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...

Joseph

Some scholars like to claim that as few of the events described in the Bible actually happened. It isn't at all rare to find people who say that Biblical history starts at about the time of Hezekiah (2 Kings) or David (2 Samuel), and that the earlier stuff is all myth. There are even some people who claim that the history starts in Ezra.

Of course, I don't agree with them, and I think it's a very cavalier approach to history to ignore the only documents we have that describe much of the earlier history. But outside the Bible, there isn't much evidence either way for events before David - Israel wasn't settled then in a way that produces much in the way of archaeology. There's some from the time of Joshua, but that's contested because it isn't clear and could be made to fit half a dozen very different scenarios.

And then something like this comes along. They've found some coins in Egypt from the right sort of time which seem to refer to Joseph. That's Joseph the son of Jacob (as in Genesis) rather than Joseph the husband of Mary. If these are real, they blow massive amounts of liberal Biblical scholarship out of the water. I believe the previous record for the oldest Biblical character referred to in an archaeological inscription was David (c. 1000 BC), but that was from a while later referring to the kings of Jerusalem as "sons of David". If this is the same Joseph, it pushes it right back to about 1600BC...

The Phantom of the Opera

Here's some of the TV info blurb for the film of the Phantom of the Opera, as shown on Film4:

Joel Schumacher directs this darkly Gothic interpretation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical

Andrew Lloyd Webber's famous musical is, as the name suggests, about a phantom who lives in an opera house. The script requires a few murders and attempted murders and has several significant scenes set in a graveyard and abandoned caves under the opera house.

It contains lines like "Down once more to the dungeon of my dark despair / Down we plunge to the prison of my mind!"

And yet, somehow, the blurb suggests that it might be possible to produce an interpretation of Phantom that isn't darkly gothic!

Don't get me wrong, I think Phantom is ALW's best musical. It's probably my second favourite musical (after Les Mis). It's clever, and has some real feel-good moments. But it is dark, and it is gothic. Oh, and I enjoyed the stage version more than the film.

Always Going Deeper

Knowing God is the biggest adventure anyone can ever have.

Here is where Gregory of Nyssa makes his most noteworthy contribution to Christian theology: that the Christian life must first be defined by seeking God without end, and "that true satisfaction of the soul's desire consists in constantly going on with this quest and never ceasing in the ascent to God." This is a joyful conclusion, since it ensures that one can always progress in holiness because spiritual progress is one of infinite growth. For the Platonist, all change is regarded as a defect or loss; in Gregory's system, the process of changing may be redeemed by perpetual growth in the good. It is this sort of movement that describes our transformation "from one degree of glory to another" (2 Cor. 3:18, ESV). However much the Christian is transformed into the likeness of God, God remains ever beyond, so that the soul must always push forward in anticipation in this life and in the one to come.

Ancient writers like Gregory remind us that the door to joyful mystery must be opened. Knowledge, even the knowledge that comes from Scripture, is not undermined but humbled, as it is placed before the vast depths of God. Because God is eternal and infinite, there will never come a time when we've exhausted all that God has to give us; we'll never plumb the depths of the Almighty, but will always find ourselves going deeper in and higher up.

D.H. Williams, from here.

God Inside Out - Simon Ponsonby

I've recently finished reading God Inside Out by Simon Ponsonby. Apparently, someone who had read the book though it was so good that they bought a copy for every ordinand in the C of E. Very generous of them. I thought it was certainly good, but not good enough that I'd have bought a copy for all ordinands...

The book sets out to try to provide a Biblical and charismatic account of the person and work of the Spirit, and it does that pretty well. The way he handles, for example, the doctrine of Baptism in the Spirit is excellent. (He argues that the Pentecostal experience is right, but their theologising of it is wrong, and it isn't a "second blessing" of the kind they talk about.)

The one area Ponsonby really doesn't cover, and which I wish he had done, because it's something I think I disagree with a lot of charismatics on, is the question of having "more of the Spirit" and so on. I guess I'm just going to have to read his book on the topic - More.

Here are some good quotes.

If adoration and consecration are not the net result of our theological studies, either what we have studied is flawed, or we ourselves are blinded.
p.17

Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures.
Thomas Aquinas, quoted on p.196

The spiritual worship which is claimed demands a spiritual force which is not innate in man; to worship in spirit and truth is possible only through the Spirit of God
H.B Swete, quoted on p.303

Engagement

Sorry for the lack of posting recently. A large part of this is that I've been on holiday recently, and my lovely girlfriend has agreed to become my lovely fiancée, which I'm delighted about.

Here's a photo of us together.

I might post some more when I'm less snowed under with sermon prep...

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.

Christian Contemporary Music

When I was a teenager, I used to listen mainly to Christian Contemporary Music (CCM). That wasn't forced on me - it was my decision. The reason was that I found myself being too easily influenced by some of the lyrics in secular pop music, which I was only just beginning to get into when I gave up listening to it.

If I was now advising someone like I was then, I'd given them a copy of Desiring God by John Piper, a load of Matt Redman CDs and some U2. But I didn't really know about U2 and the cutting edge (pun intentional) of worship music at the time was Martin Smith and songs like "These are the days of Elijah" and "Do you feel the mountains tremble?" And while those songs have some merit (Days of Elijah has a great chorus), the verses are too, well, untrue, for me to get on well with them. So CCM it was, and even then I was pretty picky.

