Help! I’ve been tagged by Lingamish in a highly provocative post. In a nutshell he writes:
What do we do about the curses, the bloodshed, and the vengeance found in the Old Testament? The answer is very simple: we skip it.
In making his point he willingly acknowledges the ways in which the pleas for vengeance in the Psalms, for example, mirror our own instincts in certain situations, however he sees that (and by implication the OT) as something to be redeemed. He goes on to illustrate what is a rather Girardian take on the problem of sin and its solution by claiming Jesus as someone who also edits the vengeance out of Scripture.
Consider Jesus’ method of “skipping” the violence of the Old Testament during the opening quotation in his sermon recorded in the Gospel of Luke: … Jesus is quoting Isaiah 61:1-2 but has deliberately left out half of verse 2 … “the day when our God will seek vengeance”
Well, there are no answers here. But since I’ve been asked, I will try out a few observations.
I think the sermon at Nazareth as a preface to Jesus’ ministry is a Lukan literary creation that is programmatic for his account of the one who dies with “Father, forgive” on his lips. Luke has a more radical idea of repentance as rooted in God’s initiative than the other gospel writers, and is perhaps the easiest to interpret in Girard’s categories. Girard’s work is also a tremendously attractive explanation of sin and atonement, but while I feel its pull, I keep feeling some important issues of justice are getting lost. The best of the Old Testament (and New Testament) expressions of divine violence are statements of God’s passion against injustice and evil, however much we might want to express things differently.
One of the interesting moves made by some of the earlier interpreters of Scripture, before the West became over-suspicious of allegory, was a reinterpretation of the texts of divine violence as warfare against the evil spirits and demons. It is an allegorisation broadly in line with the literal interpretation of other texts. I’m not quote sure how we might do any kind of demythologised allegorisation today, but perhaps this mythologically framed reinterpretation of the difficult texts has something to offer.
Of course, as Luke’s Jesus does, and as David does, we are all selective about our readings of Scripture in the light of the broad themes we adopt, or the methods we use to tame difficult texts to our own theology and morality. We are not alone in that. Our Jewish brothers and sisters do much the same with the text of the Old Testament, without needing the New Testament to do it. Indeed, some of the more vivid metaphors of God’s destructive condemnation come on Jesus’ lips. It is not confined to the Old Testament. That would suggest that there is no simple principle of selectivity that will let the text off the hook.
The human desire for vengeance reflected in a number of texts is not very far removed in many cases from a desire for the destruction of evil and the establishment of justice. The vengeful instinct may be a distortion, but it is a distortion of our better instinct: the desire for justice. And the desire for justice may be one of the more powerful pointers of our hearts towards the existence of God. For is it not true that in the end, only God can guarantee a justice that sees the human heart, and whose judgement may yet lead to restoration?
Perhaps then, wrestling with all the problem texts may lead to a deeper appreciation of justice, and in the end a justice that may look suspiciously like mercy. That’s why we need to keep those difficult texts, admit to their awkwardness, wrestle with them and argue with them. Perhaps in the course of that conversation which takes them seriously, we will admit both that we long for justice, but that left to our own devices, we’re more likely to end up with vengeance. And perhaps we need these texts of terror to help us learn the difference.
{ 15 comments }
“Jesus as someone who also edits the vengeance out of Scripture.” – after you with the millstones and the worms that never die, then.
(Not suggesting this is your viewpoint, btw. Thanks for a thoughtful post.)
Very, very good. Where is anger supposed to go, if not Psalm 137?
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I live in a culture torn by war and driven by the same ethnic impulses that drive the narratives of the Old Testament. When discussing Psalm 63 yesterday with my students, the one student, a choir director, said that verse 9 is the verse he would choose to make into a song:
9 Enemies seek to destroy my life,
but they will descend into the depths of the earth.
There’s very little metaphorizing of the Scriptures here in Africa. My hope is not to get African believers to discount the revelation of the First Testament but to see that “better things relating to salvation” await them in Christ.
David, I take that point. Nonetheless – as an example – I would seek to develop Ps 63:9 from that literal interpretation via, say, Gen 4:7, to an understanding that the desire for vengeance is itself an enemy lurking at the door, which God desires to bring down to the pit. Then it’s time for Romans 12:14-21,
That’ll preach, brother. That would be my approach as well.
All well and good. Though I tend to problematize so-called NT truths in my preaching far more than the trajectory you outline would.
Furthermore, what kind of sermon is that in the face of real-life decisions of the kind nations make today, including our own, with soldiers fighting and killing and being killed in places like Afghanistan?
Is is not totally irrelevant? I would think that Obama’s Nobel Prize speech is far more to the point than a sermon that sets up Romans 12:14-21 as a guideline in context.
Excuse the brutal honesty. I don’t know about you, but my congregation is full of vets and kids going off to war. I can’t get away with preaching that ends up with Rom 12 trumping all other considerations. I have to take into consideration the entire witness of Scripture and try to relate it to war and peace today.
Well, I took David’s question to be about an individual’s desire for his own triumph and vengeance, and answered that one, and not the one you seem to think I should have.
: The answer is very simple: we skip it.
