MandM » War Ethics

Contra Mundum: Pacifism and Just Wars

Matt — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:58:12 +0000

Comedian Bill Maher recently berated Christians for being hypocrites for supporting military action against terrorists in his “New Rules” segment on the U.S. TV show Real Time (transcript here). Jesus, Maher contended, was a pacifist; “Jesus lays on that hippie stuff pretty thick. He has lines like, “do not repay evil with evil,” and “do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you.” Here Maher was citing from Romans 12, where Paul formulated Christ’s teaching about loving one’s enemies. In this passage Paul commanded people to “bless those who persecute them,” they are forbidden to “repay evil for evil” and are commanded to “not take revenge” but to “leave room for God’s wrath. For it is written, ‘Vengeance belongs to me. I will pay them back’.”

Maher scathingly contended that this support contradicted Christ’s clear teaching; he said, “nonviolence was kind of Jesus’ trademark. Kind of his big thing. To not follow that part of it is like joining Greenpeace and hating whales.”

After saying this Maher quipped, “the next line isn’t ‘and if that doesn’t work, send a titanium fanged dog to rip his nuts off.’” The irony is that it Maher clearly had not bothered to actually read the next line; Romans 13 states that the “governing authorities” are “established by God”; one is morally bound to submit to rulers because “rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to execute vengeance upon evil doers”.

The Greek words for evil, wrath, and vengeance are the same in both Romans 12 and 13. Paul is stating that the very things Christians are forbidden to do with regard to not repaying evil for evil, are precisely what the State has been given the legitimate authority and right to do.

Paul here elaborates the basic premise that moral theologians appeal to to reject pacifism and to support the claim that war can be just under certain circumstances. The premise is that a government has the right and duty to use force to uphold within the geographical area over which it has jurisdiction. A just war is simply an extension of a government’s power to pass laws and create police powers.

If a criminal attempts to rape or kill people within the geographical realm over which a government has authority then the government can justifiably use force to prevent this. And it can also use force to try and punish anyone who does these things; hence, the existence of a legislature, police force, courts and prisons. Just War theorists simply note that there seems no reason why this would not extend to when the person committing the offence is a soldier from another country as opposed to a domestic criminal.

These theorists argue that for a war to be just it must meet 6 requirements;

It must be fought for a just cause and aim;
It must be prosecuted by someone with the lawful authority to do so;
It must be a last resort;
There must be a reasonable chance of success in prosecuting the aims;
The cost incurred by going to war must not be greater than the evil being opposed;
The force used in prosecuting the war must be both proportionate and discriminate (force must be aimed at combatants and not non-combatants)

These criteria are based on reflection on the circumstances in which governments are permitted to us force to uphold justice in general. The first two criteria read together, it must be fought for a just cause by someone with the lawful authority to do so, reflects the notion that private citizens do not have a right to pass laws binding on all New Zealand citizens and back these up with force – only the government can do this. It is only morally permissible for the government to do this when it does so to uphold justice — to protect people living within its boarders from injustice and to punish those guilty of crimes. Governments do not have the right to take people’s life, liberty or property at whim.

The idea of war being a “last resort” in criteria 3) is simply an extension of principles of normal governance. The police generally do not use force unless arrest is resisted.If they are dealing with a hostage situation, they try to negotiate with the hostage taker first. However, in the world we live in, hostage takers sometimes start shooting, people refuse to come quietly and threaten the police or the safety of the local population; force then becomes regrettably necessary and justified.

We see the criteria in 4) in normal governance contexts; the government should not authorise force, even to prosecute a just cause, unless it believes there is a reasonable chance of success in doing so. It is unjust to ask someone to sacrifice their property, resources, freedom or themselves in vain for an end that cannot actually be achieved.

The same is true with criteria 5); the cost incurred by going to war must not be greater than the evil being opposed. There are plenty of unjust actions that governments do not criminalise or aggressively prosecute precisely because the evils of doing so are greater than simply tolerating the offence. It is unjust to be lied to. It is unjust for people to give insults. It does not follow that the government should invest time and resources trying to prevent this through legislation and enforcement. Police often refuse to prosecute offences they consider trivial or not worth police time and resources; they limit their focus to what is serious. We do not expect the police to do anything about liars but we do for serial killers and rapists because the evil being done by the latter outweighs these concerns. War is not in a special category here.

Finally we reach 6), the idea that any violence used must be proportionate and discriminate. If a state uses violence justly then the force used will be proportionate to the injustice being rectified. A just government imposes more severe coercive penalties on a premeditated killer than they do against a teenager who smashes windows. While someone smashing my windows is engaging in unjust aggression against my property, the force used to stop this should be more measured than that employed against a hostage situation where the criminal has started killing hostages.

In the same way the state has the right to use force against criminals and not innocent people, Paul’s contention was that the government “are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer”. When functioning as God’s servant, “rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong”. Governments can justly use force against people engaging in aggression against citizens but not against third parties who are not complicit in this aggression.

Of course, no war ever meets these criteria perfectly but neither does any court system, legislature or police force. Even in a relatively just society courts make mistakes and innocent people go to jail; sometimes armed police mistakenly shoot the wrong person. Even in a relatively just society there are corrupt police and judges. However, none of this inclines us to reject the idea that a government has the right and duty to use force to uphold justice within the geographical area over which it has jurisdiction. We accept that people are fallible. We expect that governments should take reasonable precautions to avoid such errors and that rules governing investigation, evidence, corruption and so on will be put in place and honest attempts will be made to enforce them. We know that, despite this, the system will still fail on occasion and innocent people will be harmed and we accept this as collateral damage. We don’t demand an end to courts, police or legislation; we should take the same approach to war.

What then of Jesus’ teaching to “love your enemies” and on “turning the other cheek”? What about what Paul said? “Bless those who persecute you”, “do not repay evil for evil”, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone”, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” and “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” Are we to reject these?

Let’s look closer. Paul juxtaposed these passages side by side with passages that state the “rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to execute vengeance upon evil doers”. He used the same phrases in each, which suggests he meant to make a distinction between the duty of the private citizen and the duty of the State.

Outside the discussion of war this distinction is common place. It would be wrong and criminal for a private citizen to take another person’s property by force — even if they believed the money was going to a worthy cause. However, Governments do this all the time when they impose taxes. It would be wrong for me to lay down laws for my neighbour to obey and then deprive her of her liberty if she fails to comply; this would constitute blackmail and kidnapping. Yet governments lay down laws for others and incarcerate criminals who do not comply with them. Governments hold a monopoly on certain uses of force, and hence, have rights to use force that private citizens do not. The fact that citizens have duties to refrain from certain forms of violence, force and retribution does not mean that the government has the same duty.

When Paul summarised Christ’s teachings and told his followers to not get revenge he provided a reason. He stated, “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” We are not to use force and violence to seek justice because we do not have the authority to, only God does. However, in the next verse, Paul tells us that God has delegated this authority to governments. Hence, the instruction he gives to Christians in virtue of their status as individuals for refraining from such actions does not apply to the State. Christians who accept that the State can, on occasion, use force, violence and even kill to uphold justice are not, as Maher contends, “just ignoring” and “lawyering the Bible”, they are, in fact, reading it in context.

Comedians like Bill Maher should stick to comedy because instructing in moral theology (or even understanding it) is clearly not their forté.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled “Contra Mundum.” This blog post was published in the July 2011 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to:
editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

Lawful Authority and Just Wars

Matt — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 23:47:53 +0000

A reader pointed me to this interesting post on Pacifism and Just War Theory from Baylor University Philosophy Professor, Alexander Pruss.

Interestingly Pruss offers an argument similar to the one I presented at a panel discussion on the ethics of war recently. In this discussion I suggested that traditional Christian Just War Theory follows from the contention that a government has the right and duty to use force to uphold justice within the geographical area over which it has jurisdiction. A just war is simply an extension of the government’s police powers. If a criminal attempted to rape or kill people within the geographical realm over which a government has authority then the government could justifiably use force to prevent this. It could also use force to try and punish anyone who did do these things; this is why we have a police force, court system and prisons. Just war theorists cannot see why this should cease to be the case when the person committing the offence is a soldier from another country as opposed to a domestic criminal.

