Let’s go back to Roger Olson’s catalog of contentions: “Every Interpretation of the Bible’s ‘Texts of Terror.'”
Again, I appreciate the effort and the intent here. Olson is a conservative theologian who takes the Bible seriously and he is here honestly confronting certain parts of the Bible that he finds not just challenging, but repugnant. And he does so without offering, and without pretending to have, a satisfying, simple answer for the dilemma posed by these parts of scripture.
As Olson writes:
The phrase “texts of terror” usually refers to stories in the historical books of the Hebrew Bible that describe God as commanding his people to slaughter groups of men, women and children and “show them no mercy” (to quote one such command).
Most of these stories involve the conquest of Canaan. In these particular stories, God commands God’s people to slaughter their enemies — every man, woman, and child. In the stories, God’s people either obey this genocidal command and are blessed for their obedience, or else they disobey it and are punished for their disobedience. Yikes.
Olson describes nine different responses Christians have had over the years — different ways that different Christians have attempted to contend with these horror stories found in our holy text. I think he does a good job assembling this list, but not as good a job at describing the problems that some of them present.
That’s particularly true of No. 7, which Olson calls “Liberal interpretation.” His description of this approach is inaccurate and uncharitable. That’s odd here because — despite Olson’s repeated claims that he rejects all of these approaches — this is actually the position endorsed by his post. He just doesn’t realize that.
Olson starts his list with some of the oldest and earliest Christian attempts to contend with the Texts of Terror. That includes Marcionism — the ancient heresy that rejects the “Old Testament” and replaces it with the New. Olson notes that this was vehemently rejected as a heresy by the early church, which is true, but the idea has lingered, especially at a popular level. You can find all sorts of quasi-Marcionism in American Christianity.
Ironically, this ancient heresy first intended to distance Christianity from the merciless slaughter in some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures has fueled Christian antisemitism over the centuries and led to Christians committing atrocities and pogroms in which they have gleefully slaughtered every man, woman, and child without mercy, claiming to do so in God’s name. The little MAGA extremist who recently torched a Mississippi synagogue explained his motives in explicitly Marcionist terms.
(One major difference between these massacres committed by Christians and the massacres depicted in the biblical stories of the conquest of Canaan is that the Christian massacres actually happened and can be documented as real historic events. That’s not the case for most of the stories about the conquest of Canaan. The stories of Joshua slaughtering every inhabitant in Canaanite cities are legends without any historical support. The stories of Christians slaughtering Jews in pogrom after pogrom over multiple centuries can all be documented and verified.)
Olson also lists “allegorical interpretation,” which was the preferred approach to the Bible taken by all those AnteNicene Fathers who spent their days slapping down heresies like Marcionism. Their “allegorical” readings of scripture are fascinating to read, but were often speculative and imaginative and way too elastic for Olson’s high-view-of-scripture sensibilities. He says this approach invites “unwelcome possibilities.” I’d just say that anybody born after about, say, 430 CE doesn’t have the knack for this.
Further along in his list, Olson contends with the idea of “progressive revelation,” which is a solid idea that becomes more amorphous when it comes to the application. Olson summarizes the general idea this way:
People came to understand God’s revelation more clearly over time. … God’s revelation of his own character and will becomes clearer throughout Scripture with the later (clearer) parts relativizing the earlier (less clear) parts.
There’s a bit of evangelical deck-stacking in his description there, with “clarity” (Yay!) vs “relativizing” (Boo!), but that’s still the gist of it. Olson describes the problems with this approach/solution as “Requires a very flexible view of divine inspiration of Scripture (and rejection of inerrancy if not infallibility). Is also subject to accusations of implicit Marcionism.”
