Category: Old Testament

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)” →

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.

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

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]” →

How should we think about the violence in the Old Testament? [Questioning Faith #19]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 3 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—April 7, 2023

I have heard it said that the stories in the Old Testament about God’s involvement in war, punishment, and various other forms of violence have been responsible for more Christians losing their faith than any other single thing. I have no idea whether that is actually true, but I do know from my career as a pastor and teacher that Old Testament violence is a problem for lots and lots of people. Because the Old Testament is so big and diverse and the issues so complex, it is impossible to give a quick, clear, and concise answer to the questions. But because they are so often present and distressing, I think it is important to try to have some kind response in mind. What follows is mine—which is admittedly not likely to change anybody’s mind.

Starting with God’s love

My starting point for all theological questions is my core theological conviction: God is love. It follows from that, for me, that I would affirm that God is nonviolent, as I believe that violence and love are mutually exclusive. And, I happen to believe that the Bible supports these convictions. So, when I turn to the Bible, I am seeking to understand what the Bible’s teachings are that give us the best images of God. What in the Bible leads us to confess God’s love and, thus, nonviolence? And what should we think about the parts of the Bible traditionally cited as the bases for denying that God is nonviolent?

Let me first, though, say just a bit about what saying “God is nonviolent” means for me. In a nutshell, to make such an affirmation is to confess that the Bible teaches that God created what is out of love and for the sake of love. It also teaches that God participates in the world most directly in how God brings healing in the face of brokenness, binding wounds, reconciling alienated relationships, and empowering creativity and compassion.

Also, I believe that the Bible’s definitive portrayal of God is found in the story of Jesus. That is, God is most clearly and reliably known to humanity in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. My affirmation of God’s nonviolence finds its strongest grounding in my affirmation of Jesus’s nonviolence. Just as it is unthinkable to me that Jesus would punish, hate, exploit, or violently coerce, so is it unthinkable that God would.

Continue reading “How should we think about the violence in the Old Testament? [Questioning Faith #19]” →

Abraham’s gospel: A peaceable reading of Romans (part 5; 4:1-25) [Peaceable Romans #12]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 1 Comment

Ted Grimsrud—April 4, 2022

One of the most beautiful road trips my wife Kathleen and I have ever taken had us driving through the mountains of western North Carolina. We were on the Blue Ridge Parkway. We spent the night in the village of Little Switzerland and greatly anticipated the next morning when we would drive by Mt. Mitchell, the highest spot east of the Rockies, and then see points west.

But when we got up, it was totally foggy. As thick a fog as we’ve ever seen. The forest certainly has its own eerie beauty when you can barely see the white lines on the highway. Still, we were uneasy when we drove twenty miles or so and never saw another car. But then came the moment. We turned a corner and without any warning the fog was gone. We had the most incredible vista, in the bright sunlight, snowy mountains, valleys, forests. It was amazing. Then, we were back in the fog for several more miles. It was just those few moments, but the picture is still vivid in my memory.

The whole Bible as a peace book

This experience comes to mind as I think about Romans four. A lot of Christians, maybe especially those attracted to peace theology, are suspicious of the Old Testament. And suspicious of the Apostle Paul. And, deeply suspicious of the book of Revelation. There is the great bright light of Jesus, his picture of a God of love and mercy—and much of the rest of the Bible is kind of foggy, wars and rumors of war, legalistic religion, abstract doctrine, with the finale of Revelation’s unspeakable bloody judgment.

This is the analogy: The Bible can seem like that foggy drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. There is but one spot of incredible beauty. Such a spot may redeem the whole thing—but the rest isn’t of much value. However, I want to say: No! The Bible is actually more like our return trip driving back home. Then the Parkway was clear and sunny all the way and we had one beautiful scene after another. Likewise, the whole Bible has great beauty.