Pruss gives a similar argument; he starts by defining problematic violence as “lethal violence, i.e. violence that, if successful, has a high probability of resulting in the opponent’s death, counts as problematic, even when the death is not intended.” He then argues,

“If it is permissible to use problematic violence to stop a citizen wife from murdering her citizen husband, it should also be permissible to use problematic violence to stop a non-citizen woman who sneaked into one’s country to murder her citizen husband. Moreover, this should be permissible even if the woman was commissioned by another state to kill her husband. But if we allow that it is permissible to use problematic violence against criminals acting on behalf of foreign states, then there seems to be no way to deny that it is permissible to use problematic violence to stop invaders.”

He makes this illustration,

“When the invading army marches in, burning crops and murdering citizens, they are breaking the victim country’s laws. If problematic violence is permitted to enforce the laws of one’s territory, it should be permissible to use problematic violence to stop them. But this seems to be a case of war.”

This argument is common in the Reformed or Presbyterian traditions. John Murray, in his book Principles of Conduct, notes the Pauline teaching that the “governing authorities” are “established by God.” One is morally bound to submit to rulers because “rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” He then asks, “by what kind of logic can it be maintained that the magistrate, who is invested with the power of the sword, may and must execute vengeance upon evil doers within his own domain must sheath the sword of resistance when evil doers from without invade his domain.”

The Westminster confession makes a similar argument. It argues that because a Government has the authority to use force to maintain justice and peace within the realm over which it governs it can fight wars to maintain justice and peace within this realm.

I think this is one of the most important lines of argument in defence of Just War Theory. In my talk, I argued that the standard six criteria of a just war: just cause, lawful authority, last resort, the use of proportionate and discriminate force and so on simply unpack the general circumstances in which governments are permitted to us force and apply it to warfare. Here I simply want to explore one implication of this line of argument that Pruss raises.

“There is, though, a consistent position that someone could hold here; problematic violence by agents of a state must be confined to that state’s territory. This is not a pacifist position by my stipulation of what a “pacifist” is but it may be thought to be a pacifist position in a broader sense. I am not sure. It seems that this is not so much a position against violence, as a position about jurisdiction.”

I don’t think the position Pruss alludes to here is a form of pacifism but it does provide the basis for a particular type of Just War Theory. One of the standard criteria employed in Just War theorising is that a war is just only if it is prosecuted by a lawful authority. If a just war is simply an extension of the states police powers, the rationale for this criteria is quite clear. Only the lawful government of a country can prosecute a war, because only the lawful government has the right to use force to uphold justice within the geographical area over which it has jurisdiction. Private citizens do not have a right to pass laws binding on all other citizens and back these up with force – only the government does. Similarly, private citizens do not have the right to arrest, prosecute, judge and punish people who break these rules – only the government has the right to do this.

Pruss’ comments point to another feature of lawful authority. A government’s right to use force to uphold justice is limited to the geographical area over which it has jurisdiction. The Australian government cannot pass laws binding on New Zealand or France or Canada. Nor could they prosecute people for crimes committed in the United States. The government of Australia can only use force to uphold justice within Australia. In terms of every other jurisdiction, the Australian government lacks lawful authority.

This line of reasoning implies that the only just wars are defensive wars. A war is prosecuted by a lawful authority only when the government in question is using force to stop attacks on the life, liberty and property of the people living inside its borders. If another nation threatens to commit crimes within its borders then it has the right to respond with force. Foreign intervention would, at least on this argument, not count as a just war.

Defending Nation A from unjustified attacks by Nation B or defending the citizens of Nation A from unjust attacks from their own government might count as a just cause for war but, only Nation A would have the lawful authority to prosecute such wars.

Now I am not entirely comfortable with this conclusion. I find the idea that other nations should stand by and refuse to intervene when a genocide occurs in another country deeply disturbing. However I will grant that the argument both Pruss and I provide does appear to limit just wars in this way. I will now offer a couple of possible qualifications on this conclusion.

First, it is conceivable that alliances could change the situation. Suppose Australia and New Zealand enter into a treaty whereby they agree to defend each other in case of attack. In this case, it could be argued that the government of Australia has given New Zealand the authority to uphold justice within Australia under certain situations and that New Zealand has given Australia the same authority over New Zealand. One could ask questions about whether governments can lawfully cede sovereignty to foreign nations in this way but it seems to me that this is what an alliance involves.

Secondly, a government can acquire the right to uphold justice in another jurisdiction under certain situations if it has unlawfully meddled in that nations affairs. Suppose the Australian Government had destroyed several properties on Auckland’s North Shore, justice would require that the Australian Government compensate the relevant property owners. Compensating someone is to redress an injustice they have suffered. So, in this context, the Australian Government by its actions aquires a right to uphold justice within New Zealand.

This has some interesting implications. Suppose the United States had for many years adopted a foreign policy where they aided and abetted various dictatorships in the Middle-East and were, as a result, complicit in the enslavement of the people living in those nations. A person who has aided and abetted the enslavement of a people acquires an obligation to liberate those people.

Similarly, suppose the United States engaged in an unjust war and in doing so overthrew the government of a particular nation. The United States would plausibly acquire an obligation to reconstruct a just government in that area. If I smash someone else’s stuff I acquire an obligation to fix it.

In these sorts of cases a government arguably acquires lawful authority to uphold justice in regions outside its borders and so using force to achieve this may not necessarily violate the criteria of lawful authority.

Subject to these qualifications, if, as I have argued, the basic premise of the Just War theory is the contention that a government has the right and duty to use force to uphold justice within the geographical area over which it has jurisdiction. If a just war is simply an extension of a government’s police powers to protect people within its jurisdiction from criminal violence, and if the standard six criteria of a just war simply unpack the general circumstances in which governments are permitted to use such force, then it appears to follow that only defensive wars can count as just wars.

Pacifism, the Bible and the Sin of Selfishness

Madeleine — Thu, 26 May 2011 17:41:20 +0000

‘If someone wants something from us and we do not want to give it to them that is the sin of selfishness and the Bible condemns selfishness.’ This was one of the three points a Christian pacifist speaker made in defending his stance at the panel discussion on War Ethics that Matt mentioned in Pacifism and The Golden Rule.

Whilst there were a lot of issues raised that night that I wanted to respond to (being a member of the audience, I was only able to ask a question on one) it was this point that I woke up with in my head the next morning; I awoke with the question/statement I wished I’d have asked/said on the night fresh in my mind. Here it is:

Mr Pacifist, you said that if someone wants something from us and we do not want to give it to them that is the sin of selfishness; if someone wants to take from us we should let them without resistance because that is what Jesus did when he let himself be crucified. Is that about right?

So if I go out to the parking lot and a man pins me to the ground and starts raping me and my hand find a rock in the darkness next to me, is what you are saying that I should let him take what he wants, that I should not use the rock to smash him in the head but rather I should lie back and think of Jesus?

I think the point you are missing is that Jesus let his life be taken to save humankind. If I let myself be taken I am saving no one; if I smashed the rapist in the head with a rock I could at least save the next victim. I could mount the argument that by responding with my choice to be pacifist I was selfishly not thinking of the next victim?

And what if it was my daughter? What if I heard a noise in the night and found some man pinning my 10 year old down raping her? Should I tell her to lie back and think of Jesus too? Not call the police who might force him away in handcuffs to face a justice system that will deprive him on his liberty? Not smash him over the head with a frying pan or attack him with a kitchen knife? Because I’ll tell you what, anyone who I found doing that to my daughter would leave my house in a body bag or I would give my life trying.

Pacifism might sound trendy but it misses the point that while Jesus might have lived a fairly pacifist looking life when he was on earth, Jesus is part of a Trinity and there are other parts of the Trinity that judge, that wage war, that strike down and destroy. Yet another part of the Trinity inspired the writing of the whole Bible. All three elements of the Trinity’s example must be read together to understand the contexts they fall in and I believe Romans 13: 1-10 is the key:

On the Authority of the State to Govern Justly and the Directive to us to Consent to be Governed:

¹ Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. ² Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. ³ For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. ⁴ For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. ⁵ Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience. [Emphasis mine]

⁶ This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. ⁷Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

Given the State’s Authority and our Consent to be Governed, how we should treat each other?

⁸ Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. ⁹ The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰ Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

The context of how we should live in peace and love must be read alongside the role and authority of the State to bring force and justice to those who do not. Choosing to only look at your perception of how Jesus lived without looking his example within the context of what we know of God the Father and what the Holy Spirit has caused us to know through the Word of God is effectively denying the Trinity.

