The Point of Hebrews: Further Conversation with Paul Copan

Paul Copan and I have been having an ongoing conversation revolving around the issue of violence done in God’s name and the corollary issue of violence and the Bible. Although we have very different views on these subjects, I am grateful for Paul’s willingness to engage with me, and also very much appreciate his respectful and kind demeanor. I hope to return that same tone of kindness and respect.

Most recently the conversation has centered around chapter 11 of Hebrews. Referring to Hebrews 11:31 which states “By faith the walls of Jericho fell, after the army had marched around them for seven days” Paul asked me if I thought the author of Hebrews believed that “the battle against Jericho was divinely commissioned and thus morally justified.” It’s worth noting that after the walls of Jericho fell, the book of Joshua states that “everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys” (Joshua 6:20-21).

So I think it is without question that the author of Joshua did believe that the battle against Jericho was divinely commissioned. That seems to be the clear point of Joshua 6. Now, there is strong archeological evidence, based on high-precision radiocarbon dating, that shows that Jericho was completely uninhabited at the time of Joshua. So as Robert Hubbard concludes, echoing the current scholarly consensus, “There was no fortified city of Jericho for Joshua and Israel to conquer.” Since it is made-up that Joshua conquered Jericho, it is a very short logical step to conclude that it is equally made-up that God commanded him to.

However, let’s return to the author of Hebrews, who obviously did not know anything about archeology. Do I think that the author of Hebrews believed that the battle against Jericho was divinely commissioned and thus morally justified” as Paul asked?

No, I do not. Given the context of the central point the author of Hebrews is making in this chapter as well as in the following chapter, I would say it is clear that he is not trying to make the point that killing in God's name is morally justifiable, and in fact he is making the opposite point: The point of the entire chapter is encouraging believers who are suffering violent persecution to not resort to violence in their defense but to endure suffering in faith. Indeed, in the beginning of chapter 12 we read the author’s summary conclusion, “therefore, with all these examples before us... keep your eyes fixed on Jesus who looking beyond the shame of the cross, enduring it to get to the joy beyond it.” (Heb 12:1-2)

Paul seems to agree with me that the author of Hebrews is not using these OT examples to persuade his audience to similarly use violence in God’s name. He writes, 

“there is a new people of God who are the interethnic body of Christ--no longer a national entity with civil laws, national enemies, etc. So taking up the sword to rise up against their Roman persecutors in the name of Christ would be misdirected.”

He however disagrees with my saying the author of Hebrews is making the “opposite point” noting that the author of Hebrews speaks favorably of these OT examples who “conquered kingdoms, . . . became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight” (Heb 11:33-34). The implication is that the author of Hebrews is speaking favorably of war here, using it as a positive example. That’s true. However, I want to point out that in the next chapter this same author writes,

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son. (Heb 12:5– 6, quoting Prov 3:11– 12 from the LXX)

The Greek word translated above in the NIV as “chastens” is mastigoō which in fact means “to beat with a whip, flog, scourge.” It’s the same word Jesus used to describe his being flogged by the Roman centurions before the cross (Mt 20:19; Mk 10:34; Lk 18:33).

Now, if we want to conclude that because the author or Hebrews cites being “mighty in war” positively, we should therefore see this as a New Testament endorsement of war in the OT, we would have to equally conclude that because the author of Hebrews cites being “flogged” by your father positively, we should likewise need to see this as a New Testament endorsement of what would unmistakably be regarded today as criminal child abuse in the OT.

This is not how I would read Hebrews 12, nor is it how I would read Hebrews 11. What I try to do is look at what the point is that an author is trying to make, and focus on that. In chapter 12 the point is to hold on to the idea that even when we suffer, we can trust that we are loved by God. The point of chapter 11 is to look to the past and take heart, while enduring suffering in faith. The point of the author is not to endorse violence in the OT, nor is it his point to condemn it. His point is not to make any sort of evaluation of the past, but rather to tell his audience how they should live now. That is pretty much always the point of NT authors. The Apostle Paul has plenty of really critical things to say about the OT, but it is always in the context of telling his audience how to live and love now. So he tells them that if they are under the Law they will be under a “curse.” He compares it to slavery, says it is “death” and gave birth to “sin” and on and on, always doing this in the context of how we should live now. Paul is not concerned with saying whether or not Joshua or Moses were justified, because they are not his audience. Jesus is the same. Jesus says everything with the focus on how his audience lives and loves now. So he breaks the Sabbath to heal, he disobeys the command to kill the woman caught in adultery (even though he is the one without sin who could have cast the first stone) and forgives her instead. He says “You know the law says this... but I say to you now...”

So I will thus concede that the author of Hebrews does say positive things about people in the past killing in God’s name. However, I maintain that it is quite correct to say that his clear point, the take away, the reason he is writing, what he wants his audience to do now is not to kill in God’s name, but to do the opposite: “choosing to be ill-treated with the people of God" (Heb 11:25), "regarding abuse suffered for Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt" (Heb 11:26), and even calling his audience “to resist to the point of shedding your blood” (Heb 12:1), rather than to respond with violence. Hebrews 11 is not an endorsement of OT violence, nor is it a critique of it. It is, as the NT authors always are, telling his audience how to live now. That is his point, that is his take-away message.

