Does the Bible Justify Violence?

Posted Thursday, December 06, 2007 by Charlie Trimm
Categories: Military Issues
This short book is a modified version of the SBL Presidential address in 2002 and presents some interesting thoughts on violence and the OT. While it cannot go into much detail (only thirty pages long), he does a good job surveying the evidence, showing briefly how other views are deficient and then presenting his own view.

His view is that we need to sideline the violent parts of the OT. Not all of the Bible is an ethical model for us today, and so we should follow the texts on love for neighbor rather than warfare. Of course, it is somewhat difficult to follow this line of thinking if one believes in inspiration. But even if we ignore inspiration, there are still problems. The main issue is why we should highlight the love commands and ignore the war commands. Why not the other way around? The source of authority is no longer the text, but what we think should be emphasized.

Here is his final conclusion:

"The Bible has contributed to violence in the world precisely because it has been taken to confer a degree of certitude that transcends human discussion and argumentation. Perhaps the most constructive thing a biblical critic can do toward lessening the contribution of the Bible to violence in the world is to show that such certitude is an illusion." (32-33)

Series: Book Reviews
The Gods of the Nations, by Daniel Block
Hebrew Poetry and Robert Alter
Creation According to Sailhamer
The Rise of Evangelicalism	Random book reviews from Charlie
Old Testament Theology Devotionals
The Dominance of Evangelicalism: The Age of Spurgeon and Moody
Rethinking Missions with Steve Saint
Neither Poverty nor Riches
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind II
Going Places with God
A God Entranced Vision of All Things
The Meaning of Jesus: Borg versus Wright
Military History and Christianity: Do they mix?
Wright and Borg, Part 3
The Mosaic of Christian Belief
Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology
The Problem of War in the Old Testament
God is a Warrior
Holy War in Ancient Israel, by Gerhard von Rad
Yahweh is a Warrior
Is There A Meaning in This Text
Faithful Intepretation: Reading the Bible in a Postmodern World
Engaging Scripture
Does the Bible Justify Violence?
Reading Scripture with the Church
A History of Christian Thought, Volume 1
The Darker Side of Samuel, Saul and David
War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence
Golden Compass Trilogy
Israelite Religions, Richard Hess
The Mission of God
Biblical Interpretation: Then and Now
Life in Biblical Israel
Biblical Theology
Reading and Preaching the Bible in the Worship of the Church 3
Theological Introduction to the Psalms
The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature