I’ve
just got back from a fascinating and at times harrowing week
in Rwanda and Burundi where I took part in a gathering of
‘emerging’ African leaders, organized by Amahoro Africa.
The theme of the conference was ‘The Gospel of Reconciliation’, the
1994 genocide and its aftermath being the inevitable focus for a
conversation that broadly addressed the inadequate response of the
post-colonial church to the humanitarian, social and political crises
that currently afflict East and Southern Africa. We listened to the barely
believable stories of genocide survivors and visited a number of sites
- churches in particular - where defenceless Tutsis had been slaughtered
in their thousands. Even fourteen years after the event it is clear
that beneath a veneer of micro-managed social stability anger, grief
and fear are still intensely felt. The church has
powerful stories
of forgiveness and reconciliation to tell, but in the eyes of many
Rwandans the church was largely ineffectual when it really mattered,
when the frenzied mobs came wielding their machetes to exterminate the cockroaches.
For
background reading I looked at the troublesome Old Testament
accounts of the divinely mandated Canaanite
‘genocide’. To be
reminded that horrors of this nature are part of our sacred
tradition certainly keeps us from moral complacency; and I
rather imagine that there are some complex lessons to be learnt from
the conquest narratives with respect to the witness of the church in
situations of war and conflict today, if we can just get beyond our
understandable moral revulsion. But I want to make a less controversial
suggestion here, which is that we may perhaps make some sense of the
destruction of the peoples of the Land within the frame of a ‘new
creation’ theology.
I
have argued (for example, in Re:
Mission) that the family of Abraham is conceived
from the start as a
‘new creation’, a microcosm, a world-within-a-world, an alternative to
the corrupted macrocosm.
In marked parallel to the original creation of humankind, Abraham
is blessed and told to be fruitful and multiply so that his descendants
will take possession not of the whole earth but of the land that YHWH
will give them. Whatever we make of the conquest as a matter of
history, theologically the possession and filling of the land
constitutes the completion of the new creation paradigm.
So here’s the thought. In light of the analogy between creation and new creation the
destruction of the
inhabitants of Canaan prior to the final establishment of Israel as a
land-based microcosm appears to correspond to the destruction of the
inhabitants of the macrocosm on account of their wickedness and
violence by means of a flood that, according to the story, covered the
whole earth. The
Canaanites are destroyed because of their idolatry and because their
continued presence in the land would jeopardize the purity of Jewish
religion (ef. Deut. 6:14; 7:4; 12:29-31; 20:18). The invasion is also a
judgment on the Canaanites on account of their wickedness (Deut.
9:4-5). So just as the macrocosm is cleared of corrupted life
before the ‘new creation’ of Genesis 9:1-7, so the land of Canaan is
cleared of corrupted life before the consummation of the ‘new creation’
promise to Abraham.
This is a large-scale correspondence. It seems to me to have
an obvious coherence, but it would take more work to determine whether it
has adequate textual support. I would cite one piece of exegetical evidence,
however, at this point. The word nišmaṯ or
‘breath’ occurs in Genesis 2:7 with reference to the ‘breath of life’
in the nostrils of the man created from the dust; and in Genesis 7:22
all creatures in whose nostrils is the ‘breath of spirit’ die in the
flood. The word occurs next in Moses’ instruction to Israel to destroy
everything that breathes in the cities which YHWH will give to them for
an inheritance (Deut. 20:16), and then in the accounts of Joshua’s
subjugation of Canaan: ‘He left none remaining, but devoted to
destruction all that breathed, just as the Lord God of Israel
commanded’
(Josh. 10:40; cf. 11:11, 14). So we have in the ‘genocide’ narrative a
rather distinct echo both of the flood narrative and of the original
creation of humankind.
Comments
quotation marks
Thanks, Andrew, for setting me up with a password on your new site. I’ll use it at least this once.
Whoever regards the Bible as a true telling of God’s deeds must come to grips with the genocide perpetrated by the Israelites, at God’s explicit command, on the peoples of Canaan. I can think of four reasons to buffer the impact of the word with irony quotes:
1. It wasn’t really a genocide. My dictionary defines genocide as "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group." That’s exactly what God is talking about in Deuteronomy.
2. The genocide didn’t really happen; the events aren’t historically true. I haven’t heard that argument put forth here.
3. The slaughter was justifiable. First you’d have to accept that God really did command this genocidal purge, just like the text says, rather than the Israelites simply attributing their own ruthless cruelty to God. Then you have to accept that it’s right and just for God to punish sinful peoples, even to the point of utterly destroying them man woman and child. If you accept both of those contentions, then you’re prepared to regard this godly slaughter as justifiable genocide. Certainly that’s been the Judeo-Christian tradition over the centuries.
