Alvin Calling

(Noah had no idea how we worked out it wasn’t really Alvin Plantinga.)

For obvious reasons, few people would dare to dispute the contention that belief in other minds is rational. However, Plantinga’s critics have two options: (1) they might contend that belief in other minds is rational, but only in virtue of a rationally compelling argument. Hence their burden would be to produce a rationally compulsive version of the analogical argument. (2) They could admit that there is no rationally compulsive version of the analogical argument, but argue that there is a relevant difference between theistic belief and belief in other minds, such that the two beliefs are not epistemically equivalent or, as it were, “equiprobable”.

In this paper, I am not concerned to argue against (1), but suffice to say I think it thoroughly wrong-headed. I am concerned however, to argue against one particular version of (2). Some of Plantinga’s critics have charged that belief in God and belief in other human minds are epistemically unalike in the sense that reasonable people do not disagree about whether or not other minds exist, whereas reasonable clearly disagree about whether or not God exists.

While he doesn’t explicitly respond to Plantinga or any of the so called “Reformed Epistemologists”, Richard Feldman argues something akin to in his article entitled “Reasonable Religious Disagreements”. Hence it makes sense to analyze his argument in the context of an objection against Reformed Epistemology.

I do not find his argument convincing. In-fact, as I will go on to argue, un-sharable private evidence in the form of religious experience proves an intractable problem for Feldman’s argument with respect to religious disagreements. That is not to say that there is no epistemic parity between theistic belief and belief in other minds, rather it is simply to say that at least one attempt to establish any such parity is not successful.

Feldman’s thesis is that reasonable disagreement between epistemic peers who have fully disclosed their evidence is not possible[iv]. That is to say, reasonable disagreement cannot subsist between two parties that are equivalently intelligent, have approximately equal powers of reasoning, are equal with respect to background information and have shared all relevant evidence[v]. When he says that reasonable disagreement cannot subsist between such people, Feldman does not mean to say that both parties should agree. Rather, what he means to say is that both parties should suspend judgement[vi]. In other words, those who are party to the discussion cannot simply “agree to disagree” (at least they can’t do so rationally) . Rather, they must opt for a position that can only be described as “agnostic”. The final preliminary point to clarify is the issue of “reasonability”. By this Feldman means to say is that a belief is “reasonable” just if it has sufficient evidential support. This point is important, because as Feldman points out, if by “reasonability” one simply means that there is no “obvious blunder”, then it’s possible to be “reasonable” and yet base ones beliefs on confusion and misunderstanding etc[vii]. Feldman introduces his thesis by way of the following questions:

In order to help us see his point, Feldman entreats us to consider the following scenarios:

-          Suppose two individuals are on their way to an important meeting when they come across a fork in the road. The map they have shows no such fork, and they have no other way of getting any more information about which way to go. But, they must choose if they are to get to the meeting on time. One person chooses to go right and the other chooses to go left. In that situation each is entirely reasonable (pragmatically speaking) in going in the direction they are. But both would be equally justified if they had gone in the other direction. However, in such a scenario, neither is justified in believing that the path they have chosen is the right one[x].

-          Suppose that a detective has evidence that incriminates Lefty, and equally strong evidence that incriminates Righty of the same crime. Suppose finally, that the detective has evidence to suggest that either Lefty or Righty is guilty, but not both. In that situation, it seems clear that the detective should suspend judgement until further evidence comes out on either side of the issue. After all, where the evidence one way or the other is completely equivalent, it seems entirely unjustified to think that one is guilty and the other is innocent[xi].

Feldman contends that such situations such as this lend support to what he calls “The Uniqueness Thesis”, namely the contention that a body of evidence supports only one proposition out of a set of competing propositions. In other words, for any body of evidence only one attitude is rationally justifiable[xii].

As it happens, I propose to agree with Feldman with respect to the Uniqueness Thesis. Where the body of evidence is completely indeterminate, it seems utterly unjustified to think that one conclusion is true. As Feldman himself points out, there may be good pragmatic reasons for believing P as opposed to ~P, but pragmatic reasons seem to do little to  give any reason for believing that either P or ~P are, in actual fact, true[xiii]. Some might object that it’s never as clear cut as simply plugging in evidence and getting a single hypothesis out. For instance, for any data set in a scientific experiment, any number of theories might be consistent with all of the available evidence. In this sense, the evidence cannot determine the justifiability of any given theory. But this objection rather misses the point. The claim isn’t that the evidence determines the justifiability of any given theory. Rather, the claim is that the evidence determines the justifiability of a given doxastic attitude, including the suspension of judgement. Hence where there evidence is consistent with any number of hypotheses, the doxastic attitude determined by the evidence is the suspension of judgement. Some have charged that this view commits me to deeply skeptical consequences in that reasonable people seem to disagree about a great number of propositions and hypotheses. For instance, there are reasonable moral nihilists and reasonable moral universalists. The fact then that they seem to reasonably disagree seems to commit me (when conjoined with the uniqueness thesis) to moral skepticism. But this is not at all clear. In-fact, it seems that I am only committed to these “skeptical consequences” if my view entails that people ought to suspend judgement the great majority of the time. However, when conjoined with the epistemological egoism that I will defend in what follows, my view entails that the actual number of instances where the parties need to suspend judgement are few and far between. After all, what I argue is just as applicable to the disagreement between moral nihilists and moral universalists as it is in the case of the disagreement between theists and atheists.

However, that Feldman is right with respect to the Uniqueness Thesis in no way entails that he is right with respect to religious disagreements. It is fully compatible with the truth of the Uniqueness Thesis that we shouldn’t suspend judgements when it comes to religious disagreements. Critical to the suspension of judgement on Feldman’s account, is that all relevant evidence has been shared. As I will go on to argue, the conditions Feldman specifies are never, even in principle, met in Religious disagreements of a particular kind. More precisely, in my contention evidence in the form of religious experience cannot be “shared” with other people. When I say that Religious Experience cannot be “shared”, what I mean to say is that it cannot have the same justificatory force for the non believer as it does for the believer. In other words, even though a believer can in a sense “communicate” the fact that he has had a religious experience, the believers testimony would not provide a person who hasn’t had the relevant experience with the same degree of doxastic justification as it does for the believer.

Anticipating this response, Feldman argues that this simply pushes the issue back a step. Once those who are party to a religious disagreement are made aware of the experience of the other, and aware of the evidentiary support that those experiences provide to the believer, the evidence between the two parties is fully disclosed[xiv] and the disagreement must ultimately end in a suspension of judgement. In order to help us see this point, Feldman appeals to the following role of evidence: If S, has evidence that some other person S1 has evidence for P, then, S has evidence for P.[xv] However, in order for this objection to get off the ground, it seems that we need to interpret Feldman as saying that the evidence that S has for P has justificatory force as it does for S1. After all, if the evidence for P has more justificatory force for S than it does for S1, then it would still seem to follow that, in at least some circumstances, reasonable disagreement between S and S1 could subsist. As I will go on to argue, Feldman’s premise in this respect is not convincing. However, at this stage we need to be precise about the terms of my argument. I am not denying the contention that S has evidence for P when S has evidence that S1 has evidence for P. Rather, what I am arguing is that in such a situation, S does not have the same degree of justification as S1.