One of the reasons we need a more “flexible view” of inspiration and shouldn’t accept “inerrancy” and “infallibility” is that the clear chronology presupposed by “progressive revelation” — and by Olson — is not at all clear. Paul’s ministry came after the life and death of Jesus, but Paul’s letters were written well before any of the Gospels. Isaiah and Amos are far older than the Books of Moses. “Progressive revelation” might work if we had access to a clear chronological development that suggested a linear progression in a single direction, but we don’t have a clear chronology and nothing in what we do have suggests a conversation or argument that’s moving in only one direction. The chronological linear progression is not chronological, or linear, so it’s hard to say it’s progressive.
Which brings us to item No. 7 in Olson’s list of Christian attempts to contend with the Texts of Terror. I’m going to quote his description and dismissal of this one in full:
7. Liberal interpretation: Portions of the Old Testament (and perhaps also of the New) are culturally conditioned such that they cannot be believed by modern people. The touchstone of biblical interpretation is the modern worldview and modern ethical sensibilities. (In other words, yes, the people of God did slaughter men, women, and children, but God did not command it.)
*Problem: Sets up a temporal and conditioned cultural norm (“modern”) over Scripture itself and possibly even over Jesus himself. Leads to phenomena such as the “Jefferson Bible” (whether literally, physically or not).
The deck-stacking is more obvious here — four “moderns” in five sentences. Olson’s hostility toward this approach is more visceral because he’s semiconsciously upset about finding himself right here, in the world of “Liberal interpretation,” along with people like me. Because this right here — No. 7 — is where Roger Olson and I both wind up when it comes to the “Texts of Terror,” even though neither of us supports a version of this that much resembles his description of it.
This is where everyone winds up once they come to view the Texts of Terror as such — as passages that demand to be addressed, to be contended with and contended against, because they are terrifying and appalling and atrocious. Because these passages command and commend, in a word, sin.
Roger Olson and I are not identical and simpatico on every point of our theology or hermeneutics or doctrine. But there is one thing we both agree on wholeheartedly here, which is that the mass-slaughter of children is a Bad Thing. It is immoral and deplorable, wicked and evil, sinful and depraved and contrary to the will of God. And, therefore, any text that argues the opposite — that it is sometimes God’s will and God’s command — is a text that we both have problems with.
This is less of a problem for me than for Dr. Olson, because I am not personally (or professionally, or financially) precomitted to an inflexible view of “divine inspiration of scripture” or to dogmas of “inerrancy” or “infallibility.” I am thus free to read passages like the texts of terror and just say, “Um, yeah, No,” and to toss them over my shoulder. I’m even free to do so somewhat glibly and gleefully.
Alas for Olson, he is not free to do so. And thus he has to carry these divinely inspired horror stories and to contend with them in search of some way that doesn’t approve of them yet also doesn’t threaten the dogmas of inspiration and inerrancy and infallibility — a pernicious problem that, he says, “will have to wait for answer until paradise or the eschaton.”
But the real obstacle for Olson here is not any notion of inerrancy or infallibility. It’s the dogma of univocalism — the idea that all of the Bible is a single text that speaks with a single voice without internal debate or contradiction or contention.
And that is — very obviously — not at all what the Bible is. It’s a library — an anthology of 66 disparate books, many of which are themselves anthologies containing multiple voices and perspectives.
The Bible is, among other things, a collection of arguments. Some of these arguments are narrow and focused and specific. Some of them are vast, sweeping, and pervasive throughout the many books that make up the Bible. Those “Texts of Terror” are part of a latter such argument — one of the biggest and longest-running arguments in the Bible.
I do not reject the argument presented in the “Texts of Terror” because of my “modern worldview and modern ethical sensibilities.” I reject that argument because I take the other side, because I side with all the many scriptures that forcefully present the opposite side of that argument.
I reject the views argued for in those deplorable Texts of Terror and I reject those passages and toss them over my shoulder because, well, should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left — and also many animals?
If this is because of my nasty, wicked “modern worldview and modern ethical sensibilities,” then at least I share that worldview and those sensibilities with the divinely inspired author of the book of Jonah.
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