4. The victims didn’t really count as people. I think this interpretation too is supported by the Biblical text. God’s main expressed concern is to protect the purity of HIs chosen people from the pollution of living in proximity with other nations. The nations of Canaan may have been sinners and idolaters, but you get no sense that God is chastening them in order to bring about their repentance, like He does when the Israelites perpetrate these very same insults to God’s authority. He’s not correcting the Canaanite nations. God lets the survivors of the ethnic purge live not so they might repent and be grafted into the people of Israel, but in order to teach the Israelites the art of warfare by serving as their enemy and also to provide an ongoing test for Israel’s faithfulness by offering temptation to disobey (Judges 3:1-4). It’s not that the Canaanites are intrinsically less moral or less powerful or of inferior racial stock; it’s just that God didn’t choose them.
So if you accept the OT as God’s word, and if you believe that God is right and just in all His dealings, then I suppose you’re justified in enclosing the word "genocide" in quotation marks. You can use the same quotation marks when you talk about the Flood, which was genocide on a far vaster scale than the slaughter in Canaan. The same can be said for the Last Judgment. Some interpretations of Scripture effectively quarantine God’s "mass murderer" phase from His relatively more benign dispensation in the New Testament; others see more historical continuity. Either way, the conservative tradition accepts the idea that it’s okay for God to perpetrate genocide and to order His followers to perpetrate genocide in His name. Thinking of the Church as being enclosed in a protected microcosmic new creation that’s separated morally, covenantally and even creationally if not ontologically from the rest of the human race probably helps distance Christians from the horror of genocide. I presume this microcosmic bubble could even protect its occupants from any sense of real complicity if for reasons of judgment or purification God were once again to command His people to slaughter the masses of the unchosen. But even if you don’t accept the microcosm theory, even if you regard the world as the mission field where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, you still have to accept that God may kill en masse people who are ordinary human beings just like you, that He may even command you to be one of His agents in this purge, one of the killers of your fellow men.
I’m dismayed that Christians would accept the possibility that their God could call for the purposeful and systematic slaughter of whole populations of people who don’t worship HIm, who don’t obey Him, who might never even have heard of Him. I used to believe it; I won’t believe it any more. I would have hoped that the idea of an "emerging" post-evangelicalism would disavow this sort of criminal anti-humanistic religion once and for all.
I can live harmoniously with people of faith, any faith, even if I don’t believe the same things they do. But if a particular religious sect believes that God would go out of his way to kill me and my kind for not being among His chosen people, and especially if that sect believes that God has in the past and might in the future call His people to pursue a holy war or a systematic execution of the infidels, then I’m going to have to stand in opposition to that sect. Even if just such a sect is part of my cultural heritage. Even if I once was a member of just such a sect.
Many, perhaps most, evangelicals are fine with that, fine with my little stance of resistance. Historically the Judeo-Christian tradition has acknowledged a radical distinction, even an at times violent antagonism, between God’s people and outsiders. This antagonism is built into the Biblical record. To set aside the us-versus-them mindset would require setting aside the literal hermeneutic, which deems all these violent outpourings of God’s wrath as true representations of the way God acts in the world. Many Jews and Christians have done just that, regarding the genocidal passages as tragic misunderstandings or purposeful misrepresentations of God’s real nature. It’s possible to retain one’s Christian faith without retaining the literal accuracy of all Scripture. To regard these genocidal passages not just as true but as pivotal to understanding God’s dealings with His people throughout history is, in my judgment, willfully to embrace the antagonistic stance that pits Christian against non-Christian, even unto death if need be. I would hope that Christians of good conscience would turn their backs on this vile and dangerous tradition and look for some other way forward.
Genocide and new creation
John, thanks your careful, articulate and forebearing response on this difficult subject. I did not use quotation marks around ‘genocide’ for the sake of irony as you appear to suggest, but I’ll address your four points seriatim.
1. As I said elsewhere, I’m still not sure it’s correct to say that the Canaanites were killed because of their race. The biblical witness appears to be that they were cut off from the land because of their idolatry and wickedness. Nevertheless, the word ‘genocide’ carries an appropriate emotional and moral weight in this context.
2. Whether or not events actually happened as described in Joshua, the conquest of the land remains central not only to the story but also to the foundational promise to Abraham. The whole narrative from Genesis 12 through to Joshua is basically about how Israel will come into possession of the land and how the people will live in it once they get there. Moreover, the hope of restoration to the land is central to the ‘salvation’ imagined by the prophets (eg. Jer. 30:3). Isaiah’s vision of the ransomed of the Lord returning with singing to Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads (Is. 51:11) presupposes the conquest, the occupation of the land, the displacement of the Canaanites by the migrating Hebrew tribes.