In order to see what I’m getting at here, consider the following scenario (taken from what Feldman has argued elsewhere):

“Bob and Ray are sitting in an air-conditioned hotel lobby reading yesterday’s newspaper. Each has reads that it will be very warm today and, on that basis, each believes that it is very warm today. Then Bob goes outside and feels the heat. They both continue to believe that it is very warm today. But at this point Bob’s belief is better justified[xvi]

Following this, Conee and Feldman comment that Bob’s justification increased because he actually experienced the heat. He thereby underwent a mental change which internalized the temperature.[xvii] Now while Conee and Feldman used in the context of arguing for internalism, it can similarly be used in the context of defending the private evidence defence to Feldman’s argument from disagreement. In order to see this, suppose that Bob and Ray strike up a conversation while the latter is still inside the air-conditioned lobby. “It’s really hot out here!” Bob proclaims “you should come out and see!” At this point, Ray has two sources of justification for the belief that’s its warm: 1) it was in the Newspaper and 2) Bob just told him. But it still seems possible for Ray to have a third source justification. Pursuing with our thought experiment a bit further, let’s suppose that Ray joins Bob outside. “Whew” Ray exclaims, “it really is hot out here!” in such a situation, intuitively speaking, we seem to want to say that Ray’s justification is now even better than it was before he joined Bob. Nevertheless, we still want to say that Ray’s justification for believing that it’s warm is now identical to Bob’s. But if Ray’s justification for believing that its warm is improved by his joining Bob, then it would seem to be the case that Bob’s purported experience does not provide Ray with the same degree of justification as the experience itself provides for Bob. In other words, Bob’s direct experience of the heat cannot be conveyed, with the same degree of evidential force, to Ray. Such a principle of reasoning does seem to enjoy further intuitive support. Suppose for instance that a bible scholar tells an African tribesman who has never read (or even heard about) the bible before, about the story of Daniel and the Lions. In that instance, the bible scholar’s testimonial evidence is sufficient to justify the tribesman’s belief that the story of Daniel and the Lions is in the bible. However, the bible scholar is more justified than the tribesman by virtue of the fact that he has actually read the book of Daniel. But suppose that the tribesman picks up the bible and reads the book of Daniel. We would now say that the tribesman is just as justified as the bible scholar in believing that it contains the story of Daniel and the Lions.

Examples such as this seem to support the conclusion that our own experiences carry greater evidential significance in our own considerations, than the purported experiences of others. After all, it was only once Ray had an experience that was identical to Bob’s that the two were regarded as having the same degree of justification. Bob may have been able to communicate his experience to Ray, but clearly that testimonial evidence did not convey the degree of justification as the experience itself did for Ray. This soft brand of epistemological egoism has an important consequence for our discussion of disagreement. That is, a theist who bases his faith on some kind of “religious experience” is justified in regarding his own experience as counting for more than the purported evidence of another individual with an “atheistic experience”[1]. However, the theist must acknowledge that genuine disagreement does provide at least a partial defeater. Although it’s the case that direct experience has more evidentiary force for the subject of that experience, the testimony of a juxtaposing experience is still counter-evidence. As such, it must ultimately undercut the certainty with which an individual can hold his experientially justified beliefs. For instance, suppose that “Theist” is asked to rank the certainty of her beliefs on a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 designates that P is absolutely certain, and “0” designates that ~P is absolutely certain. Suppose furthermore, that (prior to full disclosure) on the basis of her religious experience, “Theist” ranks her certainty at 9.5[2]. But then consider the juxtaposing scenario where another individual “Atheist”, has an atheistic experience on which he bases his certainty that God does not exist at 9.5. Suppose finally that “Theist” and “Atheist” engage in an argument in which they both share their respective experiences with one-another. In that situation, both “Theist” and “Atheist” are furnished with counter-evidence for their respective beliefs. Thus if “Theist” and “Atheist” are to properly apportion their beliefs to the available evidence, they should respectively reduce their degree of certainty. Thus neither “Theist” nor “Atheist” can hold to their respective beliefs with the same degree of certainty as they did. However, it needs to be emphasized that the justificatory force of direct experience is far greater for the subject of that experience. Hence although “Atheist’s” testimonial evidence has provided a partial evidentiary defeater for “Theist’s” beliefs, it has not defeated “Theist’s” belief outright. That is to say, although it reduces their respective certainty down from 9.5, it does not reduce it to 5.

However, if Feldman is to make his case with respect to Religious Disagreements, it needs to be the case that genuine disagreement provides a total evidentiary defeater. That is to say, if on the basis of genuine disagreement both “Theist” and “Atheist” are to suspend judgement about theism, then it needs to be the case that genuine disagreement brings their respective levels of certainty back to 5. Only then would it strip both parties of sufficient justification for making a judgement either way.  However, as I have argued, individuals have reason for weighing their own experiences as having more evidentiary force than the apparent experiences of other individuals. Returning then to our example, while we can concede that after full disclosure, neither “Theist” nor “Atheist” can be as justifiably certain in holding to their respective beliefs, it may nevertheless be the case that they are still sufficiently justified in retaining those beliefs. Pursuing with our though experiment, let’s suppose that having both shared all their evidence with one-another (including their experiences), they then go away and re-calculate their certainty levels. If they are to apportion their beliefs to the evidence, then both “Theist” and “Atheist” must respectively consider that the testimony of the other is in-fact counter-evidence to their own beliefs. Hence they must correspondingly reduce their levels of certainty. However, because “Theist” may well regard her own experiences as having greater evidentiary significance (in her own considerations) than the apparent experiences of “Atheist”, her respective levels of certainty would not (justifiably) drop back to 5 as Feldman would require. The same can be said for “Atheist”.

The inability of “Theist” and “Atheist” to convey the justificatory force of their experiences implies that not all evidence is public. Ergo, some evidence is private. It therefore seems that, at least in the case of certain kinds of religious disagreements, the “full disclosure” of all relevant evidence is not, even in principle, possible. It therefore follows that both “Theist” and “Atheist” can justifiably believe that the other side is wrong, and at the same time admit that they are also justified. So much for Feldman’s argument from disagreement.

Modus Ponens
One of the very first valid inferences one learns in logic is modus ponens. To use the well worn example that was repeated ad nauseam when I was learning logic (and one I probably bored my students with too) a paradigmatic example of modus ponens is,

1. If it is raining then the  grass will be wet.

2. It is raining;

Therefore:

3. The grass will be wet.

Put more abstractly, a modus ponens has the form:

1’ If P then Q.

2’ P;

Therefore:

3’ Q.

