Genocide in the Bible: does this trouble anyone else?

[Gorgias]

How can you possibly sort out the literal from the non-literal?

The Church has the charism of teaching the faith. It doesn’t provide authoritative commentary on each and every passage in the Bible, but when a doctrine or dogma hangs in the balance, it utilizes that charism to teach the truth of the faith.

So, it teaches that Genesis 3 is figurative, not literalistic. It teaches that the Institution Narratives are literalistic. It teaches that the accounts of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection are literal history.

That’s how.

 

[Magnanimity]

After all, “this is my Body… this is my Blood” is something that we’d dig in our heels about and insist that Jesus was speaking very literalistically!

Fair enough. I have been arguing above that it is a specifically modernist tendency that makes any of us today want to read back into sacred writings, like the old testament, some sort of bland historicity. (The modernist obsession with facts and evidence.) and such a tendency is very much out of step with the church fathers. From that same pontifical document on biblical interpretation we read,

Convinced that they are dealing with the Book of God and therefore with something of inexhaustible meaning, the fathers hold that any particular passage is open to any particular interpretation on an allegorical basis. But they also consider that others are free to offer something else, provided only that what is offered respects the analogy of faith.

The allegorical interpretation of Scripture so characteristic of patristic exegesis runs the risk of being something of an embarrassment to people today. But the experience of the church expressed in this exegesis makes a contribution that is always useful (cf. Divino Afflante Spiritu, 31-32; Dei Verbum, 23). The fathers of the church teach to read the Bible theologically, within the heart of a living tradition, with an authentic Christian spirit.

I started reading the patristics in earnest 2-3 years ago, and I have found the above statements about them to be true. The way in which, for example, St Gregory of Nyssa reads the Exodus account bears almost no resemblance to any reading I have ever seen before (any contemporary interpretation). And I suspect that a large part of why the fathers read the Old Testament this way was that they were keyed in on the fact that it is sacred writing, in no way attempting to be something like Greco-Roman historical texts. Moses ain’t Plutarch. And Isaiah ain’t Herodotus. Know what I mean? If a person is reading the OT as facile history, then she’s massively out of step with the patristics and “doing it wrong.”

So… it’s not that we cannot “be rigidly literal with regard to Scriptures”

That rather depends on what one means by “literal.” We today often carry the same
Meaning as “literalistic” when we say literal. But Aquinas, for example, when he notes that the scriptures refer to God’s arm, says that the “literal” meaning of God’s arm is His operative power. Which is a rather metaphorical usage of the term “literal.”

But what Freddy and others in this thread have been getting at is that the conscience is always operative. The Fathers knew this, and they appreciated the fact that one’s conscience can (and should) act as a defensive check against any reading of the OT that suggests that God is a moral monster.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

The Israelites were absolutely certain that what they were doing was God’s will. What happens if you are absolutely certain that God has commanded you to do something? Do you carry it out regardless of your personal moral position or do you reject God’s command?

You do it, naturally. However, it’s still your action, and you’re morally culpable for it. If you’ve misunderstood God’s command, you’re on the hook – there’s no “get out of jail free card” for the excuse “I thought God wanted me to bomb that abortion clinic”.

The question at hand is whether you would 'talk back to God* or comply with His command despite you believing it to be immoral.

You’ve moved the goalposts, haven’t you? From “this is my personal understanding of human morality” to “I think God Himself is acting immorally”, right?

To the point of your question: if I thought that God’s request was immoral for him, I’d have to ponder that notion, since (on the face of it) that’s impossible. I’d have to try to understand why it seemed immoral on God’s part.

Good to have an honest answer. Thanks. But if I may, there seems to be a contradiction in the two answers.

The first says that you would naturally comply if you were certain the command comes from God. I’d expect the same answer from any Christian.

But the second says that if you thought that the command was ‘immoral for Him’, you’d have to ponder it.

It seems that you would obey God…but…only if you thought the command was a moral one. Which seems to open up the biggest can of worms imagineable. Because you are then applying your standards of morality onto God.

We can now go back to tbe Israelites and consider their position if they took your view. If you were one of the soldiers then your comment indicates that you would need to make a decision as to whether the act was’immoral for Him’. Yet we have had numerous posts telling us that whatever God does is moral and we’re not in a position to question Him.

I’ll come back to the first answer in due course after you’ve clarified the above.

 

[Freddy]

Not what I said.

You said that God could not ask you to commit a moral evil. And he commanded that all women and children should be killed. Therefore that act cannot be a moral evil.