Do I see difficulty with telling people to “to resist to the point of shedding your blood”? Yes I do. I can see how a text like this could be used to justify people accepting oppression. But that is the tight-rope that we need to walk here, we need to work out how we can understand this way, which seems to me to be a very hard way, and put it into practice in a way that brings us closer to a loving and just world.

Paul Copan next addresses a question that I raised, where I proposed that we must not stop at what we can justify, but must go beyond this towards working to reform and repair and redeem. He writes,

“As for your other question, of course, a broader ethical discussion must go beyond justifying difficult moral exceptions. But that isn't the specific point that Matt Flannagan and I are tackling in our coauthored book. We are addressing a specific moral difficulty, and we do go into great detail about the matter of divine commands. In that setting, we raise the question, "Is taking innocent human life ever morally justifiable?" We give, I think, plausible examples (e.g., in the case of an ectopic pregnancy) that lead us to conclude that while it is an objective prima facie duty not to take innocent human life, it would not be morally absolute. (We point out too that this view is not idiosyncratic but is fairly widely accepted.)”

I note that here we are in agreement that there are some rare cases where taking innocent human life could be considered morally justified. I also acknowledge that this is a relatively widely accepted view. Paul then continues,

“Issues of hyperbole in ancient Near Eastern war texts, etc. aside, could it be that under certain less-than-ideal conditions, that an all-wise, all-good God might have overriding reasons for issuing these difficult commands?”

No, it could not. Absolutely, categorically, no. There is no possible reason that would justify going into a city and slaughtering infants and children. None. I dare say that it is universally accepted that killing infants is never ever okay. I strain to think of something that could possibly be more self-evidently immoral than this.

Paul next comments,

“I do think that John Goldingay is on to something when he writes: “Perhaps Deuteronomy [20:17-18] was only being realistic in recognizing the power of Canaanite temptation when Israelite faith in Yahweh was a newly budded flower.”

I cannot help but mention that the reasoning John Goldingay is using here for justifying these accounts is literally the same reasoning that the Nazis used to justify the Holocaust. I hope that gives all of us pause. The logic is that it is necessary to kill an two-year-old child and and six-month-old baby because otherwise they will grow up to morally corrupt the chosen people, making them impure. That is a truly horrific kind of logic. As we know from history, that kind of logic has led to many genocides.

I do not know John Goldingay, but I would not be surprised to find that he is a fine, loving person. I do know that Pastor John Ortberg has said something very similar, writing that “The beliefs of the Canaanites were a cancer that had to be removed from the land before the people of God could live there with any hope of health.” John Ortberg is well known for his commitment to care for the poor and the oppressed. So here’s a guy who is actively working to help the poor and the oppressed, a person who is exhibiting compassion and care, a person who is likely a much better person than I am. Yet they are calling people a “cancer.” I had the opportunity to speak with John Ortberg about this, and he graciously agreed that this was a fair critique.

I want to emphatically stress here that my point is not to claim that John Ortberg or John Goldingay or Paul Copan are bad people because of such comments, but just the opposite: I wish to underscore how easy it is for all of us as Christians— even the most loving among us— to feel the need to justify violence in the name of defending the Bible. In doing so we find ourselves seeking to justify things in the Bible, which in any other context we would without question wholeheartedly condemn.

I note again that the New Testament author’s focus was always on how people should live now. I would like to propose that this is how we need to read the Bible, too. That is the task of discipleship and also the task of ethics. While we can perhaps make ethical evaluations of things in the past, we cannot stop there. The most important question is to ask how we should live out the teachings we find in the Bible. I maintain that when we do this in a way that promotes acting in love towards others and ourselves we are reading the Bible rightly, and when we read it in a way that promotes harming or hurting others we are reading it wrong.

Paul, thank you for bearing with me as I work through this. I wish you God’s grace, peace, and loving care always.

A Reply to Paul Copan

In my previous blog post, "Boyd and Copan's Unbelievable Debate, and the Problem of Unquestioning Obedience." I outlined some serious problems I see in Paul Copan's approach to interpreting Scripture. Paul was gracious enough to reply to me in a comment on the blog, which you can read here. Since my reply to Paul's comment was getting rather lengthy, I decided to post here:

Hi Paul, thanks for posting. 

You write, “I'm incredulous that you attribute to me what I do not hold (e.g., that Mt. 15:3-4 is in force today).” I can certainly sympathize with that, as no one likes to feel misrepresented. However, I'd like to submit that, while difficult and uncomfortable, this could perhaps actually be good in that it allows us to really face what is at stake in the discussion.

I note that in your conversation with Greg, when he brought this up, you did not acknowledge that the idea of a command to execute children really troubles you, too. Perhaps it does, but you did not communicate that distress and struggle. You instead stressed (as you did again in your comment here) your view that “Jesus clearly seems to take this as divinely commanded under the Mosaic Law.” This left me with the impression that you had no problem with it since you believe Jesus endorses it. Or at least that, for you, the issue is not really whether or not you or I struggle with something as being alarmingly immoral, but simply whether it is commanded.

To state things differently, the issue is not that I am claiming that Paul Copan is endorsing such behavior today. I fully acknowledge that you do not, and if I implied otherwise, that was sloppy of me, and I apologize. The issue, i.e. what I am wanting to bring to light here, is that you are endorsing such behavior as morally justifiable if and when God commands it.

