A Response to J. D. Greear and Al Mohler on the Role of Women in the Church

In some parts of the Christian world, debates are flaring up about women’s roles in the church and what God’s will is concerning them. This is particularly true in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) at present, as a string of recent events has led to much conversation on the topic. There has been the decision to leave the SBC by the eminently popular Beth Moore, who has produced a lot of curriculum that Lifeway, the discipleship and Christian education arm of the SBC, and other distributors have sold. Dr. Beth Allison Barr is a professor of church history at Baylor who comes from a Baptist background. She published a book in April called The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth, and it takes a look at the history behind what the church has said about women’s roles, and she documents some of her journey out of complementarian theology, further kicking the conversation wide open. (Full disclosure: I haven't read her book but have listened to her speak on a podcast). Top that with the recent ordination of three women at Saddleback Church in the greater Los Angeles area–home to pastor Rick Warren and currently the largest church in the SBC–and you can see why Christian Twitter has been abuzz on the issue.

J. D. Greear, the current president of the SBC and pastor of Summit Church in Durham, NC, wrote a blog post after Saddleback ordained the three women, calling the decision “disappointing” and linking to a position paper on gender roles utilized by his church, which you can see here. Al Mohler, the president of the largest seminary connected to the SBC, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, also wrote a piece that's critical of women in church leadership here. I'm not a Southern Baptist, but Zion Baptist Church in Woodland, AL, played an instrumental role in me becoming a Christian as a teenager. I am grateful for the SBC, and though I differ from them on a few things, they are my brothers and sisters in Christ and I will always cherish the grace God has given me through them. I pray that God would give grace and blessing to the SBC and to these two men I'm interacting with in this post.

I find Greear’s position paper much more charitable and willing to reason through things with kindness and Scripture at the center, while Mohler comes off as harsh and dismissive. Mohler’s piece doesn’t seem designed to persuade those who think differently from him, but rather serves to drum up those who are already in agreement with him. It also appears that Greear and Mohler disagree on some things themselves, with Greear being open to women preaching in certain settings, but not Mohler.

Two very common perspectives on gender roles in the church are clashing in these things, though there are lesser known intermediary positions too. The wider church has labeled these two perspectives as complementarian theology and egalitarian theology. Complementarians hold that God does not call women to be clergy and that women should submit to their husbands and have a more supportive role at home. Men are to lead at the church and in the home. Most complementarians would say 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Cor. 14:34-35 represent God’s ultimate will concerning gender in church leadership, while other passages around women taking leadership roles can be understood contextually or should be considered exceptions. When it comes to marriage, wives honoring/submitting to husbands is commanded in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16; Ephesians 5:21-33; Colossians 4:18-19; Titus 2:5; and 1 Peter 3:1-7, and complementarians would say the husband “gets more of a vote,” so to speak, in decisions pertaining to the family. A good source of getting information and arguments from some of the thought leaders from this perspective is the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. 

Egalitarians hold that God calls women and men to be clergy and that leadership of the family is more determined by the gifts of the Spirit and someone's talents rather than biology. They would lift up other biblical passages where women are in positions of authority (we'll look at some of these below), the mutuality without hierarchy present in Genesis 2, and a close reading of the NT marriage passages in context to advocate for equal partnership as God’s ultimate will. They'd make the case that restrictive passages on women in church leadership like 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 can be understood contextually. You can see proponents of this perspective in the group Christians for Biblical Equality.

What is God’s best on this issue? I don’t have perfect knowledge and I welcome correction if you see me going wrong, but I wanted to offer my perspective on the issue of women in church leadership and why I come to a different conclusion from Greear and Mohler on God calling women to be clergy. (Maybe we can look at the passages on marriage another day and in another post.) I land more in the egalitarian camp on this, though some egalitarian arguments and exegesis prove more convincing than others. I want to lift up some introductory considerations, engage primarily with The Summit's position paper, and then dive into interpreting some of the relevant passages of Scripture. I also will ask some questions of my complementarian brothers and sisters.

Interpretive Considerations

The first thing I’ll say is that this topic can get complex and multiple interpretive issues come into play. One of those issues is trying to make sense of what the whole sweep of Scripture says about a topic, not just a few passages. In preaching on women in ministry a few years ago, I encouraged people to think of making sense of a complex topic in Scripture as being like a bicycle that comes to you in a box and you need to assemble the parts. We need to look at all passages that are relevant to the topic and assemble them in a way that makes sense of all the parts. If you put it all together in such a way that some passages are discarded or left out, then you probably haven’t put it together correctly. It would be like making a unicycle out of the parts for a bicycle–you've made something from the parts, but you still have the frame and an extra wheel lying on the ground. Let's take what the Bible says about wealth and possessions as an example. If you highlight the passages about God giving people prosperity and material blessings while neglecting passages about generosity and simplicity, then you’ve left out some crucial pieces of God’s design for how we treat money and possessions. It's like riding a unicycle when God intends for us to ride a bicycle. Sure, we've have made something from the parts, perhaps even something that can propel us forward, but we're missing God's intended design, which is faster and more useful than a unicycle. (And yes, you guessed it: I actually had a unicycle and a bicycle that I used as props in that sermon. Lord, have mercy.)

We further can think on how much historical background should shape our interpretation. What was going on in the world in which a text was written? What was the situation in a church and city to which a particular letter was addressed? What was going on the broader culture? How might such knowledge help us better understand how the original hearers and readers would’ve interpreted a passage, or help us understand why a particular command was given? 

A further interpretive issue concerns determining if something is a universal command to be obeyed in all times and places regardless of context versus determining when we shouldn't literally obey a command, but instead pull a principle from it that we apply a bit differently to our lives today. A common example my New Testament professor, Dr. Craig Keener, would use to illustrate this are Paul’s repeated commands around greeting one another with a holy kiss (Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:12; 1 Thess. 5:26). I think most churches in the U.S. don’t obey this verse literally, because in our context kissing one another might imply something different and potentially negative to the culture around us compared to what it would've meant in Paul's original context. But we can pull the principle of greeting one another warmly and with hospitality from these commands and apply that in a way that best makes sense in our context to fulfill the spirit of the command.

I mention these interpretive issues first because they shape how people make sense of the Bible and help us see how people arrive at different interpretations of the Bible. You’ll see them coming into play below. 

Women of Spiritual Authority in the Bible

Right off the bat, I want to list some passages of Scripture that showcase women in authoritative roles.

• Miriam—Prophetess & leader, Exodus 15:20-21; Micah 6:4
• Deborah—Judge over all Israel & prophetess, Judges 4:1-5:31
• Huldah—Prophetess, 2 Kings 22:14-20; 2 Chronicles 34:22-28
• Isaiah’s Wife—Prophetess, Isaiah 8:3
• Anna—Prophetess, Luke 2:36
• Daughters of Philip—Prophetesses, Acts 21:8-9
• Women in the Corinthian Church—Prophetesses, 1 Corinthians 11:5
• Priscilla—Evangelist and teacher with her husband Aquila. Taught a man, Apollos, in Acts 18:24-26.
• Phoebe—Deacon, Paul likely trusted her to be able to explain the letter of Romans as carrier of letter. Romans 16:1-2
• Junia—Apostle, most likely Andronicus and Junia were a husband and wife apostle team. (More on this below). Romans 16:7
• Euodia and Syntyche—Labored with Paul in spreading the Gospel. Philippians 4:2-3

Something else of note is that Paul ranks being an apostle and prophet/prophesying above pastoring/teaching in 1 Corinthians 12:28 and Ephesians 4:11. Since you have the example of a woman apostle and several women prophets throughout Scripture, with some of this being present in Paul’s letters themselves, what does that mean for what the Bible says and what Paul believed about women having authority in the church? This is going to be important to wrestle with as we keep delving into the topic.

Now let’s turn to The Summit Church’s position paper.

The Summit Position Paper–Positives

I want to start off by saying I have a lot of respect for J. D. Greear. I find him to be a wise voice in the SBC, and he is someone who cares about evangelism and is open to pursuing racial reconciliation. I also appreciate his and his church's desire to be centered on Scripture, which is evident throughout The Summit’s document. I’m an egalitarian, but I fear some egalitarians make their case mostly by leaving the Bible behind and focusing primarily on experience and reason rather than Scripture. This is not a Protestant (or Methodist) way of doing theology. To the degree egalitarians have argued for women in ministry leadership by abandoning Scripture, we deserve critique and become guilty of not setting people up for a submissive view toward Scripture like Jesus, the apostles, and the early church had. I ultimately come to a different conclusion from Greear, but his biblical focus is good.

The document is much more nuanced and well-rounded than some other presentations I’ve seen from complementarians, showcasing the diversity of women in Scripture. I’m glad the Summit highlights the incidents where women did teach men and preached in mixed settings in the Bible. I also am grateful to see that Summit allows women to be deacons in section IV-D, which is what we see in Romans 16:1-2 and 1 Timothy 3:11 (more on this below). The words in III-B on the necessity of all Christians to submit to God, to each other mutually, to government in some things, and to church leadership in some things is healthy as well. I agree with them that the titles pastor, elder, and overseer refer to the same role in the NT (see their interchangeable use in Acts 20:17, 28), and they also correctly highlight that we have no examples in the New Testament of women as elders, overseers, or pastors. As shown above, however, there are passages that showcase women in more authoritative roles than that of pastor/overseer/elder in the Bible. You do have a few women who were considered elders in the early church (see the first footnote to the postscript in this article that gives some names of women who were considered clergy: https://margmowczko.com/women-elders-new-testament/), but it is quite true to say the large majority perspective in church history is against women in ministry leadership. While tradition is an important resource to consider theologically, for Protestants, it is not the ultimate authority. The Bible is our primary authority and represents the earliest traditions of the church, and later tradition can sometimes miss the mark.

