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.

My article in Sojourners on wrestling with violence in the Bible

My feature article just came out in the latest edition (Jan, 2012) of Sojourners Magazine. It is called:

"The Way of Peace and Grace: How Paul wrestled with violent passages in the Hebrew Bible"

You can read it online at the SoJo website for free (you just need to register).
EDIT: For those who don't want to register, here's a direct link to a
PDF of the article

As the title suggests, it deals with how we can faithfully wrestle with really disturbing passages in the Bible that seem to advocate and even command committing violence in God's name. As I've mentioned before, most commentaries tend to either justify or downplay these passages. What I propose is a very different approach: if we learn to read the Bible the way that Jesus and Paul did, we can deal with them like they did.

In the Sojourners article I deal in particular with how Paul wrestles with violent passages from the Old Testament, disarming them and putting them under Christ. You'll need to read the article for the details, but Paul's approach is pretty awesome. If Paul read the Old Testament like this, then I think its fair to say we would be on pretty solid ground if we read it that way too.

I'm really excited about this article, and am thrilled to finally be able to share it. As far as I know, it represents a unique contribution to biblical scholarship. I've found scholars making similar conclusions about Paul, buried in the middle of some obscure footnote in a dense technical commentary, but I have not seen anyone connect all the dots like this. In fact, books like the Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament miss (or intentionally omit?) this pattern in Paul's reading entirely, even though Paul does this constantly. In doing so, they completely miss how Paul reads his Bible and arrives at a gospel of grace that is so different from how he previously read his Bible before his conversion to Christ.

What's more important than scholarship though is how we, as followers of Christ, read the Bible as Scripture. Adopting Paul's way of wrestling with these violent passages opens up a way for all of us to read the Bible that does not force us to check our conscience at the door. Jesus and Paul didn't, and neither should we!

So if you've ever wondered how Jesus or Paul could have read the Old Testament and arrived at a loving, radically grace-focused understanding of God, then check out the article.

Understanding Violence in Old Testament - Psalm 139

Psalm 139 is one of the most beloved of the psalms. It beautifully express God’s nearness:

“You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.’ (Ps 139:13-14)

Yet beginning at verse 19 there is a clear shift both thematically and emotionally. What begins as a psalm of intimacy and closeness to God suddenly shifts into a tirade of hatred:

“If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!... I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.” (Ps 139:19, 22)

The raw hatred expressed here is disturbing, especially if we see this psalm as a model of prayer. As Christians we know it is wrong to pray for the death of our enemies and cultivate “complete hatred” (v 22). So how can we understand this psalm? Viewing this from the perspective of a screenwriter or actor, one would need to immediately ask what the emotional motivation was that triggered this shift? What breaks the psalmist out of the gentle rhapsody of feeling sheltered and initiate with God, into his sudden outburst of hatred? What is the personal back-story that accounts for this emotional and thematic shift in the narrative?

One clue is that we see that the psalmist's hatred is directed against “men of blood” (v 19), that is, against men of violence whom the psalmist wants to be “kept far away from.” When he wishes that God would “kill the wicked” therefore, this is clearly not meant in the context of Psalm 51 where David confesses his sins. In fact, the Hebrew word rasa translated as “wicked” is never used reflexively in the psalms to refer one’s self, but always refers to the other, to "them." This Hebrew word rasa ("wicked") is also frequently coupled with violence in the psalms:

“The Lord... hates the wicked and the one who loves violence” (Ps 11:15)

“...the wicked who do me violence, my deadly enemies who surround me” (Ps 17:9)

“Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from violent men (Ps 140:5)

So the word rasa is used very much in the same way as we use the term “bad” people in the context of terrorists and child abductors. As with those emotionally charged themes, here too there is a history of hurt behind the psalmist’s words. Likely they or someone they love were the victim of violence, and now they are lashing out in their hurt. A friend of mine had a girl from Israel live with her family as an exchange student. This girl had seen Palestinians inflicting violence on little children, and one day confessed to my friend through tears “I hate them! I want them to suffer, I want their children to suffer like ours have! I know that’s wrong, but I don’t know how to stop. I just hate them so much.” If we read this psalm in that context, of emotional pain and trauma then the abrupt shift makes sense. It also shed light on the closing two verses:

“23 Search me God and know my-heart. Examine me and know my troubled thoughts. 24 See if the way of pain is in me, and lead me in way eternal.”