Romans four is a text that helps us to see the Bible in this way. I don’t want to deny that the Bible has a few spots that are irreparably foggy scattered around. Basically, though, I believe that the overall message is about mercy all the way down from the very start. The Bible tells an empowering story throughout. We may embrace its message of peace, restorative justice, compassion, and healing. The key figure in Romans four is Abraham, the great patriarch, considered to be the spiritual ancestor for Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

Continue reading “Abraham’s gospel: A peaceable reading of Romans (part 5; 4:1-25) [Peaceable Romans #12]” →

The anarchistic appeal of the Bible: A needed story for human wellbeing [Theological memoir #11]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 5 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—February 16, 2021

I would say that I got politicized in the mid-1970s, about the time I finished college. I grew up paying attention to the news. My dad was a high school social studies teacher, so keeping up on current affairs was part of his job—and that spilled over to me, too. However, when I started college in 1972, I was pretty apolitical. My Christian conversion when I was 17 had actually influenced me to pay less attention to politics.

Radical Christianity and politics

Still, these were turbulent times. I remember that terrible spring and summer of 1968 when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy both were assassinated, and so much else was deeply chaotic. I registered for the draft when I was 18 in 1972 and thought it likely that I would have to go to Vietnam. I’m sure I was paying more attention than I remember, and within a few years I was highly engaged. The key factor for me, it turned out, was my exposure to the “radical evangelical Christians” affiliated with several magazines—The Other Side on the East Coast, Post American in the Midwest (then Sojourners when the community moved to DC), and Radix out West. Just as fundamentalist Christianity depoliticized me in the early 1970s, radical evangelical Christianity had the opposite effect a few years later.

I would read each of those magazines as soon as possible when it arrived. After voting for Richard Nixon in 1972, I grudgingly voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976—grudging because I thought he was too conservative, especially too pro-military, but preferable to Gerald Ford. Carter proved my fears well-founded, and by 1980 I was ready to go third party. One of Carter’s acts that got my wife Kathleen and me on the streets was his reinitiating registration for the draft. We joined the protests and met another young couple who introduced us to a political philosophy of which we had been ignorant.

Karl and Linda were young radicals who had recently moved to Eugene, Oregon, where we lived at the time. They moved specifically to join with an emerging community of anarchists. We had numerous lengthy conversations with them about anarchism, Christian pacifism, nonviolent resistance, violent resistance, and other related issues. Karl and, especially, Linda were smart, compassionate, deeply committed to social justice, and thoroughly against war.

We discovered the appeal of anarchism. For Kathleen and me, the path toward anarchism had mostly to do with war. Centralized, territorial nation-states have become a curse. The 20th century was the century of mass war and was showing littles signs of changing. In 1980, a rising tide of opposition to nuclear weapons was heightening awareness of the link between centralized government, large corporations, and the likelihood of the destruction of the earth.

Kathleen and I weren’t ready to go full anarchist, largely because of our commitment to working in the church. When the anti-draft movement petered out, we lost touch with Karl and Linda and our interest in anarchism moved to the back burner. We certainly didn’t get any encouragement to pursue it from the Mennonites we were by then hanging out with.

Continue reading “The anarchistic appeal of the Bible: A needed story for human wellbeing [Theological memoir #11]” →

Is the Old Testament actually “dying”? [Looking West #6]

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 5 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—March 15, 2019

I was in college, back in the early 1970s, when a new translation of the Bible—The New International Version—was first published. The NIV has gone on to be quite popular and is widely used, especially in evangelical settings. The New Testament by itself was first published. I don’t remember how I even knew about this new translation, but I bought a copy as soon as I learned about it.

There were a couple of things about this new Bible that were noteworthy. First of all was how readable it was. After I had my conversion experience when I was 17, I was nurtured in a congregation that insisted using on the King James translation. I found the KJV difficult to read. Perhaps I justified defecting to this new translation by telling myself that I had been unfaithful in my Bible reading and getting an easier to read version would help me better carry out that core obligation.

The second noteworthy element was that this NIV New Testament looked like a regular hardback book. That is, the paper was not super thin like most Bibles. The print wasn’t extra small. The text came in paragraphs, not individual verses. It did not have two columns on a page, but only one. The cover wasn’t leather but was like regular hardback books.