Recommended further reading:
Sunday Study R 13: Romans, Revelations and the Role of the State
All MandM War Ethics Posts
All MandM Old Testament Ethics Posts

Pacifism and The Golden Rule

Matt — Wed, 25 May 2011 22:10:40 +0000

Last night I was part of a discussion panel looking at the Ethics of War; I defended classical just war theory. Speaking in defence of pacifism was one of the Waihope three who offered the argument that you cannot use force against an oppressor because of the Golden Rule, typically stated as: ‘do to others as you would have them do to you.’ His idea seemed to be that if you were an oppressor you would not want force used against you so therefore no one should use force against oppressors – this is what the Golden Rule teaches.

This struck me as odd. One problem with this line of argument is that it interprets the Golden Rule as stating we should do to others what we want them to do to us. This interpretation is obviously problematic. I want a million dollars, does it follow that therefore I should give a million dollars to everyone? I want a nice car does it follow that I should give nice cars to everyone? What the Golden Rule says is that there should be consistency between what we think that people are morally required to do for us and to us and what we are morally required to do for and to others; if I object to someone stealing from me in certain circumstances and condemn that person’s action in doing so as wrong then I am committed to not stealing from that person.

Once this is understood, I do not think my fellow panellist’s argument works. I am quite happy to accept that if I was trying to kill or seriously maim another human being that others (including the state) would be morally permitted to use force to stop me; I may not want them to but that is not the issue. The issue is whether I think they are are required not to and the answer I think is obviously no.

In fact, anyone who recognises the government as legitimate must accept that the state can use force against them if they violate certain rules. I would have thought that the laws against assault and homicide would be paradigm examples of this.

Internationalism is Dead: Boneparte’s Descendants

John Tertullian — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 09:18:07 +0000

OK, so we thought that you would want to hear it here first. Internationalism–the idea that nation states are subject to a higher “sovereignty”– is dead. The corpse is rotting. The Libyan “adventure”, called for by the UN, is growing madder than a March Hare. All the problems and faults of internationalism are now clearly displayed. We hear Joan Baez in the background, intoning “when will they ever learn?” Not in a hurry would be our bet.

Though internationalism may be dead, the foolishness that is bound up in the heart of unconverted man is likely to keep flogging that particular equine corpse for decades to come.

Consider the mess that the internationalists are now in. The UN has passed a resolution directing that a no-fly zone be established in Libya. The internationalist community has spoken. Man, the universal overlord of the globe, has determined that what was happening in Libya ought not to be; some kind of nebulous higher ethic was appealed to which mean that “humanity” or “the international community” had to step up and into Libya to sort things out.

The echoes in the UN Security Council chamber had not died away before they were drowned by arguments between those who voted over what the meaning and application of the resolution. This from Al Jazeera:

International criticism of the coalition enforcing the no-fly zone has continued to grow, with India joining China in publicly calling for an end to the airstrikes. Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, said on Tuesday that the government opposed “the wanton use of armed force leading to more civilian casualties and more humanitarian disasters”. China had already called for a ceasefire.

S M Krishna, the Indian foreign minister, called for a “cessation of armed conflict”. His office had previously issued a statement on Monday expressing “regret” for the military intervention. Pranab Mukherjee, the country’s foreign minister, said in a speech to parliament that “no external powers” should interfere in Libya. “Nobody, not a couple of countries, can take that decision to change a particular regime,” he said

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Brits cannot even agree amongst themselves as to what the resolution means: can they take Gaddafi out or not? Some say yes; others nay-say. Neither can the French agree amongst themselves. Does the resolution mean that Gaddafi can legitimately stay in power. Yes. No. Maybe. All of the above. Meanwhile, Turkey a member of NATO has announced that it will not allow its airspace to be used in enforcing the no-fly zone, if it goes beyond the UN resolution–whatever it might mean, and no-one knows.

The announcement came after Turkey, a member of the NATO, warned on Tuesday that it could not agree to the military alliance taking over the enforcement of the no-fly zone if their mission went “outside the framework” of the UN decision.

Meanwhile in the US, President Obama, a committed internationalist, appeared deeply reluctant to get involved. But when the UN Security Council resolved, he had no choice. How could the Internationalist-in-Chief not support internationalism? Suddenly the humanitarian disaster was a siren summoning all good men to come to the aid of the rebels. He committed the US, but forgot to seek the approval of Congress. Internationalism overrides one’s national constitution, don’t you know. Now he is being hammered by both the left and the right in the US for his hasty oversight or arrogance–take your pick.

No-one knows what the “end-game” is. Regime change, or not? And the more the internationalist community pontificates upon the illegitimacy of the Gaddafi regime as a justification for his removal, the argument proves way too much. A list of equally pernicious regimes is published, with the damning interrogative: “well, if Gaddafi, what about these tyrants”? The deafening silence or the attempt to distinguish between cases on the list are so blatantly self-servingly tortuous that sceptics conclude that it must not about moral principles at all–it must be something else, like oil.

We are told that there are twelve tribes in Libya and tribalism is very strong. Like the Balkans, brute force alone can maintain an artificial unity. If Libya stays as a single nation it will only be because of an authoritarian government keeping tribal divisions suppressed by force. And in that case, why not Gaddafi? One tyrant is as good as another. Appeals to human rights by the internationalist community are fatuous at best, incoherent at worst.

Internationalism is rotting corpse; we in the West are just olfactorily dense and so are very, very slow learners. There is no such thing as abstract universal, international human rights. It is a pretentious fiction developed out of the French revolution, which in turn issued from Enlightenment gall. Human rights can only be spoken of meaningfully and helpfully if they are understood to be granted by the Living God, as Creator to His creatures. Attempts to abstract human rights out of this explicit covenantal Creator-creature nexus become bloody and destructive and hopelessly confused and compromised.

Human rights cannot hang suspended in mid-air. To be a blessing to man they have to be grounded in the truths revealed by the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable Creator, and they must be understood to be a gift to man, His creature, within the frame of His covenant. If not, then notions of universal human rights rapidly devolve into some (stronger) nations shedding blood in other (weaker) nations. Napoleon Boneparte was a bloody revolutionary. His armies marched throughout Europe and the Near East. But it was OK. It was all for the establishment of liberty, equality and fraternity of Mankind. So the blood was well worth shedding, non?

Obama, Bush, Cameron, Sarkozy, and all the other internationalists, stand “together” at the UN in the name of universal human rights. They are little more than pretentious Corsicans, madder than the March Hare, pirouetting on a thousand contradictions, inconsistencies, and confusions. What did that resolution mean again? Whatever you want it to mean, my dear, whatever you want.

Cross posted at: Contra Celsum

God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part III: Two Implications of the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Account

Matt — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 02:28:19 +0000

This three-part blog series is a modified version of what I presented to the Evangelical Philosophical Society meeting in November 2010.

In a recent Conference at Notre Dame Alvin Plantinga suggested that the commands to wipe out the Canaanites, recorded in the book of Deuteronomy, might be hyperbolic; they should be understood more like how we understand a person who states, in the context of a boxing match, “knock his block off, hand him his head”, or in a football game where a person states that the team should “kill the opposition” or boasts that “we totally slaughtered them.”[1] Understood this way, the commands in Deuteronomy meant “something like attack them, defeat them, drive them out; not literally kill every man, woman, child donkey and the like”.[2]

In two previous posts I have explored and defended Nicholas Wolterstorff’s argument for this conclusion. In God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation, I elaborated on, appropriated and expanded Nicholas Wolterstorff’s case for understanding Joshua as a hagiographic, stylised and highly hyperbolic account of Israel’s early skirmishes. In Part II: Ancient Near Eastern Conquest Accounts, I argued that studies into Ancient Near Eastern historiography give considerable support to his conclusion. Joshua appears to follow the same rhetoric, literary conventions and motifs of other ancient Near East conquest accounts and one feature of such accounts is to narrate victories hyperbolically in terms of killing all people, leaving no survivors and so forth. This suggests the description of Joshua putting every inhabitant to the sword, totally destroying all and leaving no survivors, is not to be taken literally. In this last post in this series I want to look at some implications of accepting this.