Verse 23 is an echo of the opening line of this psalm “God, you search and know me,” (v 1) which launches the psalmist into the beautiful description of god’s intimate knowledge of our inmost being. Here he adds “...and know my troubled thoughts” (v 23). This is frequently translated as “anxious thoughts” and as a result I, and many others, have read this in the context of assurance from doubt, as a verse of comfort when I doubt God’s love for me. I still think this is a perfectly legitimate way to read this—a psalm can take on new meaning as the Spirit uses it to speak into the context of our lives—but here I am convinced that in the original context the “troubled heart” that the psalmist speaks of is the one that caused him in pain and anger to be pulled out of worship and into his outburst of hatred.

His thoughts of worship and intimacy are troubled, disturbed, interrupted, by violence. This takes us into the next line “See if the way of pain is in me” (v 24). The Hebrew word here is otsev meaning pain or suffering, but many translations have instead “the way of wickedness” (NRSV) or “offensive way” (NIV) which both lose the direct emotional connection this term has to the very real hurt expressed in this psalm. Here is someone whose heart is "troubled" by violence, they are hurting, and because of this they lash out in anger. They are stuck in the “way of pain,” the way of hurting and being hurt, are praying that they would be brought out of this road of hurt, and instead be placed on “the eternal way” which is not characterized by hurt and violence, but by life.

Most psalms begin with a lament, and end in praise. Here the order is reversed: It begins in praise, and ends in anguish, hatred, and pain. So we need to look back to vv 1-18 to find the answer to the psalmist's troubled angry heart at the end. The message of the psalm, if we look back to these beautiful opening lines, is that God knows our troubled hearts, God knows our pain, and even our darkness, even when we “make our bed in hell” (v 8), God can “make that darkness into light” (v 12). Even our hatred and pain can be transformed and redeemed by the God who knows us. God meets us there in our darkness and there in that embrace can turn that darkness into light.

Penal substitution and the OT narrative of judgment

Andrew Perriman responding to my blog on a non-penal understanding of Isa 53 proposes that while we should not see the Servant Song as a picture of the satisfaction of the demands of justice, he does want to retain a penal view understood in the context of the Old Testament narrative. He writes that,


“There is at least a difference to note between God directly punishing Jesus in order to satisfy the demands of justice and Jesus being implicated in the direct punishment of Israel (in order to satisfy the demands of the Law).”


This is indeed much more Jewish and historical than the classical Calvinist presentation of penal substitution, but it is something I would also want to ultimately reject as well, in particular that last part about “punishment... in order to satisfy the demands of the Law.” The reason not because I reject the biblical narrative, but because I think this only tells half the story.

Much of the book of Isaiah indeed conveys exactly this above narrative: Israel has sinned and now, Isaiah tells them over and over, they are suffering calamity, oppression, and death for their sin. This is not just in Isaiah, it is all over the OT. Andrew writes further that, “in the biblical setting we should recall that sickness is a consequence of Israel’s failure to keep the covenant (cf. Deut. 28:20-22).” Again this is quite true. In the Old Testament mindset, sickness is conceived of as both impurity, and punishment from God.

While this represents the broad picture of sickness in the Hebrew Scriptures, it is important to note that the Old Testament does not present a single static view, but a dynamic one containing internal critiques and developing understandings of who God is. In the book of Job for instance we find a divine critique of the view of Job’s friends, who assumed that Job’s afflictions must have come as the result of his sin. In contrast to their judgment, Job is declared by God to be “a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job 1 :8). The rest of the book that follows proceeds to give us one long and colorful protest against judging the sick and suffering. Similarly, in Isaiah we again find a critique of the connection of sickness with sin in the story of the suffering servant who, Isaiah tells us, was falsely considered “struck down by God, and afflicted” (Isa 53:4). Yet it is through the righteous suffering of the servant that healing is to come to Israel: “by his bruises we are healed” (Isa 53:5). One might even say that the suffering servant song serves as an internal critique of the view in Isaiah itself that suffering comes as the result of sin.

This inner-biblical critique of the view that sickness and suffering are punishment for sin finds its strongest statement in the gospels. At times Jesus seems to associate sickness with sin (for example in the healing of the paralytic Lk 5:20ff), and other times he explicitly denies it (as with the blind man in in Jn 9:2-3), his focus throughout however is never on ascribing blame, but that “the works of God might be displayed” through a reversal of the curse of sickness and affliction. Andrew is again spot on when he writes, “when Jesus heals the sick, it is to be understood as a sign that the curse is being lifted, that forgiveness is being offered to Israel.” The paradigmatic statement of Jesus here is “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Lk 5:31–32). Here a connection is indeed drawn between “sinners” and “those who are sick,” but the order is reversed: instead of saying that the sick are guilty, he is saying that sin is an illness in need of healing, rather than judgment. This reflects a significant shift: even if sickness is the result of sin, God’s action in Jesus is now to reverse that judgment via healing.