Modus ponens proceeds with the first premise contending that a conditional statement is true. A conditional statement is a statement about a hypothetical situation; in this case the claim is “if it is raining then the grass will be wet”. Notice that for this conditional to be true, it does not have to actually be raining. On a sunny day it is still true that if it starts raining the grass will be wet. A conditional statement tells us what will be the case if some other thing or event is the case – not what actually is the case.

Conditional statements of the form “if P then Q” have what logicians call an “antecedent” and a “consequent”. P is the antecedent; in the above example the antecedent is the claim, “it is raining”. In a conditional statement one talks about what occurs if the antecedent is true. Q is the consequent; in the example above the consequent is the proposition “the grass will be wet”. The consequent is what is said to be true if the antecedent is correct.

Modus ponens proceeds by first affirming that a conditional statement is true and then affirming the antecedent is true. If both a conditional statement is true and its antecedent is true then it is impossible for the consequent to not also be true. This is obvious upon immediate reflection. If the conditional ‘if P then Q’ is true, and P is true, then Q must also be true. Note, that in a valid modus ponens inference, one affirms the antecedent.

Modus Tollens
A second and related valid inference is modus tollens. Like modus ponens a modus tollens begins by affirming a conditional statement; however, it proceeds by denying the consequent. To use the example above:

1. If it is raining then the grass will be wet.

2’’ The grass is not wet;

Therefore:

3’’ It is not raining.

This has the form:

1’ If P then Q.

2’’ Not Q;

Therefore:

3’’ Not P.

Modus tollens proceeds by noting a conditional statement is true and then denying the consequent of this condition. It follows from this that the antecedent is false. Again this is a valid argument form. If its true that given a certain antecedent obtains that a consequent will follow, and the consequent has not followed, then the antecedent will not obtain.

Both modus ponens and modus tollens formalise valid inferences involving conditional statements. If one has a conditional statement of the form, if P then Q, one can deny the consequent and argue that P is false or one can affirm the antecedent and argue that that Q is true.

Denying the Antecedent
With this background in place we can turn to the fallacy of denying the antecedent. This fallacy occurs when a person denies the antecedent. To return to our example:

1. If it is raining then the grass will be wet.

2’’’ It is not raining;

Therefore:

3’’’ The grass will not be wet.

This argument is invalid because it is possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. Imagine it is a hot summer day in Auckland, there is not a cloud in the sky and the sun is beating down; to cool themselves off my children set up a sprinkler on the grass outside and run through it. In this situation the condition ‘if its raining then the grass will be wet’ is true. It is also true that it is not raining yet the grass is wet; it has been drenched by the sprinkler.

This highlights something about conditionals. When one makes a conditional statement, one claims that if the antecedent is true then the consequent is true. One does not, however, necessarily claim that if the consequent is true then antecedent is true. The example above shows this. It is true that rain causes grass to be wet but this does not mean that rain is the only thing that causes wet grass. So one cannot validly claim that a consequent of a conditional is false by arguing that the antecedent is.

Example
This may all sound a bit abstract and the examples of rain and wet grass somewhat trivial. However, it is necessary to use obvious examples to illustrate the logical point. Let us now turn to an example that has been discussed on this blog lately which has generated a reasonable amount of online commentary.

In the recent debate at the University of Notre Dame between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig, Craig offered the following conditional:

1. If God exists then we have a plausible account of (a) the nature of moral goodness and (b) the nature of moral obligation.

As I noted in my review of the debate, one response Harris offered to 1 (b) was to argue that the existence of evil in the world suggests that God does not exist. I also noted that this objection is unsound. Craig’s contention in 1 (b) was a conditional statement that: If God exists then we have a plausible account of the nature of moral obligation. Arguing that God does not exist does not refute this conditional statement since the conditional does not claim that God exists. Just as one can, on a sunny day, make true statements about what would be the case if it were raining, the claim that ‘if God exists then we have a plausible account of moral obligation’ can be true even if God does not exist.

Since the debate, some of Harris’s supporters have suggested Harris’s argument here did provide a compelling reason for rejecting Craig’s claim that there exists a plausible divine command theory account of moral obligation. Craig’s conditional for this was that if God exists then a divine command theory is defensible. However, they contend that God does not exist and so, therefore, a divine command theory is not plausible.

This does not follow and is pretty clearly a case of the fallacy of affirming the antecedent. As both Plantinga and Mark Murphy have noted separately, a divine command theory is, in fact, compatible with atheism. Plantinga notes,

“one might reject theism but accept a divine command ethics, and as a consequence … reject moral realism.”

Similarly, Mark Murphy contends:

“A metaethical theological voluntarist might claim that no normative state of affairs could be made to obtain without certain acts of divine will, but because there is no God, or because there is a God that has not performed the requisite acts of will, no normative states of affairs obtain.”

The point is that one could accept that the most plausible account of moral obligation is that obligations are identical with God’s commands and still deny God exists; and conclude, therefore, that moral obligations do not really exist.  This is no more incoherent than accepting that the best account of the nature of unicorns is that they are magical horses with one horn in the centre of their forehead and then conclude that because no such horses exist that unicorns do not exist.

It should not need belabouring but calling into question the antecedent of Craig’s conditional does not entail a refutation of the consequent. The fact that so many followers of Sam Harris are defending as valid the fallacy of denying the antecedent is mildly amusing but it is not much else.

To summarise, conditional statements are if-then statements; they claim that a consequent is true, if an antecedent is true. One cannot show the consequent is false by denying the antecedent. One can affirm that the antecedent is true and infer, therefore, that the consequent is too, and one can deny the consequent is true and therefore deny the antecedent but denying the antecedent has little effect at all.

The question is ambiguous. Taken one way it is simply a question which assumes that God exists and asks for God’s reasons for allowing a particular event. Taken the other way it is a rhetorical question which hides an unspoken argument that the existence of disasters, like the Christchurch earthquake, is evidence that God, most likely, does not exist. In “God, Evil and Suffering” Daniel Howard-Snyder notes,

[T]he theoretical “problem” of evil is often expressed in the form of a pointed question. God is able to prevent evil and suffering and He would know about them before they happened, right? Moreover, since He is unsurpassably good, surely He would not permit them just for the fun of it. So why doesn’t He prevent them?

The sceptic notes two things; first that God knows about and is able to prevent suffering. Second that God, being perfectly good, would prevent this suffering unless he had a good reason for allowing it, which Howard-Snyder defines as “a reason that was compatible with his never doing wrong and his being perfect in love”. This is the implicit background to the question.

The rhetorical force of this argument is powerful and its emotional appeal has a strong pull, particularly on the back of an horrific disaster. Nevertheless, many philosophers have found that when examined rationally it has an important flaw. The argument establishes that if God exists then He must have a good reason for allowing suffering. The sceptic is asking for an account of these reasons. The assumption is that if a believer cannot give a precise account of God’s reasons then there probably are none. It is this assumption upon which the argument hangs or falls.

