24 Jun, 2024

Blog

Reevaluating the Destruction of the Canaanites

Letting God off the hook for Genocide

Yahweh and Genocide

In my previous blog we discussed that many christians want to believe that YWHW is good and thus are puzzled by the divine commands to commit genocide as found in the Old Testament. In this blog will explore the many ways christian gatekeepers attempt to “get God off the hook” for genocide and, at the same time, mollify the faithful.

One of the most thoughtful books I found on this topic was written by Dr. Charlie Trimm of Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. Trimm tackled this difficult issue by proposing four possible views of the problematic verses as represented by these four statements.

God is good and compassionate.
The Old Testament is a faithful record of God’s dealings with humanity and favorably portrays YAHWEH’s actions.
The Old Testament describes events that are similar to genocide.
Mass killings are always evil.

Trimm states that all of these four statements can’t be true at the same time. Therefore, he says, “scholars tend to reject any one of them so that the other statements can cohere.” He arranges his arguments based on which one of these four statement people choose to reject. For example, if someone choses to believe that statements 2,3 & 4 are true then they must reject the first statement, (that God is good and compassionate). So, let’s begin with statement one.

(It’s important to note that, unlike most christian writers, Trimm does not tell his readers which option they should choose to believe. He offers the pros and cons of each and allows his readers to come to their own conclusions. Granted, their options are greatly limited by their social circles and religious beliefs, but nonetheless, I applaud Trimm for his approach to such a sensitive topic.)

Reevaluating God

If you believe that the Old Testament is a reliable and inerrant source of Yahweh’s dealings with humanity, and that stories of genocide occur in the OT, and that mass killings (of innocent women and children) are, and always have been, acts of evil, then statement one, that Yahweh is good and compassionate, must be rejected as not true. Obviously, accepting this option, and reevaluating God, is very problematic for believers. First off, questioning the nature of God is simply not allowed in christian circles. And second, anyone who openly starts questioning the true nature of christianity will run the risk of being shunned. Trimm summarizes the fallout of accepting this option.

The beneﬁt of this view is that it clearly solves the problem of divine violence by simply rejecting the deity wholesale. However, the cost is also clear: the rejection of the entire notion of monotheism has severe social and existential costs for many.

He expands the costs a christian might experience by rejecting the idea of God.

For those who had previously claimed faith, their social circles will be extensively disrupted and friendships lost.
The faith that had previously provided a foundation for life will also be lost.
In ethical terms, new grounds besides theism will need to be acquired to serve as a foundation for ethics and morality.
If religion previously provided the grounds for rejecting genocide as evil—perhaps on the basis of the dignity provided to humans as the image of God—then other grounds will need to be found to establish the value of human life and hence the depravity of genocide.

As someone who at one time embraced christianity, was part of a faith-based community for decades and ultimately decided to reject the whole package of a monotheistic deity, I can attest to the validity of these consequences. Looking back, however, I would have to say that although leaving christianity was unsettling at times, (as Trimm points out) it was the right thing to do and I have absolutely no regrets. For more on the topic of deconversion, you might want to read chapter two of Dan Barker’s book godless. Or you could read my blog about my personal deconversion experience entitled “Why I Let Go of Christianity.”

Reevaluating the Old Testament

The next possible option is to discard the second postulate that the Old Testament is a faithful record of God’s dealings with humanity and favorably portrays YAHWEH’s actions. This view questions the reliability of the Old Testament by proposing that the violent events found in the OT never actually happened, but rather were examples of Ancient Near Eastern hyperbole. Some of the on-line articles I found, explained it like this.

And so clearly when ancient or Eastern kings talk about warfare, there’s a lot of hyperbole involved, whether it’s numbers or the extent of the victory. Now, it doesn’t seem like they made up stuff entirely, so they don’t make up battles or anything like that, but they will certainly make their victories look more conclusive than they actually are, and so on, and so that plays an important role in thinking about the military stories in the Bible. (8)
Such commands represent hyperbole typical of Ancient Near Eastern accounts of military conquests. (4)
First, the wording should be understood in the context of ancient Near Eastern military narrative, the argument goes. Ancient writings commonly traded in hyperbole—exaggeration for the sake of emphasis—especially when it came to military conquest. (5)
Therefore, phrases like “utterly destroy,” or “put to death men and women, children, and infants”—as well as other “obliteration language”—were stock “stereotypical” idioms used even when women or children were not present. It decreed total victory (much like your favorite sports team “wiping out” the opposition), not complete annihilation. (5)

Trimm concludes this section about rejecting the reliability of the Old Testament with the possible downside for believers.

The reevaluation of the Old Testament provides obvious ethical beneﬁts by disassociating God from biblical violence. However, it comes at the cost of being able to trust the Old Testament as a reliable document. Choosing this view also usually entails a rejection of inerrancy (or at least a signiﬁcant redeﬁnition of the idea). Since many Christians are uncomfortable with these views about the nature of God and the Bible, the social cost of taking this approach may be quite high—perhaps even leading to the loss of a job or removal from fellowship at a church.

I would imagine that if you work for an evangelical organization and reject biblical inerrancy, even to get God off the hook for genocide, your time with that congregation will be shortened and thus the reference to “loss of a job or removal from the fellowship”. Peter Enns Ph.D. of Harvard University wrote that “for many christians, questioning biblical inerrancy is more troubling than the thought of God killing off an entire population of people”. But he adds, “You can’t have everything.”

Reevaluating Genocide

The third option is to reject the idea that the Old Testament contains events that are similar to genocide. Many on-line articles gave supporting arguments similar to these.

God’s hand is what will drive out the Canaanites: it will throw them into confusion and so they will turn their backs on the Israelites. This process, we are told, will happen gradually. But note there is no word of annihilating the Canaanites by war. (3)
So, the argument could be made that it sounds bad, but when read as an ancient Near Eastern text, we’re just describing normal military battles, we’re not talking about genocide. (8)
It’s an extensive victory in military terms, the enemy is clearly crushed. But we’re not talking about killing kids or something like that. (8)
This is a figure of speech, meaning everyone. And so you can make the argument maybe it’s just a military encampment, and so we kill everyone there. There’s no kids there and so no kids are killed. (8)
No women and children were actually killed. All the battles were with military outposts and soldiers, where women and children would not have been present. It is, in fact, a striking feature of these narratives that there is no record whatsoever that women or children were actually killed by anyone. (4)
That makes sense of why there is no record of the killing of women and children, such as I had vividly imagined. Such scenes may have never taken place, since it was the soldiers who remained to fight. It is also why there were plenty of Canaanite people around after the conquest of the land, as the biblical record attests. (4)
Women and children probably weren’t targets since the attacks were directed at smaller military outposts characteristically holding soldiers, not noncombatants (who generally lived in outlying rural areas). “All the archaeological evidence indicates that no civilian populations existed at Jericho, Ai, and other cities mentioned in Joshua.” (5)

Tripp summarizes this possible justification to get God off the hook. He writes,

“In sum, through a variety of means the scholars in this view reevaluate the interpretation of the Old Testament by arguing that the violent texts are not ethically problematic. While it might look like God has commanded horrible things, a close reading of the biblical text shows that this is not the case.

Okay, let’s “take a closer reading of the biblical text” from Numbers 31 to see what is actually there. For the purpose of space and brevity I have excluded some verses that have no bearing on the outcome of the passage.

They fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man. The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the Israelite assembly. Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. Moses was angry with the officers of the army who returned from the battle. “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

According to this biblical record, it certainly appears that women and children were killed in this particular battle. Perhaps, I don’t have magic christian glasses through which these passages can be seen as “not ethically problematic”, but for me, they clearly are. And the fact that some christians profess that passages like Numbers 31 are “not ethically problematic” is (at least for me) more than a bit concerning.

From where I stand

I live in Colorado, where we have our own “ethically problematic” history known as the Sand Creek Massacre.

Sand Creek Massacre Foundation

On that cold November morning in 1864… soldiers would open fire amongst the lodges of the innocent and unaware Arapaho and Cheyenne civilians. Over the course of eight hours the American troops killed around 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people composed mostly of women, children, and the elderly. During the afternoon and following day, the soldiers wandered over the field committing atrocities on the dead before departing the scene on December 1^st.

Since the barbarism of November 29, the Sand Creek Massacre maintains its status as one of the most emotionally charged and controversial events in American history. Critically, the Sand Creek Massacre stands as a testament to a brutality that should be learned from and never repeated, a lesson of what the rejection of conscience in the face of fear and hysteria can lead to, and the suffering that this betrayal has imparted on generations of Arapaho and Cheyenne people.

If this event in Colorado history can be described as barbarism, brutality, hysteria, betrayal and a rejection of conscience, then the events recorded in Numbers 31 could certainly be described in the same way. For christians to say that these passages are not ethically problematic is morally reprehensible. It’s too bad Trimm doesn’t addressed that in his book.

In next week’s blog we will explore the most disturbing and scariest option for letting God off the hook for genocide. There is a large group of christians who reject the idea that “mass killings are always evil.” They claim that the Canaanites deserved to be destroyed and Yahweh was justified in commanding their destruction and annihilation. Atheist Dan Barker writes, “If you claim to be a good person, then this book (the bible) should embarrass you and disgust you.”

We’ll take this one step further, by saying, “if you claim to be a good person, this justification for letting God off the hook for genocide by saying that mass killings are not necessarily bad (if God commands them), should definitely embarrass you”. And the fact that it doesn’t is indeed problematic. Just wait until you see what Trimm says about the downside of rejecting proposition four, “Mass killings are always evil.”

As my dad used to say, “It ain’t gonna be pretty!”

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum

References:

(1) https://wellspringchristianministries.org/why-did-god-command-the-children-of-israel-to-kill-every-man-woman-and-child-in-the-promised-land/

(2) Why did God condone such terrible violence in the Old Testament? | GotQuestions.org

(3) https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/the-best-way-of-getting-out-of-the-whole-canaanite-genocide-thing-and-it-comes-right-from-the-bible-but-you-may-not-like-it/

(4) https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/the-slaughter-of-the-canaanites-re-visited

(5) https://www.str.org/w/the-canaanites-genocide-or-judgment-

(6) https://www.str.org/w/if-we-condemn-modern-day-genocide-why-don-t-we-condemn-god-for-destroying-the-canaanites-

(7) Is God a Genocidal Maniac? – Bible Apologetics – A DAILY DEVOTIONAL

(8) God, Genocide and Biblical Interpretation – Think Biblically – Biola University

(9) https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/god-guilty-genocide/ Kurger

(10) 2belike christ

15 Jun, 2024

Blog

Disassociating God from Biblical Violence

Getting God Off the Hook for Genocide

Steven Lewis’s chapter in Answering the Music Man entitled “Dan Barker and the Immoral God of the Bible” deals with a myriad of issues that question the moral goodness of Yahweh. Lewis defends issues such as Yahweh and the moral authority of the bible, Yahweh’s jealousy, biblically sanctioned slavery, but (as we discussed in the previous blog) the most disturbing of all is Lewis’s defense of divine violence and acts of genocide that are recorded in the Old Testament.

“Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (1 Sam 15: 3).

“Now therefore, kill every male among them, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.” (Num 31:17-18)

I was curious what christians (other than Lewis) had to say about this topic, so I went to the internet. Turns out, this is indeed a hot topic. Scores of books and ten times that many online articles have been written about divine violence as found in the Old Testament. Some of what I learned was good news, some of it was bad news and a large portion of what has been written in defense of divine violence is downright shocking. Let’s start with the “good news”.

The Good News

Turns out that many “good christians” are rightly disturbed and embarrassed by divine violence.

Many faithful believers are simply puzzled and embarrassed. (1)

A majority of the books and articles I found on this topic began with sentiments like these.

That there was violence in the Old Testament is indisputable. Is the God of the Old Testament a “moral monster” who arbitrarily commands genocide against innocent men, women, and children? (2)
Most Christians are at least a little bothered by this, and various solutions are regularly put forward to reconcile a good and loving God with the idea of God as a killing machine in the OT. (3)
How could a loving God do such a horrible thing? (7)
We seemingly have God commanding genocides, and we all feel genocide is wrong, and God is loving and kind so that can’t be right. What’s going on here? (8)
When the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, was it not God who commanded them to wipe out all the indigenous people? Is God not guilty of genocide? Admittedly, this is a difficult and complex issue. (9)
We feel obligated, understandably, to get God “off the hook” for the deaths of so many people. (9)

The Bad News

The bad news is that christian gatekeepers go to great lengths and perform mental and moral gymnastics to protect God and to mollify the discomfort felt by good christians. We’ll see in this and future blogs just how these christian gatekeepers attempt to “get God off the hook” for genocide. Their arguments run the gamut from “It never really happened – the stories are only hyperbole” to “the Canaanites were evil and deserved destruction”, and just about everything in between.

Justifications for divine genocidal commands fall into several different categories.

It never happened – it’s hyperbole.
It wasn’t as bad as it seemed. No women and children were killed.
If children were killed, they went straight to heaven.
The Canaanites were warned to leave but when they didn’t, they had to be killed.
God’s command was to drive out the Canaanites, but the Israelites misunderstood the command and killed them instead. (oops!)
The Canaanites were evil and deserved it.
God can kill whoever he wants, whenever he wants.
God was protecting the Hebrew people from temptation.

In future blogs we’ll take a deeper look at the reasoning behind each one of these justifications. Suffice to say now, that for christians, the inconvenient truth is that every one of these justifications comes with a built-in downside, much like the side effects one might experience when taking medicine. Each justification should come with a warning label like these.

Warning!! If you swallow the bitter pill that the bible is full of hyperbole and is not inerrant, you might experience social ostracism or removal from fellowship at church.

Warning!! If you swallow the bitter pill that God indeed commanded genocide you might experience a moral crisis and will need to find new grounds for morality because you can’t use religion anymore.

Warning!! If you swallow the bitter pill that your life means nothing to God, and he can kill you whenever he wants, (because you deserve it) you might experience a disillusionment that can cause you to question your faith.

While researching this topic I discovered a book by Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan entitled “Did God Really Command Genocide?” As mentioned before, Copan and Flannagan perform some pretty impressive mental and moral gymnastics in their attempt to get God off the hook. They write,

And we should be distressed by professing Christians’ abuse of Scripture, using such texts to justify the subjugation of women, the horror of the slave trade, and the oppression of people groups. Yet despite the Christian distortion of Scripture across the centuries, let us not forget about the moral gains brought about by, yes, Bible-reading Christians in Western civilization and Western (especially Protestant) missionaries who brought many democratizing gains, moral reforms, and protection of indigenous peoples from colonial powers. Other gains include democracy, literacy, human rights, women’s rights, civil rights, abolition of slavery and so on.” p.41

I just had to chuckle at this piece of revisionism. We’ve already discussed the role christians played in the Antebellum South regarding slavery. In addition, the authors failed to mention what “people groups” were oppressed. The list of persons “oppressed” by christians could be quite long so, it would be helpful to know exactly who the authors think were being oppressed.

You have to love the phrase, “Yet despite the Christian distortion of Scripture across the centuries“. Are we supposed to believe that suddenly Christians have stopped distorting scripture and stopped oppressing people? I’m not buying it, and neither should you. But it gets better as the authors write, “let us not forget about the moral gains brought about by, yes, Bible reading christians.” So, let’s look at the list of benefits the authors believe have been given to us by Bible-reading christians.

democratizing gains (whatever that means)
moral reforms,
protection of indigenous peoples (How about the Trail of Tears? oops!)
democracy, (from a group of people who would prefer a theocracy?)
literacy, (See my blog about a christian writer who advocates for the bible as your only reading material.)
human rights,
women’s rights, (ha ha!!)
civil rights,
abolition of slavery. (See my blog about how Antebellum pastors used scripture to justify slavery.)

I read this list to my wife, and we both had a good laugh. Christians can’t all of a sudden claim responsibility for these moral gains. The truth is that many of these moral gains were realized in spite of christian opposition. It never ceases to amaze me how christians, who claim to be the standard-bearer of objective truth, actually have (at best) a causal relationship with truth and often times use deception and dishonesty to support their truth. It’s something we will see repeatedly in their attempts to get God off the hook for genocide. It’s gonna get interesting.

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum

mt.toll@comcast.net

References:

(1) https://wellspringchristianministries.org/why-did-god-command-the-children-of-israel-to-kill-every-man-woman-and-child-in-the-promised-land/

(2) Why did God condone such terrible violence in the Old Testament? | GotQuestions.org

(3) https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/the-best-way-of-getting-out-of-the-whole-canaanite-genocide-thing-and-it-comes-right-from-the-bible-but-you-may-not-like-it/

(4) https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/the-slaughter-of-the-canaanites-re-visited

(5) https://www.str.org/w/the-canaanites-genocide-or-judgment-

(6) https://www.str.org/w/if-we-condemn-modern-day-genocide-why-don-t-we-condemn-god-for-destroying-the-canaanites-

(7) Is God a Genocidal Maniac? – Bible Apologetics – A DAILY DEVOTIONAL

(8) God, Genocide and Biblical Interpretation – Think Biblically – Biola University

(9) https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/god-guilty-genocide/ Kurger

(10) 2belike christ

1 Jun, 2024

Blog

God and Genocide

“If you claim to be a good person, then this book (the bible)

should embarrass you and disgust you.” Dan Barker

Steven Lewis’s chapter in Answering the Music Man entitled “Dan Barker and the Immoral God of the Bible” deals with a myriad of issues that question the moral character of Yahweh. Lewis defends issues such as the moral authority of the bible, Yahweh’s jealousy, biblically sanctioned slavery, but the most disturbing of all is Lewis’s defense of divine violence and acts of genocide that are recorded in the Old Testament.

“Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” (1 Sam 15: 3).

“Now therefore, kill every male among them, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves.” (Num 31:17-18)

Take a minute to ponder about this divine command to spare the virgin girls. Was it an act of compassion? Obviously not! Knowing what we know about what fate awaited them, the compassionate thing to do would have been to slay them with their families.

That being said, I have decided for this blog to limit my comments and allow Lewis his rope. My comments won’t matter anyway. If you are an evangelical, your allegiance requires you to defend your god (at all costs). If you are not an evangelical, Lewis’s defense of the indefensible will most likely be as shocking to you, as it was to me. However, if you’re questioning what you’re being taught from the pulpit or what you’re reading in the bible, then please keep questioning. The truth is out there, but you won’t find it by listening to the likes of Lewis and other religious leaders. So, let’s see how Lewis defends the indefensible issue of divine violence. (Underlining is mine.)

Lewis’s defense of Divine Violence

Here we must return once again to the nature of God as a guide for understanding these genocidal commands. Assuming that God exists, and the Bible is his authorized word to humanity, it is clear that these instances of killing were special cases given in speciﬁc contexts and authorized by the only one who is truly sovereign over all life and death-—God himself.

(Assuming that God exists, and that the Bible is his authorized word to humanity is quite an assumption to make in defense of genocide.)

If anyone has the right to end a life, then it is the one who created life in the ﬁrst place. Thus, God has not broken any laws or stepped outside his moral nature in order to command the killing of the Canaanites.

Furthermore, if God commanded these acts as the Bible reports, then the Israelites acted merely as agents under God’s authority, not their own. This is a stark distinction between these acts of killing and every modern example of genocide.

Nonetheless, the atheist may yet argue that the question is not whether God or the Israelites had a right (or responsibility) to kill the Canaanites, but rather how such an act or command could be morally justiﬁed, considering its brutality if God is truly good.

Considering once more the nature of the God of the Bible as understood from classical theism, God is simply “good” in his essence by necessity in that his being is perfect, complete, and lacking nothing. God is only “morally good” in the sense that he always acts in perfect harmony with his essentially good nature.

Hence God’s command to kill the Canaanites, for example, cannot be considered a “moral evil” in any reasonable sense of the term if the God of the Bible truly exists.

Finite humans can safely assume that God, if he exists as the Bible asserts, is acting according to his perfect nature while giving such a command, and that any seeming contradiction must exist only in the imperfect mind of the human.

Whatever God’s reasons for such a command, he certainly has them, and they are fully consistent with his inﬁnitely good act of being.

Even though God has no need to reveal the reasons for his actions… it is nevertheless helpful to see what possible reasons or motives may lay behind God’s genocidal commands.

(But here’s where Lewis’s argument goes from bad to worse. When he is done relieving Yahweh of an any wrongdoing, he turns the blame onto the victims of Yahweh’s genocidal commands. “They deserved it!”)

First, unlike most modern examples of genocide, these commands have nothing to do with race or nationality and everything to do with sin.

