Category: Biblical theology

The death of Jesus and the weakness of God [Peace and the Bible #14]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 4 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—March 15, 2024

Christianity has focused a great deal of its theology on the death of Jesus and its purported cosmic significance. This emphasis has not had an altogether positive result. To mention just one of the problematic outcomes, viewing Jesus’s death as the necessary sacrifice that somehow enables God to offer salvation to sinful human beings has placed an act of terrible violence at the heart of Christian faith—thereby greatly weakening the peaceable impact of Jesus’s life and teaching. When some sort of punitive “justice” that needs to be “satisfied” by Jesus’s violent death is seen to be part of the essence of God’s character, it greatly increases the likelihood that Christians will also see themselves and their institutions as agents of such “justice”—that is, as agents of divinely approved violence. The long legacy in the “Christian” West of the state as the wielder of such violence in warfare and in criminal justice bears witness to the dark legacy of theological interpretations of Jesus’s death.

I suspect that part of the appeal for seeing Jesus’s death as salvific for Christian theology has been a large emotional investment in the notion of God being victorious and in control. If Jesus is God Incarnate and the Savior, how can it make sense that he would die such an ignominious death? How can it make sense that God would face such a defeat? How can it be that God’s control could be breached by such a horrendous and blasphemous act as executing the Christ? One way to understand traditional Christian atonement theology that makes Jesus’s death into such an efficacious act is to recognize it as a way to turn defeat into victory, to turn weakness into overwhelming power. But what if such a move actually has led to many problematic consequences—turning a peaceable story on its head and making it into a story that has underwritten a great deal of violence? And what if such a move actually misconstrues the story of Jesus’s death itself—and in doing so misses the main points of that story that would indeed have major peacemaking consequences? Perhaps it is no surprise that the truly peaceable and transformative message we find in Jesus’s life and teaching has been so seldom evident in the long history of Christianity these past 2,000 years.

Continue reading “The death of Jesus and the weakness of God [Peace and the Bible #14]” →

What did Jesus mean by the “Kingdom of God”? [Peace and the Bible #13]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 1 Comment

Ted Grimsrud—February 5, 2024

I believe that one important indicator that Jesus had a “political” agenda (as I have discussed in my previous two blog posts, “Peaceable politics and the story of Jesus” and “Did Jesus have a political philosophy?”) is simply his prominent use of the term “kingdom of God” (or its equivalent in Matthew’s gospel, “kingdom of heaven”). This seems actually to be a complicated metaphor—it’s not obvious exactly what Jesus meant. But that “kingdom” has political connotations cannot be questioned. As a simple definition of “kingdom,” we may say it is a stable community of people that is led by a queen- or king-like ruler. In whatever sense Jesus had in mind of “community” and “ruler,” he did have in mind some sort of political entity.

I have long been ambivalent about our using the “kingdom of God” metaphor today. It seems hopelessly archaic, not to mention patriarchal. It breathes of a world of domination and hierarchies. Yet, Jesus—as I understand him—opposes patriarchy, domination and hierarchies. Is there a better way to understand his metaphor, then? I think so, though I am still not fully comfortable making the term a regular part of the faith language. But rather than simply dismissing the metaphor, I think we would be well served to try to figure out what Jesus himself meant by it. What was he trying to convey? May we affirm his intent even if we seek to find more contemporary language to articulate it? To work at answering these questions, let’s look at the biblical history of the notion of the “kingdom of God.”

The failed territorial kingdom of the Old Testament

The initial picture of the kingdom of God in the Old Testament is of Abraham’s descendants, a community of freed slaves who God led out of Egypt. After the exodus from slavery, God provides the people with a set of laws (Torah) that calls for a social order that in many ways would be an alternative type of politics in contrast to the domination-style politics of the Egyptian empire. The liberation was led by Moses, whose role was to be a kind of extemporaneous prophet, not a permanent king-like leader and not a military leader sitting atop a permanent war-making machine. God is presented as the true king of the people; that is what makes the community an expression of the “kingdom of God.”