The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, to my mind, puts a final end to this land-based nationalism (indeed Zionism) and the church must find a more dispersed, scattered, fragmented way in which to be a sign of God’s sovereignty over the whole earth. But I don’t think that that allows us to dismiss or diminish the significance of the earlier narrative conception of the people of God as a creational microcosm that needed to possess the land in order both to recover the original blessing and to be a blessing to others. Obviously the dispossession of the Canaanites creates an immediate moral and indeed theological problem, but I am reluctant to resolve it either by ignoring it or by denying the centrality of the land for Old Testament theology.
3. It seems to me that both the Old and New Testaments generally regard catastrophic disasters as instances of divine judgment on human sinfulness: the flood is a judgment on humanity’s propensity for violence; the conquest is a judgment on the wickedness and idolatry of the Canaanites; the Assyrian invasion is a judgment on the sinfulness of the northern kingdom; the Babylonian invasion is a judgment on Judah for walking in the corrupt ways of Manasseh; the Persians are God’s instrument of judgment on the hubris of Babylon; the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans and the death of a million Jews, if Josephus is to be believed, is God’s final judgment on a persistently rebellious and stiff-necked people; and, I would argue, the eventual collapse of pagan Rome is roughly speaking God’s judgment on the power oppressed the church and exalted itself against the creator.
More often than not the Jews are on the receiving end of divine ‘punishment’; only rarely are they the agents. How much of a difference is there between God’s ‘punishment’ of the Canaanites by the invading Israelites and God’s ‘punishment’ of Israel by the invading Babylonians? The fundamental point, it seems to me, is that Israel had to make sense of its painful and conflictual political existence theologically: if God is sovereign over the nations, then these major events must have theological - and ultimately covenantal - significance. Obviously, in the case of the conquest this could be regarded as self-serving, but Israel is always acutely aware of the fact that it was liable to the same judgment.
4. I agree that Judges 3:1-4 is problematic. It sounds like a rationalization of certain non-complying historical contingencies. However, I disagree that God’s main concern is to protect the purity of his chosen people. The main concern is that they should come into possession of the land - this is why the Canaanites are not really given the chance to repent (though Peter’s mention of Gen. 15:16 is at least partly relevant). Notice that cities outside the land (if I’ve understood this correctly) are treated differently (Deut. 20:10-18). Notice also that God hardens the hearts of the Canaanites so that they do not make peace with Israel (Josh. 11:20) so that Israel might receive the land as an inheritance (11:23). Again, this is not put forward as a justification of the ‘genocide’. I simply draw attention to the fact that the conquest is the means by which a central element of Israel’s self-understanding is achieved, and I’m not sure that the right response is simply to ‘disavow’ it.
I think that the New Testament sees in Jesus a fulfilment of the vocation originally given to Abraham not merely to save individuals from their sins but to model and embody a ‘new creation’. The foreseen possession of the land was an intrinsic and necessary part of that original vocation. That means that we have to deal with the conquest of Canaan and the mandated destruction of the Canaanites - and with it the various objections that you raise. I don’t have the answers, but I don’t see at the moment that it invalidates the basic argument that Israel was conceived from the start as a ‘new creation’, a response or counterpart to a macrocosm that had repeatedly rejected the creator.
I have never argued that this ‘microcosm’ has a protective function, that it is a ‘bubble’. The point of the terminology was to suggest that the church should see itself not as a narrowly spiritual entity with its final destination in heaven but as a people called to represent in its corporate life, both actually and prophetically, the full possibilities of being in concrete, creational relationship to the living God. Nor is it my intention to distance us from the ‘horror of genocide’ - on the contrary, by bringing into focus the full scope and missional significance of the promise to Abraham I seem to have obliged us to acknowledge the critical significance of the conquest.
That is a problem for any theology that thinks that the God of Jesus is the same God who revealed himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, et al. My understanding of New Testament eschatology, however, suggests that AD 70 constituted a final and irreversible judgment on the land-based, Jerusalem-centred form of the microcosm, as an outworking of the Law. Since it is pretty much only in relation to the possession of the land that Israel was instructed to eliminate impurities in this way, and since Jesus taught his disciples to love their enemies and allowed himself to bear the destructive brunt of God’s judgment on Israel, I don’t see any danger of God commanding the church to ‘slaughter the masses of the unchosen’.
Incidentally, why is the suggestion that the people of God as descendants of Abraham should see itself as a creational microcosm any worse than more traditional conceptions of the church as a ‘chosen people’ or ‘elect’ or ‘saved’ or destined to live with God for ever?