That’s…pretty straightforward isn’t it?

 

[Julius_Caesar]

St Gregory of Nyssa reads the Exodus account bears almost no resemblance to any reading I have ever seen before (any contemporary interpretation

Or ancient, that’s for sure.

Augustine, Chrysostom and others all read it I. The historical sense.

 

[Julius_Caesar]

Because you are then applying your standards of morality onto God.

That’s your whole shtick, I’m afraid.

 

[Freddy]

You keep turning this into what ‘we think”.

I’m not turning this into anything. It’s been my whole point throughout the discusion. Yet again I will accept that God can command whatever He pleases. Do you understand that position? It’s yours, so you should. And for the purposes of this discussion I will agree with it.

Which leads on to what people do, or should do, if they believe that they have received a command from God which they think is immoral. Do they take the position, on which we both agree, that God is free to command anything He wishes and carry out the command, OR as Georgias has suggested, do we consider whether the act is immoral for God before acting.

 

[Freddy]

But what Freddy and others in this thread have been getting at is that the conscience is always operative. The Fathers knew this, and they appreciated the fact that one’s conscience can (and should) act as a defensive check against any reading of the OT that suggests that God is a moral monster.

But what we have had in this thread is a number of people, post hoc, justifying the massacre. ‘It seems immoral but who is to know that the children won’t grow up evil’. Not ‘will grow up evil’ but ‘may grow up evil’. The implication is that we just don’t know. With the further implied ‘Who can know the mind of God’.

I could now imagine an act so horrendous that we would baulk at the idea that God would command it. That ‘one’s conscience can (and should) act as a defensive check against any reading of the OT that suggests that God is a moral monster.’ But I can’t honestly think of a more horrendous one than the one in question.

So the question then arises, what command would engage our conscience and prevent us from acting? If hacking children to death can be justified then what could possibly stay our hand?

 

[Magnanimity]

But what we have had in this thread is a number of people, post hoc, justifying the massacre. ‘It seems immoral but who is to know that the children won’t grow up evil’.

Believe me, I know and feel your pain! As ironic as it might seem to you, you and I are allies within this thread. I don’t know if it is intentional that you are trying to get others to see that there is no way to evade human conscience in determining what is possible for God. But that is a primary concern of mine. No one sets aside conscience.

When a person contemplates deeply the natures of (1) an all-good God, (2) humanity itself and (3) “the good,” what follows from all of this consideration is that God-as-genocidal-monster is excluded from possibility. As I’ve said now ad nauseam within this thread, the church fathers were keenly aware of this. For some bizarre reason we today aren’t aware of this…?

 

[StudentMI]

As I said many times to you

To whom are you speaking?

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

But what we have had in this thread is a number of people, post hoc, justifying the massacre. ‘It seems immoral but who is to know that the children won’t grow up evil’.

Believe me, I know and feel your pain! As ironic as it might seem to you, you and I are allies within this thread. I don’t know if it is intentional that you are trying to get others to see that there is no way to evade human conscience in determining what is possible for God. But that is a primary concern of mine. No one sets aside conscience.

When a person contemplates deeply the natures of (1) an all-good God, (2) humanity itself and (3) “the good,” what follows from all of this consideration is that God-as-genocidal-monster is excluded from possibility. As I’ve said now ad nauseam within this thread, the church fathers were keenly aware of this. For some bizarre reason we today aren’t aware of this…?

It’s not my aim to do that. I’m quite happy to accept someone saying that whatever God does (or commands) is moral. By definition. How someone comes to terms with a command that is obviously horrendously immoral as far as we are concerned is up to the individual. If I were a Christian then I would be of the opinion that stories of the flood and the massacre of the Canaanites were just that. Stories, which were meant to be a warning: ‘Don’t mess with God!’

My problem is that if someone suggests that we are justified in bypassing our conscience and should act on God’s commands whatever we personally think of it, then it allows for any act whatsoever as long as that person truly believes that they are doing God’s wishes.

There’s no need for me to explain where that might lead.

 

[Magnanimity]

It’s not my aim to do that. I’m quite happy to accept someone saying that whatever God does (or commands) is moral. By definition.

That’s fine with me. You and I can be strange bedfellows here then.

There’s a sense in which what I’ve quoted from you above can work and there’s another sense in which it can’t. The sense in which it can’t work to say that whatever God wills/commands is ipso facto good is the capricious and arbitrary sense. As in, one day God is the nicest of all beings, the next day, He’s out for blood! Baby blood! Anybody’s blood! Not workable for very many reasons not least of which is that it reduces the Divine to basically a big ole creature (and a really strange one).