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Did Jesus have a political philosophy? (Peace and the Bible #12)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 2 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—February 2, 2024

I am finally returning from an extended break to continue my “Peace and the Bible” blog series. My most recent post, December 18’s “Peaceable politics and the story of Jesus” was the first that dealt with the New Testament after a number of Old Testament posts. I have several more planned on Jesus and then will consider some issues regarding both Paul’s writings and the book of Revelation. Before returning to my planned outline, though, I want to linger in this post on some issues that came up with my last one.

Politics, philosophy, and pacifism

I started by noting that the “Peace and the Bible” theme helps us focus on just how political the concerns of the Bible are. For most Christians, I imagine that point seems clearer in relation to the Old Testament than the New Testament. I suggested, though, that the New Testament actually “presents a kind of political philosophy” that has at its core “a commitment to pacifism, a commitment based on the centrality of Jesus Christ to the Big Story the Bible tells.” In thinking about this assertion, I decided I should reflect a bit more on what I am trying to say.

I pointed out that “Christians have tended to miss the social implications of the New Testament part of the story because of assumptions about both politics and Jesus.” One way to further analyze the issues is to suggest, in very much a general sense, that we might recognize two types of thinking about how to understand the cluster of issues related to (1) “political philosophy,” (2) “pacifism,” (3) “biblical faith,” and (4) “Jesus-oriented discipleship.” One way is to perceive that those items #1 and #2 belong to a certain kind of thinking and that #3 and #4 belong to a very different kind of thinking. The other way would be to argue for understandings of those terms that recognize that they all may (and should!) be understood together in a way that leads to redefining them all.

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Peaceable politics and the story of Jesus (Peace and the Bible #11)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 6 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—December 18, 2023

In my blog series on “Peace and the Bible,” I am showing just how political the concerns of the Bible are. Most people I know find it easier to see that in the Old Testament than the New. In the second half the series, I will argue that the New Testament presents a kind of political philosophy. This philosophy has at its core a commitment to pacifism, a commitment based on the centrality of Jesus Christ to the Big Story the Bible tells. Christians have tended to miss the social implications of the New Testament part of the story because of assumptions about both politics and Jesus.

Politics have been seen as directly tied to running governments and the necessary use of violence. Jesus indeed did not talk about running governments or using violence. However, if we define politics more broadly as the way human beings order their lives together in social groups, perhaps Jesus and the rest of the New Testament were engaging in political behavior. Once we think of politics in this wider sense, we will be more open to recognizing that Jesus indeed was interested in politics—and, actually, very little else. When Jesus spoke of the “Kingdom of God,” perhaps what he had in mind was not some other-worldly existence but a reimagining of politics in this life—in line with the political dynamics in his Bible (what we call the Old Testament). The notion that Jesus spoke only of the personal sphere actually has little support in the texts.

If Jesus did indeed care about politics, then that Christians understand him to be the model human being and the definitive revelation of God would seem to require them to take seriously Jesus’s political witness. If we do take the story of Jesus seriously as an account of a peaceable way of ordering our social lives, our other question will be how relevant that account should be for our present-day political convictions and practices.

Who was Jesus?

At the very beginning of the story of Jesus in Luke’s gospel—the song of Mary in 1:46-55 upon her learning of the child she will bear—we learn that this child will address social reality. He will challenge the power elite of his world and lift up those at the bottom of the social ladder. This child, we are told, will bring succor to those who desire the “consolation of Israel.” Those who seek freedom from the cultural domination of one great empire after another that had been imposed upon Jesus’s people for six centuries will find comfort. From the beginning, the story presents this child in social and political terms.