"I’m still not sure
Genocide doesn’t have to be based on racial differences. Any time one group of people tries to wipe out another based on national, religious, or class differences, it’s still genocide. Going back to the original subject of this post, the Hutus and Tutsis aren’t distinctive races. They are different tribes or nations, but genetically they’re more similar to each other than they are to any other neighboring tribes/nations. When the Belgians conquered both nations, they decided that the Tutsis tended to have longer noses than the Hutus, suggesting that at some point in their history they had interbred with "superior" European stock. Because of their supposed European-ness, the Belgian conquerors assigned the Tutsis to positions of higher authority and greater power within the new colonial nation. Genetic studies indicate that there was no greater prevalence of European-ness in the Tutsis than in the Hutus. It was the Belgians who in effect created a class differential within Rwanda based on their assignment of imaginary race differences. So here’s a genocide that’s not based on race at all.
It’s clear that any war based on the alleged racial superiority of one group over another is a falsehood. That’s not just because all races are equal, but because the whole idea of race is a socially defined construct. All humans belong to the same species, all can interbreed, all carry the same genes that distinguish them from other species and that make them all part of one humanity. We’re all members of one race: the human race.
I understand that you want to establish the distinctiveness of Christianity within the framework already established in the Old Testament: God sets aside one group of people and establishes a special relationship with them. God promises to protect and bless that special group, and in turn He expects them to worship Him and to obey His laws. He may punish disobedience among HIs people, but He does so in order to bring them to repentance and renewed obedience. God may move other peoples aside; He may punish their sinfulness; He may even use them as instruments to test or to bring judgment on His special people. But with these other peoples God has established no special relationship, extends no covenant, assigns no Law, He offers no special blessing or chastisement.
You call attention a couple of passages that might ameliorate God’s seemingly callous disregard for nations other than Israel. You mention Deut. 20:10-18 as evidence that God treats the neighboring Gentile cities differently from the seven nations subjected to genocide. In that passage God tells Moses that any city agreeing to make peace with Israel shall become forced labor; if they don’t agree to peace then Israel shall besiege that city and kill all the men, preserving all women, children, animals and goods as war booty. I wouldn’t say this constitutes a dramatically different tone from the thorough elimination of cities within the boundaries of the promised land. You also second Peter Wilkinson’s citation of Gen. 15:16 as partially relevant to the possibility that God would have given the Amorites (one of the nations of Canaan) a chance to repent. While it is somewhat ambiguous, this passage suggests that God is waiting to give Abraham’s descendants the Promised Land until after the iniquity of the Amorites is complete. It doesn’t sound like God is going to intervene with the Amorites in order to prevent their total iniquity, inasmuch as the Amorites’ repentance might have delayed the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham.
In His earthly ministry Jesus functioned primarily within this Old Testament framework, as you have repeatedly pointed out. He focuses most of His attention on His fellow Jews. He tries to bring them to repentance in order to avert God’s judgment on Israel, which seems imminent. He doesn’t want just surface-level obedience to the Mosaic Law; he wants perfection and a commitment from the heart. But even as you read the Gospels you see hints of a different direction. He responds to certain Gentiles as though they are more deserving of God’s good graces than are many of the Jews. He says that when it comes down to it the only real commandment is to love.
It’s not until the Book of Acts and especially the ministry and writings of Paul that these glimmers in Jesus’ earthly ministry start to take on an intense luminance. I’m a Jew, says Paul, but all my Jewish credentials I count as worthless. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. In fact, I, a Jew, am specifically called to minister to the Gentiles. I’m blameless according to the Law, says Paul, but that doesn’t make me truly good. The Law is good but ironically it stimulates my desire to transgress. But now I’m dead to the Law and alive to Christ. I don’t live as a servant to the Law; I live by the Spirit. I’m no longer stuck in the endless cycle of commandment, disobedience, guilt, punishment, and repentance that characterizes God’s historic relationship with his special nation, Israel. There are no more sacrifices, I’m forgiven once and for all, I no longer need to wallow in guilt, I can be motivated by love.
As I read Paul I’m struck by how radically discontinuous are his proposals from the Old Testament project. The chosen nation, the moral economy based on law and obedience, the disregard of other nations as irredeemably corrupt and only instrumentally relevant to God’s purposes for His chosen people — all of this Paul seems to set aside. Those may have been good things, Paul says, but now we should consider ourselves dead to them. Instead we are alive together in the love of Christ that knows no distinctions between people and in which there is no condemnation.