Second, the Canaanites are eliminated to spare the Israelites from falling prey to the Canaanites’ sinful corruption and idolatry.

In fact, God even promises to destroy the Israelites themselves if they follow in the footsteps of the idolatrous Canaanites. Thus, these killings are motivated solely by the unrepentant sin of the heathens in the land—something only God himself is ﬁt to judge. They were not killed because of their nationality or race.

Third, it is important to note a distinction in the text that the overarching command in the conquest of Canaan is to “drive out” the inhabitants and clear the land—not necessarily to kill everyone from the start. The text therefore continually and repeatedly states that the Canaanites will not be exterminated in the sense that the Israelites are to kill every single man, woman, and child in Canaan. Rather, it states they are to be “driven out.”

Hence, it is possible that the commands to kill the inhabitants who, though warned, refused to leave.

(This has a very familiar ring to it. Haven’t we seen something similar to this in the news lately? Hmmmm!)

Admittedly, this is a complex and difficult issue given the horrors of genocide enacted against entire nations and people groups in the modern world. But once again, it is important to remember the distinctions that set these biblical commands apart from modern acts of genocide.

If the God of the Bible exists, then God alone has the authority to issue these speciﬁc, limited commands for humans to act as agents of his judgment against sinful, deserving peoples.

Because God alone has this authority, then it is reasonable to conclude that any genocidal commands do not violate any sense of goodness or moral perfection attributable to God.

From Where I Stand

If the purpose of Lewis’s chapter was to discredit atheist Dan Barker, then he has failed miserably.

“If you claim to be a good person, then this book (the bible) should embarrass you and disgust you.” Dan Barker

Lewis’s shameless attempt to let Yahweh off the hook for genocide also fails. It’s important to note here, that if people start with the belief that God is perfectly good then any evidence to the contrary must to be ignored or justified so the belief can be maintained. If their belief in a perfectly good god is questioned or shown to not be true or, better yet, points to the reality that Yahweh doesn’t actually exist, then christians find themselves on sinking ground.

So, if Barker’s statement is correct, what are the ramifications? Are christians not good people? Certainly, that can’t be true. Churches are mostly filled with good people who are deeply troubled by the divine violence found in the bible. So, how do good christians (who are not theologians) reconcile their belief on one hand that God is good with the incidents of divine violence on the other? While researching this project I discovered many christian websites that address these concerns. Let’s call them the “gatekeepers” whose job it is to defend the character of God and mollify the discomfort of believers. How they attempt to accomplish this task will be the topic of the next blog. Suffice to say here that their arguments range from “genocide never actually happened” to “the Canaanites deserved to be destroyed.” It promises to be interesting!

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum

19 May, 2024

Blog

How Antebellum Pastors used the Bible to Defend Slavery

The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures.

Richard Furman

Unless it can be shown that slavery is a sin… the dispute is ended.

Thornton Stringfellow

A conversation about Slavery (part 2)

This is part 2 of an imaginary conversation I had in my head with Answering the Music Man author Steven Lewis. I have never corresponded with him but have incorporated his ideas from his chapter.

Mt. Toll Productions and Steven Lewis PhD

________________________

MTP: In your chapter from Answering you wrote that, “Barker’s condemnation of the modern notion of slavery is admirable and correct”. Why did you say that?

Lewis: Slavery in the modern sense invokes images of kidnapping, bondage, forced servitude, cruelty, rape, racial hierarchy, and over-all dehumanization.

MTP: So, are you saying that slavery in the Antebellum South was morally wrong?

Lewis: Yes, that’s what I’m saying.

MTP: But biblical slavery was not immoral?

Lewis: No! I still maintain that modern chattel slavery was a vastly different social enterprise than the slavery that was permitted in the Bible.

MTP: We covered that in the previous conversation. Let’s move on to the topic of this conversation. Are you aware that Antebellum pastors used the bible to justify slavery.

Lewis: Yes, I am aware of that.

MTP: Have you ever read any of their writings defending slavery?

Lewis: Can’t say that I have.

MTP: Allow me to share one example with you. A Baptist minister named Thornton Stringfellow in his book “Slavery Defended from Scripture,” argued that slavery was consistent with biblical teachings and that abolitionists were misguided in their interpretation of the Bible.

Stringfellow wrote,

“Now, here are laws that authorize the holding of men and women in bondage, and chastising them with the rod, with a severity that terminates in death. And he who believes the Bible to be of divine authority believes these laws were given by the Holy Ghost to Moses. I understand modern abolition sentiments to be sentiments of marked hatred against such laws—to be sentiments which would hold God himself in abhorrence if he were to give such laws his sanction. But he has given them his sanction; therefore, they must be in harmony with his moral character.”

MTP: Was Stringfellow wrong to defend slavery based on the bible? Was his reasoning contrary to the biblical teaching?

Lewis: No, but as you may know, there were also many christians from that era who saw slavery as immoral and used the bible as their justification.

MTP: That’s true. For example, Frederick Douglas used his belief in God to argue against slavery. He condemned the religious slaveowner as hypocritical and not truly christian. And then there was William Wilberforce, an 18^th century antislavery advocate, who helped outlaw slave trade in Briton. He opposed white on black slavery, “not by examining passages on slavery” but rather, on the idea that “racial” slavery was contrary to the value that God places on every human being. Can that idea be supported by scripture?

Lewis: Of course it can! There are plenty of scriptures telling us this.

MTP: I know that’s what christians like to believe, but it’s not really what we see in the bible, is it?

Lewis: We believe that we were created in the image of God.

MTP: Yeah, and then, according to Genesis, God promptly destroyed the entire human race. Wouldn’t that invalidate the concept of that every human being is valuable?

Lewis: No, but…

MTP: Other abolitionists believed that southern christians twisted the bible and deliberately misunderstood what it actually teaches. Would it surprise you that pro-slavery Antebellum pastors made the same comment about abolitionists?

Lewis: It would not surprise me.

MTP: Let me quote a couple of examples for you. Stringfellow wrote this in 1841,

“It is to be hoped, that on a question of such vital importance as this… we shall be seen cleaving to the Bible, and taking all our decisions about this matter, from its inspired pages. With men from the North, I have observed for many years a palpable ignorance of the divine will, in reference to the institution of slavery. I have seen but a few, who made the Bible their study, that had obtained a knowledge of what it did reveal on this subject.”

Lewis: Interesting!

MTP: He also wrote that…

“We (southern christians) have to put on our armor to suppress a rebellious spirit, engendered by false doctrine, propagated by men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, who teach that the gain of freedom for the slave, is the only proof of godliness in the master.”

MTP: Both sides were saying that their opponents were not good christians. So, who was right, christian abolitionists like Wilberforce or pro-slavery christians like Stringfellow?

Lewis: I am leaning toward Wilberforce, because of his stance that 19^th century slavery was based on racism, which is just one of many reasons why christians oppose evolution. (I actually found this argument on a christian blog)

MTP: Wait a minute, did you actually just blame Darwinism for 18^th and 19^th century slavery?

Lewis: Darwinian evolution can easily be used to suggest that some “races” are more evolved than others.

MTP: So, you’re pointing the finger of blame for slavery at Darwinism? Do you really think that any of the Antebellum christians who supported slavery would ever consider using Evolution as their justification?

Lewis: They believed that blacks were inferior.

MTP: Of course they did. A Presbyterian minister from South Carolina named James Thornwell wrote, “we are profoundly persuaded that the African race in the midst of us can never be elevated in the scale of being. As long as that race, in its comparative degradation, coexists, side by side, with the white, bondage is its normal condition.”

Lewis: Like I said, they believed that blacks were inferior.

MTP: Yes, but it was not based on Darwinism. First off, when antislavery advocate Richard Furman wrote his famous letter to the Governor of South Carolina in defense of slavery in 1822, Darwin would have been 13 years old. The Origin of Species was published 37 years later in 1859. Blaming 18^th and 19^th century slavery on Darwinism and evolution is a bit of stretch. It feels like a lame attempt to retrospectively switch the blame for slavery away from the bible where it belongs. The fact is that none of the antebellum pastors who supported slavery did so based on arguments of evolution. All of them, without exception, supported slavery based on the bible. So, back to the question. Which side was right? The Antebellum christians or the northern anti-slavery Christians? Both sides used the bible as their justification. One of them had to be wrong.

Lewis: That’s a tough question. Who do you think is right?

MTP: Neither of them.

Lewis: How can that be?

MTP: For me, the issue isn’t whether they are pro-slavery or anti-slavery. What makes them both wrong is that they both based their stance on the bible. Secularists have longed maintained that anything you want to believe, you can find support for it in the bible. But, if I had to choose which side actually had a biblical basis for their argument, I would have to say that the Antebellum pastors did. Their theology was better. The bible does not condemn slavery. It’s that simple.

Springwell says,

“This position is impregnable, unless it can be shown that slavery is a sin. Holy Scripture… is an authoritative testimony of God, and not a speculation. The question, then, is brought within a narrow compass: Do the Scriptures directly or indirectly condemn slavery as a sin? If they do not, the dispute is ended, for the Church, without forfeiting her character, dares not go beyond them.”

MTP: Wilberforce might not have examined passages on slavery to base his argument, but the antebellum christians certainly did. And I quote, “the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.” Were they wrong?

Lewis: No, but…

MTP: The point is that they found no scripture that condemned slavery as a sin. Right?

Lewis: That’s true, they did not. But…

MTP: So, is slavery a sin?

Lewis: (Silence)

MTP: Let me make a comparison. Is homosexuality a sin?

Lewis: Yes.

MTP: How do we know that?

Lewis: The bible clearly say that it is.

MTP: Leviticus 18:22?

Lewis: Yes, and others.

MTP: About six others, I believe. Can you quote any of those verses for me?

Lewis: Not verbatim, but the bible says that homosexuality is an abomination.

MTP: Right! And based on those 6 or 7 verses you believe that homosexuality is a sin, right?

Lewis: Yes! That’s what the bible teaches.

MTP: According to Strong’s concordance there are 75 references to the word “slave or slaves” in the bible; 25 of them occur in the New Testament. And yet, not a single one of them condemns slavery as immoral. Do you know of a scripture that says slavery is immoral?

Lewis: No but…

MTP: So, wouldn’t that make Antebellum christian slaveholders correct in their argument?

Lewis: Not necessarily.

