Welcome back to the Fourth Way Podcast. In this episode, we are looking at a second non violent view for interpreting the violence of the Old Testament. In the last episode, we talked about the first view, which says that God has the authority to allow violence, since God is the author and sustainer of life. He can either directly do violence or He can give others permission to do it. The view that we're gonna talk about today, however, is going to say that God does not do violence, nor does He permit others to do it.

He doesn't have others do it for Him. And this is an important, this view will will say, because if Jesus truly depicts the Father to us you know, as Jesus tells Philip, I believe, He says, if you have seen me, you've seen the Father. And Hebrews talks all about how Jesus is the perfect image of God, how we see clearly now in Christ, whereas we used to see dimly. Right? If everything is is enlightened, and that enlightened image is Christ, then to avoid Marcionism and this this idea that we, let's say, have have a God of the Old Testament who's mad and angry and mean and kills people, and then Jesus, the God of the New Testament, who's nice and peaceful and loving, even his enemies, if we're gonna avoid that sharp distinction, then we're gonna have to believe that the Father is like Christ.

And, not just in the New Testament, but He's always like Christ. And, the last view was pretty easy, because we pretty easy to explain because we didn't really have to explain that much. We just kind of presented a view of authority. This view is gonna be quite a bit more complex because we are going to have to deal with other problems that that come up, because we're we're kind of shifting a lot of paradigms here. There are essentially two lines of reasoning that individuals who adhere to this view are going to use to support it.

In the first one, I'm going to, as I explain it, I'm going to draw largely from Greg Boyd and Tim Mackey. Greg Boyd has written a an extremely extensive book titled The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, which I'll provide a link to. He also has a a simpler version. I don't remember the name of that book, but you can you can look that up. Greg Boyd.

The second resource I'm gonna use, Tim Mackey. He has a he's the creator of The Bible Project, and he also has a podcast, which is which is awesome because he it's kind of a it's a podcast where they go through their thoughts and and discussions as they prepare to make, you know, their little 5 or 10 minute videos. But they might have a a 6 part podcast series as they're kind of hashing things out in preparation for it, so that they can get clear thinking and figure out how to succinctly deliver information accurately. So, Tim Mackey, Greg Boyd, good resources here. And, the first line of reasoning then, is going to be that the Bible doesn't really show God as being violent or wrathful, but rather, when it talks about God being wrathful or violent, it's usually withdraw.

It's God's withdraw. Or if there is violence, it is not God doing the violence. And Mackie makes a very, very good argument for this, and I will link his his, podcast series here, where he he gives example after example after example, and we'll go through some of of what I think are are the best. But he gives examples of how God's wrath isn't really the way that that we usually think of it. And Mackie says that he he's estimating here, because there there are a lot of instances, he hasn't tallied them all, But he's guessing that 80% of the time, we see violence from God or wrath from God.

Either God is not doing the violence or this wrath is a wrath of withdrawal. So take, for example, Zedekiah's alliance with Egypt. K? He did that. The king of Israel did that, made this alliance with Egypt to to try to protect him from Babylon.

And God didn't like that. And all of the prophets are saying, God judges you. God sends this upon you, and, you know, it's terrible terrible terrible. But when we see what actually happens, Babylon comes in and does terrible things to Israel, but it's it's not really God. And what we see is that, yeah, God is sovereign over those situations.

But, really, what happened is instead of God protecting Israel, which he would have done had they not allied with Egypt, He said, look, you wanna go with Egypt, you go with Egypt. I'm holding back, and Babylon's gonna come, and they're they're gonna get you. So, in in one sense, yeah, we could say that God was wrathful, but that wrath was not God doing violence, but but God giving people over to their their sin and their choices. We see it again in the, the death of the firstborn in Egypt. In Exodus, God is just talking about how He's gonna kill the firstborn, He's gonna destroy, He's gonna destroy.