As a result of this, I got to know a lot of CCM before I knew much secular pop. Now that I listen to quite a bit more pop music, one thing has really struck me. An awful lot of the award-winning CCM artists, people I thought were really musically inventive and so on, ripped their best tunes off secular pop music. I don't think DC Talk or the Tribe did, but a lot of others certainly did.

Now, let's view this through the lens of the US Culture Wars. In the US, or so I understand, there are a significant number of people who only listen to Christian music, even to the point of rejecting secular pop. However, many of their heroes in the CCM scene are lifting their tunes from secular pop, which means that they themselves are listening to quite a lot of it. Hmmmmm....

The Amalekite Genocide 3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

So far, we have seen that the Amalekites were the nation that always opposed God's plan to bless the world. But even given that, it can still be difficult to see how the same God that loved his enemies so much that he died for them could command that the Amalekites could be wiped out in the way that he does in 1 Samuel 15.

The first place to start looking for an answer is in the passage itself...

In verse 5, Saul reaches the city of the Amalekites. But he doesn't attack immediately. Instead he sends a message to another tribe – the Kenites. According to Judges 4:11, the Kenites were the descendants of Moses' father-in-law, variously called Jethro and Hobab. Now here's an interesting contrast.

The first two groups of people that the Israelites meet after coming out of Egypt are the Amalekites in Exodus 17 and the Kenites (Jethro and his family) in Exodus 18. The Amalekites try to destroy Israel. Jethro and his family help Israel. They want in on God's blessing which is coming to the whole world, and they help Israel and worship the God of Israel.

So when Saul comes to fight against the Amalekites, the first thing he does is that he sends a message to the Kenites.

Then Saul said to the Kenites, "Go, depart; go down from among the Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them. For you showed kindness to all the people of Israel when they came up out of Egypt." So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.
1 Samuel 15:6

Now, that makes it look very much as if the Kenites are mingling with the Amalekites fairly freely. Suppose an Amalekite decided that they didn't want to fight against Israel. There doesn't seem to have been anything stopping them from deciding to be a Kenite – dressing themselves up as a Kenite and just slipping off. The Amalekites had a way out, if only they were willing to deny their identity as Amalekites.

You see, the Amalekites' national identity is set up against Israel and against God's plan to bless the world. But there is a way out – they just have to renounce that identity and join in with the people who worshipped and served God. They have to get rid of the thing that means they will be going against God. Maybe some of them did. But many of them didn't.

The second way out is the one given in Deuteronomy 20, which is where the laws for how Israel was meant to fight its battles are set out.

When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. And when the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword...
Deuteronomy 20:10-13, ESV

I don't know if Saul followed this rule or not when he attacked the Amalekites, but he should have done. If the Amalekites had surrendered, they would have been spared. But once again, they would have had to renounce their identity as Amalekites and become vassals of Israel. The only way they would have been destroyed is if they refused to surrender to God's plan.

So the Amalekites as a group had the opportunity to surrender to God's plan to bless the world, and the Amalekites as individuals had the opportunity to renounce their group and join in with the people who had sought to be a part of God's plan. It's not exactly genocide, is it?

Paul Copan, in his recent paper Yahweh Wars and the Canaanites points out that the command is to kill whoever is there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they kill women and children. As Goldingay writes: “When a city is in danger of falling, people do not simply wait there to be killed; they get out... Only people who do not get out, such as the city's defenders, get killed.” So the command in 1 Samuel 15:3 looks a lot less like genocide, and a lot more like “If anyone - man, woman, child, whoever - doesn't take the chance to give up their struggle permanently, then kill them. And make sure that you don't profit from doing it.”

This is backed up by the way that Hebrew writers seem to use language when talking about war. Here's an example.

Hadad was from the royal family of Edom, and here is how the LORD made him Solomon's enemy: Some time earlier, when David conquered the nation of Edom, Joab his army commander went there to bury those who had died in battle. Joab and his soldiers stayed in Edom six months, and during that time they killed every man and boy who lived there. Hadad was a boy at the time, but he escaped to Midian with some of his father's officials...
1 Kings 11:14-17, CEV

Killing every man and boy who lives in Edom doesn't mean “killing every man and boy who lived in Edom and making sure that none escape”. It seems that it means “making sure there aren't any men or boys living there any more.” In the same way, killing all the Amalekites seems to mean killing everyone who keep on identifying themselves as Amalekites and who keep setting themselves against God's plan.

This is about breaking and destroying the identity of Amalek as a nation, so that they as a nation cannot continue to oppose God's plan to bless the world. It isn't about hatred of individuals, or about killing those individuals, unless they want to keep on being Amalekites and to keep on fighting against God's plan.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Right Use of the Old Testament

I was reading 1 Timothy 1 this morning, and realised that it could have been written to some modern Biblical scholars.

As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain persons not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God's work—which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers. And it is for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.

1 Timothy 1:3-11, TNIV

People shouldn't waste their time on myths, endless genealogies, or source criticism of the OT. The purpose of the Law (and Paul's examples all seem to be related to the 10 Commandments here) is not to give us insight into its sources or its relation to other ANE codes of law, but to tell people who are living wrongly how to live rightly.