Thus, sayeth the Lord…

MTP: So, let’s imagine for a second that Mosaic law had said that slavery was an abomination? Do you think that might have prevented Antebellum slavery? Stringfellow wrote that “Christians should produce a ‘thus saith the Lord’ both for what they condemn as sinful, and for what they approve as lawful, in the sight of Heaven.” What if there were verses in the bible that said something like this?

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high. Thus, sayeth the Lord, “you must not enslave others as you have been enslaved. It is an abomination.”

Thus, sayeth the Lord, “Do not take for yourselves slaves of any kind, neither of fellow Israelites nor foreigners residing among you. Pay them their wages daily because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise, they may cry to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.”

Lewis: But the bible doesn’t say that.

MTP: That’s exactly the point. This is why Antebellum pastors were able to use the bible to defend slavery. That’s a logical conclusion, don’t you think?

Lewis: Yes, but…

MTP: In your article you quoted atheist Michael Shermer. You remember that, right?

Lewis: Yes.

MTP: Shermer says, “Imagine how different the history of humanity might have been had Yahweh not neglected to mention that people should never be treated as a means to someone else’s ends but should be treated as ends in themselves. Would this have been too much to ask from an all-powerful and loving God.” Do you remember how you addressed that?

Lewis: I do!

MTP: You said, and I quote, “It is irresponsible to make any sort of judgment that God should have outlawed slavery in the Bible from the start to save humanity from centuries of what became such a cruel, inhuman enterprise.” Irresponsible? Why did you use that word? Is it considered irresponsible to question the character of God?

Lewis: We believe that God is above reproach and…

MTP: Yeah, yeah… we get it, but still, secularists might say that it would be irresponsible of an all-powerful and loving God to NOT save humanity from centuries of such a cruel, inhuman enterprise.

Lewis: Yeah, but…

MTP: So, I only see two ways of looking at the issue of biblically sanctioned slavery. First, if the god you believe in really is benign, has foreknowledge of all future events and could have prevented centuries of human suffering but chose not to, then we must question the character of such a god. Second, perhaps Barker is correct when he says,

“If the God of the Old Testament were more than a ﬁctional character, he might have been free to rise above the culture of his authors to denounce slavery. Instead, we had to wait millennia to abolish the biblically approved practice on our own, a progress that was hampered by faith in an ancient deity.”

Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do, yet fails to do it, is guilty of sin. James 4:17

Lewis: I’ll be praying for you, Dale.

MTP: That won’t be necessary.

Checkmate!

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum

5 May, 2024

Blog

Dismantling the Myth That Ancient Slavery Wasn’t That Bad.

A Conversation About Slavery

This is an imaginary conversation I had in my head with Answering the Music Man author Steven Lewis. I have never corresponded with him but have incorporated his ideas from his chapter. I also understand evangelical thinking, which allows me to envision a conversation like this. (When in doubt with what he might say in defense of certain issues, I have fill in his reply with “Yes, but… or no, but…” You can decide for yourself what his response might be.)

Mt. Toll Productions and Steven Lewis PhD

MTP: In your chapter of Answering the Music Man, you were responding to atheists who have written that the God of the bible (Yahweh) is immoral and not worthy of praise. Your chapter was entitled “Dan Barker and the Immoral God of the Bible.” Is that right?

Lewis: Yes, that was the title and topic of the chapter.

MTP: I was particularly intrigued by the part of your chapter that involved slavery. Would you mind if we dive a little deeper into what you wrote?

Lewis: That would be okay!

MTP: In your article you say this about slavery in America, and I quote, “The typical American is appalled at the actions of his ancestors in this regard, and, thus, when reading in the Bible where slavery was permitted in ancient Israel under the guidance and laws of God himself, the response is often shock and confusion. However, the error here is a fallacy of equivocation.” What did you mean by “fallacy of equivocation”?

Lewis: Simply speaking, slavery in the Bible was not the same as slavery in nineteenth-century America.

MTP: That’s what you wrote in the book. Is that what you believe?

Lewis: Yes, the bible clearly gave strict restriction on slavery. Biblical laws did more to protect the slaves than the slaveowners; the human dignity of the slave was always protected and preserved.

MTP: Do you really believe that biblical slaveowners always protected the dignity of their slaves?

Lewis: Yes, that’s what we’re told in scripture.

MTP: So, do you consider yourself an expert on ancient slavery?

Lewis: To be honest, not really.

MTP: I’m not either, which is why I decided to do some extra research for this conversation. I found an online article entitled, “Dismantling the Myth That Ancient Slavery Wasn’t That Bad.” I’d like to read some quotes from the article if that’s okay with you.

Lewis: Sure.

MTP: The author writes, “As someone who researches slavery in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially in the Bible, I often hear remarks like, ‘Slavery was totally different back then, right?’ ‘Well, it couldn’t have been that bad.’ ‘Couldn’t slaves buy their freedom?’” I’m hoping that we could agree to defer to this author in order to augment our lack of knowledge on the topic.

Lewis: That would be alright.

MTP: Good! The author continues, “Because these kinds of slavery took place so long ago and weren’t based on modern racism, some people have the impression that they weren’t as harsh or violent. That impression makes room for Christian theologians and philosophers… to argue that ancient slavery was actually beneficial for enslaved people.” That’s kind of what you said in your piece, right? That biblical slavery was beneficial for slaves? Is it possible that you were wrong?

Lewis: Maybe. Like I said, I’m not an expert on ancient forms of slavery, but I know what the bible tells us.

MTP: I’m sure you do, but if I may continue. The author writes that, in her work she encounters three myths about ancient slavery that I’d like to share with you.

Lewis: Okay.

Myth #1: “There is only one kind of ‘biblical slavery”

MTP: That’s what you implied in your piece; that’s there was typically only one kind of biblical slavery. You wrote that, and I quote, “biblical slavery was more akin to indentured servitude than forced slavery. It was typically a contract entered into willingly by both slave and owner, usually for the sake of the poor in order to provide for themselves or their families.” Do you still hold that position?

Lewis: That’s what we find in the bible.

MTP: I’m not saying that indentured servitude didn’t exist in ancient Israel. It certainly did, but you implied that indentured servitude was the only kind of slavery in ancient Israel. That is just incorrect. When Israelis bought foreign slaves from surrounding tribes, does it mean the slave did so voluntarily? The owner bought them, and they became his property. The bible uses the word property. Right?

Lewis: Yes, but…

MTP: So, it’s possible that chattel slavery existed in that era as well. If a slave is purchased with money and can be passed on to the next generation as directed in the bible, that would mean he/she is an inheritable possession and not an indentured servant, right? Would you be willing to concede that point.

Lewis: Yeah, but…

Myth #2: “Ancient slavery was not as cruel”

MTP: Let’s move on to myth #2. That’s what you believe, right? “The laws did more to protect the slaves than the slaveowners; the human dignity of the slave was always protected and preserved.” That’s what you wrote, right?

Lewis: Yes,

MTP: Do you really believe that?

Lewis: That’s what the bible tells us.

MTP: So, what do you define as cruel? What if a slave is beaten so severely that he/she loses a tooth or an eye, or is beaten to death or near death? Couldn’t that be called cruelty? Atheists, like Barker, would say that this indeed constitutes cruelty. Barker quoted this verse in his book, “If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken;” (and here’s the important part) “for he is his property” Did he misquote Exodus 21?

Lewis: No, but…

MTP: So, are atheists like Barker wrong about the cruelty inherent with slavery, including biblical slavery? Do you still maintain that “the human dignity of the slave was always protected and preserved?”

Lewis: Yes, and yes! There might have been cruel slave owners, but Hebrew laws were given to protect slaves.

Myth #3: “Ancient slavery wasn’t discriminatory.”

MTP: Thanks for clarifying your stance. Now, let’s look at myth #3. Much of your argument was that biblical slavery was not like 19^th century slavery. You wrote that “Barker even points out a racial component to biblical slavery“, in that slaves of other races could be purchased and owned. Barker quotes Lev. 25 as reference. ‘As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. . .. they [non-Jewish sojourners] also may become your property’” Did he misquote Lev. 25.

Lewis: No, but…

MTP: The author explains in more detail what she means by myth #3. “Slavery in the ancient Mediterranean wasn’t based on race or skin color in the same way as the transatlantic slave trade, but this doesn’t mean ancient systems of enslavement weren’t discriminatory. Ancient slavery still depended on categorizing some groups of people as “others,” treating them as though they were wholly different from those who enslaved them.” So, couldn’t Lev. 25 be seen as a form of discriminatory slavery based on a non-Jewish criterion?

Lewis: Yes, but…

MTP: It seems as if your non-expert evaluation of biblical slavery is not as accurate as you had hoped. It doesn’t hold up to historical truth. In addition, you wrote, “A closer look at the context of these laws shows a gradual push away from slavery- not further into it.” But a “gradual push away from slavery” never actually materialized, did it?

Lewis: No, but…

MTP: You might be looking at ancient slavery with rose colored glasses. I see only two ways to look at your stance on slavery. Either you failed to do adequate research on the topic and thus are conveniently misinformed, or you are deliberately misleading your readers with falsehoods. I find it interesting that the inaccuracies in your argument such as your statement that “the human dignity of the slave was always protected and preserved” are obvious to atheists but remain unquestioned by your christian readers. But that’s a topic for another conversation.

Lewis: I look forward to having that conversation.

MTP: Me too, but let’s get back to our discussion of slavery. You wrote that, “Barker’s condemnation of the modern notion of slavery is admirable and correct, even though the slavery permitted and regulated in the Bible is a vastly different social enterprise than what Barker imagines.” We’ve already shown that your view of biblical slavery is historically inaccurate, so how is Barker wrong?

Lewis: As I wrote, the Bible’s descriptions of slavery and slave laws, when taken in the correct social context under which they were given, fail to provide proof of the culpability of the perfectly good God of the Bible. The bible is very clear on that.

MTP: I’m pretty sure it’s not as clear as you think. But is that why you take issue with Barker calling your, (in your words) “perfectly good” God a slave monger.

Lewis: That’s correct. I wrote that there are plenty of good and reasonable alternatives to the “slave monger” view of the God of the Bible.

MTP: I noticed, however, that in your chapter you didn’t actually offer any “reasonable alternatives” to the moniker “slave monger.” Why was that?

Lewis: Obviously, a great deal more could have been said on the issue of slavery but space was limited. The chapter delt with multiple issues, not just slavery.