I think two implications can be drawn from this conclusion. First,

On the assumption that Deuteronomy and Joshua are parts of the same sequence of books, this interpretation of Joshua forces a back-interpretation of Deuteronomy. If “struck down all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword” is a literary convention when used to describe Joshua’s exploits, then it is likewise a literary convention when similar words are used by Moses in his instructions to Israel in general and to Joshua in particular.[3]

I think Wolterstorff is correct here, this interpretation of Joshua does force a back-interpretation of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 7:2 states “when Yahweh your God has given them up before you and you have struck them, you shall utterly destroy them”. Similarly, Deuteronomy 20:16-17 states “anything that breathes you shall not keep alive, but you shall utterly destroy them”. In Joshua 10 one sees the formulaic language of “and Yahweh gave [the city]” and they “struck it by the mouth of the sword, and its king he hath destroyed” until there were “no survivors”. The chapter is summarised with the phrase “So Joshua struck all the land, … He destroyed all that breathed”. The similar phraseology is evident.[4]

Moreover, the book of Joshua clearly, explicitly and repeatedly identifies what Joshua did in these chapters with the command that Moses had given regarding the Canaanites in Deuteronomy.[5] If the language of “striking all the people by the sword”, “leaving no survivors”, “totally destroying”, “striking all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword”, and so on, is hyperbolic (as the evidence suggests it is) then the command cannot have been intended to be taken literally.

This understanding of the commands in Deuteronomy also solves some other interpretative problems. Here I will mention briefly three.

First, what God commanded regarding the Canaanites differs in various canonical books. As noted above, in Judges when the angel of the Lord refers back to the original command it is stated in terms of not making treaties with them, destroying their shrines and driving them out; it is not stated in terms of literally exterminating them. Similarly, in the earlier book of Exodus the command is given in terms of not allowing the Canaanites to live in the land, again, not in terms of extermination. This is significant. “Deuteronomy” in Greek means “second law”. Throughout Deuteronomy, Moses repeats laws already laid down in the book of Exodus, sometimes expanding on them. The Decalogue, for example, which was delivered on Sinai in Exodus 20, is repeated again in Deuteronomy 5. The laws about releasing an ebed (and indentured servant) in Exodus 21:1 are repeated and expanded on in Deuteronomy 15:12-18. Similarly, Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is a repetition of a law spelled out in Exodus 22:15.[6] The same occurs with the law under discussion. Deuteronomy 7 repeats the same promises and commands laid down in Exodus 23:20-32; however, in Deuteronomy, the language of “destroy them” replaces the “do not let them live in your land” in Exodus. Wolterstorff’s interpretation explains this.

Second the word herem, which is translated “destroy” in Deuteronomy 7:2, has the primary meaning of the irrevocable giving-over or devotion of something to Yhwh and hence implies renunciation. The term has also developed a secondary secular meaning of “to destroy”;[7] but, a literal reading of “destroy” here does not fit the context well. The command to “destroy” the Canaanites occurs alongside several other commands, “Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons”.[8] However, this seems odd. Killing is not an obvious antithesis to marrying or making a covenant; moreover, the text goes on to elaborate the command in terms of smashing idols and driving them out in a similar vein to Judges. For this reason Christopher Wright argues herem should be translated as “renounce” and is a command to shun the Canaanites.[9] This reading clashes with the parallel verse where “In Deuteronomy 20:17 herem is used epexegetically to verse 16, ‘you shall not leave alive anything that breathes’”.[10] However, taking the word as ‘destroy’ and understanding it hyperbolically makes sense of this.[11]

Some object that a hyperbolic interpretation does not fit the context, which draws a contrast between sparing “the women, the children, the livestock” in verse 14 and totally destroying them in verse 16 “do not leave alive anything that breathes”. This is mistaken; first the emphasis in verse 14 is not on sparing non-combatants but rather on the permissibility of marrying the women of conquered enemies, adopting their children and using their cattle. Second, the contrast is not between verses 14 and 16, but between verse 16 and the whole set of instructions regarding nations that are far away in verses 10-15. These verses command Israel to seek to make peace treaties first and if they go to war and kill combatants they can marry the women, adopt children and keep the live stock. In other words, as much as possible they are to seek peaceful co-existence with these nations. A command to go to war and drive them out expressed hyperbolically as ‘totally destroy them, leave nothing alive that breathes’ would stand in contrast to this. A final point on this is that the crucial issue is whether the hyperbolic interpretation is more plausible than a literal one, even if a literal interpretation fits Deuteronomy 20 better. Above I have argued that a literal interpretation puts Joshua 6-11 at odds with Judges and the later chapters of Joshua. It would be odd to reject a hyperbolic interpretation because one passage in Deuteronomy 20 does not cohere with it and instead embrace a literal interpretation which creates an even greater incoherence in the text.

Finally, the hyperbolic reading addresses another apparent contradiction in the text noted by many readers of the Pentateuch. While Deuteronomy 7:2 and 20:16-17 command Israel to “utterly destroy” the Canaanites and to “not leave alive anything that breathes”, numerous other texts claim the Canaanites are to be “driven out”, “dispossessed”, “thrust out”, etc; in fact, often the “drive out” language is juxtaposed with the language of “destroy”. Taken literally these pictures are inconsistent. If I stated that I had driven an intruder from my house one would not assume the intruder was dead in my lounge. Similarly, if I said I had killed an intruder, one would not normally think this meant the intruder had fled. The Hebrew confirms this; the language of driving out and casting out is used elsewhere to refer to Adam and Eve being driven from Eden, Cain being driven into the wilderness, David driven out by Saul. All are cases where the meaning precludes something being literally destroyed.[12]

Moreover, when the “drive out” language is used of Canaan it often is used in a context where it does not literally mean destroyed but rather, dispossessed. In Leviticus 18:26-28[13] the Canaanites are said to have been driven out in the same way Israel will be driven out if they violate the Covenant.

Finally, the language of destroying whole nations is in several places in the book of Deuteronomy used in a rhetorical or hyperbolic sense where it refers to “driving out” the nation in question or dispossessing them; it does not mean exterminating them. Hence, Wolterstorff’s suggestion has ample precedent from within the text itself.[14]

A second implication of Wolterstorff’s position is that Joshua does not assert that Israel engaged in divinely-authorised genocide.

[W]hen a high-school basket ball player says his team slaughtered the other team last night he’s not asserting, literally now, that they slaughter the other team. What is he asserting? Not easy to tell. That they scored a decisive victory? Maybe, but suppose they barely eked out a win? Was he lying? Maybe not. Maybe he was speaking with a wink of the eye hyperbole. High school kids do.[15]

In the same way, when one realises that Joshua is hagiographic and highly hyperbolic in its narration of what occurred, the best one can conclude from the accounts of killing everyone that breathed is that,

Israel scored a decisive victory and once you recognise the presence of hyperbole it is not even clear how decisive the victories were. Joshua did not conquer all the cities in the land nor did he slaughter all the inhabitants in the cities he did conquer. The book of Joshua does not say that he did.[16]

Canonical factors force the same conclusion. I noted above that in Judges and Exodus the command is expressed in terms of avoiding treaties and driving the Canaanites out. In Joshua and Deuteronomy the command is expressed in the language of “utterly destroying them”. The conclusion we have reached is that the latter is figurative language and the former is literal. If this is the case then the command was to drive them out and it was not to literally exterminate them.

“Everyone in it they put to the sword. They totally destroyed them, not sparing anything that breathed, and he burned up Hazor itself. Joshua took all these royal cities and their kings and put them to the sword. He totally destroyed them, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded.” (Joshua 11:11-12 NIV) [Emphasis added]

Also,

“So that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the LORD had commanded Moses (Joshua 11:20b NIV) [Emphasis added]

As the LORD commanded his servant Moses, so Moses commanded Joshua, and Joshua did it; he left nothing undone of all that the LORD commanded Moses.” (Joshua 11:15 NIV) [Emphasis added]

[6] Gordon Wenham “Bethulah: A Girl of Marriageable Age” Vetus Testamentum 22 (1972) 326-348.
[7] J P U Lilley “Understanding the Herem” Tyndale Bulletin 44 (1993) 1:11.
[8] Deuteronomy 7:2-4.
[9] Christopher J H Wright Deuteronomy (New International Biblical Commentary) (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996) 109.
[10] Lilley, supra n7, 174.
[11] Other commentators such as Duane L Christensen and J McConville suggest “destroy” is being used in a figurative sense. McConville, for example, states “the concept of complete annihilation of the nations is always a kind of ideal, symbolizing the need for radical loyalty to Yahweh on the part of Israel.” J. G. McConville, Deuteronomy, Apollos Old Testament Commentary, ed. D.W. Baker and G.J. Wenham (Downers Grove/Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 2002) 161.
[12] I owe this point to conversations with Paul Copan.
[13] “But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things,²⁷ for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled.²⁸ And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.”
[14] Deuteronomy 2:10-12, 20-22, 4:26-30, 28:63.
[15] Nicholas Wolterstorff “Reply to Antony” in Michael Bergmann, Michael J Murray and Michael C Rea (Eds) Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) 263.
[16] Nicholas Wolterstorff “Reading Joshua” presented to “My Ways Are Not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible” Conference at the centre for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame, Saturday 12 September 2009 at accessed 19 December 2009; this paragraph was in the paper presented at the conference but was omitted from the published version.