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Guardians of God’s shalom: The Old Testament prophets (Peace and the Bible #10)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 1 Comment

Ted Grimsrud—December 15, 2023

The Old Testament tells us that God provides salvation for God’s people as a gift—given out of God’s healing love, unearned, even unmerited by the people. The story presents two institutions linked with salvation, Torah and sacrifice. Both initially served as responses to the gift. First, the people received God’s acts of deliverance, then came gratitude. Such gratitude led to responses of obedience to God’s will for social life. These found expression in Torah and in ritualized expressions of commitment to God via sacrifice.

As the Hebrews’ political structures expanded and became centralized under the office of the king, their religious structures also became centralized around the Temple. With this, the original purposes of the Law and sacrifices were mostly forgotten. Torah originated as the framework for the Hebrews to concretize their liberation. Torah arranges for the economic viability of each household, resisting social stratification. Torah’s inheritance legislation, Sabbath year laws, and the ideal of the Year of Jubilee all pushed in the direction of widespread participation in economic wellbeing. The Law also placed special emphasis on the community tending to the welfare of vulnerable people—widows, orphans, and aliens (“for you too were aliens in Egypt before God delivered you,” Leviticus 19).

The idea of what we could call “God’s preferential option for the poor” in many ways defines what ancient Israel said about God. It arose as a core part of the understanding from the very beginning. The sacrificial practices, above all else, were intended to be linked with the faithful responses of the people, in gratitude, to God’s liberating work.

Problems with law and sacrifices

Torah meant neither the Law nor the sacrifices to be means to salvation but rather responses to the saving works of God. Torah meant for the Law and sacrifices to enhance justice in the community. Once they were established, though, the danger inevitably arose that either or both would be separated from their grounding in God’s merciful liberating works. As memory of the intent of the Law faded, the story tells of the community’s tendency to focus on external expressions, easily enforced and susceptible to becoming tools of people in power. These tendencies led to legalism and, eventually, in the prophets’ views, to removing the Law from its living heart of liberation from slavery and concern for the wellbeing of vulnerable people.

Continue reading “Guardians of God’s shalom: The Old Testament prophets (Peace and the Bible #10)” →

May the Joshua story be read peaceably? [Peace and the Bible #9]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 2 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—December 11, 2023

One of the more challenging passages in the Bible is the story told in the book of Joshua. God’s chosen people enter the “promised land,” meet with opposition from the nations living there, and proceed—with God’s direction and often miraculous support—to kill or drive out the previous inhabitants. The book ends with a celebration that now the Hebrew people are in the Land, poised to live happily ever after.

Probably the most difficult aspect of the story to stomach is the explicit command that comes several times from God to the Hebrews to kill every man, woman, and child as part of the conquest. This element of the story is horrifying, even more so in light of the afterlife of the story where it has been used in later times to justify what are said to be parallel conquests—such as the conquest of Native Americans and native southern Africans. I wonder as a Christian pacifist what to do with this story. But, really, even for Christians who are not pacifists, how could any moral person want to confess belief in such a genocidal God—or accept as scripture a book that includes such a story?

Exhortation not history

I want to see if we can find meaning in the story that will help us put it in perspective and protect us from uses that find in the story support for our violence. More than defending Joshua per se, I want to defend the larger biblical story of which it is a part—an essential story for faith-based peacemakers. So, the first step for me is to recognize the type of literature, in a general sense, that Joshua is. I will call it “exhortation,” not “history.” It was an account likely written many years later than the events that inspired it may have happened. It was shaped in order to offer exhortation to its readers and hearers to seek faithfully to embody the teaching of Torah. I do not think it was meant to tell the people precisely what happened in the Joshua years.

I would characterize the Joshua story, then, as a kind of parable, a story (mostly if not totally fictional) that makes a point. To see the Joshua story as kind of a parable does not take away the troubling elements of the story—however, I think such a view changes what is at stake for we who believe in the Bible. What is at stake for us, most of all, is to try to discern the lesson the story is meant to make—not to feel bound to believe that the details are factual. Thus, for one thing, believing the Joshua story conveys important truths does not require us to accept its portrayal of God (or of the vicious character of the “conquest” of the promised land) as normative for us.