The Summit’s Position Paper–Questions and Critique

I’m grateful that Greear sees Junia as a woman in Romans 16:7. For a time, Junia’s name was made into the masculine Junias because people assumed a woman couldn’t be an apostle, but the name Junias isn’t extant in any other Greek writings, while the feminine name Junia was relatively common. There are several early church interpreters who viewed Junia as a female apostle (Ambrosiaster, John Chrysostom, Origen, Theodoret, Jerome, John of Damascus, etc.). I’d like an explanation of why Greear prefers to interpret the Greek phrase in Romans 16:7 “episemoi en tois apostolois” as Junia being held in high esteem by the apostles instead of being considered outstanding among the apostles. Episemoi gets variously translated as “noteworthy,” “outstanding,” “reputable,” or “prominent,” and tois apostolois means “the apostles.” The argument centers around the sense given to the preposition en–does it mean “in/among” or “to/by"? 

While “to” or “by” is lexically possible, this is not the most common sense of the preposition. BDAG, one of the most reputable Greek-English lexicons, lists "to" or "by" as the eighth possible meaning of en, and there are only a few passages in the New Testament where the authors think this sense is utilized. En usually locates someone or something within a group, condition, or time, and there are many more attestations of this sense of the word in the New Testament (see BDAG pp. 326-330). The most common usage of en would imply that Andronicus and Junia were apostles. Nate Sparks writes about this in a blog post, citing New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham’s book Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels.

…Bauckham asserts that Paul’s consideration of Junia as an apostle is ‘virtually certain’ (p. 172). Bauckham sees the lack of a qualifier for “apostolois" in Romans 16:7 – such as occurs with “apostle of the churches” in 2 Corinthians 8:23 or “your apostle” in Philippians 2:25 – to be an indicator that: Romans 16:7 must refer to the apostles of Christ, whom Paul generally refers to simply as “apostles,” meaning that Junia and Andronicus were apostles themselves, not that they were esteemed by other apostles. Bauckham readily notes that this usage is not as narrow as that used in the Gospels at the choosing of the “twelve apostles”, but points out that it is the sense in which Paul refers to his own inclusion as an apostle [see, for instance, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11]. (Source: https://natesparks130.com/2016/03/08/rhetorical-questions-kevin-deyoung/#_ftn6)

In reference to what is written in section II-B, egalitarianism doesn’t consider men and women to be “interchangeable,” as though there were no differences among them at all. I’m an egalitarian and I do not believe this. There are obvious biological differences between women and men, and we too see complementarity in God's design of the two sexes. We just don’t think biological sex determines the roles God might call a woman or man to in the church and in the home. Also, the language in this section about complementarian theology giving women more reasons to serve in the church is mystifying. How is egalitarianism giving less motivation for women to be involved in the life of the church when it asserts God can call women to more roles and offers them more opportunities than complementarianism? Further, it's not like egalitarians are going to criticize women if they serve in roles more traditionally expected of women in the church, like children and family ministry. The logic here eludes me.

I fear in section III the ideas get confusing in trying to delineate when women can and can’t preach and teach. They can preach and have authority over a group as long as they’re not doing it in a way that explicitly states they’re an elder or implies that they’re teaching like an elder. But that begs the question: what does it mean to teach and preach like an elder? Do elders have a particular way they preach and teach? I know several elders, and they all have different styles and gifts when it comes to preaching and teaching. Further, in III-E, I don't think the division of teaching into “general” and “special” categories is a biblical one. Colossians 3:16 and 1 Peter 4:11 are cited in support of this claim, but how these verses establish that there’s “general” teaching that everyone can do and “special” teaching that only male elders can do is not apparent. Further, how would you know if a sermon was a “general” one or verged into “special” teaching territory? Can you consistently say that women are sometimes allowed to teach and preach in mixed settings, but also say in III-E that “for most churches, particularly in North America, the sermon acts as the most obvious example of ‘special’ teaching at the local church level,” so therefore women shouldn’t preach sermons at church, though they can offer "admonitions" and "scriptural insights" during the worship service? The distinctions are fuzzy and some of the argumentation folds in on itself. I fear it will leave people confused. Further, Deborah and Miriam had more authority in the life of God’s people than an elder would've had in the NT. Would they fit into this schema?

As we continue, I want to offer an interpretation of two key biblical passages where Paul restricts women's ministry. Let’s start with 1 Timothy 2:8-15

1 Timothy 2:8-15

Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or disputing. I also want the women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, adorning themselves, not with elaborate hairstyles or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (NIV)

Paul's letter of 1 Timothy is addressed to Timothy as his delegate over the churches in the city of Ephesus. This passage is getting at disruptions and distractions in the gatherings of the congregations in Ephesus, presumably at worship, since in 2:1 Paul is telling Timothy to instruct the people on how to pray and we return to the theme of prayer in 2:8. The first disruption centers on angry men who were getting into arguments–probably not the most fun experience if you visited the church in Ephesus back in the day and some men were raucously arguing with each other. The next two disruptions center around women, with verses 9-10 being devoted to modesty and 11-15 to women being barred from teaching. In context, Paul’s commands on modesty probably were intended to minimize conflicts centered around opulence and social elitism as well as connotations of sexual immorality connected with some of the specific adornment Paul mentions (see Philip Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus: NICNT, 208-209). Paul moves on to give further instruction for the women in Timothy’s churches, calling for them to learn in quietness and submission, saying that he does not permit a woman to have authority and teach over a man, making an appeal to creation to further his argument, and then giving the promise that women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith, love, holiness, and propriety. 

First off, Paul wants women to learn. “While this may seem unsurprising to us at this juncture in history, the degree of education appropriate for women was very much a subject for debate in the Greco-Roman world, with some suggesting it was inappropriate altogether. There is even a notorious Jewish saying, ‘better to burn the Torah than to teach it to a woman’ (J. T. Sot. 3.19a, 3). Here in our text women are not merely encouraged to learn, they are required to do so. They are to do it in quietness and in all submission/subordination” (Ben Witherington III, The Problem with Evangelical Theology, 99). Most likely here Paul is telling the women to be submissive to the teacher/instructor in the gathered group, not to their husbands or to men in general.

The fact that Paul bars women from teaching in verse 12 brings with it the assumption that some women had been teaching in the Ephesian church. The verb that the NIV translates as “assume authority over” is authentein in Greek, and it only occurs here in the NT. There is some discussion over whether in means simply “to have authority over” or, more negatively, “to domineer.” Scholars are divided and both senses are possible. Whichever sense we go with probably isn’t crucial for our overall interpretation. The main question is: Why does Paul stop these women from teaching and having authority?

The traditional complementarian interpretation is Paul in verses 13-14 anchors his argumentation back to creation, which therefore makes his prohibition of women teaching and assuming authority over men a universal prohibition, rooting male leadership and teaching authority back to God’s created design. Egalitarian interpretation often maintains that Paul is making the prohibition here for reasons specific to this church context, and Paul appeals to the creation story as an illustration of the present problem in this church, but not as a transcultural forbiddance.

If you'll permit a brief digression, one place you see most people consider an appeal to creation to be a culturally bound argument that isn't applicable in the same way today is in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. In this passage, part of Paul’s argument for women wearing head coverings involves an appeal back to creation in verses 8-12. Most Christians consider the head coverings command in 1 Corinthians 11 to be a contextually bound command from which we might pull principles around honoring spouses, but not literally apply them in the same way today by requiring all married women to wear head coverings in church. Most women/wives don’t wear a head covering in worship in Christian congregations in many parts of the world today. Perhaps those who argue for women not teaching or preaching over men should also advocate that women/wives should wear head coverings in church if they want to be consistent in their interpretive method.

Returning back to 1 Timothy 2, there is evidence in 1 and 2 Timothy that indicates multiple problems with women at the church in Ephesus under Timothy’s charge. In 2 Timothy 3:6-7, Paul talks about false teachers who sway gullible women, work their way into their homes, and spread false doctrine. Since women weren’t as educated as men back at the time, they probably would have been more vulnerable to false teachers. Ben Witherington sees this as standing behind the appeal to creation in 2:13-14.

I suggest that the reason for the mention that Adam was formed first, before speaking of Eve, is to remind the audience of the context of the story in Genesis 2. That story is quite clear that Adam alone was formed and was present for the original instructions about what was prohibited. Eve was not there for proper divine instruction, hence she was more susceptible to deception. Nothing is said here about the woman being more susceptible by nature to deception, unlike what we find for instance in Philo (Witherington III, Problem, 101).

Paul also gets on to some widows in 1 Tim 5:6 and 11-15 for living for pleasure, breaking their pledges, saying things they shouldn’t say, going from house to house as gossips, and some of them even rejecting the faith altogether to follow Satan. Paul’s overall message concerning widows in 5:3-16 seeks to encourage families to care for their elderly, put strictures around which widows the church supported financially, and counsel younger widows against the example of other younger widows who were behaving badly. One gets the picture that some of the troublesome widows that Paul upbraids in 5:11-15 had been put on the list to receive financial support from the church while they were going about causing problems for the church. This would not have been good for the reputation of the church or for the quality of the fellowship. Combine that with the modesty issues Paul has just mentioned in 2:9-10, and it seems plausible that local problems with women stood behind why Paul pumped the brakes on women teaching and having authority over men in Ephesus. 

There also are some more positive examples of women in Paul's correspondence with Timothy. Paul sees the Christian faith as being passed down to Timothy from his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice in 2 Timothy 1:5. Priscilla, along with her husband Aquila, are mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:19. In Acts 18:24-26, Priscilla and Aquila taught a man, Apollos, the way of God more fully, and they did it in Ephesus, the same city where this letter is directed to Timothy. Further, there's what Paul says about women deacons in 1 Timothy 3:8-13.

Deacon comes from the Greek word diakonos, which is used to describe an office of church leadership in 3:8-13. It means "servant" or "minister." It clearly refers to a leadership office in the church in at least two cases: in 1 Timothy 3:8-13 and in Philippians 1:1. It also can have a more generic sense of being a servant without any official ecclesiastical position implied. Jesus calls all Christians to be servants–see, for instance, Mark 10:43-45 and its parallels. Paul applies the word to himself and others multiple times to talk about serving or ministering in some way. There are some instances where it’s not clear if he is referring to someone who serves exceptionally well or to someone who held the office of deacon. You can see different examples of him using the word in Greek in Rom. 16:1 (Phoebe); 1 Cor. 3:5; 2 Cor. 3:6; 6:4; 11:23; Eph. 3:7; 6:21 (Tychicus); Col. 1:7 (Epaphras), 23, 25; 4:7 (again, Tychicus). It is quite probable that Paul refers to Tychicus, Phoebe (a woman), and Epaphras as people who held the office of deacon based on the location of where they are brought up in these letters (either toward the beginning or end), and especially in light of Tychicus being called a deacon twice in different letters.