Indeed, if the reason you are not following this command to execute children is simply because it happens to not be in force today, and not because you think it would be morally abhorrent to do so, then you really should not feel incredulous. It would only make sense to feel incredulous if I claimed you endorsed something that you found morally abhorrent.

My suspicion however is that the reason you felt incredulous is because you actually do find it morally abhorrent (I mean seriously, who wouldn't?). I think it would be helpful if you could acknowledge that. Throughout your conversation with Greg I was waiting for something like that from you. He kept bringing up really troubling things like divine commanded genocide and so on. I never heard you say “Yes, Greg, your reaction is valid. I really struggle with that, too. Here's how I try to understand it, which is a bit different from how you do...” Instead your responses all seemed like none of this troubled you, like a tennis player volleying back every shot that comes over the net. Like it was a game of sorts. Again, perhaps this all does in fact trouble you, but I saw no indication of this.

To be clear, my wish that you would acknowledge and validate much more than you do the legitimacy of people's shock and moral outrage in regards to these examples of divine commanded killing of children and infants is not so much about the merits of your arguments, and has more to do with effective communication. It just works better to validate others' views and feelings--especially ones that are deeply morally troubling--and makes it more likely that they will be open to hearing yours.  I think the lack of this, both in your books and interviews, is what leads me (perhaps incorrectly) to conclude that you have no moral problem with any of it. The impression given is that while immature Christians might struggle with such things, you demonstrate the model of the one who has it all figured out, the model of faith as certainty as an antidote to doubt. I would submit that when people are troubled by such profoundly immoral commands, it does not represent a weakness in their morals or faith, but instead is the result of adopting the heart of Jesus. That is, such moral doubts spring from developed empathy which in no way should be regarded as being in conflict with faith.

To be fair, you do speak theoretically of how we might find certain actions “troubling,” but this is in the context of arguing that we should do it anyway if it is a command. This brings me back to what I see as at the heart of the substance of your argument: The issue of making commands the sole criteria for moral evaluation. You make the point that there are some circumstances where it is morally justifiable to use coercive force. I fully grant that point. I can think of lots of examples myself. That, however, in no way means it logically follows that therefore it was okay to execute children for being disobedient or slaughter infants. The moral justification I believe you would give for both of these is that they were divine commands. As you say in Is God a Moral Monster? “Without God’s explicit command (and thus his morally sufficient reasons), attacking the Canaanites would not have been justified” (169). Again, the sole moral justification here is simply that it is a command. We don't know God's reasons, we just know the command. This is what I term the hermeneutic of unquestioning obedience.

You say that you seek to approach the OT as Jesus and the apostles did, but I don't think you actually are. Jesus taught his followers to not follow certain OT commands, rejecting the command “an eye for an eye” and teaching them instead to follow his way “but I say...” Paul told his churches that they were not under the law, i.e. not under commands, but under love. Jesus, when told that the law commands a woman be stoned to death, opted to disobey that command, and instead forgave her – which under the law there was absolutely no provision for with the sin of adultery. I could go on for pages and pages with examples of this, and if you are interested, I in fact do in my book Disarming Scripture.

The bottom line here is that both Jesus and Paul consistently approach faithfulness to Torah as being expressed not in blindly following the command, but rather in seeking to do what is loving and good and just – even if that meant going against a command. That's why Jesus was regarded by the authorities of his own religion as a lawbreaker. He prioritized the welfare of people over commands and laws. That's why he broke the Sabbath. That's why he touched the unclean (by law making himself unclean). That's why he fellowshipped with the “woman of ill-repute.” His understanding was that the purpose of the law was to lead us into loving action, and if in practice it turned out it was not leading to this, then our application of the law needed a course correction. As Jesus says “People are not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for people.” Likewise, the law is intended to be a means to help us to love, not something that binds us into doing things that are unloving and immoral. That's how I see Jesus and Paul's approach to the OT, and so I try to take that same approach with all of Scripture.

I hope from this is is apparent why I maintain that the way Jesus and Paul both interpreted and applied Scripture was the opposite of the hermeneutic of unquestioning obedience, and thus why I take such issue with your approach to Scripture.

Boyd and Copan's Unbelievable Debate, and the Problem of Unquestioning Obedience

Premier Christian Radio's show "Unbelievable" recently hosted part 1 of a 2-part debate  between Greg Boyd and Paul Copan, discussing Greg's book The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. Those of you who are familiar with my own  debate with Greg on this topic (which you can read here, here, here and here) know I have had my own critiques of Greg's approach to the problem of violence in Scripture, so let me begin here by saying that in comparison to Copan, Greg and I are totally on the same page. I thought Greg did a great job presenting and defending his position, and I encourage folks to have a listen.

What I noticed more than anything listening to the two talk is that Boyd and Copan have very different ways of reading the Bible. Boyd speaks of the "humanness" of the Bible and how his understanding of the incarnation allows for him to see the Bible as divine, even with its flawed human parts. This is very much in line with the approach outlined by Pete Enns in his book Inspiration and Incarnation which I see as a healthy and realistic approach to Scripture. Indeed, Boyd pastorally warns that people who look for a "perfect" Bible set themselves up for disappointment and even a challenge to their faith by expecting the Bible to be something that it is not.