The problem is that this assumption is questionable. Philosopher Alvin Plantinga illustrates,

I look inside my tent: I don’t see a St. Bernard; it is then probable that there is no St. Bernard in my tent. That is because if there were one there, I would very likely have seen it; it’s not easy for a St. Bernard to avoid detection in a small tent. Again, I look inside my tent: I don’t see any noseeums (very small midges with a bite out of all proportion to their size); this time it is not particularly probable that there are no noseeums in my tent—at least it isn’t any more probable than before I looked. The reason, of course, is that even if there were noseeums there, I wouldn’t see ’em; they’re too small to see. And now the question is whether God’s reasons, if any, for permitting such evils as [the Christchurch earthquake] are more like St. Bernards or more like noseeums.

In his book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Timothy Keller notes “we see lurking within supposedly hard-nosed skepticism an enormous faith in one’s own cognitive faculties. If our mindcan’t plumb the depths of the universe for good answers to suffering, well, then, there can’t be any! This is blind faith of a high order.”

The sceptic suggests that if a finite human being with limited factual knowledge, limited perspective in time and space and an imperfect moral character does not know of any reason for why suffering occurs then it follows that an all knowing, perfectly good being cannot have any such reasons.

Philosopher William Alston has noted that the sceptic’s argument is like the person with no background in quantum physics who, when he could not understand why the world’s best physicist held a particular view, decided that the physicist obviously had no good reasons to hold it.

However, suppose this is the wrong approach; suppose that the failure to provide an answer does mean that it is improbable that one exists and from this that it follows that the existence of God is improbable given the fact of suffering. What follows from this? Nowhere near as much as you might think because even if the existence of God is improbable on one fact it does not mean that it is improbable per sé.

Plantinga notes that there are many beliefs that we hold to which are improbable on some body of facts we acknowledge. If I was playing poker and was dealt four aces in one hand I would know that this was highly improbable given the number of cards in the pack and number of possible combinations that I could have been dealt yet I would still be rational in believing that I was dealt four aces as I have other grounds for accepting this; I can look down at the cards in my hand and see that I have four aces in front of me.

It is well known that a belief can be improbable on one sub-set of facts a person knows and yet highly probable by everything that that person knows. For example, if I know my friend is French and if it is a fact that most French people cannot swim then my belief that my friend is a swimmer would be improbable given the facts I am aware of. On the other hand, suppose I know that my friend is a life guard by profession and that all life guards, even French ones, can swim. Then despite the fact that a belief is improbable on the basis of one set of facts, it is not necessarily improbable on the whole.

In addition, the question needs to be raised as to how well Christianity performs regarding the existence of suffering relative to alternative views. Some Philosophers have suggested that the existence of suffering might also make the non-existence of God improbable. Here are some reasons why.

First, in order for suffering to exist sentient life forms must exist. However, there have been discoveries in contemporary physics which establish that a universe evolving life is extremely improbable. For life to evolve there are around 15 constants necessary, each must have precise values and if they were off by a million or even one in a million, life could not evolve. Even if some of these constants had differed by 1 in 10 to the power of 60 then life could not evolve.

Second, some of the worst forms of suffering have a moral element. We experience suffering as evil, bad or unjust. But this requires the existence of moral norms. Some raise the question as to whether the existence of objective moral principles is likely on a secular view of the world. Is it likely that in a universe composed entirely of matter and energy that objective principles or rules could exist independently of any mind?

Finally, suffering can only exist if there is a universe; questions have been raised as to whether it is likely for a universe to come into existence out of nothing or for a universe which is radically contingent to exist without something eternal and non-contingent sustaining it.

My point is not to endorse or reject these lines of inquiry; I simply note it is not obvious that the typical secular view is any more probable given the existence of suffering than belief in God is. Even if we grant the argument that the existence of suffering makes God’s existence unlikely, it does not automatically follow that a secular perspective on the world fares any better. It could be that the existence of suffering is improbable on both views. To reject Christianity because of the existence of suffering and in its place embrace a secular view of reality which faces the same intellectual challenge would be arbitrary. Just as Christians have to face the sceptical challenges that suffering presents to their beliefs, secularists must also. Secularism is not true by default.

In conclusion, my response to the argument that suffering makes God unlikely is as follows: first, the argument relies on an assumption that is false or at any rate, an assumption that no reason is forthcoming as to why a Christian should accept it. Second, even if evil does make the existence of God improbable, one would need further argument to show that this meant Christianity was irrational. One would need to show that God’s existence was improbable on all the relevant evidence – not just the mere fact of suffering.  Finally, even if the sceptic could do this it does not follow that a secular view of the world is correct. It could be that the existence of evil is also improbable on a secular view and hence, secularists are in the same boat with regards to the existence of suffering.

Given this, Christians can contend that a perfectly good God was there during the Christchurch earthquake. They can believe that he allowed the devastation for an ultimately good reason, even if that reason remains opaque and mysterious to us; their doing so is not an obvious case of cognitive dissonance or wishful thinking. This answer leaves many questions unanswered; it does not remove the anguish or the pain but it does address one very real intellectual question that people ask precisely because of such suffering.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled “Contra Mundum.” This blog post was published in the April 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

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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.

[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 at <http://www.nd.edu/~cprelig/conferences/documents/HBprogram_006.pdf> accessed 5 Jan 2010.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Nicholas Wolterstorff “Reading Joshua” 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) 252-253. 252.
[4] All scripture references in this paragraph are from the Hebrew Greek Interlinear Bible.
[5] “So Joshua subdued the whole region, including the hill country, the Negev, the western foothills and the mountain slopes, together with all their kings. He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded. (Joshua 10:40 NIV) [Emphasis added] Similarly we see,

“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.

RELATED POSTS:
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II: Ancient Near Eastern Conquest Accounts
Download Matt’s EPS Talk “God and the Genocide of the Canaanites” (& other EPS talks)
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II
Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?

In my previous post, God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation, I expounded and adapted Nicholas Wolterstorff’s argument for a hagiographic hyperbolic reading of the book of Joshua. Wolterstorff’s argument has, I think, considerable force. Judges and Joshua cannot both be taken literally as their accounts are at odds; given the internal evidence Wolterstorff cites it is reasonable to contend that Joshua is the one that is non-literal. Wolterstorff, however, limits his case to what I call internal evidence, evidence from within the text itself. I think there is some interesting external evidence, evidence of how particular terms and language were used in other Ancient Near Eastern histories of conquests and battles, which could be added to Wolterstorff’s argument to make it significantly more plausible. Here I will cite three lines of such evidence.