God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation

Matt — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:30:45 +0000

Around this time last year I wrote two posts Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites I and Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites II. These posts attracted a fair amount of attention and debate. I got offers to publish my ideas in several upcoming books and present them before both the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS) and the Society for Biblical Literature in November 2010. Since the original posts I have corresponded with various people and I have modified and refined some of the ideas. This three-part blog series is a modified version of what I presented to the EPS last month. These posts supersede and update what I wrote in a year ago.

One of the most perplexing issues facing Christian believers is a series of jarring texts in the Old Testament. After liberating Israel from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites arrived on the edge of the Promised Land. The book of Deuteronomy records that God then commanded Israel to “destroy totally” the people occupying these regions (the Canaanites); the Israelites were to “leave alive nothing that breathes”. The book of Joshua records the carrying out of this command. In the sixth chapter it states “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”. In the tenth and eleventh chapters it states that Joshua “left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded.” The text mentions city after city where Joshua, at God’s command, puts every inhabitant “to the sword” “totally destroyed the inhabitants” and “left no survivors.”

If one takes these passages literally they record the divinely-authorised commission of genocide. But genocide surely is morally wrong. In the light of this, critics of Christian theism often ask a rhetorical question; how could a good and loving God command the extermination of the Canaanites?

One response which goes back to the patristic era is to suggest that the strict, literal reading on which this rhetorical question is based is mistaken. Recently, several, protestant scholars have suggested a hyperbolic reading of the relevant passages.[1] Perhaps the most detailed is that proposed by Nicholas Wolterstorff. Wolterstorff suggests,

“[T]hat the Book of Joshua has to be read as a theologically-oriented narration, stylized and hyperbolic at important points, of Israel’s early skirmishes in the Promised Land, with the story of these battles being framed by descriptions of two great ritualized events. The story as a whole celebrates Joshua as the great leader of his people, faithful to Yahweh, worthy successor of Moses. If we strip the word “hagiography” of its negative connotations, we can call it a hagiographic account of Joshua’s exploits.”[2]

In this series I will defend Wolterstorff’s position. In this post I will sketch, adapt and defend Wolterstorff’s argument. In Part II, I will argue that external evidence from comparative studies in Ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts gives considerable support to Wolterstorff’s position. Finally in Part III I will look at two implications of this position.

Wolterstorff’s Argument
Wolterstorff’s contention is that “a careful reading of the text in its literary context makes it implausible to interpret it as claiming that Yahweh ordered extermination”. It is important to note what he means by context. Here, it is clear that Wolterstorff is advocating a canonical approach. He notes that,

“Joshua as we have it today was intended as a component in the larger sequence consisting of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I and II Samuel, and I and II Kings… I propose that we interpret the Book of Joshua as a component within this larger sequence – in particular, that we interpret it as preceded by Deuteronomy and succeeded by Judges.”[3]

Joshua comes after Deuteronomy and before Judges. Wolterstorff points out that these books should be read as a single narrative. When one does this, however, several issues are apparent. Joshua 6-11 summarises several battles and concludes with “So Joshua took the entire land, just as the LORD had directed Moses, and he gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal divisions. Then the land had rest from war”[4] (Joshua 11:16-23). Judges, however, opens with a battle that occurs after Joshua’s death; it states,

“After the death of Joshua, the Israelites inquired of the Lord, “Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites, to fight against them?” The Lord said, “Judah shall go up. I hereby give the land into his hand.” Judah said to his brother Simeon, “Come up with me into the territory allotted to me, that we may fight against the Canaanites; then I too will go with you into the territory allotted to you. So Simeon went with him. Then Judah went up and the Lord gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand; and they defeated ten thousand of them at Bezek.” [Judges 1: 1-4]

Taken literally, Joshua states Joshua conquered the whole land and Judges states that much of the land was unconquered.

Similarly, Joshua affirms he exterminated all the Canaanites in this region. Repeatedly it states that Joshua left “no survivors” and “destroyed everything that breathed” in “the entire land”, “put all the inhabitants to the sword”. Alongside these general claims the text identifies several specific places and cities where Joshua exterminated everyone and left no survivors. These include Hebron (Josh. 10:40), Debir (Josh. 10:38), the hill country and the Negev and the western foothills (Josh. 10:40). In the first chapter of Judges, however, we are told that the Canaanites lived in the Negev (1:9), in the hill country (Judg. 1:9), in Debir (Judg. 1:11), in Hebron (Judg. 1:10) and in the western foothills (Judg. 1:9). Moreover, they did so in such numbers and strength that they had to be driven out by force. These are the same cities that Joshua 10 tells us Joshua had annihilated and left no survivors in.[5]

Similarly, Joshua 11:23 states that “Joshua took the entire land” and then “gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal divisions”. Consequently, the conquered region is the same land that is later divided between the Israelite tribes. When the text turns to giving an account of these tribal divisions only a chapter later the allotments begin with God telling Joshua, “You are very old, and there are still very large areas of land to be taken over” (Josh 13:1). Moreover, when one examines the allotment given to Judah we see Caleb asking permission to drive the Anakites (Josh14: 11) from the hill countries and we also hear how Caleb has to defeat Anakites living in Hebron and, after this, marches against the people “living in Debir” (Josh 15:13-19). Similarly, it is evident with several of the other allotments that the people have yet to drive out Canaanites entrenched in the area and that the Israelites were not always successful in doing so.

We read, for example, that the Ephraimites and Manassites “did not dislodge the Canaanites living in Gezer; to this day the Canaanites live among the people of Ephraim” (Josh 16:10). Similarly, in Chapter 17 it states “Yet the Manassites were not able to occupy these towns, for the Canaanites were determined to live in that region. However, when the Israelites grew stronger, they subjected the Canaanites to forced labor but did not drive them out completely” (Joshua 17:12-13). We hear that “Danites had difficulty taking possession of their territory, so they went up and attacked Leshem, took it, put it to the sword and occupied it. They settled in Leshem and named it Dan after their forefather” (Joshua 19:47). Here we see the same land said to be subdued and conquered by Joshua in battles where he exterminated and left alive nothing that breathed; this land is yet to be occupied by the tribes of Israel and is occupied by Canaanites, often heavily armed and deeply entrenched (17:17-18).

Kenneth Kitchen notes that a careful reading of the earlier chapters makes it clear that Israel did not actually conquer the areas mentioned at all. Kitchen notes that after crossing the Jordan the Israelites set up camp in Gilgal “on the east border of Jericho” (Joshua 4:19). He notes that after every battle in the next six chapters the text explicitly states that they returned to Gilgal,

“The conflict with Canaanite city-state rulers in the southern part of Canaan is worth close examination. After the battle for Gibeon, we see the Hebrews advancing upon six towns in order, attacking and capturing them, killing their local kings and such inhabitants that had not gotten clear, and moving on, not holding on to those places. Twice over (10:15, 43), it is clearly stated that their strike force returned to base camp at Gilgal. So there was no sweeping take over and occupation of this region at this point. And no total destruction of the towns attacked.”[6]

Kitchen goes on to note,

“What happened in the south was repeated up north. Hazor was both leader and famed center for the north Canaanite kinglets. Thus as in the south the Hebrew strike force defeated the opposition; captured their towns, killed rulers and less mobile inhabitants, symbolically burned Hazor and Hazor only to emphasis its end to its local supremacy. Again Israel did not attempt to immediately hold on to Galilee: they remained based at Gilgal (14:6).”[7]

Kitchen notes that the first “real indication of a move in occupation beyond Gilgal comes in 18:4.” This is after the first allotment of “lands to be occupied are made” and as we saw above the Israelites did not find occupying these allotments easy. He concludes, “these campaigns were essentially disabling raids: they were not territorial conquests with instant Hebrew occupation. The text is very clear about this.”[8]

Finally, the account of what God commanded differs in the two narratives. Joshua states “He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded (Josh 10:40) and “exterminating them without mercy, as the LORD had commanded Moses (Josh 11:20b ). However, when the command is retroactively referred to in Judges 2:1, no mention of genocide or annihilation is made; instead we hear of how God had promised to drive them out and had commanded the Israelites to not to make treaties with them and to destroy their shrines. This silence is significant in the context. If God had commanded genocide then it is odd that only the failure to make treaties was mentioned.