1 Timothy 3:11 is the verse relevant for our discussion. It reads in the NIV, “In the same way, the women are to be worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything." Some translate "the women" as "the wives" of the male deacons, an interpretation that implies women didn't hold the office of deacon. The Greek word in question in this verse is gunaikes, a plural form of gunē, the word for woman. Gunē, along with the Greek word for man–anēr or arsēn–can also mean wife and husband in Greek. There isn’t a different word for wife and husband in Greek like there is in English. You have to infer from the grammar (often through the inclusion of a possessive pronoun or the definite article) and context if a biblical author is referring to wives and husbands. For instance, in Greek, my wife Laura would be “my woman" and I would be “her man.” 

Philip Towner gives several reasons for why he finds women deacons to be the best sense of 3:11. One of them is that while this word can mean wives, typically when wives are referred to in Greek in the NT, they either have a possessive pronoun attached to them or the definite article (see 1 Cor. 7:2, 3; Eph. 5:22; Col. 3:18, 24; 1 Pet. 3:1). The Greek here does not have a possessive pronoun or the definite article. Also, “The omission of a parallel instruction to wives of overseers [in 3:1-7] makes it still less likely that ‘wives of deacons’ would be singled out. Further, the reference in Rom. 16:1 to ‘Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae’ […] demonstrates both the existence of women deacons and the use of the masculine term [in Greek] to refer to a female deacon” (Towner, 266). There are a couple other nerdy Greek things Towner lists that he believes further supports this conclusion. Luke Timothy Johnson in his commentary on 1 and 2 Timothy mentions some different interpreters throughout history who came to the conclusion that Paul was referring to women deacons–Theodore of Mopsuestia (350-428), Theodore of Cyr (393-466), Oecumenius of Tricca, (tenth century), Theophylact (eleventh century), and Hervé de Bourg–Dieu (twelfth century) (Luke Timothy Johnson, The First and Second Letters to Timothy: Anchor Yale Bible, 27-37).

In 3:9, Paul says that deacons “must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.” Keeping hold of the deep truths of the faith implies that deacons teach. Why else would Paul make this a requirement unless deacons were responsible for communicating these truths in some way? So if Paul allowed women to be deacons in 1 Timothy 3, the presumption would be these women also would be teaching the "deep truths of the faith." And wouldn’t “deep truths of the faith” probably fall into the category of what The Summit labels as “special teaching” that they think women shouldn’t approach?

Returning back to 2:11-15, here's Witherington again:

Of what relevance is all this to the discussion of women learning rather than teaching? Eve is an example of someone who could be deceived by a false teacher (in this case a snake), [perhaps] because she had not been properly instructed in the first place. This speaks directly to the problem in Ephesus where we have some high-status, well-to-do women, likely with some education, who are trying to assume the mantle of teaching before they have learned the apostolic message properly, and in all likelihood after they have already been misled by the false teachers (Witherington III, Problem, 102).

Seeing some of these aforementioned problems with women indicated in Paul’s correspondence to Timothy, Paul affirming women in leadership in other parts of his writings, Paul greeting warmly a woman who taught Apollos in Ephesus in 2 Tim. 4:19, and Paul affirming women as deacons in 1 Timothy 3 all lead me to think the best way to interpret 2:11-15 is as a contextual prohibition against women rather than a universal one, though it is one from which we still can pull principles to apply to our context today. The principles at play here would be that the unlearned shouldn’t teach, but rather should spend time learning in submission to Scripture and the church. Depending on authentein’s definition, there also can be a lesson in not trying to domineer and wrench authority away from others, particularly if you think you deserve it as a high-status person. There is also the principle of self-control, which applies throughout all of 2:8-15. Self-control can require that we limit some of our Christ-given freedom for the sake of effectively engaging with a fallen culture (see also Paul’s words on the weak and the strong in Romans 14-15 and eating food sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8). This would have proved relevant for Christian women trying to reach a broken and patriarchal culture.

2:15 implies that God is capable of providing help and delivering women through the dangers of childbirth, which is part of the pain given as a curse in response to Eve and Adam’s sin in Genesis 3:16. There is a potential implication that Christ is able to heal and undo elements of the curse to those who hold on to him in faith and love and holiness. Part of the curse on Eve and women was also patriarchy and male domination in 3:16. Maybe that is a curse that God wants to heal us from today as well as we go on in faith, love, holiness, and propriety?

I want to ask a few questions of complementarians around 1 Timothy 2:8-15: If you believe the appeal to creation indicates a transcultural prohibition of women teaching and having authority over men, then wouldn’t Paul’s argumentation from the creation story also be transcultural? In essence, wouldn’t that mean that women are inherently more gullible and less discerning than men? This implies an intellectual and/or moral deficiency in women in comparison with men. Can the prohibition against women teaching and leading be universal and the argumentation used to support the prohibition not be? 

If you believe women are inferior to men intellectually and/or morally, what does that mean for your thoughts on women's ministry in complementarian churches? Should women, who are prone to deception, all get together to teach each other so they can push each other further into muddled thinking about God? 

Let's also look at 1 Corinthians 14:34-35.

1 Corinthians 14:34-35

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. (NIV)

Some scholars (Gordon Fee being one, with Richard Hays following him) make the case on text critical grounds that these verses were an interpolation added at an early stage of copying the manuscripts of 1 Corinthians and aren’t original to the letter, and therefore we shouldn't consider them as Scripture. Several of the oldest manuscripts place these verses at the end of chapter 14, others put it where it presently is in our Bibles, and another ancient manuscript contains markings that imply the scribe considered these verses to be an addition inserted into the text. As some other scholars have noted in response to this view, while this passage may have been moved around to different places in the ancient copies, it is always there. There is no extant ancient manuscript where verses 34-35 are omitted, so it is likely original. So how are we to interpret it as Scripture?

Like 1 Timothy 2, the wider context of 1 Corinthians 14 pertains to the Christian gathering, specifically the worship service. Paul is concerned about the Corinthians worshipping in a way that is orderly, intelligible, and beneficial for those who gather. Paul highlights things that are disrupting orderliness in the Corinthian worship services, particularly a lot of people loudly speaking in tongues all at once with no interpretation. This was causing disorder in the gathering and turning visiting non-Christians away from Christianity. In light of this wider context about proper order in church worship, we can presume that some women were disrupting orderly worship gatherings as well.

It’s very hard to argue from this passage that women should never, ever speak in church, since Paul clearly assumed they were praying and prophesying in the Christian gathering earlier in this same letter in 1 Cor 11:5. “…[T]he only kind of speech he directly addresses in 14:34-36 is wives asking questions” (Craig Keener, Women in Ministry). So what is Paul getting at? As mentioned above, women were much less likely to be educated than men, both in the Bible and in philosophy. It seems likely that the women would have had more elementary questions for whoever was trying to exposit and preach from the Scriptures at the Corinthian house churches, and Paul is giving a short-term restriction—let the women keep silent so as not to slow down the learning of the whole group—followed by a long term solution to catch the women up to speed—let them learn the basics at home from their husbands, who were more likely to know the Bible. What does Paul mean when he says they should be in submission, as the law says? Again, it seems that they should be in submission to the teacher and the group at the worship gathering, similar to what is said in 1 Timothy 2:11 on women learning in quietness and full submission. All of us should submit to instruction in God’s law and not disrupt it. I can see a lot of application of this in youth groups...

To sum up, Paul seems to be dealing with uneducated women who were disrupting the order of the teaching portion of the Christian gathering with their questions. He wants them to be quiet during this time as to not slow down the others, but also to learn at home from their husbands so they can be caught up to speed. Paul did not think women should be silent all the time during worship gatherings.

For complementarians, how do you make sense of what Paul says earlier in 1 Corinthians 11:5 around women praying and prophesying in the Christian worship gathering, especially since prophecy is considered by Paul to be more beneficial than teaching in 1 Corinthians 12:28?

Does Paul contradict himself concerning women? What do you do with the passages in which Paul and others showcase women in roles more authoritative than pastoring and teaching in the New Testament? Can you put all these passages together in a way that makes sense of the whole Bible, not just parts? 

Conclusion

There’s certainly more to be said on the topic. We haven’t touched the marriage and submission passages. One of my favorite books on this topic that delves rather deeply into this exegetically and engages with several complementarian scholars is Craig Keener's Paul, Women, and Wives: Marriage and Women's Ministry in the Letters of Paul. 

I've posted this to make the case that Mohler's demurral on women clergy and the position paper Greear posted are open to scrutiny exegetically. Despite Mohler’s dismissal of someone like myself as being on the slippery slope down to unfaithful compromise, rushing headlong to get the Bible out of the way, it seems to me that he himself could be ignoring the Bible in some places. I think there are biblical reasons for affirming women in ministry leadership, and I find the egalitarian position makes sense of all the data better than the complementarian position. I could be wrong and am open to correction here, but I’d like to see how my complementarian brothers and sisters would respond to some of my questions and observations.

To return to the example of a unicycle and a bicycle, what if complementarians have been riding a unicycle and discarding passages of Scripture that don’t fit their theology, when God calls the church to go further and faster by riding a bicycle, utilizing all of God’s people, women and men, to the fullest extent in the mission of making disciples of Jesus? What if God is calling you as a woman into serving and leading in the church, not as a political statement, but as an act of faithfulness to the God who called Miriam, Deborah, Phoebe, Junia, and Priscilla? Let's follow the lead of Jesus in our lives. Let's follow the whole Bible in utilizing the whole body of Christ to its fullest extent in doing the work of the kingdom, for the glory of God.

