Fight: Preston Sprinkle

1: Mountain of Skulls

The tree of life sculpture from Mozambique. http://goo.gl/7bN0PQ the sculpture stands as a beacon of hope on a mountain of skulls.

The tree of life is there in Eden and also in the New Jerusalem.

One survivor of the 1975-1992 civil war in Mozambique said:

The life here, the life in the world, is no good now, it has been broken by war. We eat suffering for dinner.

Nearly half of the 16m citizens were affected by the war. After the war there were millions of guns in the country so the government created a 'arms for tools' policy. People returned rifles and received an agricultural farming tool.

The returned weapons were turned into pieces of art, symbols of piece. They took the tools of violence and forged them into symbols of hope.

The violence of the twentieth century:

Most historians say that the past 100 years has been the most violent century in history.

Stats from past century:

• over 187m people (most civilians) have been killed in war
• around 170m have been killed by their own government 
• There have been at least 7 different genocides 
• Rwandan genocide: (1994) 800 000 slaughtered in ninety days (3 months) *E. Sussex = 527k, W. Sussex = 808k
• (& Rwanda was a Christian country - one of the most Christianised in the world)
• Currently there are 26k nuclear warheads in the world (each more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima & 100k people)

Questions to consider:

• What is the Christian response to warfare?
• Is it ever necessary to wage war to confront evil?
• Can you use violence toward someone attacking your family?
• What about capital punishment?
• Should Christians celebrate the death of a mass murderer? Or suicide bomber?
• How about killing to save a life?
• self-defence?
• Serving & killing in the military?
• Do we pray for dictators to meet Jesus or a sniper?
• Surely we could have killed Hitler?
• How should Christians behave toward the state?

Militarism: the belief or desire that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests. 

Hal Lindsey (one of Christianity's bestselling authors): The Bible supports building a powerful military force... the Bible is telling the US to become strong again... and to use our vast and superior technology to create the world's strongest military power.'

Wayne Grudem: America's superior military weaponry is a good thing for the world... genuine peace in the world comes through the strength of the US.

Preston Sprinkle: To date there have been approx. 500 civilians, including more than 150 children, killed by US drone strikes in the M East. Some call this collateral damage; others call it a war crime. It all depends on where you live.

But we must leave aside all this clutter and read the Bible afresh. We must invite God to challenge our presuppositions, and this is my challenge to all of us: despite your upbringing; despite what you've always been taught; despite what you already think about violence, self-defence, serving in the military, or capital punishment... consider with fresh eyes what the whole Bible says about this crucial topic.

Violence: Violence is destruction to a victim by means that overpower the victim's consent.

We'll get to the questions about defending your family or killing Hitler but first I want to see what the Bible has to say about war/violence.

4 chapters on OT since most people assume the NT condemns violence but think the OT is 'pro' it.
4 chapter on NT
1 on early church

in defence of 'biblical' or 'narrative' theology:

God didn't give us a dictionary on religious thought. He gave us a story.

The 'dos and don'ts' of how Christians should live are wrapped up within this story.

Three goals:

1. rethink what the Bible says about warfare
2. snuff out the militaristic spirit
3. help equip Christians to fight. Fight agains evil.

2. Was Israel a violent, genocidal, bloodthirsty nation?

Dawkins: 

The God of the OT 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.

Shalom:

signifies the well-being of a human in all imaginable aspects. It stretches from the well-being of satisfaction and contentment about one's welfare, to security, to being unharmed including keeping healthy, to getting along with each other in every form of relationship.

Eden:

From the beginning God wanted shalom to permeate his creation on every level. In the end, God achieves this goal.

Enmity, strife and jealousy take the place of shalom early on in the story as when Cain kills Abel.

Interestingly God responds not by killing Cain - meeting violence with violence - but by placing a mark on Cain so that no one else will take vengeance on him. 

The story moves on. Cain feels shame at killing Abel but Cain's descendent Lamech 'boasts at killing a teenager' (Gen. 4:23). Just seven generations after killing Abel Cain's descendants are celebrating violence.

Gen. 6:11 - '...the earth was corrupt in God's sight and the earth was filled with violence.'

Put simply: the early chapters of Genesis celebrate peace while showing disdain for violence among humans.

