Response to Show Them No Mercy (2003)

Richard Greydanus


My Papers

Why is all this attention given to the obscure origins, in a military consolidation of a rather small tract of land, of an equally obscure Semitic tribal people? Nothing cosmopolitan that would suggest relevance for our contemporary world is immediately suggested by the establishment of the Hebrew people in Canaan. At the other foundation of the Western canon, by comparison, Homer’s Iliad, with its indiscriminate divine sanction of glorying in conflict for the sake of conflict, would seem at first a better candidate for such a discussion of the ethical as universally applicable. Is it not generally claimed that Classical Greek culture possessed an indiscriminately cosmopolitan impulse from its initial formation? That which motivates the conversation in Show Them No Mercy (2003) is the Hebrew claim to possess a discriminating divine sanction (and the perhaps notion of divine sanction, as such) to engage in genocide—and how one reconciles that divinely sanctioned violence with a contemporary Christian ethic. Each of the authors is forced to navigate the tension between an insular Hebrew outlook versus an universal Christian outlook that manifests itself within the Judeo-Christian tradition.

In his case for radical discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments, C.S. Cowles, more than any of the other authors, attempts to address this tension directly with a reflection on the person of Jesus Christ. He asks, “How can we harmonize the warrior God of Israel with the God of love incarnate in Jesus?” (14) The solution Cowles proposes begins by throwing into question the “inerrancy and infallibility of all Scripture.” (15) Important for him is the distinction the Apostle Paul draws between the old and new covenants. (19) God’s revelation of himself as Love in Christ, further, allows him to “dim” the lights on the will of God for human life. (19) This earns him the inglorious accusation of relegating “the Old Testament to a Marcion-like obsolescence” (51) from Eugene H. Merill. Cowles’ inversion of John Calvin’s understanding of progressive revelation into a “progressive understanding of God’s self-disclosure” (38) provides a key to understanding his radical anthropocentrism/Christocentrism. He has resolved to know only Christ as the God of Love, and him crucified; the divine content of any offending biblical passages is thus thrown into question.

Eugene H. Merrill’s case for moderate discontinuity between the Old and New Testaments proposes to understand the divinely sanctioned violence against the Canaanites as falling under the rubric “the Yahweh war,” which is limited in its scope to Old Testament times. (84) Its institution served a particular end: “Yahweh war was necessary to Israel’s escape from Egypt, and it will be necessary to her conquest and settlement of Canaan.” (77) Drawing on the work of Gerhard von Rad, he identifies particular characteristics belonging to the “Yahweh war-ideology.” (69) Numerous concrete instances of the ideology’s exercise may be found in the Old Testament; however, Merrill considers it “significant that Jesus makes no reference…to anything resembling Old Testament Yahweh war”. (89) Similarly, he points out that whenever Christians are said to be engaged in battle, it occurs on a spiritual plane. (90) In conclusion, Merill explores two possible Christian responses, pacifism and “just war.” The later, he concludes, cannot be justified with an appeal to the text of the Old Testament. (92)

Daniel L. Gard builds his case for eschatological continuity between the Old and New Testaments around the displacement of Yahweh warfare to the eschatological conclusion of history with the coming of Christ. (136) He begins, however, by pointing out that a claim to divine sanction was not unique to Israel, but in fact was made by other nations like Moab as well. (116-7) Moving back and forth biblical scholarship and historical scholarship, Gard highlights the uniqueness of the Hebrew convenantal relation to their God. Examples are drawn to show that God, on occasion, fought against the Hebrews. “[T]here remained for Judah a hope for the future; Akkad, by contrast, was destroyed without such hope.” (122) “For Israel, the warfare of Yahweh against his own people was never to destroy utterly, but to chasten and restore.” (123) Further, he identifies to unifying motifs interwoven into biblical warfare narratives: “of Yahweh fighting alone and Yahweh fighting in conjunction with the people.” (126) His presentation of the biblical and historical material serves to underscore the centrality of the particular purposes of God for understanding the Canaanite genocide. The constitution of Israel as the people of God and the Church as the people of God are differentiated. The later had no geographical or political boundaries (138); divinely sanctioned violence, therefore, has no place in the history of God’s people after the coming of Christ. In conclusion, he affirms with Saint Augustine the place for just war in a Christian society. (138)