The first is that comparisons between the book of Joshua and other Ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts from the same period demonstrate some important stylistic parallels. Various studies have documented these similarities. Commenting on the structure of the campaigns mentioned in Joshua 9-12, Kitchen notes;

This kind of report profile is familiar to readers of ancient Near Eastern military reports, not least in the second millennium. Most striking is the example of the campaign annals of Tuthmosis III of Egypt in his years 22-42 (ca. 1458-1438). … [T]he pharaoh there gives a very full account of his initial victory at Megiddo, by contrast with the far more summary and stylized reports of the ensuing sixteen subsequent campaigns. Just like Joshua against up to seven kings in south Canaan and four-plus up north.[1] [Emphasis added]

Kitchen adds,

The Ten Year Annals of the Hittite king Mursil II (later fourteenth century) are also instructive. Exactly like the “prefaces” in the two Joshua war reports (10:1-4; 11:1-5), detailing hostility by a number of foreign rulers against Joshua and Israel as the reason for the wars, so in his annals Mursil II gives us a long “preface” on the hostility of neighbouring rulers and people groups that lead to his campaigns.[2] [Emphasis added]

Kitchen adds other examples. He observes that the same formulaic style found in Joshua is also used in the Amarna letters EA 185 and EA 186.[3]Similarly, before his major campaigns,

Joshua is commissioned by YHWH not to fear (cf. 5:13-15; 10:8; 11:6). So also by Ptah and Amun were Merenptah in Egypt and Tuthmosis IV long before him: and likewise Mursil II of the Hittites by his gods (10T-Year Annals, etc.), all in the second millennium besides such kings as Assurbanipal of Assyria down to the seventh century.[4]

Similar studies have been done by Van Seters[5] and James Hoffmeier.[6] However, the most comprehensive is that done by J Lawson Younger.

Younger notes similarities in the preface, structure and even the way the treaty with the Gibeonites is recorded between Joshua and various Ancient Near Eastern accounts.[7] Joshua follows this convention in describing numerous battles occurring in a single day or within a single campaign.[8] Ancient Near Eastern accounts also, like Joshua, repeatedly make reference to the enemy “melting with fear”.[9] Even the way post-battle pursuits are set out and described have parallels with pursuits in Ancient Near Eastern literature.[10] I could mention more examples; the point is that “when the composition and rhetoric of the Joshua narratives in chapters 9-12 are compared to the conventions of writing about conquests in Egyptian, Hittite, Akkadian, Moabite, and Aramaic texts, they are revealed to be very similar”.[11]

Second, Younger notes such accounts are “highly figurative”[12] and narrate military events via a common transmission code.  The literary motif of divine intervention is an example. Both The 10 Year Annals of Mursilli and Sargon’s Letter to the God record a divine intervention where the God sends hailstones on the enemy.[13] Tuthmosis III has a similar story regarding a meteor.[14] Younger notes these accounts are extremely similar to parallel accounts in Joshua 10. Similarly, Younger notes in many Ancient Near Eastern texts “one can discern a literary technique whereby the deity is implored to maintain daylight long enough for there to be a victory”[15] which has obvious parallels to Josh 10:13-14.  Similarly, Richard Hess notes that Hittite conquest accounts describe the gods knocking down the walls of an enemy city in a manner similar to that described in the battle of Jericho.[16] The fact that similar events are narrated in multiple different accounts suggests they are “notable ingredient of the transmission code for conquest accounts”;[17] that is, part of the common hyperbolic rhetoric of warfare rather than descriptions of what actually occurred.

Third, part of this “transmission code” is that victories are narrated in a stereotyped exaggerated hyperbolic fashion in terms of total conquest, complete annihilation and destruction of the enemy, killing everyone, leaving no survivors, etc. 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.[18]

Younger notes numerous other examples. Merenptah’s Stele describes a skirmish with Israel as follows, “Yanoam is nonexistent; Israel is wasted, his seed is not”.[19] Here a skirmish in which Egypt prevailed is described hyperbolically in terms of the total annihilation of Israel. Sennacherib uses similar hyperbole, “The soldiers of Hirimme, dangerous enemies, I cut down with the sword; and not one escaped”.[20] Mursilli II records making “Mt.Asharpaya empty (of humanity)” and the “mountains of Tarikarimu empty (of humanity)”.[21] Mesha (whom Kitchen cites as stating “Israel has utterly perished for always”) describes victories in terms of him fighting against a town, taking it and then killing all the inhabitants of the town.[22] 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 following 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, their infantry and their chariotry falling on their faces one upon the other. His majesty slaughtered and slew them in their places; … He took no note of the millions of foreigners; he regarded them aschaff. [23] [Emphasis original]

Numerous other examples could be provided. The hyperbolic use of language similar to that in Joshua is strikingly evident.[24] It is equally evident that histories of this sort are highly stylised and often use this exaggeration for what could be called hagiographic purposes to commend the kings as faithful servants of the gods rather than as literal descriptions of what occurred.[25] They constitute “monumental hyperbole.”[26]

In addition, both Kitchen and Younger note that such hyperbolic language is used in several places within the book of Joshua itself. In Joshua 10:20, for example, it states Joshua and the sons of Israel had “finished destroying” and “completely destroyed” their enemies. Immediately, however, the text, affirms that the “survivors went to fortified cities.” In this context, the language of total destruction is clearly hyperbolic.  Similarly, the account of the battle of Ai is clearly hyperbolic. After Joshua’s troops feign a retreat the text states that “all the men of Ai” are pressed to chase them. “Not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did not go after Israel. They left the city open and went in pursuit of Israel.” Joshua lures the pursuers into a trap “so that they were caught in the middle, with Israelites on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives” Then it immediately goes on to assert “When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword” they went to the city of Ai and killed all the men in it. Apparently all the men of Ai were killed three times in the battle and in each case they appear alive again. A final example is suggested by Goldingay, in the first chapter of Judges he notes that after Judah puts Jerusalem to the sword, its occupants are still living there ‘to this day’.

A similar phenomenon occurs in the case of Midian,[27] the Amalekites[28] and the Babylonian invasion[29].  In each case a battle is narrated in totalistic terms of complete destruction of all the people and later narration goes on to matter-of-factly assume it did not literally occur. The fact that this occurs on multiple occasions in different books rapidly diminishes the probability that these features are co-incidental or careless errors. Why is that almost every time a narration of “genocide” occurs, it is followed by an account which presupposes it did not? These facts significantly increase the possibility that this is deliberate literary construction by the authors.

Four things are evident; first, that taken as a single narrative and taken literally, Joshua 1-11 gives a contradictory account of events to that narrated by Judges and also to that narrated by the later chapters of Joshua itself. Second is that “those who edited the final version of these writings into one sequence were not mindless” particularly if God speaks through them. Third, while Judges reads as “down to earth history” a careful reading of Joshua reveals it to be full of ritualistic, stylised, accounts, formulaic language. This third point is supported by research into Ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts. Such studies show (a) such accounts are highly  hyperbolic, hagiographic, figurative and follow a common transmission code (b) comparisons between these accounts and the early chapters of Joshua suggest Joshua is written according to the same literary conventions and  transmission code (c) part of this transmission code is to hyperbolically portray a victory in absolute terms of totally destroying the enemy or in terms of miraculous divine intervention; “such statements are rhetoric indicative of military victory”,[30] not literal descriptions of what occurred.  Fourth, this hyperbolic way of describing victories is attested in several places elsewhere in Scripture.