Biblical Contradictions and the Cross

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. –2 Timothy 3:14-17 (NIV)

The Bible is the best selling book of all time, but when it comes to how we are to understand it, particularly when we look at problems and difficulties in the Bible, people start to get squirrelly. Paul penned what has become the most quoted passage in the church about Scripture, saying that Scripture is “God-breathed.” The question is, how are we to understand how God breathed it? My previous post dealt with interpreting Old Testament (OT) violence and genocide in light of Christ. In this post, I want to focus on the nature of biblical inspiration.

Right off the bat, I want to acknowledge that some other Christian sisters and brothers would disagree with me and would answer things differently from what I share in this post. That’s ok. As always, I could be wrong and ignorant about some things. While important, these issues don’t strike at the heart of Christianity. There can be a diversity of thought on these questions, and we can still love each other as brothers and sisters united around fulfilling Jesus' mission.

But I don’t want to pretend that how we answer some of these questions doesn’t have important consequences, and may make a difference over whether someone can come to faith in Jesus or not, or whether they remain a Christian or not. What we believe and the reasons we believe can impact people’s connection with Jesus. The apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 3:15, “…in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…” Peter wanted his churches to be prepared to talk about why they’re Christians when it comes up in conversations, because that can make a difference in whether God uses us to open up a door for Christ or whether we put a stumbling block in the way of someone following Jesus. I also don’t want to pull any punches when it comes to dealing with the data. This post might be unsettling to some Christians. I’d encourage you to hang with me and read this even if this makes you feel uncomfortable, because I believe we should face truth and that Jesus is the God of all truth. In fact, while some of us may initially come to God through a profound emotional experience, sometimes it’s the intellectual grounding we get in our understanding of God that keeps us tethered to Jesus. I’ll start with a story that showcases this very point, and just like with my last post, it comes from pastor and author Greg Boyd.

Boyd shares in his book Inspired Imperfection that much of his growing up years were spent largely as an atheist/agnostic until he was converted to faith in Christ in a Oneness Pentecostal church as a teenager. God’s love and power became very real to him, and he was a passionate follower of Jesus in that time. When he left for college, however, his faith fell to pieces, mainly because of some faulty intellectual foundations he had received. A critical piece of that was his view of biblical inspiration. 

Greg’s pastor had taught that if the Bible is only 99% true, it might as well be 100% false, and said the Bible was inerrant in its history and details. In Greg’s first year of college, he took a class on the Bible as literature. In that class, he was exposed to thoughts on church history and issues in Scripture he hadn’t noticed before, some of them involving mutually exclusive claims in Scripture that seemed impossible to reconcile. His resulting inability to account for errors in the Bible eventually led Boyd to once again become an atheist. While he had experienced joy and deep love and purpose in being a Christian, he had to be honest with himself that if a flawless and perfect Bible was part of the bedrock Christianity was built on, such a notion wouldn’t hold water, and he had to leave it behind. Fortunately for Boyd, he was around a Christian friend who kept inviting him to explore further and to read other Christian theologians and writers. Boyd found Christians who had better ideas and arguments on which they based their faith in Jesus and the inspiration of Scripture, and he reclaimed his faith again down the road. He is a pastor and theologian today, having obtained his PhD in theology from Princeton. He has wrestled for years with how Christians could meaningfully believe in and understand the inspiration of Scripture, and many before him have done the same. Inspired Imperfection contains his more mature thinking on biblical inspiration.

Inerrancy

The notion that Boyd's pastor had imparted to him, that the Bible cannot contain any mistakes or flaws in it, has been called the doctrine of inerrancy. Inerrancy was a teaching articulated in 19th and 20th century America from some Presbyterian ministers, particularly some theologians connected to Princeton Theological Seminary who were part of the Fundamentalist movement that originated there. Some of the main proponents of the doctrine, B. B. Warfield and Charles Hodge, “claimed that Scripture was without error (whether it be physical, historical, psychological, or philosophical) when the precise words of the original documents were considered” (Collins, The Evangelical Moment, p. 43). It was done as a reaction to some excesses going on in the academic study of theology, where some theologians of the day were departing from crucial aspects of historic, orthodox Christianity in their teachings and methodologies. Some had started to deny the virgin birth of Jesus, had turned the resurrection of Jesus into a myth or totally psychologized it, denied Jesus' miracles, and more. Fundamentalists critiqued these excesses and wanted people to get back to the fundamentals of Christianity. Most of the time I hear people use the term “fundamentalist” as a term of derision for people who they think are anti-intellectual and politically fractious, but classic Christian Fundamentalism affirmed five main points:

1. The inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit and the inerrancy of Scripture as a result of this. 
2. The virgin birth of Christ. 
3. The belief that Christ's death was an atonement for sin.
4. The bodily resurrection of Christ. 
5. The historical reality of Christ's miracles.

I can affirm points 2-5 and most of point 1, though I don't agree with inerrancy language. Like every Protestant, I believe the Bible comes first in how we come to understand God, ourselves, God’s will, and God’s authority, which is what point 1 is trying to lift up. However, the concept of inerrancy proves to be an unfounded assumption that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny as a way of understanding biblical inspiration. It strikes me as a way of trying to impose an outside requirement and assumption onto the Bible that doesn’t actually best make sense of what Scripture is. Boyd cites wise words from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed character Sherlock Holmes: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts” (Inspired Imperfection, p. 37). 

Inerrancy largely flows from an assumption. Since we Christians believe that God is perfect and omnipotent, he naturally would all-powerfully inspire his people to produce a totally perfect set of writings. But what if that is just an assumption and not reality? What if that’s not how God in his sovereignty has chosen for inspiration to work? We should be careful in assuming we know how God ought to work. Jesus, as the bringer of God's kingdom, went quite against the assumptions people had for how the Messiah would operate, and in many ways God's kingdom functions by upside-down, counterintuitive logic. Many religious leaders and people missed that Jesus was God's anointed deliverer bringing in a new covenant and decisively fixing the world's problems of sin and evil. Further, it seems one could make a similar assumption about the church. Since the Holy Spirit is omnipotent and perfect, and the Holy Spirit is inspiring the church, therefore the church should perfectly obey the Holy Spirit, live a wholly Christlike life, and glorify God in all things. I hope I don’t have to twist your arm to see that though the Holy Spirit is inspiring the church, the church is not perfect and does not always follow God’s will and purpose. What is something similar could be at play in how God inspired Scripture?

Let’s dive into some passages of Scripture to get our lay of the land, starting with a look at Jesus and how he used Scripture.

 Jesus on Scripture

Pardon me for being a bit laborious, but I think it is illustrative to look at a good number of Jesus’ direct quotations of and allusions to Scripture in the Gospel of Matthew, though I’m ignoring some other Scriptures that the Gospel-writer himself includes. This should give us a fairly representative picture of Jesus’ view of Scripture, which for him would’ve been the Old Testament. 

During his forty day fast in the wilderness, Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy three times in resisting the devil (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10) and viewed it as an authoritative message from God for how he was called to live his life, and Matthew records it because he wants us to see it as authoritative for our lives as well and useful for resisting temptation. 

Jesus intensifies commands from the Law in Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28, 31-32, and 33-37. He modifies the Law and a traditional teaching concerning enemies in Matthew 5:38-48. 

Jesus cites Hosea 6:6 on God desiring mercy instead of sacrifice in Matthew 9:13 an 12:7, and says the Pharisees need to learn the truth of this passage.

In Matthew 10:34-36, Jesus cites Micah 7:6 as foretelling the opposition and divisions within family his followers would face as they evangelize. 

In Matthew 11:10, he cites Malachi 3:1 as foretelling John the Baptist's ministry. 

Jesus mentions what David and his companions did in eating consecrated bread in Matthew 12:3-4, and further alludes to Numbers 28:9-10 concerning how the priests desecrate the Sabbath by offering sacrifices in the temple and yet are innocent, and now one greater than the temple is here in Matthew 12:5-6. 

He pulls from multiple OT passages in talking about Israel’s blindness and inability to understand the Gospel in 13:13-15. 

In Matthew 15:4-9, Jesus quotes Scripture and prefaces it with “God said,” as he quotes one of the Ten Commandments from Exodus 20:12 (“Honor your father and mother”) and Exodus 21:17 (“Anyone who curses their mother or father is to be put to death”) then he chastises his audience for disobeying God’s commands for the sake of their tradition, and cites Isaiah 29:13 as exemplifying his audience’s hearts being far from God. In this, we see that Jesus believed the OT Scriptures were a reliable witness in giving us the voice and commands of God. 

In Matthew 19:1-12, Jesus cites Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 on God’s desires concerning marriage and engages contemporary rabbinic disputes about divorce concerning Deuteronomy 24:1-4, siding with the School of Shammai's stricter line of interpretation. 

In Matthew 19:16-19 in Jesus’ conversation with the rich young man, he tells him to obey the commandments and cites five of the Ten Commandments, along with the love of neighbor commands in Leviticus 19:18, 34, as integral to finding life. 

In 21:13, Jesus cites from Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 as he turns over tables in the Temple, showing that the religious leaders have failed and people have missed God’s purpose for the temple in the first place, even though the importance of the temple would soon pass since Jesus is the new temple, the new dwelling place of God. 

In 21:16, Jesus cites the Septuagint version of Psalm 8:2, seeing the praise of children at his entry to Jerusalem as a fulfillment of that verse. 

In 21:42-44, Jesus cites Psalm 118:22-23 and expounds on it, viewing the resistance and rebellion of the religious leaders in terms of them stumbling over the stumbling stone mentioned in that Psalm. 

In 22:29-33, Jesus gets on to his audience for not knowing the Scriptures well enough when talking about the resurrection and the nature of people’s existence after death, and draws attention to the verb tense used in passages like Exodus 3:6, where God says “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” God did not say "I was," but "I am," meaning that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob still exist and he is still their God. Jesus thus makes a grammatical argument from Scripture. 

In 22:34-40, when asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus cites Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, 34 on loving God with all our being and loving our neighbors as ourselves, and saying all of the Law and Prophets (OT) hang on these two commandments. 

