The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence (book review)

I have done a lot of study on the atonement and hell in recent years, now the next topic that I have started to tackle is the violent depictions of God in the Old Testament and how to reconcile them with the clearest image of the Father we have available to us which is the non-violent, peacemaker Son Jesus. So I was thrilled when Matthew Curtis Fleischer's book, the Old Testament Case for nonviolence came across my path for a review opportunity as it had been on my radar for some time already.

The book starts with Matthew describing the problem of violence in the Old Testament in a way that even Richard Dawkins does not get close too. The frequent mass killings of men, women and children, sometimes for seemingly insignificant reasons or through no fault of their own. The commands to kill brothers, friends and neighbors. Even one particular story where God causes His enemies to cannibalize their own children. Or the story when a city was to be destroyed but the soldiers got to spare the young virgins as the spoils of war. Not to mention the very politically incorrect shunning of the blind, lame, dwarves, hunchbacks, the visually impaired and anyone who had suffered the misfortune of having crushed testicles. This goes on for a number of pages and chapter 1 pulls no punches and you start thinking to yourself, how is he going to come back from this? By the way, you can read chapter 1 for free by clicking over here.

I share a lot in common with Matthew, we both see Jesus as the final word on Christian ethics and living, the culmination and perfect revelation of God the Father and because of this, we both believe that Christians are called to nonviolence. And I am extremely glad for having read this book as I have learned so much from it. For example, it had not occurred to me before that Israel never had a proper military before they became a monarchy, or that they were prohibited from stockpiling weapons. Israel as a nation was highly dependent on God to fight their battles for them. No Jew reading the scriptures would think of the Old Testament as glorying in war, rather, they would have seen Gods protective hand over them.

Similarly, Israel's conquests were all about land. It is interesting to consider that the Levites were never granted a portion of the land in Israel and that we the church are a kingdom of priests. In other words, we do not have land to defend or fight for, the kingdom of God is not defined by nationalities or lines drawn in the sand, thus, we the church operate under a wholly different set of principles to what the nation of Israel did.

As much as I loved this very readable book, I must say though that I don't wholly agree with some of the books primary arguments. The greatest of which is that God chose to reveal His ways and nature incrementally to His people. To be clear, this is not an idea that I completely reject. Matthew makes good and I believe a compelling case for the giant leaps forward the nation of Israel lived by compared to the surrounding nations of the time. What seems savage to us was fairly tame and revolutionary for its day. And that goes for war, the treatment of woman, slaves and more.

There is a lot of progressive revelation seen in the scriptures, an obvious example would be Jesus' prohibition of divorce where Moses had been more lenient. But to say that God permits something or relents to mans poor ideas and choices is hardly the same as arguing that God partakes in those sins Himself. Where I think the OT Case for Nonviolence falls short is that it concedes that God acted violently in times past because man was not ready for a nonviolent God and had to be slowly brought to a place where he could accept a God of nonviolence. I find this unconvincing. Yes, we meet people where they are at and we teach them at a level that they can comprehend. We are all on that road ourselves too, we have right beliefs and wrong ones but that does not mean that we partake in error ourselves because someone is not as far along the path as we might be. 

I am still on a personal journey to reconcile the violence of the Old Testament with the way of the Prince of Peace. This book has not settled all of those questions for me but it has made a valuable contribution to that conversation and I feel far more enlightened for having read it.

I received this book to review from Speakeasy in exchange for an honest review, and honestly, it's fantastic and contains a wealth of valuable insights for one searching for answers on this topic. Once again, go read chapter 1 over here and if it grips you as it did me, go get it on Amazon.