On the opposite side is Copan who exhibits what I describe as the hermeneutic of "unquestioning obedience" where one uncritically accepts everything the Bible says, no matter how unloving or morally irresponsible that may be. For example, in the debate the subject of the OT command to kill children who are disobedient to their parents is brought up (Matthew 15:4, citing Exodus 21:17 and Leviticus 20:9). Greg somewhat incredulously suggests that no one in their right mind could seriously propose that we follow that today. Paul Copan however argues that since Jesus called this a "command"  this implies that Jesus endorsed it. QED: so does Paul Copan.

The idea that a 21st century theologian who is focused on ethics could with a straight face and zero sense of irony endorse the execution of children is of course just jaw-droppingly morally irresponsible--not to mention a truly atrocious reading of the passage (which I'll return to in a second)--but it illustrates what the hermeneutic of "unquestioning obedience" looks like in action. Copan seems oblivious to how morally problematic his reading is. That's the "unquestioning" part of the hermeneutic. What is the alternative hermeneutic that we see both Jesus and the Apostle Paul demonstrating in how they read Scripture? The hermeneutic of faithful questioning, and the key question is "how can I read this in a way that will result in loving action? In this case, as Greg points out, the key take-away is that actually killing children seems pretty obviously not the loving thing to do, and so Greg presses on to dig into the passage, trying to find a way to read it that does result in love. If you listen to the interview, I think you'll agree that Greg does a pretty good job with his reading.

Copan on the other hand does not wrestle to find the reading that results in love, but instead approaches the Bible with the assumption that everything it says is good, and thus looks for ways to argue that the profoundly immoral and unloving things we find in Scripture -- like killing disobedient children, like genocide, like cannibalism, like slavery, and on and on -- are actually good and right and God's will. More specifically, because the a priori assumption Copan works with is that everything in the Bible must be good, he encounters a problem when he gets to the New Testament. This is be because the NT as a whole, and the teaching of Jesus in particular, constitutes a healthy Jewish critique of the OT. I stress that this is a Jewish critique because Jesus here is following in the tradition found throughout the Old Testament of a healthy introspective critique of one's own religion and institutions and systems in the name of love. In other words, Jesus does not agree with everything in the OT, and in fact the OT often does not agree with itself. The prophets and Psalmists (not to mention Job) frequently question the law, and do so in the name of love. However, that is not in the realm of the possible for Copan. His assumption is that the Bible must harmonize, and so Jesus can't be disagreeing. The result of this reading (which is extremely common among neo-Calvinists) is to end up missing (kind of by design of how their hermeneutic functions) most of the major teachings of the NT in a pained attempt to read Scripture as if it all agrees. This is the approach identified in the interview as "synthesis" but in the end it mostly means accepting all the authoritarian and militaristic parts of the OT as good, and mostly ignoring the NT and the way of Jesus. In contrast to this, the aim of Boyd's "cruciform hermeneutic" is to do the opposite: He begins with the revelation of God in Christ crucified, and reads everything else in Scripture in that light.


What I want to stress here is that Copan's approach is not an exception, but characteristic of how most conservative evangelicals read Scripture. This is what conservative apologetics looks like: Faithfulness to Scripture is understood to mean justify everything in the Bible, no matter what.

Let me give another example from the interview of this. Boyd brings up the subject of the Amelikite genocide, where the Israelites slaughtered every living thing, including slaughtering infants, under the command to "show them no mercy." This for Boyd is a clear example of a deeply problematic violent text, and it's hard to imagine that anyone could possibly disagree with him. Copan's response is to pontificate on how sometimes we "need to defend the innocent." Sorry, what? Are we even having the same conversation? How in God's green earth is slaughtering infants "without mercy" an example of defending the innocent!? Again this is an example of how in Copan's hermeneutic absolutely everything is justified and defended. That's how faithfulness is understood.

It's not a very big step to go from this kind of cognitive dissonance in biblical interpretation, and carry this into the public sphere and politics. We recently have seen examples of this from folks like Jerry Falwell Jr, Franklin Graham, and most recently Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council who, in a truly mind-boggling interview (be sure to listen to the audio of the interview in the link above)  justifies everything Trump does (including committing adultery with a porn star), saying--much to the apparent shock of the interviewer--that Perkins sees no problem morally at all in any of this for him as an evangelical.

So there you have it: Copan justifies everything in his authoritative book, and Perkins justifies everything the authority (here in the form of the President) does. It's not hard to see how one leads to the next. Within authoritarian evangelicalism, those in authority are typically unquestioned, and even more so the system itself remains unquestioned. When this makes its way into the public sphere as it has now with Trump and evangelicals' overwhelming support, the hermeneutic of unquestioning obedience has given birth to a Frankenstein monster. But in this version of the story the villagers can't seem to recognize the monster.  As an article in the Washington Post puts it, "evangelicals have lost their gag-reflex," they have seemingly lost all ability to be introspective and reflect morally on who and what they endorse and represent. This is painfully obvious to everyone but conservative evangelicals themselves. They have come to champion all that is untrue, whatever is ignoble, whatever is not right, whatever is impure, whatever is unlovely, whatever is not admirable.

What we need to do instead, as morally responsible adults, is to learn how to reflect on our own lives, as well as reflect on our public institutions and systems and sacred texts. That kind of introspection is what allows us to grow and develop and heal and reform and repent. That is precisely what Jesus taught us to do.