He goes on in 22:44 to ask a question based on Psalm 110:1, asking how David could call the Messiah “Lord” if the Messiah has David as an ancestor, implying that the Messiah is greater than David. 

In 23:23, Jesus upbraids the Pharisees and teachers of the law for scrupulously observing more minor parts of the Law when it comes to tithing herbs and spices, but neglecting the weightier matters of it when it comes to justice, mercy, and faithfulness toward others. Basically, they are only being selectively faithful to the Scriptures and God’s revealed will in them. This also shows that Jesus views some commands of Scripture to be of more weight and importance than others.

In 23:39, Jesus cites Psalm 118:26 as referring to his second coming. 

In 24:15, Jesus refers to Daniel’s language about an abomination that causes desolation in Daniel 8:13; 9:27; 11:31; and 12:11 as referring to future events–interpreters divide over whether Jesus is solely talking here about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, or solely talking about his second coming, or is referring to both simultaneously. 

In 24:29, Jesus references Isaiah 13:10 and 34:4 and interprets them to refer to judgments and difficulties that will precede the return of Christ–whether they are literal or metaphorical is debated. 

Jesus alludes to Noah's flood of Genesis 7-8 in 24:36-39 and sees it as an example of how things will be at his return, particularly the suddenness and finality of the return and judgment of Jesus.

In 26:11, Jesus references Deuteronomy 15:11 as he comes to the defense of the woman who anoints him with expensive perfume. 

Jesus’ multiple references to Passover in Matthew 26 connect to the original Passover in Exodus 12 and other places like Leviticus 23:4-8 and Deuteronomy 16:1-8. 

In 26:31, Jesus cites Zechariah 13:7 on the shepherd being stricken and sees it as prophetically foretelling his own suffering and his disciples falling away from him. 

In 26:54 and 56, Jesus’ sees his betrayal and coming passion as fulfilling the Scriptures. 

In 26:64, Jesus makes oblique references to Psalm 110:1 and Daniel 7:13 as he confesses that he is Messiah and God to Caiaphas the high priest. 

On the cross, Jesus cries out with the words of Psalm 22:1 and makes it his own prayer, showing that this Psalm prophetically foretells his suffering and coming resurrection victory and vindication.

This is just one of the Gospels, but I hope this demonstrates that Jesus was someone who was immersed in the Scriptures, who deeply valued the Bible, who quoted Scripture often, and who interpreted Scripture in various ways. He viewed the Bible as coming from God. He viewed some Scriptures as weightier than others. He viewed some Scriptures as foretelling and being fulfilled in his own life and ministry, his death and resurrection, and his second coming. He intensified some commands and edited/fulfilled other commands from Scripture in his role of being God’s clearest revelation and the bringer of the new covenant. He saw Scripture as useful for resisting temptation and staying faithful to God’s purpose. You see a similar approaches for interpreting the Scriptures in other NT authors. Jesus loved the Bible. He does not claim it to be inerrant, but he definitely lives by it, interprets it uniquely for his day, sees it as coming from God, and viewed as authoritative for his own personal life and for the lives of others.

Some Biblical Contradictions and Problems

Now let’s look at some problems and contradictions that occur within the Bible. 

A common example involves comparing Matthew’s account of Judas’ death in Matthew 27:1-10 versus Luke’s account in Acts 1:15-19. Did Judas hang himself or fall headlong (perhaps jumping off of a height onto some rocks) and explode? Some try to combine the two accounts and say he hung himself and when he was cut down his insides must’ve burst out. This is possible, and the impulse to harmonize isn't a bad one, though we must confess neither text actually says this and this is an imaginative combination of them both. It further doesn’t resolve the question of who bought the field, Judas or the religious leaders, because the two texts say two different things about who purchased the field. Even more, in Matthew 27:9-10, Matthew says it was Jeremiah who said the price of 30 shekels of silver was set for Jesus in buying the potter’s field, when actually Matthew seems mostly to be quoting from Zechariah 11:12-13. Zechariah is where the 30 shekels and the money going to the potter comes from, while Jeremiah 32:6-12 tells of a story of Jeremiah purchasing a field. Jeremiah doesn’t mention 30 pieces of silver nor does it mention buying a potter’s field. Matthew seems to have creatively combined Zechariah with Jeremiah, and the quote from 27:9-10 is largely not in Jeremiah.

How many women went to the tomb on Easter? John 20:1 only has Mary Magdalene, while the other Gospels have multiple women at the tomb (Luke 24:1; Mark 16:1; Matthew 28:1). 

Matthew 28:2 and Mark 16:5 only have one angel appearing to the women on the day of resurrection, while Luke 24:2 and John 20:12 have two angels appearing. How many angels were there?

 John 20:1-10 has Peter and John seeing the empty tomb before Mary Magdalene, while the other Gospels have the women seeing the empty tomb first. Who saw Jesus’ tomb first?

Matthew 26:1-13 and Mark 14:1-11 have Jesus being anointed at Bethany with expensive perfume by a sinful woman two days before the Passover, while John has this happening six days before the Passover in John 12:1-11. Two days and six days aren’t reconcilable, and it seems unlikely that in the same place, Bethany, Jesus was anointed two different times by two different women to the exact same complaints from his disciples and he gave the exact same teaching about it after their complaints. Most likely the different sources remember the same event happening on different days, but both can't be right about the date historically. 

In Mark 2:25-26, Mark reports Jesus as saying that David and his companions ate the consecrated bread in the days of Abiathar the high priest, whilst the story in 1 Samuel 21:1-6 reveals that it was actually Abiathar's father Ahimelek who was serving as priest when that happened, not Abiathar. Most likely, Mark flubbed the name of the priest as he was writing his Gospel. Matthew (see 12:1-8) and Luke (see 6:1-5) realize this and correct it in their presentation of this teaching in their Gospels, not mentioning any name for the high priest. 

1 Chronicles 21:1 says that Satan incites David to take a census of God’s people, which gets him in trouble, while 2 Samuel 24:1 says that God in anger incites David to take a census of the people, which then gets him in trouble with God. God and Satan are about as different as you can get. Which one is true? They can’t both historically be true, but they do showcase different theologies for understanding the census. 

In the story of Jesus casting out the demons into a herd of pigs, Mark’s account in Mark 5:1-20 says there was one demoniac, while Matthew’s account in Matthew 8:28-34 says there two. How many were there? Further, comparing those same passages, Matthew 8:28 reports the city as being the region of the Gadarenes, which is based off the town Gadara, while while Mark says it’s the region of the Gerasenes in Mark 5:1, which is based off the town Gerasa. These are two different cities, though they both are located within the Decapolis, a group of Hellenized cities near Galilee that had a large Jewish population but were primarily made up of Gentiles, hence the presence of pig herds. Matthew chooses the city that would’ve been closest to those more familiar with the region by identifying Gadara (six miles from the lake), but Mark chooses what used to be the capital of the Decapolis and the better known city in identifying Gerasa (thirty miles from the lake). More than likely, Matthew is the more precise one here, since Jesus just got out of a boat and they are next to a body of water.

Matthew’s genealogy for Jesus in 1:1-17 says that there are 3 sets of 14 generations from Abraham to Jesus, when the last set actually contains only 13 generations. Did Matthew have trouble counting? Further, Matthew omits three generations in the section from David to Jeconiah, skipping the three offspring that follow Joram (Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah according to 1 Chron 3:11–12). The Gospel writer simply says: “Joram fathered Uzziah” (Matt 1:8). How do you explain the discrepancies in the names and numbers?

A humorous one is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:14-16–“I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else).” Paul is exposing the error in what he has just written and is correcting things as he goes–this is just a reminder that Paul was human like us. He is saying that what he said in 1:14-15 is actually in error and that he did baptize more people, and that he might not be able to remember everyone he baptized in Corinth. 

Above is just a sampling–there are many more examples we could show. These discrepancies, errors, and contradictions seem very hard to square away with an inerrantist view of Scripture. Some will claim that if we looked deeper, a solution would appear that would resolve any apparent inconsistencies amongst different Scripture passages. I'm open to that and perhaps we can do that with some passages, but you better be prepared to come up with a lot of solutions (remember that we've just looked at a fraction above), and frankly some "solutions" I've seen aren't very convincing. Some inerrantists will acknowledge that we do have discrepancies and errors in Scripture as we have them now, but will further claim that Scripture is inerrant in the original autographs or documents. I find this position to be unhelpful and a bit evasive, since we don’t have any original documents of Scripture–at best we have copies of copies. It implies that if we could just get the original documents of Scripture in our hands, they would say different things that make all the present problems we wrestle with disappear. I fail to see how this inspires confidence in us being able to trust the Bibles we are reading today that textual critics have done a lot of work to present to us. Also, the chance of all the original documents of the Bible being preserved over 2,000 years and located seems well nigh impossible. If God wanted us to have them and place our faith in such a notion, don't you think God would've preserved the originals for us? Others distinguish what they mean by inerrancy so much that their definition seems to suffer death by a thousand qualifications, and it pushes against the plain sense of what most people think of with the word inerrant. If God wanted to give us a perfect text, then inquiring into it should demonstrate that fact. I don't think it does.

I appreciate what proponents of inerrancy are trying to do, which is to say the Bible is authoritative and is the most foundational and important source for how we come to understand God. I agree that the Bible should be our foundation and our most important source for understanding God, ourselves, others, the world, and the purpose of our existence. That’s a huge part of what the Reformation was about, getting back to Scripture and reforming the church to understand God from its earliest traditions and sources as presented in Scripture. If something can’t be proven or inferred by Scripture, it shouldn’t be required as a necessary for salvation, and if something contrasts with the message of Scripture, properly interpreted, we should leave that belief or behavior behind. I also believe that Scripture on a whole is very historically reliable and is worthy of a sympathetic and serious read. We have good reasons for believing the Bible is a historically reliable book, particularly when it comes to Jesus. Scripture is still God’s word to us regardless of whether some parts end up being totally historical or not, though the historicity of Jesus’s incarnation, ministry, death, and resurrection are non-negotiable (see 1 Corinthians 15:12-19). If you’d like further reading concerning the historicity of Jesus, I’d recommend Ben Witherington III’s The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth; it has scholarly bona fides, but isn’t going to take you forever to read. But to hang the authority of the Bible on inerrancy seems to be a bit of an intellectual sinking ship. Even more, I’m not aware of a passage of Scripture that claims Scripture is inerrant.