The Patriarchs:

There are two ways established. The Edenic 'ideal' and the way of Cain. Isaac gives up wells he deserves rather than fight over them and Abram allows Lot to choose the land first to avoid strife.

The OT does not offer a blank check toward violence. Genesis shows that the patriarchs are not far from Eden. God's desire for nonviolent peace remains the ideal - even when confronted with injustice and enmity.

The Bible often just describes without also prescribing the same response from others. Sprinkle calls this the issue of: is, ought.

Moses' day:

The perceived strictness or violent nature of these biblical laws must be understood in light of other ancient cultures rather than our own.

The covenants of Old & New are different. Note: the Gods of old and new are not but the covenants are. We won't allow our kids to drive cars when they're 5 but when they're 18 we'd consider it...

The intention of the law:

The laws God gave his people were to set them on the path to recovering his ideal as expressed in Genesis.

God tolerated less than perfect cultural practises and critiqued them and directed them toward his ideal.

Polygamy for example: Abram takes Hagar to produce Ishmael. God didn't condemn Abram for it but instead he accommodated for the practise within the law. Genesis 2 made it clear: husband and wife, monogamy. But given that polygamy was widespread God gave a law (D21:15) to ensure the 'unloved' wife's kids weren't treated less harshly than the loved wife's.

Slavery. Was rife within ancient world and other cultures the slaves had no human rights. In Israel God gave laws that accommodated for the practise but that steered them toward a better ideal.

When Jesus appears he uses the phrase: 'from the beginning it was not so' with violence and marriage.

Paul makes this clear in Galatians: The law was a guardian until Christ came.

Paul Copan:

Mosaic times where indeed 'crude' and 'uncultured' in many ways. So Sinai legislation makes a number of moral improvements without completely over hauling ancient Near Eastern social structures ad assumptions. God works with Israel as he finds her. He meets his people where they are while seeking to show them a higher ideal in the context of ancient Near Eastern life.

3. Israel's Bizarre warfare policy

The law of Moses was not a cul-de-sac but an on-ramp toward God's ideal ethic. 

God never sanctions 'militarism'. He allows warfare but never he never glories in it.

The other nations and the military:

Societal structure:

  - other nations - monarchical and feudal. The King owns the people and decrees what they do.
  - Israel - egalitarian. Equal rights. Families owned land and had equal access to gain wealth.

With regard the army. As a result of their governing structres:

  - other nations - the king owned people and conscripted/paid an army to protect the homeland security.
  - Israel - God owned the land and promised to be their army

To ensure Israel's trust in him rather than in a human king, God gives Israel an economic system that can't support a professional army.

Deut. 20:1-14, 19-20 a description of Israel's army. The main points of the passage:

• God not military might determines victory
• Israel's army is made up of volunteers
• When they go to war they must first offer peace to the city before fighting it
• Only if the city rejects peace can they fight 
• Noncombatants are not to be killed during war

God is Israel's king and even when they have a human king God sheds the king of military might so that their confidence and faith might have to be in God.

Another clear difference between Israel and their neighbours is that Israel was forbidden from glorifying violence. Eg: Babylonian law insisted that hand, ear, breast or foot be cut off for minor infractions. Egyptians also practised mutilation for certain crimes: cutting of hands, feet and even noses. 

The OT may document that a war happened but it doesn't glorify the violence like the nations around it did. 

The Assyrians would carve out eyes, tear tongues out, cut of lips, rip off testicles 'like the seeds of a cucumber in June' as one Assyrian author put it. 

King Sennacherib of the Assyrians describes the aftermath of his victory:

I cut their throats like lambs. I cut off their previous lives as one cuts a string. Like the many waters of a storm, I made the contents of the gullets and entrails run down upon the wide earth. My prancing steeds harnessed for my riding, plunged into the streams of their blood as into a river. The wheels of my war chariot, which brings low the wicked and the evil, were bespattered with blood and filth. With the bodies of their warriors I filled the plain, like grass. Their testicles I cut off and tore out their privates like the seeds of cucumbers.'

War is always 'hell' as William Sherman famously put it but the Old Testament doesn't relish the brutality as the other nations did.