Judge for Yourself

Last time I discussed how to interpret Scripture like Jesus did, and concluded that unlike the way many of us learned to interpret Scripture in seminary (something called “exegesis,” consisting of discerning what the intended meaning or message of the passage is) the task of interpretation cannot stop there. Reading the Bible like Jesus requires going further, asking with Jesus whether a passage fulfills the intended telos of love.

Let’s consider the paradigm of exegetical interpretation. Here the paradigm is that of the objective scientist. The biblical scholar seeks to approach the biblical text the way an archeologist approaches a dig. Their aim is to uncover the meaning by examining the evidence. They do not offer any sort of evaluation of this, they simply reconstruct and report. In a sense it can be seen as a form of translating.

In other words, exegesis by definition does not involve making any evaluation at all about whether the content of a text is good or not, and instead simply focuses on what it says. Consequently, while biblical scholarship has helped us to understand how to read texts in their proper context, it has for the most part ignored— and in many ways, actively resisted— dealing with the ethical issues raised by these texts, doing so on academic grounds. To the extent that this is true (and there does seem to be some movement towards correcting this) it means that seminaries neglect one of their core missions, which is to equip future pastors to guide people in how to interpret and apply Scripture as a moral guide in their lives.

If the paradigm of exegetical interpretation is that of the lab scientist, I’d like to propose that we can understand the way Jesus and Paul interpret Scripture in the context of how our judiciary interprets the laws of our country. In our legal system, the role of the courts is to interpret the laws. On a very basic level this involves establishing guilt or innocence. But it does not stop here. The higher courts also evaluate the laws themselves, for example finding that a particular law is unconstitutional. In other words, the Constitution is seen as the telos or aim of the law, and thus laws can change and even be overturned if they are found to conflict with that aim.

Here the concept of interpreting the law is not simply a matter of rigidly applying what it says to do, but of evaluating it to see whether that law serves the purpose for which it is intended, and further to see whether it upholds the deeper intent of the Constitution. In the case of Jesus and Paul, the parallel to the Constitution is not the written Torah or even the ten commandments; their “Constitution” is love.

Paul proposes that there is a higher law than the written Torah, and that is the law of love. He uses various ways to describe this, saying “you are not under the law, but under grace” (Ro 6:15), and “Christ is the culmination of the law” (Rom 10:4), and “Whoever loves others has fulfilled the law… Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law” (Rom 13:8-10), and “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (Gal 5:18). This all points to a common denominator of Spirit-led Christlike love and grace as Paul’s “Constitution” by which he then interprets the law. We might sum this all up by saying that the goal of love is the core of how Paul interprets and applies Scripture, “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal 5:14). The same can be said for Jesus, “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Mat 22:37-40).

You may recall that Brian McLaren has said that the Bible is “not a constitution but a library.” I agree that the Hebrew Scriptures are like a library in that they contain many conflicting visions of the good, rather than one guiding theme. We get it wrong therefore when we try to read the Old Testament as a way of interpreting Jesus, because it is simply not possible to synthesize these conflicting moral visions into one. However I would add to this that while the Hebrew Scriptures are not a “Constitution” for Jesus, love does function as his Constitution. That is, love is the guiding principle that drives how Jesus (and Paul) interprets and applies the law. Only to the extent that we apply Scripture in a way that leads to love can we claim to fulfill it.

That means that when Jesus overturns the way of an eye for an eye, repudiating that command along with the principle of retaliation behind it, replacing it with the way of reconciliation and redemption, he is in fact fulfilling the aim of Torah. In other words, he frequently seems to break commands (not following an eye for an eye, healing on the Sabbath, touching the unclean, not stoning the adulterous woman as the law commands) in order to fulfill the aim of Torah. It was for this reason that it was necessary for him to say “do not think that I have come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it,” because looking at how he broke the commands of the law (and yes, he did technically break them), one can see how those with a different understanding of what it means to apply the law could have gotten the wrong impression. Indeed, the Gospels tell us that Jesus was frequently accused by the “keepers of the law” of being a lawbreaker and blasphemer. Seen in the context of Jesus interpreting Scripture as our higher courts do, perhaps we should not say that Jesus “breaks” laws when he overturns them, just as we would not say that the Supreme Court breaks laws when it overturns them. Basically, the “keepers of the law” see Jesus as a criminal who either keeps or breaks the law, when the Gospel writers present Jesus instead as a judge who interprets the law, which includes the authority to overturn or repudiate. Doing so is what it means to fulfill it. Just as we are all called to be priests in Christ, we are also all called to be judges.

It may surprise and even threaten some readers that I say above that Jesus overturns commands. You may have been taught that Jesus perfectly kept the law and was thus sinless. However, the Gospels tell us that the way that Jesus in fact fulfilled the law was sinless, and demonstrated that God’s love involved “breaking” commands. Again, understood in our framework of higher courts interpreting laws, and at times overturning them, Jesus is showing us how to judge what is good. As Paul writes,

“The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for, ‘Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2:15-16)

I want you to fully appreciate what Paul says above. Paul imagines an interlocutor’s objection who quotes from the Bible, thus challenging Paul “who are you to question God’s Word?!” Paul counters this objection by insisting that those of us who have the “mind of Christ” are qualified to make such judgments. That is, those of us who have learned to think like Jesus are the ones who are able to make these judgments about what is good.