MTP: Yes, it did. Perhaps, that could be the topic of a future conversation. But for now, let’s look at how you ended your defense of biblical slavery. You said that Yahweh could not be held responsible for slavery. Did I get that right?

Lewis: Yes, slavery in world history cannot be blamed on God. Slavery existed long before God’s law was given to the Israelites, and it existed long after.”

MTP: So, Yahweh is off the hook for the institution of slavery?

Lewis: Yes, that is what I believe.

MTP: Yet there continues to be some criticism by atheists that Yahweh could have and should have prevented chattel slavery in the Antebellum South. You quoted Michael Shermer who said, “Imagine how different the history of humanity might have been had Yahweh not neglected to mention that people should never be treated as a means to someone else’s ends but should be treated as ends in themselves. Would this have been too much to ask from an all-powerful and loving God.” You have a problem with Shermer’s statement, right?

Lewis: Yes, I wrote that it is irresponsible to make any sort of judgment that God should have outlawed slavery in the Bible from the start to save humanity from centuries of what became such a cruel, inhuman enterprise.

MTP: Actually, that will be the topic of our next conversation. Many Antebellum slave owners and their pastors used the bible to justify slavery. I recently wrote a blog about a Baptist pastor named Richard Furman who said that…

The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures.

MTP: I’m curious to find out why you think a perfectly good, just, powerful, and all-knowing Yahweh, could have, but didn’t prevent centuries of cruel, inhuman chattel slavery in the Antebellum South.

Lewis: As I’ve said in my chapter, slavery in world history cannot be blamed on God.

MTP: That’s exactly what I want to talk about. So, until then!

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum

22 Apr, 2024

Blog

How Antebellum Christians Justified Slavery

“The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures.”

Richard Furman, 1822

If it were shown that the Bible authorized, and sanctioned human slavery, no good man would be a Christian.

Thaddeus Stevens, 1850

“While many Christians today view slavery as a grave moral wrong, the reality is that throughout history, some Christians have used the Bible to defend it. For example, in the early 19th century, a Baptist pastor named Richard Furman wrote a letter to a governor arguing that slavery was “in accordance with the designs of Divine Providence.” Christian Educators Academy by Camilla Klein

What many modern-day evangelicals fail to acknowledge is that many religious leaders of that era, particularly in the South, supported slavery and used scripture to justify their beliefs. Four such religious leaders are listed below.

James H. Thornwell, a Presbyterian minister in South Carolina, argued that slavery was “ordained by God” and that it was “in harmony with the spirit of Christianity.”

Thornton Stringfellow, a Baptist minister, in his book “Slavery Defended from Scripture,” argued that slavery was consistent with biblical teachings and that abolitionists were misguided in their interpretation of the Bible.

John C. Calhoun, a prominent politician and slave owner, argued that slavery was a necessary evil and that the enslavement of Africans was a benevolent act that saved them from savagery.

Richard Furman, a Baptist pastor, wrote a letter to his governor arguing that slavery was “in accordance with the designs of Divine Providence.

We will explore the writings of each in future blogs, but for this blog we will look at Richard Furman’s proslavery argument. His 54-hundred-word letter to the Governor of South Caroline can be found here.

[Furman’s argument is very wordy and (as a former schoolteacher) I found it verbose with an inordinate amount of run on sentences. I have gleaned his 5,400 words down to a more manageable 1,000 words and have underlined certain phrases that I believe to be especially pertinent.]

Richard Furman

“Exposition of the Views of the Baptists Relative to the Coloured Population of the United States in Communication to the Governor of South Carolina,” Charleston, 24th December 1822

Sir:

The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.

Had the holding of slaves been a moral evil, it cannot be supposed, that the inspired Apostles, who feared not the faces of men, and were ready to lay down their lives in the cause of their God, would have tolerated it, for a moment, in the Christian Church. But instead, they let the relationship remain untouched, as being lawful and right.

In proving this subject justifiable by Scriptural authority, its morality is also proved; for the Divine Law never sanctions immoral actions.

The Christian golden rule has been urged as an unanswerable argument against holding slaves. But surely this rule is never to be urged against that which the Divine government has established.

Cruelty is certainly inadmissible; but servitude may be consistent with such degrees of happiness as men usually attain in this imperfect state of things.

The Africans brought to America were, in general, slaves by their own consent, before they came from their own country, or fell into the hands of white men.

Much tyranny has been exercised by individuals, as masters over their slaves, and that the religious interests of the latter have been too much neglected by many cannot be denied. But the fullest proof of these facts, will not prove, that the holding men in subjection, as slaves, is a moral evil, and inconsistent with the Christianity.

If the above representation of the Scriptural doctrine, and the manner of obtaining slaves from Africa is just; and if also purchasing them has been the means of saving human life, which there is great reason to believe it has.

If, also, by their (the negro) own confession, which has been made in manifold instances, their condition, when they have come into the hands of humane masters here, has been greatly bettered by the change.

In addition to all other considerations, the translation from their native country to this has been the means of their mental and religious improvement, and so of obtaining salvation, as many of them have joyfully and thankfully confessed.

It appears to be equally clear, that those, who by reasoning on abstract principles… should be particularly careful… that they do not by a perversion of the Scriptural doctrine… invade the domestic and religious peace and rights of our Citizens… and prevent indirectly, the religious improvement of the people they… professed to benefit.

To pious minds it has given pain to hear men, respectable for intelligence and morals, sometimes say, that holding slaves is indeed indefensible, but that to us it is necessary, and must be supported.

It is therefore, firmly believed, that general emancipation to the Negroes in this country, would not… be for their own happiness, as a body, while it would be extremely injurious to the community at large in various ways.

If a man has obtained slaves by purchase, or inheritance, and the holding of them as such is justifiable by the law of God; why should he be required to liberate them?

Should, however, a time arrive, when the Africans in our country might be found qualified to enjoy freedom; and, when they might obtain it in a manner consistent with the interest and peace of the community at large, the Convention would be happy in seeing them free:

Finally, for their good, if they embrace his salvation, humble themselves before him, learn righteousness, and submit to his holy will. To have them brought to this happy state is the great object of Christian benevolence, and of Christian piety.

The idea that the Bible’s teaching the doctrine of emancipation as necessary, tends to make servants insubordinate to proper authority.

In is true, that a considerable number of those (negroes) who were found guilty and executed, laid claim to a religious character; yet several of these were grossly immoral, and, in general, they were members of an irregular body, which called itself the African Church, and had intimate connection… with a similar body of men in a Northern City, among whom the supposed right to emancipation is strenuously advocated.

The result of this inquiry and reasoning, on the subject of slavery, brings us… to the following conclusions: That the holding of slaves is justifiable by the doctrine and example contained in Holy writ; and is, therefore consistent with Christian uprightness, both in sentiment and conduct.

That slavery, when tempered with humanity and justice, is a state of tolerable happiness; equal, if not superior, to that which many poor enjoy in countries reputed free.

That a master has a scriptural right to govern his slaves so as to keep them in subjection; to demand and receive from them a reasonable service; and to correct them for the neglect of duty, for their vices and transgressions; but that to impose on them unreasonable, rigorous services, or to inflict on them cruel punishment, he has neither a scriptural nor a moral right.

That it is the positive duty of servants to reverence their master, to be obedient, industrious, faithful to him, and careful of his interests; and without being so, they can neither be the faithful servants of God, nor be held as regular members of the Christian Church.

Claims to freedom as a right… would be unjust; and all attempts to obtain in by violence and fraud would be wicked.

It is, also, believed to be a just conclusion, that the interest and security of the state would be promoted, by allowing considerable religious privileges to this class, by attaching them, from principles of gratitude and love to the interests of their masters and the state; and thus, rendering their fidelity firm and constant.

While on the other hand, (to emancipate them), as some have supposed necessary… would be felt as oppressive, (it would) … sour and alienate their minds from their masters and the public, and to make them vulnerable to temptation.

All which is, with deference, submitted to the consideration of your Excellency.

There you have it. Make your own decision.

Coming next:

Many evangelicals (like Lewis) argue that slavery and slave laws found in the bible, do nothing to contradict their belief in a perfectly good God. They are quick to exonerate their God from any culpability for slavery as experienced in 18th and 19th century America. This leaves us wondering what might have happened if the bible didn’t condone slavery.

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum

16 Apr, 2024

Blog

The Bible and Slavery

“If you claim to be a good person, then the bible should embarrass you and disgust you.”

Dan Barker

In the previous blog we examined Steven Lewis’s justification for God’s jealousy in the bible. In this blog we’ll look at his justification for slavery in the bible and in the next blog we’ll explore why Lewis’s argument entirely misses the point atheists are making about God and slavery.

The Bible and Slavery

Lewis begins,

“Another prominent criticism of the God of the Bible among the atheistic literature is that of his passive permission of (or active participation in) slavery. (This)… issue is signiﬁcant for believers. Does the God of the Bible condone slavery? If so, does this represent a moral failure—or even an act of evil—on the part of God?”

What atheists say,

“The spectacularly unreﬂective authors of the Bible had absolutely no problem with slavery whatsoever, as long as the slave owner didn’t actually beat his slave blind and toothless. That was going just too far, although beating a slave to death was perfectly ﬁne as long as the slave survived for a day or two after the beating. Then, when the slave died, it was appropriate to feel sorry for the unfortunate slave owner because it was, he who had suffered a loss.” Michael Shermer

What the bible says,

And if a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand he shall be punished. If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property. (Exodus 21:20-21).

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly. (Leviticus 25)

Lewis continues,

Before considering this question, one must carefully deﬁne the terms being used, and once again, this requires a look at the context of the biblical laws involving slavery.

Context of biblical laws? Here’s what Barker has to say about that.

Barker: I think what they really mean by context is “my theology.” Their lives are devoted to their God, and naturally they rush to his defense. They want me to see God the way they do, so that I might accept his atrocities as a small part of a greater holy and righteous plan.”

Lewis continues,

The typical American is appalled at the actions of his ancestors in this regard, and, thus, when reading in the Bible where slavery was permitted in ancient Israel under the guidance and laws of God himself, the response is often shock and confusion. However, the error here is a fallacy of equivocation.

Let’s see what “fallacy of equivocation” means and if it actually applies to Lewis’s argument.