Biblical Imperfections as a Witness to the Cross

How, then, should we understand biblical inspiration? Is there a way to hold together Jesus' deep reverence for and deference to Scripture, as well as being honest about its flaws, or are these two notions inherently incompatible? Boyd maintains that God inspired the Bible to point us to Jesus as God’s perfect, inerrant word and gift to us, to show us how to live like Jesus, and that even the flaws of Scripture are inspired to point us to the cross of Jesus. In essence, even the contradictions we discover in Scripture can be redeemed and have an inspired purpose that God uses. 

Boyd’s premise that some of the imperfections of Scripture can be testimonies in themselves that perfection is only to be found in Jesus. God’s inspiration of Scripture accommodates human limitations, and those limitations are a reminder that God uses flawed and finite people to accomplish his glorious will, a reminder of our need for the grace of Christ in our mistakes and blind spots. And where do we see grace for the broken more than in the cross of Jesus? Thus, biblical imperfections are signposts meant to point us to the cross of Jesus. Boyd thus affirms that he believes all of the Bible is inspired, not just select parts of it, and even says the Bible is infallible, that it does not fail to accomplish God’s purpose. That purpose isn’t necessarily for the Bible to be totally perfect in every detail, or to coerce us into a relationship with God against our will, but to serve as an inspired witness to the Crucified and Risen One, and how we are to know and love and serve him, and to see ourselves as sinners in need of him. “I now had a paradigm that enabled me to trust the Bible to infallibly accomplish all that God intends it to accomplish without needing to deny or to feel embarrassed by the fallibility of the biblical writings themselves” (Boyd, Inspired Imperfection, p. 69). He calls his view cruciform inspiration (p. 81).

While I don’t agree with all of Boyd’s thoughts, I like his overall thesis. It seems to be a much more accurate conception of what Scripture actually is, as well as a better theology of inspiration that avoids the pitfalls of inerrancy, while still taking all of Scripture seriously. God didn't send us a perfect text. He sent us a perfect Savior. God’s perfect, inerrant word is Jesus. Our faith is to be in him, with Scripture as God’s inspired witness to him, even in its contradictions and difficulties. 

I wonder if Boyd had such a foundation when he went to college, he wouldn't have felt compelled to give up his faith when he was exploring the intellectual foundations of Christianity. Perhaps now, because of his work and the work of others like him, we who read the Bible today can have a better paradigm for understanding its inspiration, nature, and purpose. Hopefully that will lead to us loving like Jesus and pointing others to faith in Jesus.

Kill 'Em All: Wrestling with Jesus and Old Testament Genocide

There are several hangups people tend to have with Christian faith–fun topics like hell, sexual ethics, faith and science, exclusive divine claims, and making sense of the Bible. The very mention of some of these topics at the dinner table can quicken people’s pulses. But an issue that consistently makes the list and is also a quandary for Christians is divinely sanctioned violence and genocide in the Old Testament (OT). Not long ago, my church went through a Deuteronomy Bible study, and the total eradication of the Canaanites is a repeated theme in the book. The defeat of kings Sihon and Og in 2:24-3:11 included the annihilation of all the “men, women, and children” in their towns (2:34; 3:6). Total destruction is commanded multiple times for future battles as well (see 7:2, 16; 20:16-18; 25:17-19). Greg Boyd in his book Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence, says that commands for total annihilation of a people group are given thirty-seven times in the OT (p. 9). There also are multiple commands concerning putting individuals to death for certain infractions: idolatry (see chapter 13 and 17:2-7), murder (19:11-13), dishonoring parents (21:18-21), sexual violations (22:20-27), and kidnapping and selling people into slavery (24:7).

Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins says in his book The God Delusion that the Bible encourages “a system of morals which any civilized modern person, whether religious or not, would find–I can put it no more gently–obnoxious” (p. 268). He goes on to bewail some of the more repulsive episodes in Scripture–from commands about slavery, the oppression of women, stoning people for disobedience, seeming child abuse in the offering up of Isaac, the seeming sadism in the Father willing the Son to give up his life as a sacrifice, and God commanding the wiping out of entire people groups in the conquest narratives. Theologian Miroslav Volf in A Public Faith quotes another atheist, Sam Harris, who writes in his book The End of Faith that the Bible contains “mountains of life-destroying gibberish,” and Volf summarizes him as saying that “[w]hen Christians take the Bible as their final authority, […] they act in violent, oppressive, life-destroying ways that undermine the common good” (p. 18). Dawkins, Harris, and others contend that if we really get our morals from the Bible, we would turn into incredibly savage people. 

Of course, most Christians either ignore or interpret those passages in a way that does not condone such violence. When’s the last time anyone heard a sermon telling people to go stone children who dishonor their parents? When’s the last time you heard a preacher call for a holy genocide? Folks like Dawkins and Harris grant that modern Christians don’t teach such things, but they further contend that taking such an approach pushes against the traditional Christian teaching on biblical inspiration. If you don’t interpret those passages in a straightforward way, can you sensibly believe the Bible is inspired by God? Either you believe the Bible is God’s inspired word and have a mass-murderer morality, or you throw biblical authority and inspiration out the window in order to be a good person, but the notion of the Bible serving as an authority or a revelation from God doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on. Either way, Christians seem caught in a bind, forced into a contradiction of claims concerning their religion.

Dawkins and others raise excellent questions. Is there a reasonable way out from this conundrum? Can you believe genocide passages are God’s inspired word while also believing God would not want us to perform such actions today and be consistent? What do passages commanding divinely sanctioned violence mean as God’s word to us today?

A Christian View of the Old Testament

To begin, let's look at how Christians interpret the OT. One assumption behind the critique of Dawkins and others is that to believe in biblical inspiration, one must believe believe all parts of Scripture are equally authoritative. While Christians do believe all of Scripture is inspired by God, we do not believe all parts are weighted equally or serve the same function. A passage about putting adulterers to death (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22) is not as authoritative as Jesus showing mercy to an adulterer and calling her go and leave behind her sins (John 8:1-11). Why? Christians believe that Jesus is the fullest revelation of God (John 10:30; Col. 1:19-20), and that the key to knowing God, understanding his will, and interpreting anything in Scripture, especially in the OT, is through the lens of Jesus and the Spirit. In light of Jesus being revealed in the New Testament (NT), Christians consider the NT more authoritative and binding than the OT, and contend that the OT has to be interpreted in light of God’s fullest revelation in Jesus. The function of the OT is primarily to prepare the way for and point us to Christ.

We see this notion at work in how Jesus and the early church interpret the OT. According to Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:17-20, he came not to abolish OT Law, but to fulfill it. This makes the idea of fulfillment a tool Christians might employ in interpreting OT passages. We can understand Jesus as bringing to fulfillment an idea or purpose an OT passage introduces. Once something is fulfilled by Christ, it may not be binding in the same way anymore for those who trust in Christ. Paul gets at a similar notion in Colossians 2:16-17 when he talks of OT food laws, festivals, and Sabbath as foreshadowings of the reality which is to be found in Christ. This once again is fulfillment language–a concept or practice gets introduced in the OT, but it finds its true fulfillment and perfection in Christ, which means those passages and concepts from the OT aren't applicable in the same way anymore. In Luke 24:25-27, as Jesus speaks incognito to his companions, he tells them that the OT points to his own suffering and glory (see also John 1:45; 5:39-47). Peter makes a similar point in 1 Peter 1:10-12 that God's Spirit was working in the biblical prophets to predict the sufferings and glory of Christ. In John 5:39-40, Jesus says in a conversation with Jewish leaders that they think they have eternal life by studying the Scriptures (the OT), and he says those Scriptures testify about him, yet the leaders refuse to come to him for life. Another picture is Revelation 5, where there is a scroll with writing on both sides that is sealed with seven seals, and no one can open it. Then, an angel tells John not to fret, because the Lion of the tribe of Judah can open it, and then John sees a Lamb looking as though it had been slain. The Lamb takes the scroll and is worshipped, and then in the following chapters starts undoing the seals. One way (though not the only way) to interpret this vision is that Jesus, who is simultaneously the slain Lamb and the powerful Lion, is the key to understanding God’s revealed will in the Scriptures, symbolized by the scroll. These passages see the OT as foreshadowing and preparing the way for Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. 

In one of the fullest reflections we get on this subject in the NT, Paul in Galatians 3:15-25 says the law (OT) was like a guardian or tutor God’s people were under temporarily, intended to lock everyone up under sin until Christ came and people could be saved by faith in him and his grace. While we’d all love for Paul to expound further on the specifics and how all this fits together, he does reveal a sense of progressive revelation, that the OT law was not God’s full revelation or his final plan of salvation, but was temporary and forward-leaning in nature, preparing the way for Christ. You also see Jesus cancel or modify parts of OT teaching. Jesus isn't afraid to correct some aspects of OT teaching. He cancels the OT “eye for an eye” principle (Ex. 21:23-25) and calls us to love, forgive, and pray for our enemies, while simultaneously making more stringent commands relating to murder (Ex. 20:13) and adultery (Ex. 20:14) in Matthew 5. Jesus considered himself to be revealing a more complete and better covenant than the former law, and he wasn't afraid to correct or intensify it in certain ways.

There’s more that could be said here, but I hope you see I'm not blowing smoke when it comes to how Jesus and the early church interpreted the OT. They saw Jesus as the center of the Scriptures, the key to interpreting the Bible and understanding God. There is a sense of progressive revelation going on until the coming of Jesus–the OT prepares us for and points us to Christ, but it is not the full revelation of God and doesn't always carry the same weight of authority as the NT. This does not mean the OT isn't inspired by God, but rather it means parts of the OT play a different role when we interpret them in light of the NT and the coming of Christ. If anything in the OT is contradictory to the teaching of Christ, the apostles, and their close associates who authored the NT, we must interpret those OT commands differently and discern how that passage might point to Christ, while the NT commands are most authoritative and binding for Christian life and practice today.