I think these four points, taken together, provide compelling reasons for thinking that one should interpret the text as a highly figurative and hyperbolic account of what occurred. In light of these factors it seems sensible to conclude that the accounts of battles in Joshua 6-11 are not meant to be taken literally.

In Part III I look at two implications of the hagiographic hyperbolic account.

[1] Kenneth Kitchen On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids MI: Erdmans Publishing Co, 2003) 170.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid 172.
[4] Ibid, 174-175.
[5] J Van Seters “Joshua’s Campaign of Canaan and Near Eastern Historiography” 2 Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament (1990) 1-12.
[6] James K Hoffmier “The Structure of Joshua 1—11 and the Annals of Thutmose III” in A R Millard, J K Hoffmeier, D W Baker (eds) Faith Tradition and History: Old Testament Historiography and its Ancient Near Eastern context (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994) 165-181.
[7] K Lawson Younger Jr Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990) 200-204.
[8] Ibid 216.
[9] Ibid 258-260.
[10] Ibid 220-225.
[11] Ziony Zevit The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (London and New York: Continuum, 2001) 114.
[12] K Lawson Younger Jr “Judges 1 in its Near Eastern Literary Context” in A R Millard, J K Hoffmeier, D W Baker (eds) Faith Tradition and History: Old Testament Historiography and its Ancient near Eastern context (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994) 207.
[13] Younger, supra n 24, 208-211.
[14] Ibid 217.
[15] Ibid  219, for further  discussion of the relationship between Joshua’s long day and other ANE texts see John Walton “Joshua 10:12-15 and Mesopotamian Celestial Omen Texts” in A R Millard, J K Hoffmeier, D W Baker (eds) Faith Tradition and History: Old Testament Historiography and its Ancient near Eastern context (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994) 181-190.
[16] Richard Hess “West Semitic Texts and the Book of Joshua” Bulletin for Biblical Research 7 (1997) 68.
[17] Younger, supra n 24, 211.
[18] Kitchen On the Reliability of the Old Testament 174.
[19] Younger, supra n 24, 227.
[20] Ibid 228.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid 227.
[23] Ibid 245.
[24] In addition, both Kitchen and Younger note that such hyperbolic language is used in several places within the book of Joshua itself. In Joshua 10:20, for example, it states Joshua and the sons of Israel had “finished destroying” and “completely destroyed” their enemies. Immediately, however, the text, affirms that the “survivors went to fortified cities.” In this context, the language of total destruction is clearly hyperbolic. Similarly, the account of the battle of Ai is clearly hyperbolic. After Joshua’s troops feign a retreat the text states that “all the men of Ai” are pressed to chase them. “Not a man remained in Ai or Bethel who did not go after Israel. They left the city open and went in pursuit of Israel.” Joshua lures the pursuers into a trap “so that they were caught in the middle, with Israelites on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives” Then it immediately goes on to assert “When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai in the fields and in the desert where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword” they went to the city of Ai and killed all the men in it.
[25] Thomas Thompson examines several different ANE conquest accounts of this type and notes they have a hagiographic function. See his “A Testimony of the Good King: Reading the Mesha Stele” in  Lester L Grabbe (Ed) Ahabs Agonistes: The Rise and Fall of the Omri Dynasty (New York: T&T Clark, 2007).
[26] John Goldingay “City and Nation” Old Testament Theology vol. 3 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009) 570. Goldingay goes on to give yet another example from within the Bible itself “While Joshua does speak of Israel’s utterly destroying the Canaanites, even these accounts can give a misleading impression: peoples that have been annihilated have no trouble reappearing later in the story; after Judah puts Jerusalem to the sword, its occupants are still living there ‘to this day’ (Judg. 1:8, 21).”
[27] Compare Numbers 31 with Judges 6 and 7.
[28] Compare 1 Sam 15 with 1 Sam 28:8 and 1 Sam  30.
[29] Compare 2 Chronicles 36:17 with 36:20 and 2 Chronicles 36:18 with 36:19
[30] K Lawson Younger “Joshua” in John H Walton, Victor H Matthews,  Mark W Chavalas (eds) The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (Downers Grove Il: Intervarsity Press) 227.

RELATED POSTS:
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I: Wolterstorff’s Argument for the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Interpretation
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part III: Two Implications of the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Account
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II
Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?

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.

RELATED POSTS:
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II: Ancient Near Eastern Conquest Accounts
God and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part III: Two Implications of the Hagiographic Hyperbolic Account
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part I
Sunday Study: Joshua and the Genocide of the Canaanites Part II
Did God Command Genocide in the Old Testament?

Alvin Plantinga, Matt and Rodney Lake

Fellow kiwi Rodney Lake of Thinking Matters Tauranga, also in Atlanta attending the conferences, took the above photo and wrote on Facebook of it:

Tonight I met and chatted with simply the greatest collection of Christian thinkers the world has to offer – hands down – without a doubt – the best! You couldn’t put together a better bunch in the same room than this. There were others, but the ones I got to talk to included: Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, Mike Licona, JP Moreland, Paul Copan, Craig Hazen, Frank Beckwith, Mary-Jo Sharp and of course Matthew Flannagan. Also earlier in the day shook hands with Gary Habermas and Greg Koukl. A day to remember…

Rodney has been doing a tour around the US over the last few weeks of the various Apologetics ministries and has been meeting up with various biblical scholars and Christian philosophers. You can read about what he has been up to and who he’s been trying to talk into coming out to New Zealand on his blog.

Jim West snapped this one, Matt the kid in the candy shop – surrounded by the worlds best in his field and their books!

Jim has been quite the tourist, he’s been snapping everyone and everything by the looks of his homepage.

I just talked to Matt on Skype – we are so grateful to the kind and generous people who donated us Skype equipment – he said it is quite surreal to be wandering around, sitting in seminars and recognising all these philosophers and theologians whose works he has read and admired all around him. He said the conversations following each session are very stimulating; everyone understands the topics, it is a lot like being at a Philosophy department seminar, only everyone is coming from a Christian perspective – which is something Matt is just not used to but is really appreciating. He said that MandM is clearly more widely read than either of us realised as plenty of people recognised him and complete strangers asked after me, commented on our blog and so on. The internet clearly makes the world a small place! Anyway he is having a blast and is doing great.

