I saw this book in the bargain bin at a Christian bookshop earlier last year, and bought it to read at Christmas. Philip Greenslade works for CWR, and I have always found him to be a very thoughtful and insightful theologian and Bible teacher whenever I have heard him speak.

The book itself is a collection of mini-expositions of the various parts of the Christmas story, mainly the early chapters of Matthew and Luke. He draws widely from other theologians, and manages to shed plenty of fresh light on a familiar story.

He has a great chapter on Jesus’ humanity, and is always careful to keep the story connected to its OId Testament roots and historical context. I found the book very helpful as I prepared a couple of talks to give this Christmas, and would recommend it to anyone wanting to go deeper into the meaning and significance of Jesus’ birth.

This book presents four views on the “Canaanite genocide” reported in the book of Joshua. This has always posed something of an ethical dilemma for Christians, as the Israelites are commanded to leave no survivors in their conquest of certain cities. The four authors are said to all sit “squarely within the evangelical tradition”, and are tasked with explaining how we can make sense of such bloodthirsty texts in our Scriptures. This is particularly pertinent as in a post-9/11 world, many atheists are claiming that religion is irrevocably violent.

Each writer gets to make their case in an essay of around 30 pages, followed by brief responses from the other three writers.

Radical Discontinuity – C S Cowles

The first essay is the most combative. Cowles considers the Canaanite conquest to be sub-Christian and even “anti-Christian”. He views the God of the Old Testament as violent and vindictive, while the God of the New Testament, revealed in Christ is one of love. He therefore freely repudiates the Old Testament texts (it is not a “Christian message”) and claims there could never have been any legitimacy for these attrocities. What is surprising is not that he should be so horrified, but that while claiming to be evangelical he has such low regard for the Old Testament. He seems to be suggesting that Joshua was not hearing from God, but simply making up whatever he wanted to do in the situation. He claims to be following the line that Wesley took on these matters.

The responses to him are polite, with the other authors thanking him for being so frank and honest in his views. However, he is rightly criticised for effectively de-canonising the Old Testament, and also for conveniently ignoring the “violent” texts of the New Testament. It is not at all clear that Jesus saw himself in any way as opposed to the revelation of God in the Old Testament.

Moderate Discontinuity – Eugene Merrill

Merrill represents a dispensationalist postition and his essay falls into two parts. First he surveys all instances of what he terms “Yahweh war” – war sanctioned (and fought even) by Yahweh. Interestingly, he also sees the future battle of Armageddon as another example. His justification from Yahweh war also is strongly Scripture based – God displays his holiness and omnipotence, without contradicting his goodness and mercy. The true foe in the war is idolatry and false gods. While Cowles freely criticises Scripture, Merrill shows determination to accept it’s witness to God however uncomfortable it may be. Strangely, while highlighting lots of instances of “God hardening the hearts” of various enemies, Merrill sees this as a human action (as opposed to divine initiative) of hardening which brings the judgement of God.

Unsurprisingly, Cowles castigates him for defending the indefensible, while the other two authors are more receptive to his arguments. Gard suggests he has not properly considered why, given his argument, all nations should not deserve to be annihilated. Longman feels that he has ignored instances in the OT where God is said to be fighting on the side of Israel’s enemies and altogether ended up with to “neat” an explanation.

Eschatological Continuity – Daniel Gard

Gard begins by arguing that revelation occurs not only through Scripture but through the God who acts in history. He views the Canaanite genocide as an eschatological foreshadowing of the final judgement. Like Merrill, he draws on Von Rad’s work on “Holy War”, and briefly surveys the biblical evidence. He believes that there was also “reverse holy war” – God was sometimes responsible for the defeat of Israel rather than its victory, but reminds us that Israel was never fully destroyed.

He focuses particularly on the understanding of the writer of Chronicles, who foresaw a “new David” coming. He says that Israel could participate in the holy wars because they were simultaneously a political and theological entity – unlike the church who can never justify a war, although he does agree with the concept of “just war”. He concludes by focusing on the cross – the sacrifice to save us from wrath.

Cowles again responds with hostility, arguing that the surrounding nations were less barbarous than the Israelites, making mockery of any concept of judgement in their destruction. Merrill agrees in part with Gard although rejects his eschatology and doesn’t agree that God fighting against Israel counts as herem – Yahweh war. Longman agrees with Gard’s conclusions but not his argument.