"why is the suggestion that
"why is the suggestion that the people of God as descendants of Abraham should see itself as a creational microcosm any worse than more traditional conceptions of the church as a ’chosen people’ or ’elect’ or ’saved’ or destined to live with God for ever?"
It’s a good question, but my response might be of little use to you or to your other readers. All these terms you mention — new creation, chosen, etc. — sound a lot better from one side of the divide than from the other. As someone who doesn’t identify himself as a Christian, would I rather that Christians regard me as un-chosen, rejected, damned, destined to be dead outside the presence of God forever, or part of the old corrupted creation? Tough choices.
I suppose if I were the one designing a theology premised on "new creation," I’d explore a couple other options. One, I’d make the new creation all-inclusive: neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Christian nor non-Christian. Or two, I’d make the new creation an alternate reality rather than a replacement for the old reality. The church, or maybe only this particular version of the church, is open to those with eyes to see it, perhaps to those who have been chosen to see it. But there are also other new creations besides this one, other alternative realities that are visible to other eyes and that beckon with a different call. But none of the various alternative realities currently in view is the "real" reality, nor is any one of them destined to destroy and replace all the rest. Maybe even the same God stands at the center of all these alternate realities, working with all of them in parallel.
Both the universalist and the alternate-realities variants of a new creation theology pose their own problems. But for my tastes both of them are less elitist and, more importantly, less dismissive and destructive in their orientation to those who, for whatever reason, can’t see and don’t find themselves called to one particular way of making sense of life.
Of course this is going about things the wrong way, designing universes according to specifications rather than discerning what the universe really is. Maybe it really is ruled by a God who sets apart one group of people as a kind of new humanity destined eventually to live in a new world from which all the rest of humanity has been systematically eradicated. I believe that the situation is different from that, which seems to put me in the crowd that’s going to be eliminated. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to be regarded by intelligent and kind people as being subject to a future final genocide unless I join them. And so I register my objection. As you suggested, my objection isn’t limited to your unique formulation of Christianity but to the way the church has usually regarded itself throughout most of its history.
Here briefly is what I believe, for what it’s worth. We’re all part of the same human species, all of us limited in vision, all prone to making mistakes and to acting badly, all of us living in the same universe. But we all see the universe a little bit differently, and if some of us can see things similarly enough maybe we can find our way forward together. Others might converge on seeing something else together, some other way of being that you and I don’t see as clearly. I wish them well on their distinct path toward an indistinct future. And maybe down the road our paths will converge in a place we can neither see nor imagine from where we’re walking today.
Anyhow, the idea of a new creation certainly can be found in the New Testament. I think I’ll take advantage of your continued hospitality to open up an OST post looking at those specific NT passages which make explicit reference to new creation, new creature, new man, and new self. You’ve probably already done this in your own explorations, but I’m still curious about what further light can be shed by these texts.
Re: The Canaanite 'genocide' and the renewal of creation
The Creator has absolute right over the clay. Because of original sin the natural mind cannot come to grips with that. But that does not diminish the fact "The Creator has absolute right over the clay."
Re: The Canaanite 'genocide' and the renewal of creation
"The Creator has absolute right over the clay."
The abuser always insists that the victim had it coming. Let’s say you’re a father: do you have absolute right over your children? You might wield absolute power, but it lasts only until your children grow up and fight back or move away from home. If you were to witness a father abusing his children, do you have the right to intervene on the children’s behalf? Do you have the responsibility to do so?
Re: The Canaanite 'genocide' and the renewal of creation
But John, we’re not talking about fathers and children. We’re talking about creator and creatures - and that within a particular narrative biblical framework, which crucially includes the unique relationship defined by covenant. I am not in a position to know the spirit in which RuB made his comment, but I would certainly respond on his behalf that father/child and potter/clay are only metaphors by which we attempt to make sense of our experience of God - an experience which can be painful and arbitrary at times.
Jeremiah makes use of the potter metaphor to express the extreme frustration of God regarding the wickedness of Israel which he imagined lay behind the impending Babylonian invasion. (The motif also occurs in Isaiah 29:16; 41:25.) Notice (this is relevant for the genocide discussion) that this threat of destruction could apply to other nations or kingdoms.
Re: The Canaanite 'genocide' and the renewal of creation
Well of course we were talking about genocide and its possible justifications. Forget potters and fathers: does the stronger nation have the absolute right to invade another nation and slaughter its occupants man, woman and child? Do the other nations have the right and the responsibility to intervene on behalf of the victims of genocide? The perpetrators of genocide always espouse a rationale justifying their crimes against humanity, a rationale which, not surprisingly, the victims almost never embrace.
Re: The Canaanite 'genocide' and the renewal of creation