If we were to use the Bible to create a strategy for warfare a country would look like this:

• enlistment would be by volunteer only (no conscriptions)
• the military would not be funded by taxes
• the military would not stockpile superior weapons (tanks, drones, F22s etc.)
• it would make sure all victories were the result of God's miraculous intervention
• it would deliberately fight outmanned and under-gunned to ensure God got the glory for any victory
• no training, no bootcamp

As it stands however, many Christians will be content to cut and paster selected verses that align with America's worldview to give the military some religious backing. Some call this bad hermeneutics; others call it syncretism. The Israelite prophets called it idolatry.

God's people should NEVER celebrate the use of military power and might.

4. Kill Everything That Breathes

April 3, 2003 Donald Rumsfield persuaded Bush to deploy more troops into Iraq by quoting Joshua 1:9.

Israel being commanded to take out those in Canaan was an act of cleansing, not ethnic but moral and for the sake of God's dwelling place on Earth.

Total annihilation: not the full picture.

After Joshua finished the conquest there was still many Canaanites left alive. It's not altogether lcear that God intended Israel to massacre every living thing.

• 'Drive out' : doesn't mean slaughter. Adam & Eve were driven out of Eden, Cain was driven into the wilderness. David was driven out by Saul. 

The language could be hyperbole as in: 'the Yankees slaughtered the Dodgers last night, I mean they absolutely annihilated them'

What about the killing of babies and children?

• The remaining Canaanites did indeed lead Israel astray and cause them all manner of harm.
• The phrase 'men, women, young and old' could be a stock phrase that means 'everyone' rather than an explicit command 'make sure you get the kids!'
• The towns where this is sanctioned in Canaan are likely military towns/barracks
• There is no record of a Canaanite woman or child being killed in these battles.

Appendix: What Is Just War Theory?

Arthur Holmes is not a pacifist. He is a Just War theorist. He said this:

War is evil, its causes are evil... Its consequences are evil... it orphans widows and horribly maims the innocent... it cheapens life and morality... wars that are intended to arrest violence and injustice seem only in the long run to breed further injustice and conflict. To call war anything less than evil, would be self-deception.

There are many different opinions on how to interpret just war theory.

Where did Just war come from?

Aristotle was the first to use the phrase (384-322 BC). Cicero (106-43 BC) also debated the issue of justice in war. It didn't originate in the church.

Ambrose and Augustine were the first Christians to discuss it (340-430AD)

Both believed that Christians shouldn't kill in self-defence:

I do not think that a Christian, ought to save his own life by the death of another; just as when he meets an armed robber he cannot return his blows, lest in defending his life he should stain his love toward his neighbour. -- Ambrose

Augustine felt the same however he argued that although Jesus taught nonviolence 'times change'. Augustine held that since the rulers of the day were now Christian the era of Jesus' words to the apostles had ended and things had to be thought through afresh. He admits that Jesus was an advocate of nonviolence and so drew upon Aristotle et al for help in developing his Just War theory.

Thomas Aquinas was the most significant contributor to the theory. It was Aquinas who hammered ought many of the criteria for Just War that is still in use today.

It wasn't only Christian thinkers however who took part in the theories development. Therefore it's worth bearing in mind that Just War is not a distinctively Christian discussion.

It is not a 'theory' but a 'tradition'. Just War proponent Daniel Bell concluded:

It is not as if Augustine drew up something called a just war theory or doctrine which was set in stone and to which the church has adhered without deviation or change ever since. Rather, Christians adopted a rudimentary vision of just war from the Romans and then began a long process of developing it that has not stopped to this day.

What makes a war just?

There are seven criteria used to evaluate the justice of a war.

1. Just Cause. Self defence for example. To stop oppression (Rwanda). Whether or not preemptive strikes are 'Just' is up for debate.
2. Right authority. Only a legitimate authority can go to war (no criminals or private militias)
3. Right intention. This rules out vengeance, economic gain, imperialistic advances etc.
4. Reasonable chance of success. Peace must be within reach of the warring party.
5. Last resort. All nonviolent avenues of reaching peace must be exhausted before a nation resorts to war.

Those 5 refer to a rational for going to war. The last 2 deal with how a war is to be waged:

6. Proportionate means. Using force beyond what is necessary for establishing peace is unjust.

7. Noncombatant immunity. Civilians must not be targeted in combat.

'History knows of no just wars.' Wrote just war advocate Oliver O'Donovan. The seven criteria does not sanctify war but rather limits the evil affects of war.