Not long after I got my NIV, I visited my home church. My friend Richard was shocked when he saw it. “It’s just like any other book!” he cried. He wasn’t a judgmental guy, but he did seem pretty disapproving at first. As we talked a bit, he kind of relented and granted that if it helped me read my Bible more, that was a good thing. Continue reading “Is the Old Testament actually “dying”? [Looking West #6]” →

The Centrality of God’s Love: A Response to Greg Boyd’s Cross Vision (III—An Alternative)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 12 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—November 8, 2018

Greg Boyd’s book on reading the Bible nonviolently, Cross Vision (CV), sets before us a challenge. Is it possible to accept the Bible’s truthfulness while also affirming a consistently pacifist worldview? I conclude, after reading both CV and its more scholarly companion, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, that indeed the best, most respectful, reading of the Bible does support a pacifist commitment. However, I think the case for this might be made more persuasively following a somewhat different approach than Boyd’s. In this post I will sketch an alternative approach to Boyd’s for a biblical theology that also places God’s nonviolent love at the center.

Starting with God’s nonviolence

Like Boyd, I begin with God’s nonviolence (see my blog post, “Why we should think of God as pacifist”). I believe that the fundamental reality in our world is love. And God is love. So my interest in writing this piece is not to try to persuade people who might think otherwise that God is nonviolent. Rather, I want to explain why I think the Bible supports that conviction. What in the Bible leads to confessing God’s nonviolence? And what should we think about the parts of the Bible traditionally cited as the bases for denying that God is nonviolent?

Let me first, though, say just a bit about what saying “God is nonviolent” means for me. In a nutshell, to make such an affirmation is to confess that the Bible teaches that God created what is out love and for the sake of love. It also teaches that God participates in the world most directly in how God brings healing in the face of brokenness, binding wounds, reconciling alienated relationships, and empowering creativity and compassion.

And also like Boyd, I believe that the Bible’s definitive portrayal of God is found in the story of Jesus. That is, God is most clearly and reliably known to humanity in the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus. My affirmation of God’s nonviolence finds its strongest grounding in my affirmation of Jesus’s nonviolence. Just as it is unthinkable to me that Jesus would punish, hate, exploit, or violently coerce, so is it unthinkable that God would. Continue reading “The Centrality of God’s Love: A Response to Greg Boyd’s Cross Vision (III—An Alternative)” →

The centrality of God’s love: A response to Greg Boyd’s Cross Vision (Part 2: An assessment)

~ Ted Grimsrud ~ 10 Comments

Ted Grimsrud—November 6, 2018

 Greg Boyd’s book, Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence (Fortress Press, 2017), deserves praise simply for being a book of serious theological scholarship with an original and creative argument about a crucially important issue that is written for a wide audience. I don’t find Boyd’s effort totally successful, but even as I raise some sharp criticisms I want to emphasize how grateful I am for Boyd’s book. This post is the second of three. The first summarizes Boyd’s argument and the third sketches an alternative view on the issues Boyd addresses.

For many years, I have been deeply troubled about the role Christianity plays in the acceptance of state-sponsored violence in the United States—to the point where self-professing Christians are quite a bit more likely to support wars and capital punishment than those who make no such profession. I’ve concluded that a key problem that contributes to this undermining of the message of Jesus Christ is theological—convictions Christians have that actually make acceptance of violence more likely.

Boyd may not fully share my critique, but he certainly is aware of the problem. And he is willing to write some gutsy and accessible books that take the problem on head on. Cross Vision (CV) is a much shorter and less academically rigorous adaptation of his two-volume work, Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross (Fortress Press, 2017). I recommend starting with the shorter book, which does a nice job summarizing Boyd’s argument—but the longer book is also pretty accessible and contains a wealth of analysis that those who are attracted to Boyd’s argument will want to explore (I have written a long response to Crucifixion of the Warrior God). 

What Boyd gets right

The main contribution CV makes is actually an assumption Boyd starts with more than a proposition he demonstrates. He asserts that Jesus Christ is the central truth for Christianity, that Jesus shows us the character of God more definitively than anything else, and that because Jesus was (and is) resolutely nonviolent we should recognize that God also is nonviolent—and always has been. Making such an affirmation about God a starting point means that Boyd does not equivocate when he comes face to face with difficult biblical materials. He focuses on how those materials might be understood in relation to the core convictions about God as nonviolent. This clarity is bracing and empowering. What the world needs now, I believe, are people who are committed to embodying healing love, not people who struggle over whether or not to kill others or whether or not to support the killing of others. It’s that simple, and Boyd gives us an important resource for following such a path. Continue reading “The centrality of God’s love: A response to Greg Boyd’s Cross Vision (Part 2: An assessment)” →