This type of legal interpretation, just as is the case with our higher courts, involves an evaluation of the law itself in relation to its intended purpose of leading us to loving action. Just as a court may declare a law to be unconstitutional, we are in Christ likewise enabled to judge whether a law itself, or an interpretation of the law (i.e. how it is applied in our lives) is Christlike or not. Some may balk at our being empowered by Christ to act as judges over the written law, but I remind you of Paul’s words regarding believers involved in legal disputes,

“Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! (1 Cor 6:3)

That is of course a lot of responsibility, and is not something to be taken lightly. It is something we should do together in relationship and community, taking special care to listen to the voices of the least as we do, and it is something that calls for much wisdom, maturity, and perhaps especially humility. It is the task of developing an adult faith, the task of taking moral responsibility for our lives, including taking responsibility for how we interpret Scripture.

We should not kid ourselves in thinking that we will be able to do this perfectly. We will make mistakes and get things wrong, even with the best of intentions, even with the aim of love. That is why the process of interpretation as ethical evaluation is an ongoing task.

Here I think it is instructive to understand how Jewish interpretation has developed. While Christians look to the New Testament as the guide to how to understand the Hebrew Scriptures, Jews look to the Talmud. A big part of the Talmud consists of records of rabbis debating how to interpret various parts of the Torah. There is a saying “ask two Jews a question and you will get three answers” and this reflects the nature of how these debates are presented in the Talmud. Each argument is placed side by side, and the reader needs to evaluate them all. Meaning that while the Talmud has the role of interpreting the Torah, it does not do so by giving a definitive answer, so much as it invites the readers into the process of thinking through these issues.

We have as Christians, to a large extent, been taught not to think, told that it is wrong to think for ourselves, and that we instead must simply submit ourselves to God’s written word (often meaning to submit to what our morally underdeveloped authoritarian pastor says the Bible says). Jesus and Paul, along with the prophets, and later the rabbinical debates recorded in the Talmud, all invite us instead to learn how to think morally. That is hard work, but it is the work of a mature, responsible, adult faith.

How to Read the Bible like Jesus and Paul (Your Seminary Prof Wont Like It)

In seminary one learns to interpret Scripture in order to best arrive at the authorial intent. This is known as exegesis. So we look at all the evidence, including cultural background, understanding the original languages, and so on, to arrive at what Isaiah or Moses or Paul meant. We are taught to avoid what is called "eisegesis" which is where you read your own values and agendas into the text.

As Richard Hays and many other scholars have noted however, this is not what Paul or Jesus are doing when they interpret the Hebrew Scriptures. This conclusion is frankly inescapable. Both Jesus and Paul frequently interpret Scripture in ways that so obviously override the clear intent of the original author that it is impossible to imagine this is accidental.

The question then is, what is driving their interpretation? How would we evaluate whether it is a "good" or "right" interpretation if they are not trying to follow authorial intent? If we wanted to read the same way they do, how would we similarly evaluate whether we are arriving at a good or right interpretation?

This is the kind of question that gets scholars like Richard Longenecker confused. He recognizes that Paul is doing this, but suggests that we cannot do it ourselves. In part, his argument is that Paul has a sort of apostolic "free pass" to do whatever he wants when he reads the Bible, but we do not. A second part is that Longenecker sees that this type of reading was regarded as compelling at the time, but he claims it would not be compelling to people in our time. 

I'd like to propose that the problem is that scholars like Longenecker don't really get what Jesus and Paul are doing, and so the interpretive methods of Jesus and Paul just seem -- to use the term famously employed by E.P. Sanders -- "weird." It appears to be a sort of random just-make-it-up-as-you-go-along kind of approach. Understandably, he does not want us to read like that. Nor do I. But again I think the problem is not that what Jesus and Paul are doing is actually random, but that it looks that way to Longenecker.

Richard Hays argues against Longenecker that we should adopt this "creative" reading of Paul and Jesus. The problem is that Hays does not really ever identify what they are doing, other than that it is "imaginative" and "creative," which sounds great, but does not provide us with the means to follow them in this. Even if we are thinking of this as a form of art (as the terms "imaginative" and "creative" imply), as any practicing artist can tell you, art is not random. You need to understand what you are trying to accomplish, and how you will use your medium to achieve that.

To get to this, I find the work of James Dunn helpful. Dunn identifies the baseline interpretive approach (i.e. the hermeneutic) of Jesus as interpreting so as to lead us deeper into love. I think it can be argued that this telos (aim) of love is equally the baseline hermeneutic of Paul as well. 

So how does this love-telos work into Jesus and Paul's approach to interpreting Scripture? What we can observe is that they both read Scripture so that the result will be that the way it is interpreted leads us into more compassion, more goodness, more reflection, more mercy. At times this leads them to take an idea in a new direction, and at other times this leads them to take it in the opposite direction of the original author. Sometimes it even seems that they take it in a direction that appears to completely ignore what the original author had in mind. 

To the question of "Is this what was originally intended when this was written?" their answer would be "Who cares?" (that is, this was not something they were focused on at all, contrary to those doing exegesis today, hence their indignant confusion at the question). Instead, they are asking "If we did this, would it result in abundant life? Would doing this lead to goodness and restoration? Will this lead to compassion and justice and wholeness in my life and the lives of others?" If the answer to these questions is "Yes!" then that is what makes the interpretation right. Here right interpretation and right-eousness become synonymous. It is however not exegesis. It requires, as Hays says, creativity and imagination because we need to know how to understand and build upon something, taking it higher. For that we need to know what the aim is (the aim is love) and we need to know how to take things a step further in that direction. 

