historicity of Luke's account.

Has Science Disproved God?

Earlier today, I did a talk called "Has Science Disproved God?" at Apologetics in Manchester. It seemed to be very well received. You can find audio of the talk here, and the handout here.

Spurgeon - Lectures to My Students - Quotes on Preaching

Here are some more excellent quotes from Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students, this time on the subject of preachers and preaching, but also including evangelism and apologetics...

Painfully do I call to mind hearing one Sabbath evening a deliverance called a sermon, of which the theme was a clever enquiry as to whether an angel did actually descend, and stir the pool at Bethesda, or whether it was an intermitting spring, concerning which Jewish superstition had invented a legend. Dying men and women were assembled to hear the way of salvation, and they were put off with such vanity as this! They came for bread, and received a stone ; the sheep looked up to the shepherd, and were not fed.
p.79

Some ministers need to be told that they are of the same species as their hearers.
p.183

But if you are drawn into controversy, use very hard arguments and very soft words.
p.188

Is religion to be tabooed the best and noblest of all themes forbidden? If this be the rule of any society, we will not comply with it. If we cannot break it down, we will leave the society to itself, as men desert a house smitten with leprosy. We cannot consent to be gagged. There is no reason why we should be. We will go to no place where we cannot take our Master with us.
p.189

It is to be hoped that we shall never, in our ordinary talk, any more than in the pulpit, be looked upon as nice sort of persons, whose business it is to make things agreeable all round, and who never by any possibility cause uneasiness to any one, however ungodly their lives may be.
p.189

Atheists Saying Sensible Things

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said: “There are no Christians, as far as I know, blowing up buildings. I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I am not aware of any major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death. I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity, in so far as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse.”

Peter Tatchell, the human rights campaigner and one of the organisers of the Protest the Pope demonstration at Westminster Cathedral last weekend, came to the defence of a Christian street preacher who was fined £1,000 in Glasgow for saying that homosexuality was a sin.

Shawn Holes, a Baptist from America, was charged with “uttering homophobic remarks” in a breach of the peace that prosecutors said was “aggravated by religious prejudice”.

Mr Tatchell said: “The price of freedom of speech is that we sometimes have to put up with opinions that are objectionable and offensive. Just as people should have the right to criticise religion, people of faith should have the right to criticise homosexuality.”

All from here (HT: Anglican Mainstream - though don't bother reading it, as the rest of the article is rubbish).

Of course, I don't really think that Christianity is in decline in Britain. As far as I can remember, I have been part of a church that was shrinking only for a period of about 15 months, which was while the church I was a member of was between vicars.

What we are seeing is a decline (especially in cities) of the older culture which was massively more nominally Christian than the newer cultures are. We're seeing decline in churches that don't know how to do evangelism or be culturally relevant or that have lost confidence in the power of the gospel. We may well be seeing the death of the massive nominal fringe that churches have had for so long, and we're certainly seeing a decline in the influence of Christianity on mainstream culture. But I don't think any of that implies we're seeing a decline in Christianity per se.

Having said that, it's great to see Dawkins and Tatchell making so much sense.

Interfaith Dialogue

Is conversion a legitimate goal in dialogue? Yes. It is perfectly legitimate for believers who take seriously the exclusive claims of their religion to try to persuade others of the truth they proclaim. There is nothing wrong with hoping and even expecting that some people, having carefully examined these claims, will make a life-changing decision as a result of transparent and free dialogue. Unless we accept conversion as a possible outcome for dialogue, our claim to be tolerant remains unproven.
Chawkat Moucarry

From here.

The Liberal God and the Amalekites

I've been doing a bit more thinking about the whole question of passages like 1 Samuel 15, and what seems to be going on here is a fundamental clash of worldviews – a clash between two gods (or two sets of ideas about God).