And what happens when the time comes? Well, God doesn't do it. An angel comes through and kills the children. In Isaiah 10, we see an example where God says He's, He's using Assyria to judge Israel, but Assyria is the one doing the slaughtering. It isn't God, it's it's God removing His protection.

David's census. God says He's going to punish him and and, destroy, but we end up seeing an angel, or the destroyer, who comes through and does this. And even in a place like, say, Korah's rebellion in the Old Testament, where, I believe the earth opens up and and, and his group, Korah's group, falls in to their deaths. And it mentions nothing of anyone but God doing the judging. It seems like God opens up the earth, God kills them.

That's Him. But, when we see in Paul, in 1st Corinthians 10, Paul reinterprets that passage. Nowhere do we see anywhere in the Bible where it says that it was anybody other than God who was responsible for Korah's death. Yet, what we see in 1st Corinthians 10 is that Paul says the destroyer did it. You know, who's this destroyer?

I don't know. But God does not attribute the killing to God. He attributes it to somebody else. He reinterprets it. And, you know, Mackie is kind of saying that it may be, he's not saying it is for sure, but it may be that, look, Paul recognizes that God is like Jesus, and Jesus is a certain way, and Paul recognizes the way the Old Testament is written, and violence isn't really attributed to God.

There's always, some other being or force doing some doing the violence. And so Paul says, well, you know, I know that wasn't God. We all know that, and that's what may be behind Paul's reinterpretation. So the vast majority of texts where God seems to do violence are done through other means, and if even Paul is able to reinterpret biblical stories, assuming that in in those stories of violence, it wasn't really God who did the violence, then maybe that should lead us to to think that maybe the other 20% of the remaining passages where God seems to be directly violent really, fall into the the same framework as the 80%, where God's not doing it, because that's not His character. You know, the 80% should form the character of God in our minds, not the 20%.

Scripture interprets Scripture, and we generally are going to go with the clearer consensus, and not the, you know, the the 20%, the thing that we're less sure about. Whereas in the the authoritative view we talked about in the last podcast, would say that, look, God can allow killing and God can do killing Himself, because He's the author and sustainer of life, so of course He can do do killing. But, this view is going to say, now the reason that God we we almost never see God directly doing the killing, and we only see withdrawal from God, is because God's the author of life. He's not the author of death. God does not create death.

You see that in the the system of ancient Israel, where you even touch a dead body and you had to go and do crazy ceremonies and things to become clean again. Death was something that is is so far removed from God that how could you then attribute death to God? God's the author of life. He's not the author of death. So for God to to pause death, it seems like that is something that's an antithesis of God.

It is not who God is. It's not part of His character. And so, we shouldn't be able to expect that from God. Certainly, that first part might be somewhat controversial, but you can go back and look at Mackie's work, and you can look at Boyd's work, and you can see tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of examples where it might seem like God at first, but then you just read a little bit farther, you really read another passage or another prophet who expounds on it, and you say, Oh, no, it wasn't really God, it was some other force or being. I mean, that makes a lot of sense, and that that doesn't really change a ton, but it does certainly make us question some some passages, especially in the West where we've got this, substitutionary atonement, penal substitutionary atonement, and you've got the wrath of God coming on Jesus.

You know, what does that mean? And, and it brings up really important questions. If you're gonna take this view on, you really need to work through. How do you deal with the wrath of God on Jesus? You're gonna have to to figure that out.

Nevertheless, overall, there's not that much to argue with there. The, really, the only thing you could kind of hang your hat on if you're not a pacifist is, there are 20% of verses where it does seem like God does violence and prescribes violence. So, that's still a significant amount of passages, and maybe God doesn't prefer to do violence, but every once in a while, He will. Let's move on to the second point then, and this is going to be the part where it becomes quite a bit more murky. And, that is especially this this was the hard part for me as a conservative evangelical.

You know, you talk about infallibility and an errancy. This, the second part was really hard for me to to be gracious about when I was hearing out the case. So, I am going to try to do my best to give you what I think their answers would be here, their case would be here, but you're gonna want to listen to Boyd on this one if you wanna hear out the case better than I can make it, because, he's gonna be able to to make it from somebody who holds this position and has held it for for quite a while. Boyd views the Bible as infallible, but not inerrant. Let's talk about what those two words mean.