“A fallacy of equivocation occurs when a key term or phrase in an argument is used in an ambiguous way, with one meaning in one portion of the argument and then another meaning in another portion of the argument.” Texas State, Dept. of Philosophy

The TSU site gives examples for “fallacies of equivocation.” Here are two. The first one is often used by christian apologists (like Lewis) as an argument for the existence of God.

“The laws imply lawgivers. There are laws in nature. Therefore, there must be a cosmic lawgiver.”

The second one is a bit more humorous, but you’ll get the idea.

God: “One million years to me is a second.”
Man: “What about one million dollars, my Lord?”
God: “A penny.”
Man: “May my Lord give me a penny?”
God: “No problem, just a second.”

Lewis doesn’t actually state what he’s talking about when he says, “the error here is a fallacy of equivocation.” So, we’ll have to infer that according to him the following statement is a fallacy of equivocation.

“Slavery as existed in America was bad, therefore all slavery is bad, therefore slavery in ancient Israel was bad.”

For Lewis this is flawed thinking. Let’s see if his argument can support his claim of fallacy of equivocation.

Lewis writes,

Simply speaking, slavery in the Bible is not the same as slavery in nineteenth-century America. A few distinctions are important so that one can more clearly see the full picture of what is being discussed in the Bible when it speaks of slaves.

So, according to Lewis we don’t have a “full picture of slavery.” Undoubtedly, he is going to enlighten us about the differences between modern slavery and biblical slavery.

He writes,

First, biblical slavery was more akin to indentured servitude than forced slavery. It was typically a contract entered into willingly by both slave and owner, usually for the sake of the poor in order to provide for themselves or their families.

Second, kidnapping and the forced servitude of captives were expressly forbidden as capital crimes, which would outlaw the entire nineteenth-century slave trade outright.

Third, slavery came to a natural end. A number of conditions could occur that would mandate a slaveowner to free his slaves:

Furthermore, the laws did more to protect the slaves than the slaveowners; the human dignity of the slave is always protected and preserved.

Lewis’s interpretation of biblical slavery is indeed intriguing, but is it valid? We will examine each one separately.

First, indentured servitude did indeed occur in ancient times. However, it should be noted that this option of indentured servitude (as found in the Old Testament) was not as common as Lewis would like us to believe and only applied to fellow Hebrews and certainly not to foreign slaves.

The second argument comes from Exodus 21, which says, “And he who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall be put to death.” However, Lewis is doing a bit of cherry picking in this argument. He fails to quote the very next verse which says, “And he who curses his father or mother shall surely be put to death.”

For the record there is a plethora of capital offenses in the Old Testament including…

Adultery
Working on the sabbath
Homosexuality
Being a wizard
Blasphemy

By the way, it should be noted that this “kidnapping law” only applied to kidnapping other Hebrews. It certainly did not apply to taking captives from other tribes, as we see when the Israelite warriors were told to kill every man woman and boy child of the Canaanites, but they could take the virgin girls for themselves. (We’ll tackle this disturbing story in an upcoming blog.)

Third point says that there are some conditions that allowed slaves to be set free. So, what are those conditions? These examples come from Exodus 21.

If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve you for six years; but on the seventh he shall go out as a free man without payment. If he comes alone, he shall go out alone; is he is the husband of a wife, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall go out alone.

And if a man sells his daughter as a female slave, she is not to go free as the male slaves do. If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed.

And if a man strikes the eye of his male or female slave, and destroys it, he shall let him go free on account of his eye. And if he knocks out a tooth of his male or female slave, he shall let him go free on the account of his tooth.

Notice again that these conditions only applied to Hebrew slaves. Non-Hebrew slaves became property for life and could be bequeathed to the slave owner’s children.

Lewis continues,

Furthermore, the laws did more to protect the slaves than the slaveowners; the human dignity of the slave is always protected and preserved.

An online article entitled “Dismantling the myth that ancient slavery wasn’t that bad” sheds a different light on Lewis’s assertion that the human dignity of slaves was always protected.

Because these kinds of slavery took place so long ago and weren’t based on modern racism, some people have the impression that they weren’t as harsh or violent. That impression makes room for… Christian theologians to argue that ancient slavery was actually beneficial for enslaved people.

Let’s be very clear, it was not.

Lewis continues,

Perhaps God knew that such a blanket condemnation of slavery would not be heeded, and so he chose to construct his laws more as a gradual step away from slavery and toward human dignity and equality rather than an ineffective or destructive condemnation from the start. In any case, slavery in world history cannot be blamed on God.

I’ve decided to break the above paragraph into chunks so we can evaluate each part separately.

Perhaps God knew that such a blanket condemnation of slavery would not be heeded…

This argument makes no sense. When has the God of the bible ever not given a command because it might not be heeded? God’s commands were always to be heeded or people started dying.

…and so he chose to construct his laws more as a gradual step away from slavery and toward human dignity and equality rather than an ineffective or destructive condemnation from the start.

When in the history of mankind has there ever been “human dignity and equality” for slaves? Also, is Lewis actually arguing that his God was hoping that slavery would gradually stop on its own? But as we know, it didn’t. Barker writes that we “had to wait millennia to abolish the biblically approved practice on our own, a progress that was hampered by faith in an ancient slave monger deity.”

God conveniently remains blameless.

Uninfluenced by such an argument Lewis ends his article like this,

In any case, slavery in world history cannot be blamed on God. Slavery existed long before God’s law was given to the Israelites, and it existed long after. Thus, when the Bible’s descriptions of slavery and slave laws are taken in the correct social context under which they were given, a direct contradiction in the existence of the perfectly good God of the Bible fails to materialize.

There you have it. God conveniently remains blameless. But atheists aren’t buying it. In the next blog we’ll explore why.

Coming next:

Lewis argues that biblical slavery was different from slavery in the nineteenth century. However, he neglects to address the fact that many American slave owners were devout christians who used scripture to support slavery. We’ll explore the writings of a Baptist pastor named Richard Furman who wrote a letter to the Governor of South Carolina arguing that slavery was “in accordance with the designs of Divine Providence.”

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum

7 Apr, 2024

Blog

A Jealous God

Dan Barker and the Immoral God of the Bible by Steven Lewis

Answering the Music Man

“If you claim to be a good person, then the bible should embarrass you and disgust you.”

“The God of the Old Testament rarely gets angry when he sees his people doing morally harmful things. The Lord jealous becomes enraged when he sees someone loving a god other than himself.”

Dan Barker

In the previous blog we examined Lewis’s reasoning for justifying the problematic passages in the bible. In the next couple of blogs, we will take a look at some of those problematic passages concerning 1) God’s jealousy, 2) the issue of slavery and 3) God’s genocidal commands in the bible. Hopefully, we can shed some light on how evangelicals (like Lewis) find ways to defend the indefensible.

We’ll start with…

God’s jealousy

The proverb has it that God is a fiercely jealous lover.

What the bible says,

Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name. Ye shall not go after other gods of the people which are around about you. For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you, lest the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee and destroy thee from the face of the earth. Duet. 6:14-15

Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. Exo. 20:5

For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous is a jealous God. Exo. 34.14

God is jealous and the LORD revengeth; the LORD revengeth, and is furious; the LORD will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies. Nahum 1:2

Not sure why Lewis is choosing to ignore these verses, but he maintains (contrary to what the bible says) that the God he believes in is incapable of experiencing jealousy.

He writes,

When speaking of a perfect and eternal God, Barker’s deﬁnition of jealousy makes little sense. Humans often want things for selﬁsh reasons, or even from a sense of loss or incompleteness when a desired object is absent, but an inﬁnite being lacking nothing would be wholly incapable of such desires.

This philosophy (borrowed from Aquinas) says that since God is necessarily perfect, nothing in the created universe can be beneficial for God. The god of the bible is perfectly complete and requires nothing other than itself. Therefore, since God lacks nothing, God can’t be jealous and can’t experience envy. It might be good philosophy, but it’s certainly not the god we find in the bible.

Not all believers agree with Lewis’s conclusion that God cannot experience jealousy. While researching this topic I found another christian blogger who explains God’s jealousy like this.

“Holy jealousy is central to the fundamental essence of who God is. Jealousy is at the core of God’s identity as God. Jealousy is that defining characteristic or personality trait that makes God God. Whatever other reasons you may find in Scripture for worshiping and serving and loving God alone… paramount among them all is the fact that our God burns with jealousy for the undivided allegiance and affection of his people.”

For the record, this is just plain cringe worthy! Is this believer really saying that jealousy “for the undivided allegiance and affection of his people” is the defining characteristic of God? What ever happened to Love being the defining trait of God?

So, how does Lewis justify his claim that the God he believes in is incapable of jealousy? He continues,

If the Bible is right, then God’s jealousy is never out of some selﬁsh desire or need for self-fulﬁllment or divine ego-stroking, but actually out of God’s own love for the good of the those for whom he is jealous. If God is the perfect, eternal creator that the Bible portrays, then he is by nature the ultimate source of good in all that exists, and, thus, all people who reject God in favor of false alternatives are only harming themselves.

Atheists would object the statement that “God is by nature the ultimate source of good”. It’s just another idea that Lewis proposes without any evidence to support it. Atheists would also object to Lewis’s conclusion that anyone who rejects God does so based on “false alternatives”. Many former evangelicals who “rejected God”, did so because they began to realize that what they were being taught in church wasn’t actually true.

Barker writes,

When I learned that Christianity is not true, I had to decide: “Do I want God, or do I want truth?” You can’t have both.

Lewis continues his defense,

Humans often want things for selﬁsh reasons, or even from a sense of loss or incompleteness when a desired object is absent, but an inﬁnite being lacking nothing would be wholly incapable of such desires. If God exists as he is portrayed in the Bible, one must pause to consider whether there is any other reasonable sense in which jealousy could be ascribed to God.

So, how is God “portrayed in the bible”? Let’s “pause to consider” this verse from Duet. 4.

For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. If you make any kind of idol, you will arouse his anger and you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed. The LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive.

If the bible clearly says that God is a jealous God, and other believers say that jealousy is God’s defining trait, how does Lewis justify his claim that God, by nature, is incapable of jealousy?

Lewis continues,

While the word “jealousy” in its typical connotation seems more of a ﬂawed character trait than something to be proudly proclaimed of a good and honorable being (such as God), this is not the only sense in which this word is used. Instead of leaping to conclusions that jealousy is always evil or bad, one must consider in what sense the word is being applied to God.

