Christianity is Changing
This is a guest post by Brennan T. Hughes
Brennan T. (“Bren”) Hughes, a former minister, is a musician, licensed attorney and criminal-law scholar. He lives with his family in Kentucky Coal Country. The author of the spiritual empowerment book, Heaven’s Muscle, Bren shares his writings, videos, and music at BrenHughes.com. He holds a master’s degree in biblical languages from Freed-Hardeman University, a master of divinity from Lipscomb University, and a law degree from Vanderbilt University.
The Lord Is a Man of War(?): How the Hebrew Bible Paves the Way for Christ’s Peaceful Kingdom
They sang a hymn of triumph over the drowned human bodies on the sea shore.
In Exodus chapter 14 the Lord God parts the waters of the Red Sea. The freed slaves, his people Israel, cross over on dry land, pursued by the angry armies of Egypt. At the Lord’s command, Moses stretches his hand back over the sea and it returnes to its normal depth, drowning the entire Egyptian army. The scripture states:
Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses. (Exodus 14:30-31 ESV).
Moses and the Israelites then burst into song, singing “The Lord is a Man of War.” (Exodus 15:3).
Human religions have always ascribed to their gods a propensity to violence, much like ourselves.
In contrast, Jesus, the true creator God in the flesh, revealed once for all that God is tender father toward all humankind, a being of love and forgiveness, devoted to the reconciliation of the universe.
The purpose of this post is to demonstrate that the Hebrew Bible (a.k.a. the Old Testament), read as a continuing narrative encounter with God, anticipates the arrival of Christ’s teachings on nonviolence and the establishment of a peaceful kingdom.
Stated differently, the Hebrew prophets created a theological trajectory designed to move people away from the theology of the warrior gods and toward the revelation of nonviolence that accompanied the incarnation of Christ—Christ the true human and perfect avatar of the true God.
This post briefly will trace the story of war in the Bible. A follow-up post will provide some analysis. Let’s begin.
The Bible is a graphically violent book, from Abel’s screaming blood in Genesis 4 to the apocalyptic slaughter of Revelation. And yet Christians claim this book is about Jesus, a teacher whom pacifists of all faiths identify as one of their own. How can the God who torched Gomorrah and ordered the slaughter of the Canaanites be the same God who walked among us as Jesus of Nazareth, teaching “do not resist the evil one?”
The answer lies in the story. And it starts in the very beginning.
Compared against other ancient stories, which tend to be steeped in heavenly warfare and struggles between gods and chaos monsters, the placidity of Genesis 1 and 2 is striking. In the “very good” state of the prelapsarian earth, the whole creation blossoms in peace. The humans and animals are all plant-eaters (1:29-30). Not even a rainstorm disturbs the tranquility (2:5-6). The peacefulness of Eden carries significant theological weight because Eden’s snapshot of universal harmony in the deathless garden becomes, in Scripture, a goal to pursue.
The story of the Bible can be read as the story of God working with mankind to resurrect the Eden experience. Eden in the Bible becomes not just the beginning, but also the end. The goal. The telos.
The first threat of violence in the Bible emanates from God himself. If Adam and Eve breach their trust in God by tasting the forbidden fruit, they face capital punishment (Gen. 2:17).
And yet the story takes a surprising twist when our primeval parents are allowed to live for hundreds of years after their crime. Already we discover the principle that the power over life and death lies in God’s hands. To kill or to have mercy is the prerogative of his creatorhood. As told in the text, YHWH has no qualms about threatening or meting out punishment when it serves his purposes.
Yet—and this is key—he also retains the right to defer punishment or grant amnesty whenever he so desires. Thus, when sin does enter the world, as explained by St. Paul, “the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay. . .” (Rom. 8:20-21). I’ll return to this passage in a moment.
The consequences of the fall are real and terrifying. Not only do Adam and Eve face the threat of death for their disobedience, but the whole earth darkens under the inescapable shadow of death and decay. This is the Curse in which the earth itself becomes antagonistic to mankind. The harmony of Eden becomes the struggle of man against nature. Entropy and decay replace growth and life. Animals become carnivorous, as humans eventually do, as well (Gen. 9:3). The predators declare war on the prey. All of creation becomes locked in a self-perpetuating warfare. Not only is the animal kingdom now “red in tooth and claw,” but even at the cellular level, our own bodies wage war against invading armies of germs and viruses. In the realm of the Fall, conflict, warfare, death, and decay become the natural order of things, both in the microverse and the macroverse. This is why in Romans 8 Paul borrows the word from Ecclesiastes—vanity (mataistes). From the Fall until the restoration of all things, human history (individual, corporate, and global) will be largely an exercise in futility. As the Preacher in Ecclesiastes laments, in the realm under the sun, death renders all things meaningless.
Paul’s commentary on Genesis 3 in Romans 8:19-23 carries weighty theological implications. It shows that the futility/vanity/meaninglessness of worldly existence is not the natural state of things. However, the arrival of death ultimately serves God’s purpose. Transforming the garden of delights into a crucible of pain is a means to an end. It points toward a future hope. God is grooming his people, purifying them by fire so that, when the curse is lifted, his people will be proven and mature. The new heaven and earth will be greater than Eden because maturity is greater than innocence. God will dwell, not among people ignorant of sin, but with people who have tasted the delights of rebellion yet ultimately will have chosen to embrace light and peace. So, in the biblical story, the Curse is not a failure of God, but rather part of his master plan to cultivate a people who love him and each other freely—a people he can draw into the circle of his own Triune loving fellowship.
— Brennan T. Hughes
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