Infallible just means that the message that God wants to get across, gets across. The he he gets what he wants out of the Bible. An inerrant Bible would be a Bible that has absolutely zero errors. And now, the important aspect to understand about inerrancy is that, people say the original copies were inerrant. Because we know that the current copies we have are errant.

There are differences in numbers and and, passages that may or may not have been in the original, and we we know that there are errors in the and see what the and see what the range of possibilities is. But the original manuscripts were inerrant. Boyd would not say that. Boyd would say, no, they're infallible, not inerrant. The reason Boyd is going to say this is because he is a big fan of progressive revelation, and that's the idea that God doesn't just zap people.

He doesn't, take a profit and just dictate to them what they're gonna write down. He uses individuals in their cultures, their experiences, their ideas, their personalities, and he reveals himself to them. And they're gonna take their best shot at, portraying what what God is saying and what God is like, and God is going to guide that process. But because there's still a human element to it, those authors are gonna sometimes get some things, are going to skew some things. And Boyd gives many, many, many examples, of this kind of thing.

You know, one that is kind of common is, in the Old Testament, the Messiah is is viewed as some political warrior who who comes conquering and everything. But when we get to the New Testament, we see Jesus, he's he's a sacrifice. And we get glimpses of that a little bit in Isaiah, And, but really, the Jews didn't expect Jesus their Messiah to be like Jesus. Nobody did. And that's for a reason.

That's because in the Old Testament, they didn't paint the Messiah as that kind of an individual. And that's something that God progressively prepared Israel for and pro and eventually accomplished. We see God's progressive revelation and and grace with things like divorce. You know, Jesus in the New Testament says, look, divorce is not something that should have ever been. God just allowed it because of your hardness of hearts.

So God works with people where they are and doesn't expect them to change 100%. He's gonna kind of bring them up, and he's going to be patient with them, and he's gonna work with them. Now, if we understand that there's progressive revelation in other areas, then why not with something like violence? The ancient Near East authors viewed the attribution of slaughter and and extreme violence as what the gods wanted, and Israel wasn't really any different. They they viewed, attribution of violence to God as something that would glorify God, that would up uplift His name among the nations.

Matthew Flanagan, I I heard him at a an apologetics conference, and it was it was really fascinating. He talked about the slaughter of the Canaanites. He he looked at, a bunch of different things, and in particular, he showed some of the biblical texts right alongside the ancient Near East texts from other countries. And, I mean, they used the same language, like, utterly destroy and and all those kinds of things. And they're just using the same language all all over the place.

And, he did a really good job of of showing that, we need to be really careful. All of the things that we try to take literally, historically, as something that, that's imposing onto the way that they talked. You know, like, if somebody would read our our newspapers 1000 years into the future, and they would read the headlines like, The Yankees Slaughtered the Mets. They'd be like, wow, their sports used to be really serious back then. Well, no.

That's that's the language that we use. Well, utterly destroy is is, one example of those. And we see this with the Canaanites. There are some times where it says that that these groups were utterly destroyed to the last, yet we see those same groups pop up again later, like, in the Davidic era or or sometime later. You know, like, I thought those guys were were all destroyed, but here they are again.

So what happened? They weren't utterly destroyed? We see this also with, King Agag. Supposedly, you know, when when Saul refuses to kill Agag and he he chooses to save some of the the herd to sacrifice to God, you know, Samuel comes and he's ticked. He's like, you should have obeyed God.

What are you doing? And then he he finishes the job. He kills Agag and his family. Yet, when you get over to Esther, you see that Haman is an Agagite. He is a descendant of Agag.

And you're like, wait a second. I thought that Samuel took care of Agag and his family. What's up? You you get lots of those sorts of things throughout the Bible where this language can't really mean what we in the 20 first century think that it means literally. It it's more of an expression from the ancient Near East.