Here we go again. According to the authors of “Answering”, christians have a different view of what constitutes faith and now we’re told that they also hold a different view of jealousy. How convenient.

The question then becomes, “Is God described as ‘jealous’ because he desires something that is rightfully his, or because he is forcing admiration on something that belongs to another?” The context of the Bible makes it clear that the answer is the former. God’s jealousy is for Israel to remain devoted and committed to him as the ultimate and perfect source of all that is good.

Is Lewis actually saying that the Israelites rightfully belong to God? Like a woman rightfully belongs to her husband? This is definitely a warning sign of a jealous lover. Can you imagine a husband saying something like this to his wife on their wedding day?

“I love you so much that I want the very best for you and I know that I am the best husband for you. Since you belong to me, if you ever leave me for another man, you will not be happy with him, so I must kill you to save you from yourself, because I love you so much.”

Lewis can put whatever spin he wants on the definition of “jealousy”, but the bible clearly shows a god who is a controlling lover. “You belong to me and must be devoted to me and only me, or I’ll destroy you”.

Conclusion

Lewis’s argument that a perfect God is incapable of jealousy fails here because the bible clearly states that God is jealous. Faced with this inconvenient truth, Lewis then attempts to convince us that there are different kinds of jealousy. “Okay, the bible may say that God is jealous, but it’s a “holy” jealousy. God only wanted what was best for the Israelites.” But even that argument fails. The bible describes God’s jealousy as a consuming fire which is ready to consume the Israelites if they worship other gods. We are told that they will arouse God’s anger and will certainly be destroyed. This view of a jealous God does not match Lewis’s portrayal of a benevolent deity who is incapable of jealousy. Lewis is attempting to justify the problematic passages in the bible. And therein lies the problem.

Let’s be perfectly clear…

Even though I am arguing that the deity of the bible is portrayed (in the bible) as a jealous God, I am not saying that the God of the bible actually exists. I do not believe in God. And no, Ferrer it is not necessary for me to prove that God doesn’t exist, I can simply say that I don’t believe in the god of christianity nor, for that matter, the gods of any other religion.

As I wrote in the previous blog, when Barker and other atheists make their statements regarding the nefarious character of God, they are not saying that God actually exists. They are simply trying to point out that those who call themselves believers fail to realize that the deity of the bible is portrayed (in the bible itself) as a nefarious character.

Final word:

Barker writes,

“If you claim to be a good person, then the bible should embarrass you and disgust you.”

So, what if the problematic passages in the bible don’t embarrass christians? Are they not “good” people? Certainly, that can’t be the case. The problem is not with their character. The problem is with their unquestioned devotion to their beliefs. When believers are taught to justify (rather than face) the problematic passages in the bible, it can lead to a skewed sense of morality. We’ll see more of this justification from Lewis in the next several blogs.

Coming Next:

We will examine what the bible has to say about slavery. Wait until you see how Lewis spins that one! Here’s a preview.

“Furthermore, the (Hebrew) laws did more to protect the slaves than the slaveowners; the human dignity of the slave was always protected and preserved.”

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum

31 Mar, 2024

Blog

Dan Barker and the Immoral God of the Bible

Steve Lewis

Steven Lewis has an MA in Apologetics and a PhD in Philosophy of Religion from Southern Evangelical Seminary. His passion is in learning and teaching about God—particularly in the field of Christian Apologetics with a focus on the Problem of Evil.

What theists lack in logic (or in this case morality) they make up for in length.

Barker’s quote contains 17 words. Lewis’s reply contains a whopping 8,800 words.

_____________________________________________

If you claim to be a good person, then the bible should embarrass you and disgust you.

Dan Barker

Lewis begins his rebuttal like this,

A common jab often lobbed at the God of Christianity is that of the alleged immorality of the Bible. The purpose of such arguments, of course, is not to prove that God does not exist, or even that the Bible is false, but rather to show that God (as portrayed in the Bible) is not the holy, loving, forgiving Father believers assume, but he is instead evil, hateful, petty, prideful, vindictive, and a host of other horrifying descriptors.

This is what atheists have to say about the god of the bible.

Dawkins: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all ﬁction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, ﬁlicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Barker: God is “pyromaniacal, angry, merciless, curse hurling, vaccicidal, aborticidal, cannibalistic, and slavemongering. The God of the Old Testament destroyed whole civilizations. He drowned the entire population of the planet. He is not the only bad egg in literature, but he is the most unpleasant character in all ﬁction.”

Shermer: “The Bible is one of the most immoral works in all literature.”

Mackie: “The Old Testament itself reports many atrocities as having been not merely approved but positively demanded by God and his spokesmen.”

Lewis responds,

Before engaging and rebutting such claims, however, one must ﬁrst consider the underlying assumptions and methodology that lead to these conclusions in the ﬁrst place. However, this is not how believers typically go about establishing the “moral worth” of the Bible.

We have seen this argument in other examinations of the authors of Answering the Music Man. Ferrer gave us a different definition for atheism, Keltz, a different view of faith, and now Lewis is telling us that christians have a different way of viewing the “moral worth” of the bible. What a surprise! This should be interesting!

Lewis uses a large bulk of his 8,800 words building his case against Barker. It’s important to note here that Lewis is not actually addressing atheists in his rebuttal. His audience are believers who might be influenced by Barker’s accusations of a nefarious god.

He first asks his readers to presume the actual existence of God. Second, he states that God is perfectly good and moral. Third he insists that the bible (being God’s revelation to mankind) is the basis for all moral authority. After proposing these three ideas (without any supporting evidence) he is able to justify any atrocity found in the bible based on the “contextual justiﬁcations” within the bible.

In this blog we’ll look at Lewis’s reasoning for justifying the disturbing passages in the bible and in the next blog we’ll look at the actual problematic passages.

The consideration of the existence of God.

Lewis writes,

The focus of this chapter (in Answering the Music Man) is not whether or not God exists, but whether the God of the Bible is guilty of Barker’s accusations of immorality. If the context of Barker’s claims is that God is ﬁction, then discussing “God’s immorality” is nothing more than meaningless conjecture with no basis in reality. The proper context of the Bible includes the fact that God exists as creator and sustainer of the universe. Thus, in order to make any meaningful case at all, Barker must presume that the God of the Bible truly does exist.

Sorry Lewis, God’s existence is not a fact. In addition, Barker and other atheists are simply saying that those who call themselves believers should realize that the deity of the bible is a nefarious character and perhaps, unworthy of being worshiped.

But as we have seen, Barker is not writing to like-minded atheists- he is writing to theists who believe that God exists. Thus, in order to make any meaningful case at all, Barker must presume that the God of the Bible truly does exist (even if just for the sake of argument) and then attempt to demonstrate a contradiction given that assumption. This is the only reasonable option for Barker if he wishes to avoid self-defeating circularity or pointless conjecture.

It’s a curious conjecture on Lewis’s part to say that if Barker doesn’t acknowledge the existence of God, his comments calling the god of the bible nefarious are “meaningless with no basis in reality”. (Although much of what Lewis says also has no basis in reality.) Yet, if Barker were to acknowledge the existence of God, his comments now become “self-defeating” and “pointless”. Talk about circularity!

According to Lewis, Barker has failed to consider…

God’s moral goodness and moral perfection.

Lewis: Furthermore, another problem for Barker is that of the nature of God. Even if Barker… presumes God’s existence, he still must consider God’s nature as described in the Bible in order to fairly and accurately evaluate God’s acts and commands.

So, what is God’s nature as described in the bible?

For the purposes of this chapter, I will simply assume that God is the inﬁnite, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good creator and sustainer of the universe that the Bible claims him to be. God is also said to be righteous, benevolent, loving, merciful, longsuffering, and so on. This view is consistent both with the biblical view of God and with over two millennia of theological scholarship, so it seems to be a fair place to start when evaluating the sort of being Barker is referencing.

It’s obvious that Lewis does not understand that atheists have very little regard for the “biblical view of God” or in “two millennia of theological scholarship”. Atheists would ask, “First, how do we know God actually exists, and second, how do we know that God is perfectly good, righteous, benevolent, loving, merciful, and longsuffering?”

Barker writes,

“Why do believers assume that a higher power is necessarily a more moral power? How do they know it is not the other way around?”

Lewis does not accept that Barker’s personal sense of morality is a valid way to judge the problematic passages in the bible. According to Lewis, Barker is refusing to accept…

The moral authority of the bible.

Lewis: A better approach is to begin… by ﬁrst establishing (or assuming for the sake of argument) the basic truth claims of theism as well as the historicity and reliability of the Bible.

Let’s not forget that the “basic truth claims of theism” and the “reliability of the bible” are very much in question here. Obviously, Lewis is not attempting to better Barker in a debate. In a face-to-face debate with an atheist, Lewis would never be able to start with such a statement without it being immediately questioned. This logic would never convince an atheist, but of course, atheists are not Lewis’s audience.

Lewis writes,

The Bible is understood as the authoritative word of God, and, hence, its own “moral worth” should be evaluated by its own standard of morality. In other words, rather than evaluating ancient documents according to modern moral sensibilities, a better way to evaluate the truth of the Bible is by starting with the Bible itself and working backwards from there.

By “modern moral sensibilities” does he mean that civilization no longer accepts slavery or genocide as morally acceptable? According to Lewis, rather than relying on our own morality, we should get our morality from the bible.

Lewis: But if Barker draws his morality only from his own internal perceptions, then he has lost his case against God. However, Barker believes his own morality is superior to God’s.

If the god of the bible supports slavery and demands genocide then, YES, Barker’s morality IS superior.

Lewis: We must consider the nature of God. If God is in fact the perfect creator of humanity and morality, Therefore, God would always by necessity be the greater moral authority.

So, if we presume 1) that God actually exists, 2) that God is perfectly good, 3) that the bible is the authoritative word of God, and 4) the bible is the highest moral authority, then we now have the means to justify any problematic passages in the bible because of the…

Contextual justiﬁcations within the Bible.

Barker rejects centuries of biblical and theological scholarship that help us to understand and contextualize many of the problematic passages that constitute his arguments. Given this understanding of the God of Bible, the task of evaluating difﬁcult passages must be taken from the context of the whole, including these claims… about God being righteous, benevolent, loving, merciful, longsuffering.

Indeed, there are (many) problematic passages in the bible, but according to Lewis there exists “centuries of biblical and theological scholarship” that helps christians to “understand” (i.e. justify) those morally problematic passages.