Therefore taken as a single narrative and taken literally, Joshua 1-11 gives a different account of events to that narrated by Judges and also to that narrated by the later chapters of Joshua itself.

Wolterstorff raises a further point,

“Those whose occupation it is to try to determine the origins of these writings will suggest that the editors had contradictory records, oral traditions, and so forth to work with. No doubt this is correct. But those who edited the final version of these writings into one sequence were not mindless; they could see, as well as you and I can see, the tensions and contradictions – surface or real – that I have pointed to. So what is going on?”[9]

Wolterstorff’s point is that, regardless of what sources or strata of tradition are alleged behind the final form of Joshua, the redactors who put these books into a single narrative would have been well aware of the obvious contradictions mentioned above. Moreover, these redactors were not mindless or stupid. They obviously would not want to affirm that both accounts were a true literal description of what occurred. Yet they chose to put next to Joshua in the canon a book which began with a narration at odds with a literal reading of the early chapters of Joshua and they chose to juxtapose the picture of Joshua 1-11 with the later chapters I mentioned above. The redactor cannot therefore be asserting that both accounts are literally true.

I think Wolterstorff is correct here. However, his position could be substantially strengthened on theological grounds. In Divine Discourse Wolterstorff provides an interesting and rigorous analysis of the notion that Scripture is the word of God. Central to his analysis is that “an eminently plausible construal of the process, whereby these books found their way into a single canonical text, would be that by way of that process of canonization God was authorizing these books as together constituting a single volume of divine discourse.” [10]

This understanding of Scripture provides the theological justification for reading the text as a single series and hence determining what the author of early chapters of Joshua teaches by examining what is affirmed in Judges and later passages of Joshua.[11] Moreover, if the primary author of Scripture is God, then obviously the primary author of the final canon text is an intelligent person who is unlikely to have deliberately (or accidentally) authored an obviously -contradictory narrative. Hence, even if the contradictions were not obvious to the redactors, and I think Wolterstorff is correct that these apparent contradictions would have been,[12] they would be evident to God. Seeing the process whereby the redactors incorporated these books into a “single canonical text” constitutes God authorising them, this process cannot have involved the redactors affirming as literally true two contradictory accounts.

It may be contended that an appeal to divine authorship in this way begs the question, however, I think this is mistaken. As I understand the objection, the sceptic who claims that God commanded genocide is offering a reductio ad absurdum; he or she starts by assuming that whatever God commands is right and that Scripture is the word of God, and then derives from these assumptions the absurd conclusion that genocide is not wrong. The question then is whether, granting these assumptions, such a conclusion does, in fact, follow. If Scripture is a unified divine discourse, the sceptic’s conclusion need not follow, for another assumption of the sceptic – that all accounts were intended to be taken as literal – is not evidently true.[13]

Therefore the picture of total annihilation of the Canaanites and complete conquest of their land, and the picture put forward in Judges cannot both be taken as literal descriptions of what actually happened.

At this point Wolterstorff raises a further issue about the type of literature Joshua appears to be. He notes that the early chapters of Judges, by and large, read like “down- to- earth history”. However, “Anyone who reads the Book of Joshua in one sitting cannot fail to be struck by certain stylistic features in the narrative. One is “the highly- ritualized character of some of the major events described”.[14]

“The book is framed by its opening narration of the ritualized crossing of the Jordan and by its closing narration of the equally- ritualized ceremony of blessing and cursing that took place at Shechem; and the conquest narrative begins with the ritualized destruction of Jericho.”[15]

A related ritualistic feature is the “the mysterious sacral category of being devoted to destruction.”[16] Most significant is the use of formulaic language,

“Anyone who reads the Book of Joshua in one sitting cannot fail to be struck by the prominent employment of formulaic phrasings. … Far more important is the formulaic clause, “struck down all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword.”

The first time one reads that Joshua struck down all the inhabitants of a city with the edge of the sword, namely, in the story of the conquest of Jericho (6:21), one makes nothing of it. But the phrasing – or close variants thereon — gets repeated, seven times in close succession in chapter 10, two more times in chapter 11, and several times in other chapters. The repetition makes it unmistakable that we are dealing here with a formulaic literary convention.”[17]

Thus Joshua itself appears to be full of ritualistic, stylised, formulaic language. It therefore looks like something other than a mere literal description of what occurred. In light of these facts Wolterstorff argues that Judges should be taken literally whereas Joshua is hagiographic history; a highly-stylised, exaggerated account of what occurred, designed to teach theological and moral points rather than to describe in detail what actually happened. Wolterstorff provides the example of North American morality tales of the noble puritan or Washington crossing the Delaware. These are idealised, exaggerated accounts of the past designed to teach a moral lesson, not accurate accounts of what actually occurred.

In Part II I look at Ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts.

[1] Alvin Plantinga “Comments on Evan Fales’ Satanic Verses: Moral Chaos in Holy Writ” a paper presented to “My Ways Are Not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible” Conference at the centre for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame, Friday 11 September 2009; Paul Copan “Yahweh Wars and the Canaanites: Divinely Mandated Genocide or Corporate Capital Punishment” Philosophia Christi 11/1 (2009) and Chapter 16 of Is God a Moral Monster: Making Sense of the Old Testament (Baker Books: forthcoming 2011); Christopher Wright The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 2008) 87-88; In his latest discussion on the issue, William Lane Craig states “I’ve come to appreciate that the object of God’s command to the Israelis was not the slaughter of the Canaanites, as is often imagined. The command rather was primarily to drive them out of the land. The judgement upon these Canaanite kingdoms was to dispossess them of their land and thus destroy them as kingdoms.” See Divine Command Morality and Voluntarism at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7911 accessed at 29 October 2010.
[2] Nicholas Wolterstorff “Reading Joshua” a paper presented to “My Ways Are Not Your Ways: The Character of the God of the Hebrew Bible” Conference at the centre for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame, Saturday 12 September 2009.
[3] Nicholas Wolterstorff “Reading Joshua” Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham in Michael Bergmann, Michael J Murray and Michael C Rea (Eds) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010 forthcoming).
[4] All Scripture quotations are from the NIV unless otherwise stated. At certain points I will quote from other translations when I think they capture the literal wording more accurately in a manner that is important for my argument.
[5] In addition to these general claims about exterminating populations, Joshua 11:21-22 states “Joshua came and wiped out the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah.” This happens after Joshua is already said to have killed the inhabitants in these areas in Josh 10:30-40. Josh 11:21 states that no Anakites were left living in Israeli territory after this campaign. In Judges 1:21 the text explicitly states that Anakites are in Hebron.
[6] Kenneth Kitchen On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003) 162.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Wolterstorff, Supra n 3.
[10] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 295; see also “Unity behind the Canon” in Christine Helmer and Christof Landmesser (Eds) One Scripture or Many? The Canon from Biblical, Theological, and Philosophical Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) 217-232.
[11] Plantinga notes “an assumption of the enterprise is that the principal author of the Bible—the entire Bible—is God himself (according to Calvin, God the Holy Spirit). Of course each of the books of the Bible has a human author or authors as well; still, the principal author is God. This impels us to treat the whole more like a unified communication than a miscellany of ancient books. Scripture isn’t so much a library of independent books as itself a book with many subdivisions but a central theme: the message of the gospel. By virtue of this unity, furthermore (by virtue of the fact that there is just one principal author), it is possible to “interpret Scripture with Scripture.” If a given passage from one of Paul’s epistles is puzzling, it is perfectly proper to try to come to clarity as to what God’s teaching is in this passage by appealing not only to what Paul himself says elsewhere in other epistles but also to what is taught elsewhere in Scripture (for example, the Gospel of John)” Alvin Plantinga Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) 385.
[12] Wolterstorff notes that the phrase “he killed all the inhabitants with the edge of the sword” occurs at least 12 times in Joshua 6-11 in close succession. Judges on the other hand affirms 7 times in close succession that the Israelites failed to drive the Canaanites out, finishing with the Angel of Bokim rebuking them for failing to do so. Similarly in Josh 13-18 it is hammered repeatedly that the land is not yet conquered. Hence these are not subtle contrasts. They are in Wolterstorff’s words “flamboyant” so it’s unlikely an intelligent redactor would have missed this.
[13] I am grateful to Zachary Ardern for helping me to develop this point.
[14] Wolterstorff, Supra n 2.
[15] Ibid. The ritualised nature of the narration is also stressed by Duane Christensen, Deuteronomy 1:1-21:9 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001).
[16] Wolterstroff, supra n 2; the phrase “devoted to destruction” (herem in Hebrew). That reference to the herem serves a figurative or rhetorical function is also noted by Christopher Wright “Now we need to know that Israel’s practice of herem was not itself unique. Texts from other nations at the time show that total destruction was practised, or at any rate proudly claimed, elsewhere. But we must also recognise that the language of warfare had a total rhetoric that liked to make universal and absolute claims about total victory and wiping out the enemy. Such rhetoric often exceeded reality on the ground….” in The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith Grand Rapids MI: Zondervan, 2008) 87-88. At the other end of the spectrum minimalist scholar Thomas L Thomson writing on the use of herem in the Mesha stele notes the “use of the ban at both Ataroth and Nebo are clearly part of the totalitarian rhetoric of holy war rather than historical considerations.” “Mesha and Questions of Historicity” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Vol. 22, No. 2, 249.
[17] Wolterstorff, supra n 2.

