Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. This episode, I want to add a rebuttal to season one. It's a rebuttal I I thought about making way back in the day when I first started this, but it was one which required me to do a bit more thinking. I believe I've come to a point where I can put something of quality forward, so I guess it's time. So here we go.

Today, I want to rebut the notion that the Noahic covenant undermines a position of Christian nonviolence. The argument against Christian nonviolence from the Noahic covenant is plain and simple. Genesis nine:six says the following: Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image. So, it's pretty straightforward. God clearly commands capital punishment for murder.

So how does a Christian pacifist respond to this? I think there are three main responses that I would have. The first response would be to point out this idea of semantic consistency. So refer back to the the second episode that we did on spanking, where we discussed the redemptive hermeneutic. The author that I was discussing showed how pro spankers who put forth the Bible as why they spank, fail to spank in accord with the Bible.

So they say, spanking is a good thing and in fact, it's a necessary thing for parents to do at least sometimes because the Bible explicitly refers to using the rod. It explicitly uses spanking or beating or whatever whatever word you wanna use. It explicitly talks about corporal punishment for children. Therefore, we ought to do corporal punishment for children sometimes. However, the author that we were discussing pointed out that there were seven ways that the pro spanking community was inconsistent in their hermeneutic because the Bible talks about, you know, causing bruises as a good form of punishment, it talks about, it doesn't give an age limitation for kids though the pro spanking community does and the list goes on.

So pro spankers want this face value taking of the Bible to include spanking but then they throw out at least seven areas of descriptive spanking from the Bible and don't follow it in that regard because they recognize that it's kinda crazy to try to cause bruises on your kids. I mean, that's we don't do that. That's not a good thing and they recognize it which is why they limit it. But that that's inconsistency. And so the author of that book identifies is that we understand that the Bible shouldn't be read at face value to just pull things out of it prescriptively, but there's a redemptive hermeneutic going on.

And that sounds really liberal and progressive and scary to a lot of conservative Christians but we do it all the time and with one big issue in particular but multiple issues and that big issue is the issue of slavery. You don't get slavery or you don't get abolition from the Bible directly anyway. You get slavery, face value, Old and even New Testament. Slavery seems to be status quo, seems to be okay. In fact, it was the conservative Christians back in the days of slavery and back during the civil rights movement, it was the conservative Christians who were arguing for slavery and for segregation because of this face value reading and not reading the Bible redemptively.

So we all recognize that a redemptive hermeneutic is necessary at least in some places like with the issue of slavery. And the author of the book on spanking talked about how it was important to do the same thing for spanking. So now, keeping in mind the way that former slaveholder Christians and segregationist Christians and also keeping in mind how the pro spanking community shows forth inconsistency, I wanna apply that same general type of critique here in Genesis nine:six. So if we take Genesis nine:six at face value, which is what people are doing to argue against pacifism, hey look, God has capital punishment here. Then let's really take Genesis nine:six seriously.

And what we do, we see that, well the semantics actually indicate a decree, not a suggestion, right? So it says, whoever sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be shed. This passage doesn't say maybe and it doesn't say for first degree murder but not for third degree murder, right? If it was a fit of passion versus planned, it doesn't say anything about mental states, it just says you kill somebody, then you get killed. And not only does it not differentiate between the degrees of murder, but it also doesn't differentiate between whether it was intentional murder or not, whether it was manslaughter.

Now we know later in the Old Testament, we have cities of refuge and God doesn't condemn the act of getting vengeance. So if somebody kills somebody and somebody kills my brother and I wanna go and pursue them, if they get to a city of refuge, I can't kill them. But if I kill them outside of a city of refuge, that's okay. You know, it'll be overlooked or accepted or whatever. God doesn't say in Genesis nine:six that manslaughter or negligence or anything like that is excused.

So why then today don't the conservative Christians who want to use Genesis nine:six to legitimate capital punishment, why don't they say, for every instance of murder, there should be capital punishment and for every instance of shedding man's blood, there shall be capital punishment. The problem here is that if you take Genesis nine:six as supporting perpetual capital punishment for things, then you're gonna have to apply that a bit more broadly if you're gonna be consistent with it. Second, we know that the Noahic covenant is either not as it was stated at face value or it was overturned by God because God didn't require the blood of all who murdered. God let Cain off the hook pretty easily. He didn't require his blood.

God allowed David to live even though he murdered somebody. Saul, who became Paul, he murdered or was responsible for the murder of people. God let him off the hook. So it seems like God Himself doesn't even care to uphold this standard. Finally, last point, when we read the whole passage in Genesis nine and try to apply a consistent hermeneutic, we see some other problems arise.

So let me read through verse seven here, starting in verse one of chapter nine. And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you and as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning from every beast I will require it, and from man from his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image. And you be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth, and multiply in it. So we see a number of things here. First of all, the passage says that all moving creatures were there to eat and yet, we see in the Mosaic Law that that's not good.

There were were things that were not to be eaten. So either this is wrong in terms of the things God was okay with eating, or God changed up the covenant, had a new covenant with Moses. The passage commands also to be fruitful and multiply, which has implications against singles and married couples who don't have kids. And we also see in the New Testament that Paul says being single, remaining single would be ideal. And he he thinks that that's a good thing.

So we start taking a look at this passage and we start trying to apply things consistently or see the perpetuation of these ideas throughout the Bible, it just doesn't work out nice and neatly like people want. They wanna take this one verse, verse six, and they want to say that, See look, this upholds capital punishment. But instead, what we see is that this is a specific covenant with a specific family and one which might be using hyperbole or might not, we might not have the leeway to interpret it as being as severe as it says. So for the being fruitful and multiplying, is that really for all of us and to what extent? And so then if there are limitations or there's discretion that can be used in that aspect, what about some of these other aspects?

So in summary, I would say that this was a general statement of the extreme value of image bearers. If God mandated capital punishment here, it applied to all killing, intentional or not. Second, God infused this notion with discretion when He Himself set up provisions for some individuals and groups to avoid this in the Mosaic Law. And God had the prerogative to change expectations as He did with food in the Mosaic Law, and as I'd argue, He did with killing under the New Covenant. God has the prerogative to rescind His commands and change them as we see the Noahic covenant changed in several ways throughout the course of the Bible.

Jesus has come, He has died and there needs to be no more shedding of blood, whether that's animal sacrifices or human sacrifices to the law. Hope you found this short episode a useful addition to the series. That's all for now, so peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.