Now here's the part that I think Andrew leaves out: The primary way in which sickness is expressed in the gospels is not in terms of God’s curse, but of demonic affliction. By the time of the gospels, a major shift had occurred in Judaism, and the idea that affliction and sickness stemmed from Satan had become widespread. So while there was still the sense in Second Temple Judaism that Satan served as an “agent of God’s wrath,” and thus that sickness was ultimately the result of God’s judgment, there was now also the notion that sickness came from “the enemy.” This later focus is what we observe in Jesus, who saw the Satanic reign as something to be opposed and overcome. Jesus frames his healing ministry in terms of the kingdom of God advancing against Satan’s kingdom (cf. Lk 11:17–20). This approach to sickness carries over into the approach Jesus took to sin: people are in need of being liberated from both sickness and sin. Jesus "came for sinners" because "it is the sick who need a doctor." Here we have a more sophisticated understanding of sin and sickness: it is not just something to be quarantined, it is something to be healed. The full narrative is not "do good and be blessed, do bad and be cursed" but a way to make the rotten pure and new again.

That is why I would ultimately disagree with a view of the atonement that views Jesus as bearing the “punishment of Israel in order to satisfy the demands of the Law.” In one sense this may be true. I would agree that (as Martin Hengel puts it) Jesus bears the full weight of human wretchedness. But I have a big problem with the idea that this “satisfies” the “demand” of God’s law. The picture I see in the NT and the early church is that the punishment itself is seen as evil, and identified with the will of the devil and not with God’s will. It is something that needs to be opposed and overcome, not fulfilled or satisfied.

God did not kill Jesus, nor did justice or the law. Injustice did. Evil did. We did. As Peter says on Pentecost, “wicked men put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead.” (Acts 2:23) That’s Isaiah 53 in one sentence.

A Subversive Easter Message

I've been spending a lot of time lately looking at the way the Old Testament is quoted in the New, and I've found something pretty surprising: 9 times out of 10 the New Testament citation completely flips the original meaning of the Old Testament passage on its head! Take for example Paul's Easter message in 1 Cor 15 where he writes that "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Cor 15:26). Paul then quotes the familiar line "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" and declares that "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 15:55-57). As Paul is using the phrase, Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? is addressing a defeated death: where is your sting now, O death? For you have been defeated by Christ! But take a look at the original passage in Hosea that Paul is quoting from:

"Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from Death?
O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your destruction?
Compassion is hidden from my eyes." (Hos 13:14 NRSV)

The sense here is the opposite of what Paul is saying. It is about inviting death to come and destroy Israel in punishment. The NET translation makes this difference quite clear:

"Will I deliver them from the power of Sheol? No, I will not!
Will I redeem them from death? No, I will not!
O Death, bring on your plagues! O Sheol, bring on your destruction!
My eyes will not show any compassion! (Hos 13:14 NET)


Now in both Hebrew and Greek there are no question marks (or any punctuation at all), so you can't really tell whether it says "Shall I redeem them from Death?" (a question) or "I Shall redeem them from Death" (a promise), but it is pretty significant that most English translations (NAB, NASB, NCV, NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT, NET) read this as a rhetorical question that implies a negative answer "Do you seriously think I will rescue you from death!?" The only exceptions to this reading are the NIV and KJV. Similarly, most English versions translate the part quoted by Paul to mean "What's keeping you death? Come!" meaning Hosea is not mocking death, but calling for death. Now how do we know that this is what Hosea meant? Context. Look at the last line: "Compassion is hidden from my eyes" and then read the whole chapter too and you'll see it ends by saying,

"They will fall by the sword;
their little ones will be dashed to the ground,
their pregnant women ripped open." (Hos 13:16 NIV)

This was not good news when Hosea said it, but Paul has turned it around. He has taken a passage which in its original context was about death being poured out on people and made it about humanity being liberated from death because of the Resurrection where Christ overcame death. Again, if you look at how the NT quotes the OT you will find that most of the time it is reversing the original context, subverting it, redeeming it. It takes the original context which says "I hate my enemies and want to destroy them" and makes it about redemption, forgiveness, and making things new again. I love that.

I could go on for pages and pages with other examples of this. If you want to see for yourself, just pick any passage from the NT that is quoting from the OT and then read the whole OT chapter to see what the original context was. You'll see that over and over the NT turns the original meaning around. If you ever wondered why it was that the disciples were so shocked that Jesus had to die on the cross, it's because this was a complete reversal of everything they had learned about the messiah from the prophets. They had learned from reading the OT prophets to expect the messiah to come as a warrior and kill all the bad people. The NT takes all of these messianic prophesies that are about violence and destruction and reverses their meaning. Instead of being about an oppressed people getting revenge, it makes it into a story where all of us need mercy and grace.