This is something that needs to be evaluated in conversation, and in lived community. I say here "lived community" because it is not simply theoretical, but practical. The question is, "when we walk this out, can we observe that this leads to love and flourishing? Or does this in fact lead to harm?" We can only observe that by living it out in relationship, not simply as an abstract theory. That goes for how we interpret the words of Jesus and Paul, and it goes for how we evaluate their reading of Scripture as well. 

For example, when Jesus asks, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?" and then a bit more broadly asks "Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or evil, to save a life or destroy it?” (Mk 3:4) we can see Jesus applying this approach. The question is not so much "What does the command say?" nor is it "What is the tradition of interpretation here?" In this case the answer would have been that unless this was a life-threatening situation (which it was not) one must wait until after the Sabbath to heal. Jesus argued instead that the way we honor this command is to do all the good we can. That is the right interpretation because it leads us to right-eousness which is another way of saying towards good-ness. You might say the way Jesus and Paul read Scripture is to ask "Does this way of interpreting lead to doing good or evil, does it save life or destroy it?"

So with this example of how Jesus used this love-telos approach to interpret Scripture in mind, let's see how we might apply that love-telos approach with how we interpret the teachings of Jesus. I frequently hear people make the argument that since Jesus got mad and used a whip once, therefore we can just ignore all that stuff about nonviolence and love of enemies he taught. If we evaluate this approach using the criteria of the love-telos approach, we would need to ask: does reading in this way serve to challenge me to go deeper into the way of Jesus, or does it simply serve to let me find a way to side-step the hard teachings of Jesus and feel justified in doing so? I'd say that the latter is the case and that this is an example of what Bonhoeffer might have called "cheap discipleship." It's a reading that gets us off cheap, that does not challenge us, does not change us, does not move us towards love.

To ask the question slightly differently, we might ask whether there is a better way to read Jesus besides this "cheap" way? Is there a way to interpret the words of Jesus that will lead me to a more costly following of Jesus and his way? Is there a way to read this that would do a better job at challenging me to move deeper into the way of compassion and forgiveness, and moving me closer to justice and making things right in the world? If so, then that is the right interpretation, or perhaps I should say, it is the righter interpretation. We evaluate the rightness of an interpretation on the fruit it bears. That is not a static process where we find, once and for all, the one right way of reading. Rather it is something that needs to grow and develop, just like a living thing does. So if in practice I find that I need to modulate that righter interpretation a bit in order to make it more loving, then we arrive at an even righter-er interpretation -- each time developing it further, expanding and growing towards love. That's what I see Jesus and Paul doing as they interpret and apply Scripture, and that's how I plan to read them, too. Jesus says, "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these." That work, my friends, is the work of love. So let's get to work.

Beyond Justifying: How To Read the Bible For All It's Worth

There are two basic ways we can approach living out the teachings of Jesus and our own spiritual and moral growth and development. One is by seeking to justify the morals we have now, and the other is by seeking to grow deeper. While you can probably guess that I’m going to advocate for the second, the first approach of “justifying” is far more common among evangelicals – and that’s true for both conservatives and progressives.

A common example of this “justifying” approach can be seen in how many Christians seek to deal with parts of Scripture that they find problematic. Let’s say for example you read somewhere in Paul’s writings something like “women should shut up because men are better” (or something that sounds like that to you anyway), and you think “what the hey!?” The justifying approach will look for a way to justify your not following this. For example you might say “many scholars believe that Paul did not actually write this book, so therefore I can ignore it.”

Or to take another example you might read Jesus saying something that sounds to you like “Do not protect or defend yourself or your loved ones when they are hurt by someone. Blessed are those who passively tolerate injustice” (again, I’m expressing more how the verse feels, rather than what it actually says). Again, the approach of justifying might seek to say something like “When Jesus spoke of turning the other cheek he was not referring to personal self-defense” or if seeking to defend the military one might say the opposite “When Jesus spoke of turning the other cheek he was only referring to personal self-defense, not to the state.”

This is not to say that the justifying approach is incorrect. It may very well be that Paul did not write such-and-such book, and it may be quite true that Jesus was not specifically referring to the particular situation we have in mind today – indeed literally everything you read in the Bible was said to a different people in a different situation in a different time in a different language. However, the goal we have with the Bible is to ask “How can I apply this to my life?” and more specifically “How can I apply the way and teachings of Jesus to my life?” That’s kind of the whole point of following Jesus. That’s pretty much the main reason we bother to read the Bible at all. The approach of justifying, however, instead seeks to do the opposite of that. It seeks to find ways to justify not applying it. That’s why as a general approach I think it not a good one, or at least I think there is another approach that is much better.

I also want to stress that I am not saying that the justifying approach is illegitimate. If you as a woman don’t want to be quiet and submit, I can totally relate. I also relate to wanting to defend myself and those I love. To take it even further, I can certainly understand why a person who is attacked could respond with violence. I feel the moral drive as a parent to defend your family. I think one can legitimately claim that it is justifiable, in certain circumstances, to use violence in order to protect. We can make similar arguments with many things – for example we can say it is justifiable to get a divorce in certain circumstances.

The point is not to deny that it is legitimate to see this as justifiable. But what I want to do is ask if we can go beyond this, if we can do something better. I’d like to sketch out what that might look like.