I think most Christians would probably grudgingly admit this is what goes on, but it seems to me, having worked my way thoroughly, systemmatically and gradually through the OT text over the last 3 years, that this reponse only highlights just how much this issue has been skipped. From my reading it seems that the OT is almost obsessed by violent vengenace and a God threatens and carries out violent punishment on a regular basis. Everyone knows that Joshua is difficult, and the odd Psalms, but the prophets go on and on and on about it. We tend to read them in a way that picks out the odd positive verse, and this creates the shared illusion that the prophets are largely positive. But when you actually work through the text more systematically it’s plainly rubbish. And in the prophets we move away from what could be construed as people seeking vengenance to vengenance turned in on themselves.
I tried to unpack this in my <a href="http://jesusfilms.podbean.com/2009/09/07/biblical-horror-stories-for-children/"Greenbelt talk, but to be honest, I’m no longer sure even of the liberal answers I proposed there. In fact I’m no longer sure my faith is going to survive the issue.
Matt
Hi, Matt. Most of what you say demands a long response, and I’m afraid this isn’t it. Although I appreciate it’s more dificult and complex, I still think what I say above is part of the answer:
While I sympathise with your overall point, I wonder whether we are as much in danger of creating a genteel (as much as a gentle) God for people who live at one remove from violence, terror, and tyranny, as those who live in dangerous and life-threatening circumstances are of creating a God who will get their own back for them? (And no, I have no idea how to get out of that cross-cultural dilemma!)
BTW – I don’t think I quite understand what you;re trying to say in the last sentence of your main paragraph – can you clarify?
I think (correct if wrong) that the last sentence of the main paragraph mean that the prophets are simply taking the desire for God to carry out vengence against Israel’s enemies, to a desire (“warning”) that God will take out vengence on Israel itself. . . all these people demanding a voilent God.
Funny thing is, when He incarnates they get voilent on Him too..Maybe Girard is right?
Hi Doug and Phil,
Thanks for your replies. Doug is pretty much right about what I meant.
I guess the approach seems to change in the prophets. It’s easyish to understand how winning a battle against all the odds came to be interpreted God winning the battle on our behalf. But in the prophets there is no battle just warnings that God is going to take vengeance on Judah itself. This is complicated, for me at least, by thinking through the horrific extent of that vengeance (death for many, torture, maiming, homes burnt and being dragged 100s of miles across desert into slavery, some of which is sexual slavery etc.), and the fact that the Jewish communities seem to have decided that these books, in the light of this horrific treatment they predict, must therefore contain the word of God.
Yes there was injustice in Israel and Judah, but was it comparable with the extreme punishment that was carried out? Who knows.
Overall I guess what the last three years has taught me is that whereas before I thought that the OT was generally positive, but with a number of difficult bits (that churches usually skip over) I now feel that the OT is generally negative, with just the occasional “good” bit, to the extent that it seems to me that those who claim we just “skip” over the negative bits haven’t even realised the extent to which they are selectively reading their Bibles. Celebrating Zeph 3:17 (say) isn’t so much skipping the difficult bits as picking out the only redeemable part of the whole book very much against the flow of the book and the OT as a whole.
I know I’m exaggerating all this (and that there are some bad bits in the NT as well), but please excuse me. This is really the first time I’m trying to explore and vocalise some of my thinking over the last few months.
Matt
Thought-provoking conversation. I had that same struggle when JFH called Isaiah the 5th Gospel. In my religious tradition we hold the OT in the highest esteem: it is inspired and profitable and every book, chapter and verse breathes the Gospel. That’s fine in theory but as Matt puts it, in practice it’s rather the other way around. And I think our fundamentalism does the Gospel a disservice since our continual spouting of “The Bible says…” sets up scoffers to retort, “And the Bible also says…” and then listing some outlandish practice or bloody massacre in the name of God.
There’s a book by that name about Isaiah too – and it has had that effect. In fact it’s easier, for example, to find substitutionary atonement in Isaiah than the NT, especially with hints of a penal version!
Don’t forget that Jesus utters threats also, nor that the Apocalypse is a bizarre confection of images of blood and violence centred round the throne of a wounded Lamb.
I don’t think – in the end – I go with any of the answers I’ve heard completely – mine included.
I think that this is the strongest card in the hand of anti-Christians, and I struggle with it a lot. So, here are some ill-thought through ideas….
1: a very Lutheran reading, where the harshness of some OT prophesy forces us back onto salvation in the NT (as with the Law)
2: say that God always meant to bring about salvation through Jesus, and that the terror passages were misunderstood and will become clear/somehow worth it in the scheme of redemptive history/some other thought
3: say that they are all literally true and deal with the theological/philosophical consequences that are distinctly contrary to 2000 years of church tradition and teaching
Alvin Plantinga gave some thoughts on the genocide passages at a recent conference held at Notre Dame:
http://www.nd.edu/~cprelig/conferences/HebrewBible.shtml
http://www.mandm.org.nz/2010/01/sunday-study-joshua-and-the-genocide-of-the-canaanites-part-i.html
http://www.mandm.org.nz/2010/01/sunday-study-joshua-and-the-genocide-of-the-canaanites-part-ii.html
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