The only sense in which it can work is if the theologian tries to split the horns of the Euthyphro dilemma and locate “the good” within God Himself. But this would entail that God would only do/command that which is good (or has a final good end).

However, as I’ve argued many times before for the primacy (and inescapability) of conscience, we humans have access to what is good. We can judge things as they really are—morally good or morally reprehensible (or morally neutral). And the slaughtering of babies we all judge as morally bad. No one in this thread (including you) is sidestepping conscience. We’re all using it to consider the stories found in the Old Testament and what those stories might say about God.

 

[Julius_Caesar]

My problem is that if someone suggests that we are justified in bypassing our conscience and should act on God’s commands whatever we personally think of it, then it allows for any act whatsoever as long as that person truly believes that they are doing God’s wishes.

Slippery slope fallacy and post hoc all in one.

 

[Julius_Caesar]

As I’ve said now ad nauseam within this thread, the church fathers were keenly aware of this.

Just the one you have cherry picked.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

My problem is that if someone suggests that we are justified in bypassing our conscience and should act on God’s commands whatever we personally think of it, then it allows for any act whatsoever as long as that person truly believes that they are doing God’s wishes.

Slippery slope fallacy and post hoc all in one.

That reads like you’ve just found a couple of fallacies down the back of the sofa and decided to use them whether they were applicable or not.

The problem as I’ve stated it doesn’t somehow lead to problems down the line. It is the problem in itself. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by giving you any examples because any reasonable person can imagine the consequences. And are those consequences the fault of God? Not at all.

There’s that quote from The Brothers Karamasov that without God anything is permitted. The corollary of that is that a belief that God has commanded you to do something means that anything is allowed. Unless we determine what is moral or not ourselves. And then where does that get us? Relativity!

Something of a rock and a hard place situation, isn’t it…

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

It’s not my aim to do that. I’m quite happy to accept someone saying that whatever God does (or commands) is moral. By definition.

That’s fine with me. You and I can be strange bedfellows here then.

There’s a sense in which what I’ve quoted from you above can work and there’s another sense in which it can’t. The sense in which it can’t work to say that whatever God wills/commands is ipso facto good is the capricious and arbitrary sense. As in, one day God is the nicest of all beings, the next day, He’s out for blood! Baby blood! Anybody’s blood! Not workable for very many reasons not least of which is that it reduces the Divine to basically a big ole creature (and a really strange one).

I’m often asked why I don’t believe in God. And quite often I’ll ask ‘which God’. Because everyone seems to have a different view as to what He is. If I were a Christian then I might read what you’ve written and think ‘Ah, a fellow traveller!’

No wonder there are so many denominations. And even within denominations there are so many differences in how God is perceived. Always been a puzzle to me. And I’ve said many, many times that if there was only one religion and every person within that religion believed exactly the same then I could not then help but doubt my own position.

As it is, every small discourse such as this thread seems to cement another brick into the edifice of my belief. Oops…lack of belief.

 

[Gorgias]

But Aquinas, for example, when he notes that the scriptures refer to God’s arm, says that the “literal” meaning of God’s arm is His operative power. Which is a rather metaphorical usage of the term “literal.”

No, this is pretty well in line with what is meant by the “literal sense of Scripture”. It doesn’t mean “whatever is said on the surface by the text”; it means “the meaning that the inspired writer intended to convey.” So, in my “raining cats and dogs” example – if it were in Scripture – would carry the “literal sense” of “it’s really raining hard out there!”

Magnanimity:

But what Freddy and others in this thread have been getting at is that the conscience is always operative. The Fathers knew this, and they appreciated the fact that one’s conscience can (and should) act as a defensive check against any reading of the OT that suggests that God is a moral monster.

It was Augustine (IIRC) who taught that, if the surface words of the text seem to indicate that God is evil, then we’ve misunderstood the text and need to search for an intended meaning that doesn’t assert such a counter-intuitive sense. So, I agree with you here.

If our conscience is telling us “this passage means God is evil”, then our conscience is misinterpreting the passage.

Freddy:

It seems that you would obey God…but…only if you thought the command was a moral one.

No. It means that if God is God, then we presume He is moral. So, if there’s something there that makes me think He isn’t, then I have to re-examine my understanding, since it leads to contradiction.

Which seems to open up the biggest can of worms imagineable. Because you are then applying your standards of morality onto God.

