Jesus-Looking God Conference, Finding Jesus in the Genocide

Jesus-Looking God Conference, Finding Jesus in the Genocide
Sat. Sep. 15/18, 10 am Session
By: Greg Boyd

Review
III. Saturday AM: Finding Jesus in the Genocide

1. The Revelation of God in Jesus culminates and supersedes all previous revelations.

2. The cross is the thematic center of everything Jesus was about, from the Incarnation to the

3. Jesus’ cross-centered ministry reveals that God’s essence is non-violent, self sacrificial, enemy-embracing

4. All Scripture is “God-breathed” for the ultimate purpose of bearing witness to Jesus cross-centered

Cruciform Hermeneutic

We must read the Old Testament knowing that the true, non-violent, self-sacrificial,enemy-embracing nature of the God is fully revealed in the crucified Christ and that all Scripture is “God-breathed” for the ultimate purpose of pointing us to this revelation.

1. What About the Violent Depictions of God in OT?

Bible has <1,000 depictions of God commanding or engaging inviolence
Worst is Conquest narrative.

1. The Command (given and/or carried out 37 times)

“In the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anythingthatCompletelydestroy1herem)them-theHittites,Amorites,Canaanites,Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites-as the Lord your God has commanded you….do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees people, that youshould besiege them?” (Deut 20: 16-7,19)
“When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations-the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites andJebusites, sevennationslargerandstrongerthanyou-andwhentheLordyourGodhasdeliveredthemoverto youandyouhavedefeatedthem,thenyoumustdestroythemtotally.Makenotreatywiththem,and show them no mercy” (Deut7:1-3).
herem= as act ofworship

2. Enjoying WarBooty

* The Israelites spare Midianite women, young boys and children (v. 9). Moses is enraged and commands the Israelites to slaughter the boys and women, but tells the troops to “save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man” (Numb31:17-18).

* After conquering a city, the Lord is depicted as saying; “Ifyou notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife.” But if he later “is not pleased withher,”hemay turnherout (Deut 21:10-1.14).

3. a) the book I started in 2005 -scraped

b) came to see problem not just make look nicer, or even moreChrist-like

c) the problem is that ALL Scripture supposed to point to Christ, and esp. to the

d) Origen’sadvice

e) my experience
(whether revelation or madness will be determined over time)

II. Two All-ImportantQuestions
1. How Cross Becomes Definitive Revelation of God forus?
a) 1 diagram – revolting

b) Since the cross is the culminating and paradigmatic revelation of God, should we not read Scripture expecting there will be times when we will need to look by faith through the sin-mirroring surface of a portrait of God to discern how itbears witness to the same God who is revealed onCalvary?

c) Where else God revealed by stooping to bearugliness?
-> Where else need to see surface as mirroring sin and exercise faith to look through the surface to behold the stooping sin-bearing God?
-> all sub-Christ like portraits of God in this category

2. How God “breathed” his definitiverevelation
a) people assume unilateral
->conclude Bible should be “perfect” book

b) better not to assume – let cross teach

c) God’s breathing act toward us

-> but also God allowing others to act toward him and condition the results of his breathing

d) beautiful in so far as God toward us
-> ugly and sin-mirroring insofar as God allows us to act towardhim

g) God’s breathing is Relational, not Unilateral
-> God influences as much as possible, accommodates as much asnecessary

f) Since the God who “breathed” his definitive revelation on the cross is the same God who “breathed” all Scripture for the purpose of bearing witness to the cross, should we not read Scripture knowing that it reflects both God acting toward us, as much as possible,andGodhumblyallowingotherstoactonhim,asmuch asnecessary?

g) God “breathes” through people AS THEY ARE. e.g. Bruxy’sexample
I Cor 1: 14-16 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one can say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyoneelse.)

III.Accommodation inScripture

1. The Rorschach Quality of Our Conceptions of God
* We “see” and “hear” what our hearts allow us to “see” and “hear” (e.g., Mk 4:12;8:17-8)

* The Pharisees couldn’t see that Scripture is about Jesus because they did “not have the love of God in [their] hearts” (Jn5:42)

* “Whyismylanguagenotcleartoyou?Becauseyouareunabletohear(akouein)whatIsay”(Jn8:43).

* The disciples couldn’t “hear” Jesus’ many teachings about how he came to suffer and

* Unbelievers can’t see the “glory” of Christ in Scripture because a “veil” lies over their mind (2 Cor 3:13-5).

* To the faithful you appear faithful, to the blameless you apear blameless, to the pure you appearpure, but to the devious (iqqesh– “crooked,” “perverted,” “twisted” ) you appear shrewd (pathal – “torturous,” “deceptive,” “twisted”) (2 Sam 22:26-7, Ps 8:25-6).

* When you did these things and I kept silent, you thought I was exactlylike you”(Ps50:21).

2. The Dreadful Spiritual Condition of Israelites
* The Israelites are repeatedly depicted as a “stiff-necked” people who resist the Spirit (E.g., Ex 32:9; 33:3,5).

* Hosea and Isaiah declare that there was “no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God in the land” (Hos 4:1, , 4:6; Isa5:12-3)

* Even the spiritual leaders led people astray (Isa3:12)

* Even God’s appointed priest do not know God (Jer2:8)

How could such a people NOT have “twisted” views of God?
* “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Now let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offersacrificestotheLordourGod,orhemaystrikeuswithplaguesorwiththesword”(Ex5:3).