Nevertheless, those expressions kinda show you what's valued, and what's valued is, hey, look, our God wants us to glory in the slaughter of of our enemies. So we are going to compound that, we're gonna exaggerate that, and we're gonna just say, we just utterly destroyed everybody. There was so much blood. And Boyd would argue that this makes sense that we'd see that even if it's not from God. Because if God is working within an ancient Near East group who glories in slaughter of enemies, and that's what they think is worshipful, then God is going to have to work through that.

You know, if they are putting Him as God, and if they are, getting rid of their idols, and they're they're pursuing God, but they've they've got these these blind spots and and this violence that God is working on, you know, God is is patient, and He's He's working on it. These authors don't yet have a full view of Christ, and we can expect that they're going to errantly ascribe violence to God because they think it's good. Because they don't they don't know better yet. God's working on it. Boyd, then, is going to view any violence that we see, portraying portraying God directly as violent, or saying that God told the Israelites to be violent.

Boyd is going to say, nope. Those those authors, you know, they they don't have the full picture yet. They're getting those things wrong. And the reason that we know that they're getting those things wrong is because Jesus said, look, I'm the image, the true image of God. You see me, you see the Father, this is what God's like.

And, when we, when we take the cross and we look at everything else in the Bible, in the Old Testament, which is dim Hebrews says the Old Testament is dim, and now that we have Christ, He's our lens. So, when we look through the lens of Christ, that's what helps us to determine where the Old Testament authors are errant. And, if you shine the lens of Christ, or if you put the lens of Christ over a part of the Old Testament, and it doesn't look like Christ, then that part is errant. And the glory in that, you know, some people are going to be kind of worried that, well, if if there are errors, how do I how do I ever know what's right? Well, because of Christ.

Right? Christ is the lens. And, the glory in that is that God works through flawed individuals. And, when we put the whole case together, the whole Bible together, and we see the picture of where God brings His people, and and how God unravels the story, it's just glorious that God could bring a violent, a violent ancient Near East people, become a people of absolute peace, even peace to enemies. And, I I'm sure, especially for any conservatives, like me, this this whole inerrancy thing is going to be a a really big hang up.

And that's okay. Right? We we offered another view that would would fit fit more for the the conservatives. But I do wanna help you to try to be a little bit more gracious to those who do believe in errancy, that the Bible is errant. I wanna help you to understand how we can still fellowship with them, and how they can they can be holding to to a very high view of scripture, which I think Boyd does, even though they believe in an errant scripture.

And I'll start off by saying that the reason I think we should be so gracious is because, really, all conservatives do believe that the Bible is an error, at least in a particular way. So, we believe that God has a perfect plan. Right? God, from the beginning, knows how the world's gonna end, how the world's gonna shape up, and He has an absolutely perfect plan. Yet, God works through evil, or that errant.

Right? Evil is an error. He works through errant humans to accomplish His perfect plan. We see this with Joseph. Right?

The brothers intended Joseph's slavery for evil. It was a bad act. It was an error. It was not something that God would do, that God would want. It is bad.

Yet, God intended it for good. Jesus, who crucified Jesus, well, wicked men put Him on the cross. But, it was plan of God. Romans 8 tells us that all things work together for good. And we we all believe that God has this inerrant or or, this infallible plan.

Right? This plan that will succeed, this overarching, ultimate, it it will be good. It it, evil will be resolved. It will be good. It doesn't matter what people do.

God will succeed. And so God uses error all the time. He uses errancy all the time. You can look at just time and time again, evil things happen. God's people do evil things, but God's plan is not thwarted.

It's perfect. In Boyd's view, that the Bible is infallible but not inerrant, simply applies the same concepts to God's plan for His infallible message. So God has a particular message, a particular plan that He wants to accomplish with His message. And God will get His message across, and that message will work, and it will be readable, and it will be the way that He wants it. But, that doesn't mean in it there will not be any errors.

The presence of errors in in a plan or in a work does not negate the whole work, but it can actually work to amplify the glory of God who is able to accomplish His perfect plan through human errancy, human evil. And I know that that the reason I have struggled with with being gracious to to those who claim that the Bible is errant, is because it always seems to me that I lose a lot of confidence in the Bible if I think that there are errors. How do I know where the errors are? Or, if they say this one thing about God, and it is true, and this other thing, and it's not true, how do I know? How do I know it's not all untrue?

And I really do understand that. But at the same time, nobody believes we have an inerrant Bible today, because only the original manuscripts were were inerrant. So we're we're already dealing with this idea of of errancy anyway. We already believe in errancy and God's God's plan and the people in God's plan because we believe that there's evil that happens, yet God brings His His goodwill out of it. We know that we have the lens of Christ, and reading the Bible shouldn't just be a a manual where we just read everything verbatim and don't think about it.

But, understanding that that God used people like us who are errant, and trying to put the lens of Christ over it to try to figure out what's right and what's not. And then, at the same time, seeing how how gracious God was to those errant people can be encouraging to us. So, whether or not you agree with Boyd, I think we can we can still be gracious to him and others like him, because they're not throwing the Bible out. They just have a way of understanding how everything has has unraveled, and the way that God is able to use His sovereignty to control His plan and His message. So in the end, what are the the positives of adopting this view?

Why might you consider adopting this view over the other one laid out in the previous episode? Well, first of all, it really helps with a consistent, immutable God. If Jesus is the true image of God, and He comes, and He's super peaceful, and loves enemies, and lays down His life, and in the Old Testament, He seems pretty pretty wrathful. That makes it, that makes it really difficult to argue that we truly do have the same God. It makes it a lot less palatable.

2nd, adopting this view helps us to avoid some really problematic passages. And, and Boyd points out some of these problematic passages, like in some of the prophets where it says that, you know, God just gets so angry that He comes in and He's gonna destroy the just along with the unjust. It's like, really? God God is so angry that He can't control Himself, and He's gonna come in, and He doesn't care if you're innocent or not. He's just gonna wipe you off the face of the Earth.

That's I don't know. That's that's hard to that's hard to handle when you when you see other passages where, one of the 7 deadly sins where, like, feet that are quick to shed blood or, where where if you shed the blood of innocence. And, okay, yeah, everybody's guilty in the sense that, we're all sinners. But how could God ever prescribe somebody, not kill innocents if you're gonna try to argue that God can kill anybody because nobody's innocent. Well, then the passages where God is is saying, hey, don't kill innocents, wouldn't work because nobody's innocent.

No. God God is saying in these passages in in the prophets that he's gonna kill innocent people because he's just so angry. And there are there are all kinds of passages. You'll have to read Boyd's book. But you can avoid those problematic passages if if you say, hey, look.

The prophets, they get they get a lot of things right. But, look, when they're talking about this violence and the way God's going to deal with, with judgment, they miss some things. God's wrath is withdrawal of protection. There might be some plagues that come, something like that. But God is is long suffering, not willing for any to perish, and when He does withdraw, does it sorrowfully.

And He's He's not gonna come and just slaughter innocent people, and He's not gonna take glory in that. In the end, whether you agree with Boyd or not, and whether you agree with with Mackie on the first part, I think that it's something that you really have to deal with. Boyd's book is is fantastic, and Mackie's, Mackie's work is amazing, but especially this podcast on the wrath of God is is very interesting. And I think it's something that that not many people, in my circles at least, really deal with. And, they just kind of dismiss it as, oh, those liberals who believe that the Bible is errant.

And that's not what you get here. You get people who are really wrestling through scripture, who are trying to make sense of it, who aren't trying to ignore problems, but trying to deal with them. And, and I think we need to do the same if we disagree with them. We need to deal with that work, and we need to deal with the problems that they bring up, for the opposing side. Anyway, that's all for now.

To peace, because I'm a pacifist, and when I say it, I mean it.