First of all I begin with a simple rule of thumb: If the way I am interpreting the Bible seems wrong and bad and hurtful to you, then I stop right there. Don’t do something that you feel is hurtful. That means that in the above examples where you hesitate because it seems wrong to not to defend yourself, that’s a good instinct. Pay attention to that. Your life matters. Injustice is not okay. That is perhaps not where we will end, but it is certainly where we need to start.

The next step is to entertain the possibility that if it seems to me that Jesus is saying something that seems foolish, naive or even bad, that just maybe it is not the case that Jesus is naive and dumb and wrong, and quite possible that actually he is saying something that is morally over my head. So I need to seek to get to the place of actually understanding how I could take what Jesus is saying and apply it to my situation in a way that leads to moral transformation. That is, in a way that takes me out of the typical loop I get stuck in, and brings me out of that, above it. In other words, I need to appreciate how Jesus is showing me a better way, and really get how that could work in my life. If we can begin to ask this question as we immerse ourselves in the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament, if we can have this question on our lips as we open our hearts to listen to the leadings of the indwelling Holy Spirit, then we open up a whole world of possibilities to walk in the way of reconciliation and peacemaking that Jesus embodied and calls us to as his followers.

Conversely, when our only response to Jesus is to seek to justify our hurtful actions, to say “Yes, but what about...” (fill in the blank with whatever horror scenario gets you emotionally triggered, so your amygdala is flooded, and all rational conversation is completely shut down). When we do that, we close the door to finding any other possibility besides the one where we justify hurting someone else. That results in moral stagnation. It means we close the door to learning another way. We close the door to doing better, to growing morally, to making our world more into the kind of place that Jesus prayed for “your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.”

So how can we move towards doing that? The first step is to get past seeking to justify not doing it. Rather than continually rehearsing all the emotionally upsetting scenarios where we think we are justified in being violent, rather than continually asking “but what about...?” what if we instead spent our energy trying to figure out how we could apply the way of Jesus in our own live contexts and situations? When groups like the Mennonites have attempted to do that, they have come up with really groundbreaking, society-transforming ideas like restorative justice. That’s exciting, and I want to be doing that. I want to be morally innovating and creating, rather than spending my time seeking to justify why I am not.

I think I get to say that. After all, I’m the guy who wrote a book on how it’s okay to “pick and choose” what parts of the Bible will shape and guide us morally, and which parts do not. So one could think that I would be all for the justifying approach. After all, I am, to an extent, providing a justification for not following certain teachings which we determine are hurtful (or at a minimum, certain interpretations of those teachings). Again, those justifications are legitimate. They are a good place to start, but a bad place to stop. So I maintain that we must go beyond this. In fact, the only reason I still read the Bible is in the hopes of going beyond this. I read in the hope that I can connect with the Spirit who will lead me into a deeper understanding of the way of Jesus that can transform me and my world.

That’s the attitude, and it’s a critical starting position. But let’s get to the practical. What does it look like? On a very simple level it begins by simply asking “How can we do better?” and “What are ways to reach the goal we have without harming anyone?” or at a minimum “How can we work to reduce harm?” Yes, we can justify divorce for instance. But is there a way to save the marriage, restore the relationship, and keep the family together? If there is, shouldn’t we seek to do the hard work to get there? Yes, we can justify violence used in self-defense, but if there is a way to resolve conflict peacefully, shouldn’t we seek to learn how to do that? If there was a way to reduce the amount of deaths due to guns in our country – whether from suicides, mass shootings, gang violence, or police shooting unarmed people of color – shouldn’t we seek to do everything we can to learn how to do that?

Yet so often, rather than working together to do that, what we find are people who feel the need to instead justify keeping things the way they are, and as a result actively block others from working to make it better. What I want to state is that this is not a good way to “defend” morality because it ends up in stagnation and status quo, and prevents growth and development and healing. We need to go beyond justifying things, and instead learn how to seek to make things better. That is where Jesus was trying to take us when he said all of his “I know it says... but I say to you” and “don’t even the unbelievers already do that?” statements. He wanted us to go beyond status quo religious morality, and “be perfect” which in Hebrew means to take something to completion.

Why is it that we gravitate towards seeking to justify, rather than seeking to improve and go deeper? A big factor is the feeling that we need to defend ourselves from blame. Every child does it. You could almost say it comes hardwired into us. “He started it!” we learn to say. Yes, I absolutely am implying that justifying is an immature response because it absolutely is. I’m guilty of it, too. We all are. But I don’t want to justify that (see what I did there?). I want to instead seek to follow Jesus, who calls us instead to the way of repentance and humility, rather than the way of justifying ourselves. That’s just Gospel 101, people. Moreover, Jesus calls us to be at the forefront of working to bring about peace in our world, to be ambassadors of reconciliation, to demonstrate the same kind of love Jesus did. That’s our calling, our mission.

I think that’s an exciting possibility, to be in the place of moral innovation, to be active in pushing ourselves and our world towards being more humane, more loving, more like Jesus. I also think it opens all sorts of doors into really encountering the divine in the Bible, allowing us to read in a way that deepens and challenges us. I hope you find that as exciting as I do, and will join me in going beyond justifying ourselves. Let’s stop asking if there is a way for us to justify not applying the way of Jesus to our lives, and instead seek to find how we can. Jesus tells us that way is life. Let’s not rest until we understand why that is true.