The bible says that God is righteous, benevolent, loving, merciful, longsuffering. Atheists, who do not accept the reliability of the bible, would also not accept what the bible says about God’s attributes.

Lewis: The central thesis for Barker is one of morality — that God somehow fails to live up to basic moral sensibilities that are obvious to most humans.

Yes!! Exactly!

Lewis: The focus here is in what sense God can be said to be a “moral being” beholden to the moral principles Barker appeals for his arguments. For Barker, God must answer to his apparent violations of Barker’s moral code, but where does Barker get his moral code?

As we have already seen above, Barker goes to great lengths to deny any need for external authority when it comes to determining morality. But if Barker draws his morality only from his own internal perceptions, then he has lost his case against God.

We must consider the nature of God. If God is in fact the perfect creator of humanity and morality, then the very internal sense of morality that Barker perceives in his own mind ultimately has its origin in God’s own nature and goodness. Therefore, God would always by necessity be the greater moral authority.”

Lewis’s argument here is that Barker’s morality “ultimately comes from God. This reasoning comes from Aquinas’s Five Ways to Prove God. The fourth proof “deduces that there exists some most-good being which causes goodness in all else, and this everyone understands to be God.”

Lewis is implying that Barker actually gets his “goodness” and “morality” from God by default. Having been an evangelical myself, I can tell you that Lewis simply cannot fathom that an atheist can be good or moral without God. But as many secularists will tell you, it is not only possible, it is likely that secularists have a more developed sense of morality than do believers. (See Zuckerman’s article Atheism, Secularity and Well Being for more on this.)

Lewis’s article is a prime example that many believers mistakenly rely on the bible to provide them with their morality, and therefore, quite often exhibit a skewed sense of morality, as we shall see next in the next blog.

Coming next:

Even when the actions of the god of the bible are nefariously atrocious, christians can justify them because the bible (and Lewis) tell us that God is benevolent, loving and merciful. Therefore, anything done in the name of God (including slavery, misogyny, homophobia and genocide) can also be viewed as acts of benevolence, love and mercy. If you think the problematic passages in the bible are disturbing, wait until you read how christians justify them.

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum

25 Mar, 2024

Blog

Thomas Aquinas

“If anything is found in the words of the philosophers that is contrary to the faith, this is not philosophy but rather an abuse of philosophy, due to a failure of reason” Thomas Aquinas

__________________________

If there is anything that is obvious, it is that the existence of God is not obvious. Dan Barker

Many of the contributors of the book “Answering the Music Man” have a PhD in “philosophy of religion” and as a result quote Thomas Aquinas ad nauseum as their proof that renown atheist Dan Barker is in error when he declares his non-belief in their god. While doing research for my last several blogs, I decided to find out for myself what Thomas Aquinas had written. What I learned was very enlightening.

Before we get started with the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274) let me first say that I understand that as an intellect and philosopher he was formidable. He is still considered the greatest figure of thirteenth-century Europe. His works are still read, studied and written about to this day. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says this about Aquinas.

Over a mere two decades of literary activity, Aquinas left behind more than eight million words (eight times more than has survived, for instance, from Aristotle). It is a measure of Aquinas’s immediate and lasting influence that—quite unlike the situation with other medieval philosophers—essentially everything he wrote has survived and has been lovingly edited and translated into English and many other modern languages.

Having only read several hundred of his 8 million words it would be foolish of me to attempt to discredit Aquinas’s genius. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest thinkers of all time and is still revered as one of the great philosophers, in the same league as Aristotle and Plato.

My issues with Aquinas have nothing to do with his great intellect. My issue is that modern day theologians use his 900-year-old writings to justify evangelical Christianity. What became clear was that Aquinas was a product of his time, as we all are. The sciences he pondered on were philosophy and theology. In the thirteenth century, he knew nothing about the (as yet) undiscovered sciences that have taught us much about the world we live in.

What Aquinas didn’t know.

He knew nothing about any of the following…

the Gutenberg Bible (1440)
the western hemisphere (1492)
that the planets revolved around the sun (1500s)
the King James Bible (1611)
the speed of light (1676)
the science of gravity (1687)
the existence of dinosaurs (early 1800s)
atoms and molecules (1827)
germs and bacteria (1860)
the elements and the periodic table (1869)
radio and sound waves (1880s)
the possibility of flight (early 1900s)
the uses of microwaves rather than flames to heat our food (1945)

This list could go on and on. I understand that none of this means that Aquinas is automatically wrong in his observations. I’m simply saying that his complete ignorance of science, as we know it today, and the religious culture of his day, might have limited him to some inaccurate conclusions about the existence of God. If Aquinas were alive today, with his great intellect, and knowing what we know now, it seems possible that he might have come to different conclusions about the existence of God, just as atheist Dan Barker did.

Aquinas starts with the proposition that God exists. How could he come to any other conclusion? Questioning the existence of God in the 13^th century would have been a very dangerous undertaking. The existence of God was not something that he set out to prove as is the case with modern sciences. Had he focused on the study of theology (as if it were a real science), he would have started with the hypothesis that God exists and then tested that hypothesis to see if it is indeed true. I haven’t read all 8 million of Aquinas’s words, but it appears to me that rather than starting with a hypothesis of God’s existence, he started with God’s existence as a given and then set out to justify it.

Aquinas says, “Now the object of the theological virtues is God Himself, Who is the last end of all, as surpassing the knowledge of our reason”

So, when we consider how the authors of Answering the Music Man employ Aquinas’ philosophy to help them defend their religion, it’s hard to ignore that there are gaping holes in their reasoning due in part to Aquinas’s ignorance of the knowledge granted us by modern-day science. We can’t blame Aquinas; he didn’t know what he didn’t know.
However, evangelicals can’t use that excuse. They have the same common knowledge we all do, but they choose to ignore it because it might contradict their religious beliefs.

Five Ways to prove God’s Existence

Aquinas is famous for his Five Ways for proving the Existence of God. Since I had never actually read them for myself, I decided it was time. For a novice like me, I found it very enlightening. If you have never read them, I would encourage it.

After reading Aquinas’s five ways for proving Gods existence, I came to the conclusion that they do not actually prove anything of the sort. They are based solely on philosophy, and I find their conclusion less then convincing. However, theists still use these arguments in debates with atheists so let’s take a look and see if they can stand the test of time.

First way: The Argument of the Unmoved Mover

Summary: In the world, we can see that at least some things are changing. Whatever is changing is being changed by something else. If that by which it is changing is itself changed, then it too is being changed by something else. But this chain cannot be infinitely long, so there must be something that causes change without itself changing. This everyone understands to be God.

So, if A changes B, and B changes C, and C changes D, and D changes E and so on and so forth, the question for philosophers is, what, if anything, changed A? If A starts the change and is unchanged itself then A=God. Therefore, in the words of Aquinas, “this everyone understands to be God.”

I may not have a Ph.D. in Philosophy and I’m certainly not an intellectual elite, (like the authors of Answering the Music Man), but I’m not buying this theory. And that is exactly what it is… a theory… passed off as a presumptive truth.

The next two ways are similar in construction and postulate the concept of “a first cause”. I don’t buy those two either.

Fourth way: The Argument from Degree

Summary: But judging something as being “more” or “less” implies some standard against which it is being judged. For example, in a room full of people of varying heights, at least one must be tallest. Therefore, there is something which is best and most true, and most a being, etc. Aquinas then adds the premise: what is most in a genus is the cause of all else in that genus. From this he deduces that there exists some most-good being which causes goodness in all else, and this everyone understands to be God.

This is proof of the existence of God? Let me see if I understand this reasoning correctly. If we’re considering the intelligence of humans, there has to be someone who is the most intelligent person in the world, such as Einstein in his time, or Oppenheimer in his or Aristotle and Aquinas in theirs. If this is true, then an even more intelligent being has to exist which is at the top of the hierarchy and therefore “this everyone understands to be God.” Like I said before, I don’t have a PhD in philosophy but I’m not buying this!

Fifth way: Argument from Final Cause or Ends

Summary: We see various objects that lack intelligence in the world behaving in regular ways. This cannot be due to chance since then they would not behave with predictable results. So, their behavior must be set. But it cannot be set by themselves since they are non-intelligent and have no notion of how to set behavior. Therefore, their behavior must be set by something else, and by implication something that must be intelligent. This everyone understands to be God.

By objects that lack intelligence, I assume he is talking about animals and possibly plants. If this is true then it seems that Aquinas is trying to explain the concept of what we now call instinct. How does a bird know how to make a nest? How do wasps know how to use either mud other materials to make a wasps’ nest? Some other examples of this phenomenon are,

Beavers building a dam.
Bees creating a beehive and producing honey.
Mother bears nurturing and protecting their young.
Wolves hunting in packs.

The Stanford philosopher who was attempting to explain this concept to a novice like me explains it like this,

The concept of final causes involves the concept of dispositions or “ends”: a specific goal or aim towards which something strives. For example, acorns regularly develop into oak trees but never into sea lions. The oak tree is the “end” towards which the acorn “points,” its disposition, even if it fails to achieve maturity. The aims and goals of intelligent beings is easily explained by the fact that they consciously set those goals for themselves. The implication is that if something has a goal or end towards which it strives, it is either because it is intelligent or because something intelligent is guiding it.

I have five oak trees outside my bedroom window. Maybe I haven’t been paying much attention, but I have yet to see any evidence of arboreal “striving” to propagate. What I have observed, though, is that in autumn, the squirrels in my neighborhood climb the trees, pick the acorns and bury them in the ground for winter. Is the acorn “striving” to be planted in the ground or are the squirrels striving to survive the winter? I fail to see how the conclusion to this is “everyone understands this to be God”.

Maybe everyone in the 13th century, but we know better now, don’t we? At least we should.

If there is anything that is obvious, it is that the existence of God is not obvious. There would be no “Does God Exist?” debates if the question were one of evidence rather than philosophy.

Coming next:

Dan Barker and other renown atheists have come to the conclusion that the God of the bible is a nefarious character. Barker writes, “If you claim to be a good person, then this book (the bible) should embarrass you and disgust you.”

Are theists actually embarrassed by the atrocities found in the Old Testament? And if not, why not? We’ll see, but I will tell you this, I was disgusted by their stance.

References:

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/

The Five Ways of Proving God. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ways_(Aquinas)

From Where I Stand

Dale Crum