A key question is why would God not reveal all of himself immediately? Why did God selectively reveal his will over centuries instead of sending Christ immediately after humanity fell? While we’re peering into a mystery here, one possible reason is that God wanted to reveal to us just how incapable and weak we are apart from the fullness of his grace accomplishing salvation for us. Lest we think we could be good or save ourselves apart from a unilateral work by God, the OT serves as a painful but powerful reminder of how nasty sin is and how it enslaves us (Romans 7:13-14), of how imprisoned we are by sin and evil apart from God’s full rescue in Christ (Galatians 3:22). Paul, as he concludes a section of his argument in reflecting on God's work and faithfulness to Israel, says in Romans 11:32 that God has bound everyone over to disobedience in order that he may have mercy on us all. This gets at the notion that Luther lifted up from Paul (and it’s present in Deuteronomy 31 as well)–Luther taught the second function of the OT Law is to condemn us as sinners and drive us toward Christ our Savior. The OT reveals to us how bound we are by the power of sin and evil and prepares the way for a greater work of salvation in Jesus. Through it we gain a deeper perspective into our own flaws, but also a greater appreciation for Christ and a sense of our need for Christ and the Spirit.

Some Observations on Genocide in the Larger Framework of the OT

Let’s briefly make some observations on the genocide passages within the larger framework of the OT, and then turn to look at how the NT either enriches or changes these passages.

God Is a God of Judgment–One of the primary things we can learn from these passages is that God is a God of judgment, who is disturbed, wounded, and angered by our sins. Our sins are deserving of death, and God has rights over life and death. Some of the reasons listed in the OT for why God drove out the inhabitants of Canaan can be found in passages like Deuteronomy 18:9-14, which lists out some of the practices of the people. They would sacrifice their children in fires as offerings to the gods and would listen to sorcerers, physics, and necromancers. Leviticus 18 also lists out a host of sexual sins that were practiced by some of the Canaanite people, along with another mention of child sacrifice. So we’re not talking about societies that walked old ladies across the street and were deeply life-affirming, kind, and generous. Worshipping false gods isn’t just a matter of making God upset, but it has direct consequences on how we treat others. If we fail to worship the one true God and commit idolatry, the way we treat others will fall out of sorts as well. God takes the lead in decreeing judgment and is the primary fighter and giver of victory. In fact, a lot of the victories Israel wins are miraculous, because they weren’t a trained army or a bunch of professional mercenaries. These were people who were delivered from slavery in Egypt and had wandered in the desert for 40 years before undertaking the conquest at God’s leading. God's miraculous ability to give victory against frightful odds is on display in these passages.

There Is Mercy Even Toward Canaanites–In the book of Joshua, God commands mercy for Rahab, the Gibeonites, and sojourners who ostensibly could have been Canaanites–apparently God’s holy war wasn’t waged on the basis of ethnicity, but rather on the basis of whether people accepted or refused to find shelter under the wings of Yahweh. You also see that God’s plan has always been to bless all people and to reach the world–he tells Abraham all nations of the world will be blessed through him in Genesis 12. There are many passages in the Law that are about caring for the sojourner in your midst, the foreigner who lives with you. And sojourners were always welcome to worship Yahweh and to become devoted to Yahweh. So the wrath of God can’t be said to be racial in motivation or about ethnic cleansing–God loves all people and has always welcomed all people who were willing to be in relationship with him.

Exaggerated Victory Language–Ancient near eastern military documents typically exaggerated their claims of victory and their accomplishments in battle. Kings in the ancient near east used to claim that they killed every single person in the land, then later would talk about how much tribute the presumably dead group of people then had to pay. Hint: people who have been totally obliterated can’t pay tribute. It was inflated, trumped up language that exalted in victory, even if all of the people weren’t literally killed (see Dr. Lawson Stone, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGVn1gaSsAsn ). We see hints that a similar notion might be at work in the total destruction passages in the OT. For instance, Joshua 10:20 says that the Israelites “[struck the Amorites] with a great blow until they were wiped out,” and in the very next breath talks about the remnant that fled into fortified cities. I thought they were wiped out, but then they’re hiding in cities? You see this in Deuteronomy 7:1-5, in which Moses commands the Israelites to “devote [some of the native inhabitants] to complete destruction” in verse 2, and then goes on further to command them not to intermarry with them. Why would they even have the chance to intermarry if they are devoted to complete destruction? In 1 Samuel 15, Saul is said to have eradicated totally the Amalekites, but they pop up later in 1 Samuel 27 when David makes raids against them, and again in 1 Samuel 30 when they raid David’s city of Ziklag when he was living among the Philistines. Another example is a people group known as the Anakim. In Joshua 11:21-22, it says that Joshua totally destroyed the Anakim who were in the promised land and in the hill country around the city of Hebron. The text says only in the territories of Gath, Gaza, and Ashdod–Philistine territory–did some Anakim remain. Later, however, Joshua 14:12 and Judges 1:20 tell of Caleb asking Joshua permission to take possession of the hill country and to drive out the Anakim who are there. But wait, didn’t Joshua totally destroy them from the hill country earlier in chapter 11? Moses totally destroyed the Midianites according to Numbers 31, and yet they pop up again to oppress the people of Israel in Judges 6. There are other examples of “totally destroyed” people groups who reappear in Scripture. It’s possible the original audience would have understood those passages not to be talking about literal, total annihilation, but that it was commonplace to use hyperbolic, exaggerated language concerning victories (see Scott Risley, http://bibleteachings.org/what-does-it-mean-to-utterly-destroy-the-canaanites/ for more). With these passages in mind, the total destruction commands may not actually refer total destruction, but could be inflated military language that was common in the ancient near east at that time.

How Do Jesus and the NT Inform How We Interpret These Passages?

Jesus Bears the Curse of Death for Us–While some of the prohibitions in the OT are still considered sinful in the NT, the punishment of death has fallen away. Jesus does not stone the woman caught in adultery, even though Lev. 20:10 and Deut. 22:22 command it. Why? Through Christ bearing the curse of the law, namely death and an experience of exile, for us (Galatians 3:10-14). Jesus fulfilled the death penalty by dying for us, in our place, for our sins. This creates space for God to be both just in condemning sin in one place in Christ, and yet also making a way for God to show great grace and love for those who repent of their sins and throw themselves at the feet of God's mercy. That’s in part why you see no commands to stone or kill someone in the NT. The highest form of discipline in the NT seems to be excommunication.

Non-Violence and Spiritual Warfare–Jesus was undeniably non-violent toward people throughout his life. If there is a place for violence against other humans in the New Testament, you might be able to argue for it from Romans 13, with the constraints that someone is part of an official government position designed to reward what is good and halt evil, though that matter is disputed within the church. Otherwise, there is no divinely sanctioned violence against other human beings present in the NT. We do see a move from eye for an eye thinking into the call to love our enemies in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:38-48). We see Jesus call peacemakers blessed children of God in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:9). We see Peter telling us to follow the example of Christ when suffering unjust treatment in 1 Peter 2 and 3 by entrusting ourselves to him who judges justly, and to imitate Christ and show his love even to the people who would harm us. We have Paul telling us in Romans 12 to bless those who persecute us and not to repay anyone evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good. When it comes to following Jesus and having a Jesus-centered faith, becoming more devout and zealous about our religion should not make us more violent, but more peaceful. Becoming more devoted to Christ should, in the words of James 1:19, make us more quick to listen, slow to anger, and slow to speak. It should make us more full of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It helps us believe in and work for justice without having to insist on our own way or eradicate those with whom we disagree. It helps us hold together grace, love, and tenderness alongside a deep longing for justice, truth-telling, and things being made right. 

There is a place, however, for spiritual warfare in the NT. This gives us a hint that one way we can interpret violent OT passages is to spiritualize them and use them in reference to spiritual conflict. Jesus casts out many demons in the Gospels and gives a teaching about “binding the strong man” in Mark 3:20-30 and its parallels, implying that Jesus is stronger than Satan and came to drive him out. In Ephesians 6:10-20, Paul mentions that we are in a struggle against spiritual forces of evil and darkness, and therefore we need to be equipped with God’s armor and be ready to wage spiritual war. In 2 Corinthians  2:5-11, Paul urges the Corinthians to forgive an offender and to be on guard against the devil’s schemes, one of which apparently is to harbor unforgiveness and grudges. Later in 2 Corinthians 10:3-6, Paul says that though we live in this world, we do not wage war as the world does, but rather the weapons we fight with are not of this world. They are weapons of divine power that can take down arguments against Jesus in order to make every thought captive to Christ. The Apostle John says in 1 John 3:8 that the reason Jesus appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. The NT portrays the world and the church as caught up in a cosmic battle waged by spiritual forces seen and unseen. Suffice it to say there is a spiritualizing move when it comes to violence and warfare language in the NT. This illuminates one way we can focus our rage and violent energy. It isn't to be directed against human beings, but against powers, principalities, and the forces of darkness.

God Still Expresses Divine Violence in the NT– Divine violence and the judgment of God does not disappear in the NT. All throughout, from the Gospels to Paul to Peter to John, they affirm that Jesus will return to judge the whole world and exact justice. John sees a vision of this in Revelation 19-20, where Jesus as the Rider on a White Horse comes to wage war against all that is opposed to God, and you also see the great white throne of judgment, where God definitively decides the fate of the whole world. Also, the judgment of God is still active in the present age as well–its not all stored up until Jesus comes back. God strikes Ananias and Saphira dead in Acts 5:1-11 because they lied about how much they were giving to the church and kept back part of the money for themselves. In Acts 12:20-23, King Herod Agrippa I is struck down by the angel of the Lord when he is giving a speech because people started calling him a god and not a man, and he wouldn’t give glory to God. The text says “he was eaten by worms and breathed his last,” which sounds like a pretty unpleasant way to go. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 11:27-34, attributes people in the church getting sick and some even dying as a result of God judging and disciplining them concerning abuses in how some in the Corinthian Church were celebrating the Lord’ Supper. Jesus also says he’s going to kill the children of a false prophet labeled Jezebel at the church in Thyatira in Revelation 2:18-29 (perhaps her children are her disciples/followers?), who have been given time to repent, yet have not. God’s present justice and wrath has not disappeared in the NT. Still, we do not see any commands for God’s people to carry out divinely sanctioned violence against other humans in the NT like we saw in the OT. The NT focus tends primarily to be on the return of Christ as the time when God fully exercises his justice. Peter says this delayed justice and judgment displays God’s patience and kindness, which is meant to lead us toward repentance so everyone may be saved (2 Peter 3:8-9). God’s primary desire is for everyone to be saved, and in some cases he allows present injustices in hope that we will turn from our sins and be saved and transformed by his grace. Still, if we spurn God’s grace and mercy in Jesus, the same holy and just judgment displayed in these earlier examples waits in store for us.