The final case, one for a spiritual continuity between the Old and New Testament, is made by Trevor Longman III, who traces a progressive transformation of the meaning of divinely sanctioned violence through five different phases. The Canaanite genocide belongs to the first; important here, as it will be through the other four phases, is the presence of the Lord and the sacred character of the conflict. (164) The second phase addresses Israel’s disobedience, thus the Lord’s absence, and the consequential defeat of Israel in battle. (178) The third phase anticipates the future coming of Christ as a warrior in the prophetic biblical books. (179) The fourth phase describes Christ’s transformation of the meaning of divine warfare: “No longer is the battle a physical battle against flesh-and-blood enemies, but rather it is directed towards the spiritual powers and authorities.” (180). Phase five, the final phase, anticipates final completion of Christ’s victory over sin and death on the cross and end of any and all forms of warfare. (182) “The war against the Canaanites was simply an earlier phase of the battle that comes to its climax on the cross and its completion at the final judgement.” (185) In the biblical narrative, this movement through phases Longman describes as a movement from Canaan to Satan, (183) which may be characterized as a deepening spiritual meaning and an expansion concrete historical meaning.

Where the merits to each of these approaches can be found is quickly summarized: Cowles’ radical anthropocentrism/Christocentrism; Merrill’s careful examination of Yahweh war; Gard’s explication of the eschatological character of the Israelite identity; and Longman’s progressive unfolding of meaning of the spiritual meaning of divinely sanctioned warfare. I find Merrill’s approach particularly challenging; for he is able to answer questions the other three contributors are not. Merrill and Gard both appeal to the Christian tradition of just way theory; but they distinguish between just war and God’s sanctioning of the Canaanite genocide. Longman leaves the question of a faithful Christian response alone completely. But whose justice does just war theory ground itself in? Is it not God’s justice? That is to say, Christ’s justice—from a Christian perspective? And if it is God’s justice to whom just war theory appeals, do we not today implicitly, at least, claim the same divine sanction the Hebrew people did (even if we do not envision ourselves using just war theory to sanction genocide)? The character of the conflict is not at issue here. Rather, what is at issue is the presence of a divine sanction—the same divine sanction claimed by terrorists on September 11, 2001. My own approach to the problematic of divine sanction is to attempt a radically anthropocentric/Christocentric reflection on what it means for God to enter concretely into the course of human history at specific places and times that demonstrates the spiritual continuity between the testaments. Reflecting on such unique exercises of redemptive “grace” in “nature,” here defined as the creation distorted by human sinfulness that is the stage on which human history is set, appears justified given, for example, God’s choosing of Israel out from among the nations and his manifestation of himself in Jesus Christ, both exceptions from the historical norm.

Christian ethics with its attendant questions of justice and mercy, paradoxical though it may seem, grounds itself in one way or another in the Old Testament experience of the Hebrews, as Christianity is itself grounded. Careful thought must be given to how Christians today should distance themselves from the more difficult passages of the Old Testament. The Hebrew claim of divine sanction for the Canaanite genocide can be understood as a manifestation of the same divinely sanctioned justice—the same God—that just war theory appeals to if one considers that with Christ’s coming God’s people are given a new constitution by which to direct their lives. No longer called out from among the nations to preserve a sanctuary of hope as were the Hebrews, the Church is called out from among the nations only to return bearing the Gospel of hope in Jesus Christ. The promise of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 1:8 signals the transition between two epochs. If we distance ourselves from the Canaanite genocide, but want to preserve that spiritual continuity, it should be maintained that with Christ the mission of God’s people in a fallen world changes.

But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.

Gal. 4:4-5