On one hand, there is what I'll call the Liberal God. This is God as conceptualised by most of society today. He/she is in many ways similar to the Deist idea of God – she/he doesn't actually do much in terms of acting in objective ways in space-time history. But the idea actually relies more on the ideas of the early liberal theologians – this is still a god who cares about us and whom we can experiences of (though I've argued elsewhere that that probably requires a god who can and does act in an objective way in space-time history – though I guess that might not hold if it's also the god of Process Theology who isn't really a god at all). The Liberal God embodies the Spirit of the Age rather than the Holy Spirit – there isn't much conception of transcendent holiness, but rather a loving tolerance that covers everyone who doesn't deliberately cause harm or offence to others, regardless of their race, colour, creed, gender, sexual orientation, fetishes, etc. The Liberal God's first commandment is to be true to yourself and to love yourself with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. The Liberal God would never command a genocide, and would certainly let good people (like most of us) into heaven.

On the other hand, there is the God of the Bible – i.e. God as the Bible depicts him. He is actually quite discomforting, and doesn't really seem to fit in comfortably to any human culture – he is far more accepting and loving than most human cultures have been, but at the same time he is holy and cannot stand sin. And he has a strange loyalty at times to some groups of people.

A fair few people think that actually these two “God”s are the same. So the Bible is seen as the story of the human encounter with the Liberal God, who gradually draws them from their original understanding of him as petty and rather like them, into the truer understanding of him/her as loving, generous, liberal and rather like Desmond Tutu. For these people, passages such as 1 Samuel 15 are relics of an earlier understanding of God.

[It's probably worth pointing out at this stage that actually that idea doesn't work. Revelation was probably one of the last books of the Bible to be written, and is pretty much like their idea of early stuff. And Ruth is pretty early, and is much more like their idea of later stuff. I don't think that way of thinking about how the Bible develops really works – the more conventional evangelical one fits the data much better.]

The question that passages such as 1 Samuel 15 make us face is which of these conceptions of God is the true one. And the way this is generally decided is which conception of God is morally better. And that's what I was trying to think about in my series of posts on 1 Samuel 15.

So which is better? A God who chooses to bless everyone in some vague nebulous way without ever using violence, or a God who chooses to bless the world in a concrete, real and self-sacrificial way through a specific group of people, and then acts to protect them when they are threatened? That's what I've been seeking to address in my posts on the Amalekites...

The Amalekite Genocide 4

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

We've been thinking about God's command in 1 Samuel 15 to kill the Amalekites. We've seen that the Amalekites were people who had set themselves in opposition to God's plan to bless the world; we've seen that the command gave plenty of scope for individual Amalekites to change their minds and escape from the attack. Now I want to look at the Amalekite genocide in the light of the cross.

Jesus is the True Israel

The first thing I want to note is that the theme of Israel as God's means of blessing the whole earth finds its fulfilment in Jesus. Jesus is where God reveals himself perfectly; Jesus is the one the nations stream to; he is the one who obeys God perfectly. Again and again, the gospels present Jesus as the True Israel. As Jesus says in Matthew 5:17

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.

And as such, Jesus is the one whom God defends, and the one whom he appoints as judge over the nations.

Jesus is made the True Amalek

As the Bible goes on, it becomes clear that the enmity to God and his plans which was so clear in the Amalekites is found in each individual person. We all try to resist God's plan, to reject our part in it and oppose Jesus' lordship. And the Bible calls that sin. But in one of the most shocking verses of the Bible, we read this.

God made him who had no sin [i.e. Jesus] to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV

Jesus became the personification of all opposition to God. He was made the true Amalek as well as the true Israel. He became the one who had to be killed so that God could bless the whole world. And he did that for us, for those who reject him and oppose him, so that we can know what it means to be part of God's true people.

That is the true and lasting significance of the sentence to destruction in 1 Samuel 15. It is the sentence that God himself in the person of Jesus chose to take on himself for us. Jesus becomes the person whom God destroys so that we can become the people whom God defends.