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The key to a peaceable reading of the Bible: The single-story approach [Peace and the Bible #8]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 1 Comment

Ted Grimsrud—December 7, 2023

I have what may seem like a counter-intuitive impression about how Christians tend to read the Bible. They make Jesus Christ too central to how they read scripture and as a consequence make the Bible less peaceable. That is, by making Jesus Christ too central in the way that they do, many Christians actually misinterpret his message. In a nutshell, I believe that the Bible as a whole is a book of peace. When it is not read as a somewhat coherent whole, even the seemingly peaceable parts may actually become less peaceable.

The typical Christian way of reading the Bible assumes a major turning point in the message that comes with Jesus’s entry into the story, a turning point that in practice turns the Bible into two stories. I believe that we are better off to think more in terms of a single story, what I call the “Big Story,” that encompasses both the Old Testament and the New Testament. This single-story approach allows us better to appreciate the peaceable elements of the Old Testament and the political elements of the New Testament. With the single-story approach, we do still have an important turning point. It comes sooner, though, and may be the key to a thoroughly peaceable reading of the whole. Let me explain.

Problems with the typical Christian reading

Christian approaches to the Bible tend to assume that something qualitatively new happens with Jesus. This new thing does not simply intensify what was already present in the Old Testament but is something categorically unprecedented. This newness, it is said, may be seen is in terms of salvation. Whatever was practiced before Jesus was not adequate to make salvation fully available. The main “new thing” is that Jesus’s death provides the definitive atoning sacrifice that was necessary for God to be able to offer salvation.

To read the Bible in light of this atonement theology results is what we could call a “two-story” understanding of the Bible. The Old Testament provides the first story, one that ultimately ends in failure because the means for salvation were not fully available. The second story, told in the New Testament, does depend upon the first story for establishing the problem for which Jesus’s sacrificial death provides the solution—hence, a two-story Bible. But the second story is the necessary and authoritative one.

Continue reading “The key to a peaceable reading of the Bible: The single-story approach [Peace and the Bible #8]” →

The meaning of “no other gods before me” [Peace and the Bible #7]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 3 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—December 4, 2023

The Christian Bible gives us quite a bit of material about what are human problems. It presents idolatry as perhaps the most fundamental human problem, the root of many other problems. But what is idolatry? I’m not sure the Bible is totally clear about that. But this is what I think: Idolatry is giving ultimate loyalty to things other than God. When things become idols, even if they are generally good things, they tend to become too important, too demanding, and too likely to push people to hurt other people and to hurt nature.

That leads to another question, though, what does it mean to be called to give loyalty to God above everything else? Is this call about believing in a certain doctrine? Belonging to a certain religion? Having some kind of mystical connection? Or is it something else? I will opt for the “something else” in this blog post by reflecting on one of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). What might that command mean for us today?

What kind of God?

The first issue might be to reflect on what we have in mind when we say “God” as the object of our trust. Typically, Christians view God as a transcendent “person,” a being who exists outside of time and outside of our physical space. This God is understood to be the one and only God. However, these notions of God are not all that apparent in the Bible. They owe more to post-biblical creeds, confessions, and other doctrines.

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A resolution to the problem of violence in the Old Testament? [Peace and the Bible #4]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 3 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—November 24, 2023

The Old Testament has a poor reputation among many Christians (and others) for telling stories of terrible violence that is either initiated directly by God or clearly favored by God. Certainly, this can be a problem for Christian pacifists. But it actually should be a problem for anyone who gives the OT authority as divinely revealed scripture. I had a student once who thought he was in favor of OT violence and sought to gather evidence for an argument against pacifism. As he studied the OT, though, he realized that it was a lot more violent than he had anticipated; before long he had given up on Christianity altogether. Thus, I would say that the “problem” requires attention, even for those who do not find it a deal-breaker for faith.