No, I don’t think so. I’m looking at God as God, not as a human.

your comment indicates that you would need to make a decision as to whether the act was’immoral for Him’.

No – I’d have to ask whether I understood Him properly.

So… unless I think I’m mistaken about God’s nature, then I presume it’s all-good. Anything that contradicts that presumption, then, is up for re-examination.

OR as Georgias has suggested, do we consider whether the act is immoral for God before acting.

Not exactly what I was saying: if I think it looks immoral, then I have to re-think my interpretation. Am I getting it wrong or is God a monster? Can’t be the latter, so I better take a look at the former!

But what we have had in this thread is a number of people, post hoc, justifying the massacre.

Only if it’s a literal, historical account. If not, then this whole analysis can be chucked.

if someone suggests that we are justified in bypassing our conscience and should act on God’s commands whatever we personally think of it, then it allows for any act whatsoever

However, the person is responsible for his interpretation and his actions.

 

[Aulef]

The order in the Bible, directly from God, to conquer the land of Canaan and put the inhabitants to the sword… how does that not qualify as genocide?

Where in the Bible is exactly this order directly from God? Are you sure about this? I am asking these questions so you may check for yourself whether this is actually true or just another common flawed interpretation of Sacred Scriptures. Yes, there were people put to the sword, but was it really by God’s order?

how was a Canaanite baby guilty of anything?

This question will be answered once you are able to understand what is really written in the Bible.

Even if the Canaanites were guilty of the most heinous crimes and human sacrifices known to man (which archaeology and historical research does not show), how were the babies guilty?

Actually, there is historical and archeological research proving there was child sacrifice among Canaanites and other peoples around that area. Plutarch, a Greek, wrote about it, for instance. Many excavations around the area found urns with charred remains of infants and altars with inscriptions point to the devil molech.

What do people think about this? Is anyone else troubled by it? Has anyone found an explanation that makes sense?

People should be shocked and should condemn genocides then and now. By genocide, I mean men mass killing other men by their own will and by their own hands. On the other hand, when God actually killed people (the flood or the 10th plague, for instance), He had sufficient (and very good ) reason to do so.

 

[Magnanimity]

I’m often asked why I don’t believe in God. And quite often I’ll ask ‘which God’. Because everyone seems to have a different view as to what He is. If I were a Christian then I might read what you’ve written and think ‘Ah, a fellow traveller!’

No wonder there are so many denominations. And even within denominations there are so many differences in how God is perceived. Always been a puzzle to me.

I don’t think this is cause for despair or even for unbelief. Do you know the German poet Rilke? He seems to have, like Steinbeck and many others, lost belief (at least a creedal, specific belief) when he was young. But his letters and poetry are some of the most incredible things I’ve ever read. He has one passage that is “on point” to what you’ve written here. It’s one of my favorites—never fails to strike me because there is so much truth in it, and truth that comforts rather than despairs once we come to terms with the fact that each of us is on a different part of the long Road of life. He writes,

Therefore, dear sir, love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you. For those who are near you are far, you say, and that shows it is beginning to grow wide about you. And when what is near you is far, then your distance is already among the stars and very large; rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before them and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or joy, which they could not understand. Seek yourself some sort of simple and loyal community with them, which need not necessarily change as you yourself become different and again different; love in them life in an unfamiliar form…” (Rilke, Ranier Maria, Letters to a Young Poet, letter 4, trans. M.D. Herter).

And I’ve said many, many times that if there was only one religion and every person within that religion believed exactly the same then I could not then help but doubt my own position.

I doubt that beauty or grandeur or even truth could subsist in uniformity. Isn’t there grandeur in diversity? Why should diversity of beliefs be a threat to any of us? There are no two people on planet earth who entirely agree with each other on any subject under the sun. If that is evidence of anything, I guess it would be evidence in support of the belief that life cannot be all about believing all the correct things.

As it is, every small discourse such as this thread seems to cement another brick into the edifice of my belief. Oops…lack of belief.

I genuinely don’t understand why this would be so for you. When I dialogue with people like you, Freddy, it helps my belief to grow. Because it makes me realize that whatever God is up to in the final analysis, it even involves the “unbelievers.” He loves them no less than He loves me. And that is an amazing fact, if only one could come to recognize it as a fact.

 

[Julius_Caesar]

That reads like you’ve just found a couple of fallacies down the back of the sofa and decided to use them whether they were applicable or not

Nope.

That’s your whole argument.

You think that because God orders something then means people only have to be certain that they can do it now

Post hoc and a slippery slope.