Spiritual Continuity – Tremper Longman III

Longman starts by comparing the Joshua accounts to modern terrorists such as Bin Laden with their concepts of “sacred space” and “holy war”. He also admits that there is a very small radical fringe of Christianity who might claim justification of violent action (e.g. against abortionists) from passages such as this. However, despite this Longman warns that we cannot conveniently disavow the OT. He argues that the holy war was itself an expression of “worship”. It was not that God was an enemy to Israel’s enemies, but that they were to be an enemy to God’s enemies.

As with Merril and Gard, Longman goes through the accounts and features of holy war. He notes that the Bible does not understand herem as the destruction of innocents – and views it as a final punishment after great patience on God’s part. His main approach is to argue for five phases of holy war – starting with God fighting for Israel, then God fighting against Israel, but then moving on to Jesus fighting against spiritual powers and authorities. Jesus radically changed people’s expectations by failing to bring political revolution. The church is involved in its own herem, but it is a purely spiritual battle – not against flesh and blood. And the fifth phase is the final battle as depicted in Revelation.

Summary

Personally, I think this book suffered by having too many contributors. Merrill, Gard and Longman are obviously in broad agreement about the historicity and authority of the Old Testament, and cover much of the same ground when summarising the biblical material. Their differences are not really strong enough to make for interesting reading. It would have been better to have two very differing views (probably Cowles and Longman) and let them hammer it out.

All four contributors of course completely disavow any warmongering or violence by the church, so in that sense, the argument is simply over what we do with the uncomfortable parts of the Old Testament. The answer seems to be that what you make of those parts depends on your view of Scripture. And that in turn has a very big impact on what your view of God is. It is the same issue that is at stake in current debates over the nature of the atonement – can we accept the Biblical testimony to God’s anger against sin, or do we say that this is incompatible with love and therefore reject any Scripture that does not fit our understanding of who he is, losing large parts of both Old and New Testaments in the process?

Anyone who single-handedly paraphrases the entire Bible is probably worth hearing on the subject of Bible reading, so I chose this book as my introduction to the writings of Eugene Peterson. It is not the first in his “Spiritual Theology” series, but stands alone as a guide to what he calls “spiritual reading”, or what has been know in the past as “lectio divina” – the Scriptures are not merely to be read, but lived.

The first section utilises the picture of the apostle John being given a book to eat in Revelation 10:9-10. These are words intended to get inside of us. He stresses the importance of the Bible if we are to be those who know who Jesus is, where he is going and how to walk in his steps.

When reading a spiritual book, we need to pay close attention to form – it is not just what is said, but how it is said that matters. And the form is a story. He talks about how we need to move from reading the Bible to see how God fits into the story of our lives, to reading it to discover how our lives fit into his story.

Peterson stresses the importance of exegesis – exegesis is the care we give to getting the words right. It is loving God enough to stop and listen to what he says. This is not to say that he feels that true understanding of the Bible is the domain of experts only, but he does recommend that commentators be our companions as we seek to give care to properly comprehending what the Word says.

He proposes a “hermeneutic of adoration” (it reminded me of N T Wright’s “hermeneutic of love”, but the concept is slightly different). Our culture makes self the authoritative text to live by, and the church has bought into this. He warns that just as eating the book gave John stomach ache, so the Word of God not only comforts us but disturbs. We cannot necessarily systematize to get rid of the “difficult bits”.

Peterson is a very profound and creative writer, but I must admit there were a few places where he seemed to get so profound that he lost me. He proposes that Bible reading should be “liturgical”, but not what most people understand “liturgical” to mean, but rather something that pertains to the whole of life. He moves on to give some good advice on the importance of reading “in context” – not so much meaning reading the bits before and after, but understanding the context into which the words were first spoken.

The second section of the book, goes through the art of spiritual reading – lectio divina. This quite practical section leads us through lectio – we read the text, meditatio – we meditate on it, oratario – we pray the text, and finally contemplato – we live the text. He encourages us that “anything goes” in prayer – the Psalmists demonstrate that prayer is about honesty before God, not about being “nice”.

The third and final section talks about Bible translation, a subject dear to Peterson’s heart. He is somewhat critical of “literal” translations, as they can lose the impact of metaphors. He tells the story of how he came to write The Message, a translation into modern American. He sees himself as following in the tradition of Tyndale, whose passion was to put the Bible into everyday language – an aim that was partly undone by the translators of the King James version.

Overall I found this to be a very stimulating read on a topic that is not often written on (at least from this angle), and certainly more lively than some textbooks on hermeneutics I have read. I’ll probably try a few more in his Spiritual Theology series.