Not long after I became a pacifist in 1976, I had a short time of struggle as I confronted the problem of violence in the Old Testament. I was assured by some people I respected that the problem could be overcome. So, I kind of put it on the back burner and moved ahead with developing my peace theology, emphasizing, of course, the message of Jesus. Since that time, I have not been troubled by the OT problem all that much but have focused more on finding a peace message on those writings. However, I have remained interested in how to think about divinely initiated violence. Here are some of my current thoughts.

An alternative political economy

The first argument for a certain kind of pacifist reading of the Old Testament that I encountered was a chapter in John Howard Yoder’s book The Original Revolution, the first book on Christian pacifism I ever read. Yoder drew heavily from his colleague at the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries, Old Testament professor Millard Lind. A bit later, I used the library at the University of Oregon to track down Lind’s PhD dissertation on war and the Old Testament that Yoder cited. Lind turned that work into a book, Yahweh is a Warrior: The Theology of Warfare in the Old Testament. As it happened, this book was published late in 1980 when I was a student at AMBS. In the spring of 1981, Millard taught a class on the book, and I was fortunate enough to be able to take it.

In my memory now, the class was quite helpful, though it was fairly narrowly focused. The main emphasis was on how to understand the stories in the books of Exodus and Joshua of God’s violent intervention in liberating the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt and driving the Canaanites out of the promised land. Millard’s main point, as I remember, was that the stories tell us that God fought instead of the Hebrews. It was a unique moment in the people’s history that was not repeated. The key motif was that the people needed to depend on God for their security, not on their own military might. After they settled in the promised land and established a territorial kingdom, their political dynamics changed. They became “like the nations,” including establishing a standing army. Crucially, the kingdom became quite corrupt, practicing injustice against the vulnerable in their community and also beginning to practice idolatry. Because of these injustices, God turned against the Hebrew kingdom and allowed it to be destroyed by the area’s great empires, Assyria and Babylon.

Continue reading “A resolution to the problem of violence in the Old Testament? [Peace and the Bible #4]” →

Was Moses a terrorist? [Peace and the Bible #3]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 1 Comment

Ted Grimsrud—November 22, 2023

The story told in the book of Exodus of how God liberated the enslaved Hebrew people from the Egyptian empire is exciting, complicated, inspiring, troubling, and extremely important for both Jewish and Christian traditions. Liberation theologians especially like it and pacifists tend to have strongly mixed feelings about it. I know I share both of those orientations.

Was the liberation of the Hebrews due to terrorism?

I was struck recently with how interesting the exodus story is when I reflect on it in the context of considering what is in our day called “terrorism.” Let’s start with a simple (and admittedly imperfect) definition of terrorism: The use of violence to intimidate, frighten, and coerce non-combatants for political ends. I think it is important to recognize that terrorism is a tactic of both formal state-controlled militaries and non-state insurgents, even if in general usage the focus usually is on the latter type of actions.

In what follows I will especially have in mind “terrorism” in relation to non-state actors, especially those who do not have the firepower to directly take on the militaries of states and empires. I have some tentative thoughts that have arisen when I think of the story of the exodus in light of contemporary expressions of terrorism. It does seem as if there may be some parallels between the famous story of the ancient Hebrews and what’s been going in recent history. The Hebrews were an oppressed and essentially powerless group of people in the midst of an exploitive empire. They had little hope of directly bringing major changes. As it turns out, though, they did still try—and their tactics did include a great deal of violence that brought bloodshed and suffering onto the people of Egypt.

From the point of view of the storyteller, it seems clear that the violent actions of the Hebrews and their God were not the beginning of the violence in the story. Rather, the violence was already profound and widespread—the systemic violence of slavery and the more immediate violence of the actions of Pharaoh’s minions to grind the Hebrews into dust. As the Hebrews cried out for justice, the violence of the system bore down on them all the harder. Finally, though, the acts of resistance began to have an effect—which only accelerated the violence from the state.

Continue reading “Was Moses a terrorist? [Peace and the Bible #3]” →