Is God a Baby Killer?

You may think all the aforementioned stuff is well and good, but let’s not beat around the bush–are you really trying to defend God concerning commands about killing babies in those total destruction passages? Is it ever possible to give a moral defense of such an action? And if so, doesn’t that seem a bit hypocritical, especially since much of the church champions defending unborn life but worships a God who at least at some point in time commanded the killing of Gentile babies? Children are dependent and defenseless. Young children are more the product of their parents and culture than their own choosing. Who they are is almost entirely received, not chosen. Only when they get older are they able to have more power of choice and self-definition, and more moral responsibility gets assigned to people based on how much power they had in making moral decisions. How on earth could God command things like this and be good?

There are several options on how some people proceed here. 

1. Those Passages Are Wrong and We Need To Leave Them Behind–Some folks take this approach, but again, it seems to fall prey to the critique Dawkins and others give. It’s hard to make much case for biblical inspiration and authority if you simply choose to dismiss parts of the Bible you don’t like. This isn’t how Jesus treated the OT (see for instance Matthew 5:17-20; 15:3-11; 21:42-44; 22:29-32; 26:54; John 10:35). If Jesus viewed the OT Scriptures as inspired, I don’t think we can simply say they are wrong and we need to move on from them. It’s probably not wise to think we know better than Jesus. It’s better to ask how should we interpret those passages and how are we to understand them as being inspired, even if the surface level meaning is not applicable for Christians.

2. God Did Not Speak These Commands, but These Texts Showcase How God Accommodates Fallen Humanity–Greg Boyd is a proponent of this view in his Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence, and Boyd makes the case that Moses and others either misheard God and/or made him in their own image when it comes to commands about inflicting divinely sanctioned violence. Boyd maintains that if Jesus, the perfect Son of God, was misunderstood by his disciples multiple times concerning his crucifixion and resurrection, then could it also be possible that God was misunderstood by his servants in the OT? Boyd makes the case for direct and indirect revelations of God, that when any picture of God in the OT conflicts with the picture of God revealed in Christ crucified, we must consider it an indirect revelation of God (p. 98). These passages are still inspired, however, in that we may be able to lift some principles or truths out of them, even if the entirety of a passage isn’t 100% applicable to us as Christians. And, the flawed are grisly parts can showcase how God accommodates broken sinners like us, which points us to God’s ultimate act of accommodation–the cross of Jesus–where Christ painfully bears the sins of the world to make a way for us to be made truly whole and holy if we turn from our sins. Even the nature of Scripture is cross-shaped in that it accommodates human sinfulness in order to point to God’s love. In this way, Boyd maintains that Moses and others didn't actually hear from God on divinely sanctioned violence, but the passage is still inspired by pointing to God's loving accommodation which ultimately leads us to the cross.

I think Boyd’s paradigm has a lot that is stimulating. I would modify him in a couple ways, and I also don't think his paradigm is without issues. First, Boyd seems too limited in his typology (typology has to do with how the OT foreshadows Jesus and the new covenant). He makes his particular interpretation of the cross crowd out other valid biblical themes about Jesus. What about the resurrection, the ascension, and Jesus’ eventual return and judgment of the world? He has a typology of how OT divine violence foreshadows the cross, which is true and good, but he doesn’t seem to reflect much on how OT divine violence could also foreshadow other aspects of the work of Jesus. I think there are a lot of connections that can be made to Christ's final judgment in the genocide passages. In fact, the vision of the rider on the white horse (Jesus) in Revelation 19:11-21 reads a bit like an OT genocide passage. I think Boyd's model misses this.

Second, Boyd doesn’t fully capture how God sometimes results to coercive force. He writes, “God must always act by means of influence rather than coercion” (p. 58). I agree with an aspect of this statement since I’m an Arminian. I believe God acts by means of influence when it comes to inviting people into a saving relationship with Christ. We are not coerced into becoming followers of Jesus, but loved and invited into the relationship and given grace-enabled choice. But I chafe at the word "always" in the quote above. If we resist God, he is not opposed to bringing coercive judgment and discipline into our lives. Again, I’d appeal to the aforementioned examples of Ananias and Saphira (Acts 5), Herod (Acts 12), the Corinthian Christians getting sick and dying from God’s judgment (1 Corinthians 11), and Jesus saying he’s going to kill the children of Jezebel (Revelation 2). It seems pretty clear to me that God is using coercive power to bring judgment in these passages. You can still be a pacifist like Boyd and believe in God’s right to exercise divine violence–in fact, it can be some of the grounds of your pacifism. Boyd makes the case that many in the church have made God in our own image, and perhaps Boyd is doing the same when it comes to screening out any possibility that the God we see in Jesus crucified and risen could still use coercive force?

My main question is over why Boyd doesn't use the same explanation concerning OT food laws, the sacrificial system, circumcision, religious festivals, Sabbath observance, clean and unclean laws, etc. Did Moses "mishear" God on those commands? Jesus considered those things to be revealed from God, though he fulfilled them and they aren’t binding for Christians. Can we not think similarly on divinely sanctioned violence? Of course, the key difference between the former issues and divine violence is that the former did not entail any loss of human life. Could God have commanded divinely sanctioned violence, knowing it would be a temporary, incomplete revelation whose true significance would be revealed in Christ–Christ bearing the death all sinners deserve, Christ waging war against evil spirits and calling us to join the battle, and Christ bringing final judgment against evil? That leads to the next possibility, which also is not without its challenges.

The strength of Boyd’s approach is that it gets you off the hook for believing God commanded genocide while also holding onto the plenary inspiration of Scripture, but his approach is not without issues.

3. God Spoke These Commands, but Their Function Is Spiritual and Typological in Nature–I see a couple ways people could go here. One is to pull from the above knowledge of exaggerated military victory language to make a case that in giving the total destruction commands, God did not intend the total eradication of people, but rather the military defeat and overthrow of a broken culture. That is probably how proponents would interpret the distinction made in Deuteronomy 20:10-18 on how to go to war with nations outside the promised land vs. how to go to war with nations in the promised land. The total annihilation language was more on the eradication of a culture, not the actual killing of women, children, and babies. 

Others would say yes, God is speaking commands to kill women, children, and babies. Probably no one wants to get stuck defending this position if there's a better explanation, but even if it is the case, I’d have a hard time seeing God consigning people to eternal damnation, especially children, who have no ability to choose anything other than what is given to them by family and culture. Perhaps Paul’s comments in Acts 17:30 that “in the past God overlooked such ignorance” of idolatry would be relevant here? 

These approaches maintain the notion of God genuinely speaking these commands, even though they are temporary and indirect revelations, and their main Christ-revealed function is that they are prefigurations of the cross, spiritual warfare, and final judgment. They do not "get God off the hook" when it comes to commanding violence in the past, however. Whether you hold to a softer view or a literal view of the nature of the violence, these views still bring up questions concerning God's faithfulness and fairness. These may not be insurmountable given some of the considerations above, but they can be "sticky wickets," to quote a friend who gave some feedback on a draft of this. Of course, proponents of this view maintain they are not applicable at face value for Christians when it comes to God commanding people to eradicate others, since nowhere is this supported in the NT.

4. God Still Calls the Church to Inflict Violence and Holy War Today–This position would say there is no significant difference between Old and New Testaments on the issue of divinely sanctioned violence. God’s people are still called to use violence to enforce God’s will. This is the mistake parts of the church fell into during the Crusades. While you could make a biblical case for this position, you would have a hard time making a Christian case, because supporting this would require having the OT become weightier and more foundational than Jesus and the NT when it comes to your theology. That’s not a Christian way of doing theology and is not how Jesus and the early church interpreted Scripture. Perhaps an exception can be made for those in governmental roles created to preserve order according to Romans 13:1-7.

I think options 2 and 3 can work for thinking through this issue, though the conversation certainly isn't over.

Conclusion

Biblical inspiration does not mean all Bible passages are weighted equally or function in the same manner. Jesus is the key to interpreting Scripture since he is the full revelation of God. When an OT passage conflicts with a NT passage, Christians should obey the NT while also seeking to discern how that OT passage connects to the work of Christ. God has authority over life and death. He sometimes exercises that right in history, but mostly God patiently waits to express his full and final justice until the return of Christ, an act of love done in hopes that people would turn from their sins and trust in Jesus in order to find life, meaning, and hope. Christians have a diversity of views on if God actually commanded the genocides, and if he did, on whether it was an actual genocide or the use of exaggerated language. Becoming more zealous and devoted to Jesus should not make Christians more savage and violent people. Jesus was non-violent toward people, and he and his apostles call us to be non-violent as much as possible, while still standing for truth and goodness and struggling against spiritual evil with spiritual weaponry. 

With these thoughts in mind, I’m hoping that the next time we read or hear the genocide passages in all their gruesome detail, we can receive them as God’s inspired words to us through Christ. They should remind us that Jesus died for us to show us grace, though we are sinners who deserve wrath. They should remind us that we are challenged to join in Jesus' battle against sin and spiritual evil, participating in spiritual warfare through prayer and lining our lives up with God's truth. They should remind us that Jesus is returning to judge and totally annihilate all evil, while those who trust in Christ will enter into God's promised land of eternal happiness, healing, and harmony. May we wrestle with these texts and come away with a deeper appreciation of Christ.