In this version I inherited, the only reason Jesus was born was to die for our sins.  His ministry seemed like just some time-filling activity before he died.  The Resurrection is like icing on the cake after the ‘main event’, his Atoning death.  The Ascension is basically ignored altogether.  And the gift of the Spirit is basically about empowering people to tell others that Jesus died for their sins.  The New Testament, and the study and explanation of it over Church History, however, contains a Gospel that is much fuller than this version I inherited (and which most of our modern and quite a few of our older worship songs tend to focus on).

The Incarnation of Jesus is not a mere stepping stone to the Cross (though it is not less than that).  It is the Creator entering and uniting to the Creation in general, and human nature in particular.  This, the Eastern Orthodox rightly emphasise, is itself a saving act.  All creation participates in the salvation that Christ effects.

The Ministry of Jesus does not merely fill time until the Cross.  Jesus life and ministry is an enactment and fulfillment of genuine humanness.  Everything that humans were meant to be and do, which was focused in the call of Abraham and his people ‘Israel’, Jesus achieved and demonstrated in his life.  He finishes the race we could not.  This is a saving act.

The Resurrection of Jesus is not a mere happy ending to the Cross.  Whereas the Cross entails Jesus taking Death (and Evil and Sin) onto himself and extinguishing it, the bodily transformation and translation of Jesus, the Resurrection, enacts and achieves the defeat of Death (and Evil and Sin).  It also achieves a kind of ‘beachhead’ (or ‘first-fruits’) into New Creation, the ultimate destiny and intended goal for all Creation.  This is a saving act – for all creation – including humans.

The Ascension of Jesus is not an undoing of the Incarnation (which would be a huge heresy), where the Son of God strips off his humanity and reports back to the Father that the atoning death was accomplished (and thus the body no longer needed!).  It is about the enthronement of Jesus to the place of ultimate authority – which among other things, entails a denial of any other entities claiming such ultimate authority.  This is a saving act, saving us from false authorities.

The Giving of the Spirit of Jesus is not simply a bit of personal motivation to tell people about Jesus dying for us (though it is not less than that!).  It is the gift of the ongoing personal spiritual presence of Jesus, enabling us, correcting us, leading us, empowering us, shaping us to become more like Jesus.  It’s not just about ‘evangelism’ (or exciting private experiences), but about becoming more human – more like the true human, Jesus.  The Spirit of the true human, Jesus, makes us truly human.  This ‘humanisation’ (or ‘re-humanisation’) is a saving act; it’s what salvation is all about.

And that’s the “full gospel” that the New Testament communicates.

And it occurs to me that founding the faith on personal testimony instead of ‘evidence’ (i.e. “a monument, a DNA finding, a more meticulous Hebrew census-taking, etc.”) is more fitting of a God who wishes to be known to any and all persons and not only to archaeologists, geneticists, and historians.

• Gen 1:28 says humans are to ‘fill‘ (מָלֵא mala - be full; fill) and ‘subdue‘ (כָּבַשׁ kabash - be raped; subjugate; be humiliated; etc.) the earth…
• Then Gen 2:15 says they are to ‘tend‘ (עָבַד abad – work, serve) and ‘keep‘ (שָׁמַר shamar - keep, watch, preserve) it.

Quite striking! The first has images of conquest; of a top-down power play… The second has images of care-giving; of a bottom-up servant-hood…

I wonder if this would be the starting place for a biblical theme of violence?  Perhaps, just as there is a tension between priestly (pro-temple) accounts and prophetic (pro-justice) accounts in the OT, this also evidences a tension between understandings concerning violence and war…

…and just as Jesus agreed with the prophets (over against the ‘religious’ priests), he also agreed with those who were the servants and preservers of creation (over against the violent ones who would kill for religious liberty)!

Thoughts and insights welcome.

With that in mind, the most problematic and difficult content of the Bible for me to understand (as a Christian, let alone a dweller in a modern, pacifist, egalitarian context) is the apparent command to kill an entire tribe, including animals, women and children – even babies; if interpreted literally (i.e. 1 Samuel 15:1-3).

(On this, see Matt Flannagan’s various posts providing what I see as good reason to see the ‘total destruction’ language as a culturally normative – and hyperbolic – war language.  The Bible itself records later activity of the very nations who were killed, which indicates that the command cannot be literal.)

But putting to one side the question of how literally we can responsibly read the ‘harem’ command, this is still the annihilation of an entire nation.  I don’t propose to ‘solve’ this one with this post, but I do offer some contributions to the discussion.

• The literary question: How literally can we read the command to kill a whole nation, babies and all? Hey! I said we were putting that to one side! Go to Matt’s blog for that one!  But yeah, I don’t think it’s a literal command.  But as for the question of in what sense can we say God commanded this, it seems to me (and seems to fit with the doctrine of Incarnation?) that the word of God has to ‘take flesh’ in real time and space, and that a command of God must be intelligible to the recipients – using language and terms that would make sense to them.  It makes all the historical sense in the world that the command would use the ‘war language’ of the times.
• The biblical theology question: How does this command square with the rest of the Bible? First of all, the supposed contradiction between an only wrathful OT God and an only gentle NT God is rubbish, because God is described as both wrathful and gentle in both the OT and NT.  Second, there seems to me to be both continuity and discontinuity with this command and the rest of the Bible.  Continuity in that God, right throughout the Bible, gives and takes life; discontinuity in that there does seem to be a progression towards non-violence.
• The ethical question: Isn’t it ‘just wrong’ to command a whole group of people to be killed? Even just the fighting men if it wasn’t a literal command? I actually don’t think it’s so simple as it being ‘just wrong’.  There is a lot we don’t know about the historical situation.¹  If we grant a) that the command isn’t literal (babies, women, etc.), leaving only militants being killed, and if we grant b) that the ‘rules of engagement’ were applied (allowing non-combatants to leave, making an offer of peace first, etc.) as prescribed in the Torah, and if we grant c) that the people killed indeed practiced cannibalism, human-sacrifice and were bent on killing the Israelites, then it certainly puts things in a very different light.
• What about someone who doesn’t know all of that about the historical context, etc.?  How do they deal with this command to kill a nation, including babies, etc.? This is a very good question, because the author(s) of these texts certainly did not intend them to become the subject of a historical and ethical evaluation.  These commands reflect a God who is wrathful (and grieved) at human sin.  More specifically a God who is grieved and angered by false religion (namely: worship of – and obedience to – idol non-gods) that leads to such dehumanising and degrading practices as child sacrifice & cannibalism.  Quite apart from 1) the debates over whether the command is literal and 2) the qualifications about progressive revelation, we can understand these commands quite basically: God is saying ‘enough’ to anti-humane nations, and sparing them from their own continued existence.  Putting them out of their own misery, so to speak.  I read this comment here, which takes a similar line – “The great Master of life and death (who cuts off one half of all mankind whilst they are children) has been pleased sometimes to ordain that children should be put to the sword, in detestation of the crimes of their parents, and that they might not live to follow the same wicked ways.”

I don’t think any of this ‘solves’ the issue, which I will continue to ponder.

1. I’m also entirely bracketing the current buzz of discussion as to the historicity of the accounts up to and including King David.  The evidence is not as clear, methinks, as some want it to be.