Commonsense Atheism and the Canaanite Massacre

Matt — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:47:16 +0000

Luke Muehlauser at Commonsense Atheism has written a review of my argument on the genocide of the Canaanites (Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I and Part II). Luke’s comments are largely positive (and I appreciate that a critic of Theism and Christianity sees merit in my position) he does, however, raise a few issues I would like to respond to.

First, Luke summarises my conclusion as:

Perhaps instead the most genocidal phrases in Joshua were meant as hyperbole. Imagine a basketball team speaking of how they “totally slaughtered” their opponents like their coach told them to. In the same way, maybe the Israelites wrote in hyperbolic language about how they defeated their enemies. Indeed, this kind of exaggeration and hagiography on a nation’s own behalf is common in ancient literature.

This is not quite right; I did not state “perhaps” the passages are hyperbolic. I argued a hyperbolic reading best fits the context, as it explains why the author uses stylised phrases in some passages which, if taken literally, contradict what he affirms elsewhere in the text did literally happen. Furthermore, I did not suggest that such exaggeration and hagiography is common in ancient literature. I suggested it was common in literature of the same general time and place, which used the same literary conventions and rhetorical techniques as the Bible does in the Book of Joshua - namely Ancient Near-Eastern war and conquest accounts.

Second, Luke states that my position “agrees with the Biblical minimalism already espoused by most atheists, for it says that these events found in the Bible never happened.” This comment is intriguing because much of my research drew from the writings of biblical maximalists who were criticising minimalism. My repeated citation of Kenneth Kitchen is an obvious example. Minimalists point out that the archaeological record does not fit the picture of total conquest and genocide and hence conclude the Bible is inaccurate. Maximalists, such as Kenneth Kitchen and James Hoffmeier, respond by arguing that the text is not inaccurate because, having examined the literary conventions of Ancient Near-Eastern historiography, one finds it does not actually teach total conquest and genocide as it is written according to the hyperbolic and to some extent hagiographic rhetoric of Ancient Near-Eastern historiography. So I am inclined to think my position is a development of a rejoinder to minimalist challenges.

This is of course another area where my perspective has merit. It resolves not only some of the moral questions people have with the narrative; it also resolves the apparent contradictions within the text cited by critical scholars, answers the challenge of archaeology and fits what we know about the conventions of such literature. If we know that Joshua is written according to certain literary conventions and we know that these conventions frequently are hagiographic and hyperbolic, then to insist on a literal reading is implausible. This is particularly so when it makes the text contradictory, contrary to archaeological record and seemingly immoral. Luke goes on to ask,

If Matt did think these events happened literally as described in the Bible, would he then conclude that God was an evil monster to command them? Or would he, in the end, agree with Bill Craig that genocide is okay as long as God feels like it?

I will make two points in answering Luke’s questions.

One, it seems to me one could only conclude that Joshua actually carried out a divinely authorised Genocide if, in addition to taking Joshua literally one also accepts that the Bible is inerrant. But Joshua is not the only text in the canon, the Bible also in various other places teaches that God is good, just, and so on. So it’s hard to see how a person could coherently draw the conclusion Luke mentions. A person who concluded that God is evil, would have to conclude that much of what the Bible teaches about God is mistaken, but if this is the case then one has reason for doubting that it is accurate in its description of Genocide in the first place.

Two, Luke asks if I “agree with Bill Craig that genocide is okay as long as God feels like it?” It is important to note is that this is not Craig’s position. Craig claims that killing non combatants in war is permissible if a loving and just God commands it. He also contends that God in fact did not command this in the biblical narratives hence his view is about a hypothetical conditional.¹ Once this is realised the issues are not as simple as Luke appears to think. Either it is possible for a just and loving omniscient person to command genocide or is not. If it is, then genocide would only be commanded in situations where a just and loving person aware of all the relevant facts could endorse it, and under these circumstances its hard to see how genocide could be evil.

On the other hand if it is impossible for a perfectly good omniscient being to ever command genocide, then the situation Luke mentions is one with an impossible antecedent. On the standard accounts of counter factual logic, conditionals with impossible antecedents are true. Of course this is a disputed point of modal logic, the debate however is technical and complex and certainly not one with an obvious answer. As I have argued elsewhere every ethical theory is such that under impossible circumstances it entails that genocide is permissible.

Finally, Luke argues that atheists are not “‘attacking a straw man’ or ‘taking things out of context’ as Matt sometimes says” but rather, “they are responding to the way that millions of Christian fundamentalists interpret these verses.” He states,

Atheists are not, as Matt claims, reading the Bible as fundamentalists. Atheists don’t believe the genocide ever took place! What we atheists are saying is this: If you think these events were literally commanded by God and carried out by the Israelites, then how can you call God “perfectly good”?

But here Luke is quoting me out of context. The argument I responded to was developed by Ray Bradley. Ray’s conclusion was not that fundamentalist Christianity is false but that theism is false, and that all forms of theistic ethics are false. This only follows if you assume either,

(a) that fundamentalist readings are the only defensible ones or,
(b) all theists as a matter of fact do make such readings.

To affirm (a) is to adopt a fundamentalist hermeneutic as correct interpretation.

To affirm (b) is to attack a straw man.

Of course someone might adopt a more qualified argument along the manner he suggests. But if he does, then it is not an argument against theism, nor is it an argument against Christianity, it is not even an argument against a form of Christianity committed to a strong view of inerrancy. It is an argument against anyone who accepts these things and also accepts an interpretation of Scripture which reads these passages as a literal description of what actually happened, as opposed to hagiographic or hyperbolic description. Now showing this combination of positions to be indefensible might be interesting and useful, but it is extremely limited in its conclusion. Anyone appraised of such an argument can respond simply by moving to a less literalistic hermeneutic and retaining every thing else. I suspect this is much less than atheists typically want and certainly less than they typically maintain this argument shows.

1. In Divine Command Morality and Voluntarism William Lane Craig writes “I’ve come to appreciate that the object of God’s command to the Israelis was not the slaughter of the Canaanites, as is often imagined.” The command rather was primarily to drive them out of the land.” He goes on to state “But I’m assuming a “worst case” scenario for the sake of argument.”

Contra Mundum: Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?

Matt — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 04:15:56 +0000

Perhaps the most perplexing issue facing Christan believers is a series of jarring texts in the Old Testament. After liberating Israel from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites arrived on the edge of the promised land. The book of Deuteronomy records that God then commanded Israel to “destroy totally” the people occupying these regions (the Canaanites); the Israelites were to “leave alive nothing that breathes.” The book of Joshua records the carrying out of this command. In the sixth chapter it states “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.” In the tenth and eleventh chapters the text states that Joshua “left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded.” The text mentions city after city where Joshua, at God’s command, puts every inhabitant “to the sword” and “left no survivors.” If these passages are taken in a strict, literal fashion then it is correct to conclude that they do record the divinely authorised commission of genocide. In light of this critics of Christianity often ask how a good and loving God could command the extermination of the Canaanites?

In response, I want to suggest that this strict, literal reading is mistaken. Reading these texts in isolation from the narrative in which they occur risks a distortion of the authors intended meaning. Consider the book of Joshua, critics are quick to point out that in chapters ten and eleven the text states that Joshua “totally destroyed all who breathed”, left “no survivors” in “the entire land”, went through the land “exterminating them without mercy”.