Now this kind of crazy exegesis that takes the meaning of a passage and turns it on its head is also exactly how we need to read life. The very heart of the gospel is that God has turned everything around at Easter. The one condemned to die is shown to be victorious. Jesus in his death has conquered death. So while we might look at our lives and see darkness, while we might see pain and hurt, while we might be hopeless screw-ups, God says to us through the resurrection, "behold I make all things new!" God takes what we see around us and flips it right-side up.

Christ entered into our hurt and helplessness and overcame it. That's why the early church could have hope in the middle of horrible persecution, that why people who are suffering can find hope in the middle of that blackness, that's why those who are wracked with guilt and feel helpless to change get so overwhelmed by grace. So my prayer for you this Easter is that you could find a way to see yourself the way God sees you, that we all would learn to see grace in the middle of our messed up lives, to have eyes that see hope in a dark world. It can be really hard to see that sometimes. But that is the truth of the Resurrection. Love has and will overcome hate and hurt. Because of that, nothing you have done, nothing that has been done to you needs to define who you are. In Christ we can be re-defined by grace.

Happy subversive Easter. Christ is risen!

Exegesis #7 - Reading through the eyes of Jesus

In the past I have dealt with violence in the Old Testament and the problem it poses for reading the Bible as God's word. How can we love and trust a God that would command genocide? How can be believe a book that claims he does? Does not the Old Testament present a sub-Christian and appalling vision of morality characterized by an ethic of violent domination and hatred of enemies?

Anyone who does not ask these questions has never really read the Old Testament. One Christian bishop who asked these kinds of questions early in the history of the church was Marcion. Marcion found that the God of the OT seemed immoral and brutal and had nothing to do with the the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Marcion has since gotten a bad rap, being often dismissed as a heretic, but he has a point. Unlike many people today who simply dismiss him, the church father Origen, who disagrees with Marcion' proposal of ditching the OT, nevertheless recognizes the validity of his point. Origen complins that both "heretics" like Marion as well as more "simple minded" Christians hold a view of God based on the OT which
"would not be entertained regarding the most unjust and cruel of men" (De Principiis 4.5). If we look today, find the same is true: both fundamentalists as well as atheists read the OT and see in it a monstrous picture of God.

So what is the alternative? How did Origen read the OT? More importantly, how did Jesus read the OT in which he saw his loving Abba Father who he says "loves his enemies" (Mt 5:34-48)? I'd like to propose a way for us to read the OT. It's very simple actually - we simply need to read the OT in the light of Jesus. Let me give an example of what that might look like:

Jesus applies the story of Passover to his own death, and from this we can gain a lot of insight into how he understood the cross. But the same time the cross is very different from the Exodus. The Exodus is about God's people being liberated out of bondage, but it comes about through violence and force, and is waged not against evil itself, but other human beings. So the way Jesus understands the Exodus means its reversal at the same time as it means its fulfillment. The same can be said for pretty much every story in the OT. Take David and Goliath where we have your basic "little guy overcomes the big bad bully" story. In the end it still promotes overcoming enemies through violent force though. Reading this in the light of the NT we might ask how the little guy David might have applied love of enemies and Paul's principle of "overcoming evil with good."

In other words, we cannot simply read the OT as Christians and assume that it gives us a true picture of God. In the OT we see at best a "dim Christ," but God's true nature is only fully revealed in Christ. To read the OT right, we need to read it through the interpretive lens of the NT, we need to lay every story at the foot of the cross and ask how it is transformed, redeemed, and reversed by the cross. This is precisely how we see Jesus reading the OT himself. He says he has come "fulfill the law" but in doing so he reverses it, turning the ethic of genocide and war of "hate your enemies" into "love your enemies". While in the OT we see the prophet Elijah call down fire from heaven to consume his enemies (2 Ki 1:10), Jesus rejects this outright. When his disciples ask him "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them, as Elijah did?" (Lk 9:54) Jesus rebukes them "You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." (Lk 9:55-56 NASB). Let me underline what Jesus says here: what kind of spirit you are of. There are really only two options here. Either we read the OT with the spirit of Christ, or we read it with another spirit, and as a result see in the OT a God of violence and hate.

This is admittedly a radical way to read the OT, but I submit to you that this is exactly how Jesus read his Bible. It is also how Paul and the other Apostles read it, and how Origen and the early church read it. So it is a deeply orthodox New Testament way to read our Bibles faithfully. It is also a life-giving way of reading Scripture that does not turn a blind eye to the abuse of power and violence propegated in the name of religion, but exposes it and redeems it in Jesus name. I think it is time that we recovered this way of reading.