3. Examples of DivineAccommodations
a) Marriage

b) A King

c) Animal (and child?) Sacrifices
* In ANE it was believed gods consumed sacrifices (e.g. Deut32:38).
“Thegodssmelledthesavor,thegodssmelledthesweetsavor,Thegodscrowdedlikefliesaboutthesacrifice.”
(Epic of Gilgamesh)

* Sacrifices are “a pleasing aroma to the Lord” (e.g., Ex 29:25, 41; Lev 1:9, 13,17).

* Later writers make it clear Yahweh does not delight in animal sacrifices (Ps 51:16-7; Isa 1:11-4; Mic 6:6- 8; Amos 5:21-2, 25; Hos 6:6; Mt 9:13; Heb10:8).

* theLaw

a) WhenYahweh promised Abraham that all nations would be blessed through him (Gen12:2),”Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith” (not by the law) (Gal3:8).

b) Why law given? Humanity needed to be “kept in custody” and “locked up” under the law beforewecouldbereadytoreceive”thefaiththatwaslater toberevealed” (Gal3:23).Thelawfunctionedasa “guardian”(paidagogos)to “leadustoChrist,thatwemightbe justifiedbyfaith” (v.24).

c) The law was given to expose and even increase sin (Rom 3:20; 5:20; 7:8-11,Gal3:19-25)

d) The law was a “shadow of the things that were to come,” for “the reality … is found in Christ” (Col 2:16; cf., Heb10:1).

e) There was something “wrong with the first covenant”(Heb 8:7). The new covenant renders ” the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear” (Heb 8:13, , vv.8-13)

4. Most of the OT depictions of Yahweh as a violent warrior closely parallel other ANE warriordeities.
* “Crediting” a deity with violence was how you praised a deity in the

e.g. Parallels with a Cannibalistic Ugaritic Warrior Deity (Anat)
* “I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me.
will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh-with the blood of the slain and the captives, from the long-haired heads of the enemy” (Deut 32:41-2)

* The Lord is angry with all nations; his wrath is on all their
He will totally destroy them, he will give them over to slaughter.
Their slain will be thrown out, their dead bodies will stink; the mountains will be soaked with their blood.
My sword has drunk its fill in the heavens; see, it descends in judgment on Edom, the people I have totally destroyed.
The sword of the Lord is bathed in blood, it is covered with fat-
The blood of lambs and goats, fat from the kidneys of rams.
the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah
And a great slaughter in the land of Edom (Isa 34:2-3, 5-6)

* I will make your oppressors eat their ownflesh;
they will be drunk on their own blood, as with wine (Isa 49:26).

* The righteous will be glad when they areavenged,
when they dip their feet in the blood of the wicked (Ps 58:10).

* The Lord says, “I will bring them from Bashan; I will bring them from the depths of thesea,
that your feet may wade in the blood of your foes,
while the tongues of your dogs have their share”(Ps 68:22-3).

IV Confirmations That the Portrait of Yahweh Given the Herem
Command Is an Accommodation

1. The portrait of Yahweh giving this command reflects ANE assumptions about warrior deities

2. Moses is the only one reported to have heard this command. Joshua gives the command on Moses’ authority. Paul says if anyone, even an “angel of light” teaches anything contrary to the Gospel he preached, we are place them “under God’s curse” (Gal 1:8-9). His “Gospel” is “the message of the cross” (ICor1:18)

3. Yahweh always told the Israelites that if they trusted him, they wouldn’t have to use the sword, just as they used no sword when being freed from

4. Reflections of non-violent plans to enter the promised
* I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. I will send the hornet (sirii)ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the landwould become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land” (Exod 23:27-30 cf. Deut 7:20).

* Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants …. if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you ( Lev 18: 24-5,28)

* Other passages that say Yahweh planned on “driving out” the population (Ex 33:2; 34:11, 24; Lev20:23; Num 32:21; Deut 4:38; 7:1,22).

* Remember the Rorschach-quality of all spiritual “hearing” and”seeing.”

5. The “neutral” captain of the Lord’s heavenly army (Josh5:13-5)

6. The inconsistency way the command is given and applied reflects its human origin.
* “…when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. 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, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other ..” (Deut7:2-4)

* Sometimes virgins are slaughtered with everyone else, other times soldiers are allowed to keep them aswarbooty (despite other prohibitions on bonding with Canaanites) (e.g.Deut21:10-4;Num31:18).

7. A Cruciform Interpretation of the ConquestNarrative
a) God wanted Israel in the land, but hoped to get them in by means of a slow, non-violent

b) Yahweh said, “Enter the land,” but Moses heard, “Slaughter the indigenous population.”

c) The Canaanites had pushed God away, so “their protection [was] gone” (Num14:9).

d) With a grieving heart, Yahweh allowed his people, who were “intent on violence” (Hab 1:9), “do as they pleased” (Num9:24).

e) Thisbecameanothernegativeobjectlesson,demonstratingthatallwho”liveby thesword diebythe sword.” Their violence “recoiled back on them” (Ps7:16).

f) the depiction of God as uttering genocidal commands to Moses is the sin-mirroring surface of this revelation.SinceweknowwhatGodistrulylikeonthebasisofthecross,wemustexercise thesame surface-penetrating faith we use to see the cross as the definitive revelation of God to behold God stooping to bear the sin of his people, just as he does on

Close: Story of Suzy.. ..

Jesus- Looking God Conference, Finding Jesus in the Genocide, PowerPoint Slides