DR CHRIS TUCKER’S INTRODUCTION

Published here with permission

Dr. Matthew Flannagan is quickly becoming a respected scholar on issues related to the philosophy of religion, ethics, and theology.  His articles and book chapters cover such weighty topics as, whether the Bible condones genocide, the ethics of holy war, abortion and tonight’s topic, the relationship of God and morality.  The importance of Dr. Flannagan’s work has led to many speaking engagements all over New Zealand and also in the United States.  Two of these speaking engagements were public debates, including one against Dr Bill Cooke, an erstwhile President of the New Zealand Association of Rational Humanists.  Dr Flannagan received his PhD in Theology from the University of Otago.  From the University of Waikato, he received his Master’s in Philosophy with First Class Honours.  You can follow Dr Flannagan’s work at mandm.org.nz, the blog that he co-authors with his wife, Madeleine Flannagan.  When he is not working, he enjoys spending time outdoors with his wife and four children. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Matthew Flannagan

DR MATTHEW FLANNAGAN’S OPENING STATEMENT

Is it defensible to ground right and wrong in the commands of God? In this debate I will defend an affirmative answer to this question. I will defend the position that moral rightness and wrongness consist in agreement and disagreement, respectively, with Gods commands¹- this is what Philosophers call a divine command theory. In defending this thesis I will do two things. First I will argue the standard arguments against a divine command theory fail. Second I will argue that Ray’s attempts to refute this theory fail. God is the source of morality.

1. Standard Arguments Against a Divine Command Theory

Divine command theories are frequently said to suffer a debilitating problem, they make morality arbitrary – anything at all could be deemed ‘right’ as long as God commanded it, even torturing other people for fun. This objection assumes that it is possible that God could command atrocious things like torturing people for fun. This assumption, however, seems very dubious. We need to remember that we are not talking about right or wrong as being based on the commands of just anyone, we are talking about God defined by Ray as “omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.”

So, as the terms are defined, the claim that it is possible for God to command people to torture others for fun is true only if it is possible for a morally perfect person to command such an atrocious thing. But this is unlikely. The very reason critics cite examples such as torturing people for fun is because these actions are paradigms of conduct that no morally good person could ever entertain or endorse.

A predictable rejoinder to this response is that if some action is wrong because God prohibits it then God cannot be said to be good in any meaningful sense. The claim ‘God is good’ turns into no more than the claim that God obeys his own commands, if this is so, can God be said to have any duties at all?

The suggestion that if God has no duties then he cannot be said to be good in any meaningful sense, has a grain of truth to it. If we are going to understand God’s goodness in terms of God having duties that he consistently fulfils then a divine command theory cannot account for God’s goodness. However, why must the phrase ‘God is good’ be understood in terms of God having duties? I do not see why it should?

Many theologians and philosophers have suggested an alternative, God’s goodness should be understood in terms of God having certain character traits. To claim God is good is to claim that he is truthful, benevolent, loving, gracious, merciful, that he is opposed to certain actions such as murder, rape, torturing people for fun and so on. Now, even if God does not have duties, it does not follow that he cannot have character traits such as these. It is true that God is not under any obligation to love others or to tell the truth or what have you, but that does not mean he cannot love others or tell the truth. God does not have to have a duty to do something in order to do it.

So the standard criticisms of a divine command theory fail.

2. Raymond Bradley’s Moral Argument

Ray attempts a different tack. Ray argues the divine command theorist is committed to five inconsistent propositions:

1. What God proposes for our belief–including beliefs about what we ought to do–is what we ought to believe or do.

2. In his holy scripture God proposes for our belief that he has caused, committed, condoned, or laid down commands for us to obey, every one of the four types of crimes of types A, B, C, and D.

3. It is morally wrong to cause, commit, condone, or command any of the crimes of types A, B, C, D.

4. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.

5. A morally perfect being would not do anything that is morally wrong.

In response to this I will make three lines of criticism.

I

The first line of criticism is that even if Ray’s argument is sound it does not show that a divine command theory is false. Ray has argued that the Bible presents an indefensible picture of God. However, the question of biblical infallibility is not the topic of our debate tonight. While many divine command theorists believe in biblical infallibility, some do not. A divine command theorist could, for example, claim that the wrongness of an action is determined by God but we know what is right and wrong from our conscience and not from a written revelation. The Philosopher Philip Quinn suggested a theory like this.² Alternatively he or she could accept some other revelation such as the Talmud or the Koran. So strictly speaking, Ray’s argument does not address the moot of the debate tonight. One could accept everything Ray says about the Bible and still defensibly embrace a divine command theory, the claim that God is the source of morality is untouched.

II

This brings me to my second line of criticism. Ray’s third proposition [3] is formulated as:

3. It is morally wrong to cause, commit, condone, or command any of the crimes of types A, B, C, D.

This claim is ambiguous; there are two ways it could be interpreted. The first is:

[3a] It is morally wrong for human beings to cause, commit, condone or command any of the crimes of types A, B, C, D.

or Ray could mean:

[3b] It is morally wrong for any person (including God) to cause, commit, condone or command any of the crimes of types A, B, C, D.

To be valid Ray’s argument needs to be interpreted in terms of [3b]. Ray argues that God, engages in wrongdoing when he causes, commits, commands and condones A B C and D. There are two problems with this interpretation.

First, Ray’s argument does not justify this conclusion. Ray states “to deny (3) would be to … ally oneself with moral monsters like Ghenghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot.” This is false: Genghis Khan, Hitler and Stalin are human beings to condemn them we only need to accept [3a] not [3b].

Second, Ray’s argument is circular, [3b] assumes that God has duties; however, on my view the wrongness of an action consists in its being forbidden by God. Given that God does not issue commands to himself it follows that he has no duties. To propose [3b] Ray has to assume that my view is unjustified, which is what he is supposed to be proving. He is reasoning in a circle.

III

My third line of criticism concerns Ray’s second proposition,

2. In his holy scripture God proposes for our belief that he has caused, committed, condoned, or laid down commands for us to obey, every one of the four types of crimes of types A, B, C, and D.

Actually none of the passages Ray cites contain commands to us. He cites some of God’s actions and he cites some commands God gave to Israel and to Joshua but one cannot directly infer from these that these are commands issued to us.

We have to keep in mind that the Bible is a collection of Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) texts. It was written centuries ago in three different languages, none of which were English. The cultural methods of written communication back then differ significantly from what we are used to when we pick up the latest ‘new atheist’ book at Whitcoulls. Further, the Bible is made up of various books written in various literary genres. To interpret it correctly one needs to take what it says in context – as a whole – and in accord with the literary conventions governing ancient texts translated from foreign languages. Ray fails to do this,

Instead he uses a selective, out of context, and excessively literalistic interpretation of these passages.

let me cite some examples.

1. The Slaughter of the Canaanites

The first is the slaughter the Canaanites. Ray claims God “orders the slaughter, without compassion, of hundreds of thousands of women, children, and suckling babes.” Ray here alludes to the book of Joshua’s record of the conquest of the Canaanites. Critics, like Ray, are quick to point out that this text states Joshua “totally destroyed all who breathed”, left “no survivors” in “the entire land”, went through the land “exterminating them without mercy” at God’s command.

What they do not note is that the text proceeds after this to state 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 remained heavily armed and deeply entrenched in the very same regions and the very same cities that Joshua was said to have “destroyed all who breathed” and left “no survivors” in. In light of this, it is unlikely that the author intended the language in question to be taken literally.³

This conclusion is confirmed by research into Ancient Near-Eastern history writing. In a comprehensive comparative study of Ancient Near-Eastern historiography. Old Testament scholar, K Lawson Younger concludes that the Old Testament uses the same literary conventions as other Ancient Near-Eastern conquest accounts. He also establishes that within this genre the rhetoric of total conquest, complete annihilation, destruction of the enemy, killing everyone, leaving no survivors, and so on are frequently used as hyperbole⁴: the language functions like a person 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.”⁵ Now, sports fans do not actually want David Tua to decapitate his opponent or the All Blacks to become mass murderers. Understood in a non-literal sense, the phrases probably meant something like, attack them, defeat them, drive them out; not literally kill every man, woman, child, donkey, etc.

2. Capital Punishment.

My second example is Ray’s reference to at least 34 offences for which God prescribes the death penalty. (Actually there are only 15 such offences). Ray contends that these passages constitute literal commands to the courts to execute people. This is dubious. The Torah is is written according to the literary and rhetorical conventions of Ancient Near-Eastern legal writing. J J Finkelstein notes that capital sanctions in such texts,

[W]ere not meant to be complied with literally even when they were first drawn up, [But rather they] serve an admonitory function. If one would be bold enough to restate Hammurabi’s 230 as a direct admonition it might run to this effect: “woe to the contractor who undertakes construction and in his greed cuts corners”.6

One of the leading experts on Ancient Near-Eastern legal texts Raymond Westbrook states they “reflect the scribal compilers’ concern for perfect symmetry and delicious irony rather than the pragmatic experience of the law courts.”⁷ The method used was “to set out principles by the use of often extreme examples.”⁸ In Ancient Near-Eastern legal practice a person who committed a serious crime would be legally considered to have forfeited their life or limb – this, however, did not mean that they were executed or mutilated. Instead they could ransom their life or limb by making a monetary payment decided by the courts “the death sentence is mostly hyperbole,” a literary device designed to under underscore the seriousness of the crime.9

A careful reading of the Torah confirms this. The clearest example occurs in Numbers 35. After laying out clearly and repeatedly that a person who kills in pre-meditation “shall surely be put to death” the text goes on to state “Do not accept a ransom for the life of a murderer, who deserves to die. He must surely be put to death… .” Unless there was an assumed practice of “ransoming” the lives of those under a capital sentence, this comment seems superfluous. Old Testament scholar Joe Sprinkle notes, “The availability of ransom seems to have been so prevalent that when biblical law wants to exclude it, as in the case of intentional murder, it must specifically prohibit it.”10

3. Hell

My third example is Ray’s discussion of hell. Ray cites the book of Revelation’s reference to “the lake of fire” where “they will be tormented with burning sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever”. He maintains this text teaches God will torture people forever merely for not having the right religious beliefs.

This is dubious, Revelation is apocalyptic literature. Apocalyptic literature is highly metaphorical and uses stock symbols drawn from the Old Testament. If one looks at how the symbols Ray refers to are actually used in the Old Testament, they do not support Ray’s conclusion. The imagery of sulphur being poured upon people and smoke rising is regularly used in the Old Testament to symbolise the destruction of various nations.(Deut 29:23; Job 18:15-17; Ps 11:6; Isa 30:33, Isa 34-8-11). Similarly the “lake of fire” is drawn from Daniel, where it symbolises the destruction of various world empires. In Rev 18, a few chapters later, the destruction of a city, named Babylon (probably a reference to Rome or Jerusalem) is symbolised by the city being tormented by fire and onlookers watch the rising smoke. The message is that Babylon has been judged and destroyed, not that it continues to be tortured forever.

The same is true of Ray’s references to the Gospels; the phrase the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” occurs many times in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and in almost every instance signifies hatred or rage and envy at God or the righteous – not the agony of pain and torture.(Job 16:9; Ps 35:16, Psalm 112:10, 36:16, 37:12; Lam. 2:16, Acts 7:54) In one instance, in fact, it states “they will gnash their teeth and waste away.” Similarly, the phrase “unquenchable fire” is used nine times in the Old Testament. There it refers not to a fire that tortures but one that consumes what it devours because it is never put out. (see Isa 1:31, 34:10, 11; Jer 4:4, 7:20, 17:27, 21:12; Ezek 20:47, 48; Amos 5:6).

Ray cites from the King James version of 2 Thessalonians 1:7-8, “the Lord Jesus Christ shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God.” He, however, snips the end off the quote, the full text states,

God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.

In context the reference to fire clearly means destruction and not torture.

Ray’s claim that the Bible teaches that people will be condemned ‘merely for having the wrong religion’ is equally dubious. An in context examination of the passages he cites show that the basis of judgement is a person’s actions not merely their beliefs.

Conclusion

First, even if Ray’s case is sound, at best it only amounts to an attack of the doctrine of biblical infallibility, the denial of which is perfectly compatible with a divine command theory of ethics.

Second, his argument for proposition (3) commits the fallacy of equivocation and assumes the very thing the argument is trying to prove.

Finally, Ray’s argument for (2) consists of citing a series of passages, often selectively, out of context and without regard for literary genre or literary conventions that are found within the texts itself.This might might be a sure-fire way to make the best-seller list at Whitcoulls but it is obviously not the way any serious biblical scholar should read a text.

Divine command theorists are not committed to all of the five inconsistent propositions he refers to and so are not required, on pain of contradiction, to deny that God is the source of morality.

1. Robert M Adams “Moral Arguments for Theism” in Robert Adams The Virtue of Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) 145.
2. Philip Quinn “Divine Command Theory” in Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory ed Hugh La Follette (Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing House, 2000) 67.
3. See Nicholas Wolterstorff’s “Reading Joshua” in Divine Evil ? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham eds Micheal Rea, Michael Murray and Michael Bergmann (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) forthcoming.
4. K Lawson Younger Jr Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990).
5. This example is adapted from Alvin Plantinga “Reply to Fales” and Nicholas Wolterstorff “Reading Joshua” in Divine Evil ? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham eds Micheal Rea, Michael Murray and Michael Bergmann (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010) forthcoming.
6. J. J. Finkelstein The Ox that Gored (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1981) 35.
7. Raymond Westbrook, “The Character of Ancient Near Eastern Law,” in A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, Vol. 1, ed. Raymond Westbrook (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003) 74.
8. Ibid.
9. Walter Kaiser, “Gods Promise Plan and his Gracious Law,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 35:3 (1992) 293. Joe M Sprinkle “The Interpretation of Exodus 21:22-25 (Lex Talonis) and Abortion,” Westminster Theological Journal 55 (1993) 238.
10. Joe M Sprinkle “The Interpretation of Exodus 21:22-25 (Lex Talonis) and Abortion,” Westminster Theological Journal 55 (1993) 238.

Please note that this series is not a transcript of the debate. Each post in this series is effectively a very close approximation of what was said on the night and has been put together from the papers and notes each speaker prepared and spoke from plus any additions each recalled making.

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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

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