The problem is that chapters fifteen to seventeen record that the Canaanites were, in fact, not literally wiped out. Over and over the text affirms that the land was still occupied by the Canaanites, who remain heavily armed and deeply entrenched in the cities. Astute readers will note that these are the same regions and the same cities that Joshua was said to have “destroyed all who breathed”, left “no survivors” in just a few chapters earlier.

This continues through into the next book in the Old Testament. The first two chapters of the book of Judges record that the Canaanites lived in the very same regions and cities that Joshua was said to have put every inhabitant “to the sword” in and “left no survivors” in. Moreover, again we see that they occupied these cities and regions in such numbers and strength that they had to again be driven out by force, which chapter one of Judges declared was very difficult.

Read in context then, it is difficult to see how the language of total genocide in chapters ten and eleven of the book of Joshua could have been intended to be taken literally by the authors.

This phenomena is not limited to the books of Joshua and Judges. The book of Deuteronomy in chapters seven and twenty contain commands to the Israelites to “destroy them [the Canaanites] totally” and “not leave alive anything that breathes.” The books of Deuteronomy and Exodus, in numerous places, state that the Canaanites are to be slowly driven out and expelled from the land, which is not the same thing as killing them. In fact, legislation is cited in the texts which clearly assumes that the Canaanites will survive Joshua’s the invasion. Immediately after stating that the Israelites should “destroy them totally” the text reads, “make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons.” If they were all supposed to be dead then why bother issuing instructions regarding treaties and intermarriage?

When read in context, it is unlikely that the author of these texts intended the language “destroy totally”, “do not leave alive anything that breathes”, destroy “men and women, young and old”, and so on, to be taken literally. How then should these passages be understood? At a recent conference at the University of Notre Dame, Philosopher Alvin Plantinga suggested a possible solution is to take this language hyperbolically. He suggested phrases such as, “destroy with the sword … men and women … cattle, sheep and donkeys” are phrases to be understood more like we understand a person who, in the context of watching David Tua in a boxing match, yells, “Knock his block off! Hand him his head! Take him out!” or hopes that the All Blacks will “annihilate the Springboks” or “totally slaughter the Wallabies.” Now, the sports fan does not actually want David Tua to decapitate his opponent or for the All Blacks to become mass murderers. Plantinga suggests that the same could be true here; understood in a non-literal sense the phrases probably mean “something like, attack them, defeat them, drive them out; not literally kill every man, woman, child donkey and the like.” If this is correct then the differences between the different texts is easily explained and more significantly, the texts do not teach that God commanded genocide or that Joshua carried it out.

Interestingly, research into Ancient Near-Eastern history writings bear Plantinga’s idea out. In a comprehensive comparative study of Ancient Near-Eastern conquest accounts, Old Testament scholar, K. Lawson Younger documents stylistic and literary similarities between Joshua and reports of wars written by the some of these surrounding cultures. He concludes that the Old Testament uses the same literary conventions. He notes, “the composition and rhetoric of the Joshua narratives in chapters 9-12 are compared to the the conventions of writing about conquests in Egyptian, Hittite, Akkadian, Moabite, and Aramaic texts, they are revealed to be very similar.” He substantiates with numerous examples in his book.

In addition, when one examines the literary conventions of such accounts it is evident that the rhetoric of total conquest, complete annihilation and destruction of the enemy, killing everyone, leaving no survivors, etc, is a common hyperbolic way of describing a victory in the manner Plantinga suggests. Renowned Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen notes,

[T]he type of rhetoric in question was a regular feature of military reports in the second and first millennia, as others have made very clear. … In the later fifteenth century Tuthmosis III could boast “the numerous army of Mitanni, was overthrown within the hour, annihilated totally, like those (now) non-existent” –- whereas, in fact, the forces of Mitanni lived to fight many another day, in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries. Some centuries later, about 840/830, Mesha king of Moab could boast that “Israel has utterly perished for always” – a rather premature judgment at that date, by over a century! And so on, ad libitum. It is in this frame of reference that the Joshua rhetoric must also be understood.

Some examples will illustrate this. The Merneptah Stele states “Yanoam was made nonexistent; Israel is laid waste, its seed is not.” here the Egyptian Pharoh Merneptah describes a skirmish with Israel in which his armies prevailed, hyperbolically, in terms of the total annihilation of Israel. The Assyrian king Sennacherib uses similar hyperbole, “The soldiers of Hirimme, dangerous enemies, I cut down with the sword; and not one escaped.” Mursili II records making “Mt. Asharpaya empty (of humanity)” and the “mountains of Tarikarimu empty (of humanity).” Similarly, The Bulletin of Ramses II, an historical narrative of Egyptian military campaigns into Syria, narrates Egypt’s considerably less than decisive victory at the battle of Kadesh with the rhetoric, “His majesty slew the entire force of the wretched foe from Hatti, together with his great chiefs and all his brothers, as well as all the chiefs of all the countries that had come with him” [Emphasis added]. The examples could be multiplied but the point is that such language was hyperbolic and not intended to be taken literally.

Consequently, if one does not read the texts in isolation and is sensitive to the genre of Ancient Near-Eastern writings then a literal reading is far from obvious. As Egyptologist James K. Hoffmeier notes, such a reading commits “the fallacy of misplaced literalism … the misconstruction of a statement-in-evidence so that it carries a literal meaning when a symbolic or hyperbolic or figurative meaning was intended.” This underscores an obvious but often neglected point, the bible is not written in accord with the conventions of 21st century English. It was written in ancient foreign languages and in the conventions that governed historical, legal, epic, etc writings of that time. To understand what it teaches accurately one needs to ask what it teaches given these factors. When one does this, it seems probable that the Old Testament does not teach that God commanded or that Israel carried out the genocide or extermination of the Canaanites.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled Contra Mundum. This blog post was published in the Aug 10 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to:
editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

Inter-Continental Developments: Matt to Speak in the US

Madeleine — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:52:35 +0000

When Matt wrote his blog series Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I and Part II he had no idea just how far clicking the ‘publish’ button would end up taking him. It turns out that it will be taking him quite far; half-way around the world from Auckland, New Zealand to Atlanta, Georgia in the United States to be precise.

What’s in Georgia? Well it is this years location for the annual conferences and meetings of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS), the Evangelical Philosophical Society (EPS) and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). Each organisation’s events dove-tail the others so that they all run between 17-23 November 2010 in pretty much the same location.

Anyway, in addition to the Canaanite blog series being the catalyst to Matt’s receiving invitations to co-author chapters in edited books with Philosophers of Religion and Old Testament Ethicists working at the top of the international field on the subject of Old Testament Ethics (see the upcoming publication list on Matt’s profile page) Matt will also be speaking on this topic in Atlanta.

At the EPS Apologetics Conference, Matt will speak on “God and the Genocide of the Canaanites” (full details here). The following day he will join Palm Beach Atlantic University Professor of Philosophy and Ethics and EPS President Paul Copan, Denver Seminary Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages Richard Hess and Taylor University Associate Professor of Historical Theology Randal Rauser at the SBL Annual Meeting for a panel discussion entitled “Navigating Old Testament Ethics” (full details here). He’ll also be attending bits of the ETS conference too.

This is an incredible opportunity for Matt. Not only does he get to go somewhere where most of the Philosophers and Theologians at the top of his field will all be gathered in one place and meet them all but he gets to present his work to them and speak alongside them. The potential for Matt to obtain more research and speaking opportunities coupled with the fact that attending the EPS is seen in the evangelical academic world as one of the best ways to obtain employment makes this an opportunity that we are determined for Matt to take up.

The problem is cost. Almost every other speaker in attendance has institutional backing. Financially this translates to their respective academic departments funding most of their attendance. Matt does not have institutional backing. EPS President Paul Copan, who personally invited Matt to take up these speaking opportunities, is aware of this and has generously offered to help Matt out with accommodation and to and fro conference travel. This brings the total cost down considerably but we are still chasing a total of $2,481.55 NZD ($1746.52USD) to get Matt there.

From simply talking to friends about this opportunity we are aware that people who are able to would like to help Matt get to these conferences so we have decided to take a step of faith by accepting the speaking offers and purchasing the tickets. Given our employment woes and battle with ACC over my injury compensation being wrongfully discontinued, this has made things rather tight but we have faith we will get through.

If you would like to help, our support page has various donation options. We would also greatly appreciate the word being spread, so if you are a blogger or you have website, please consider linking to this page.