I promised in my last post that I would address the issue of what to do with all the violence and battles of the Old Testament. I find that spiritualizing the battles of the Old Testament is an inadequate way of dealing with this "dark side" of the Bible, but because of the complexity of the issue it will be necessary to stretch out my answer in a series of posts. So let's start by getting some preliminary issues out of way.

First, let me say that I find it overly simplistic to say that the God of the Old Testament is a God of War and that the God of the New Testament is a God of Peace. In both the Old and New Testaments we are dealing with the same God. The God of the Exodus who battles Pharaoh and his minions to bring his people from slavery to freedom, the God who sends the Assyrians and the Babylonians against his people to punish them for their sins, and the God of unconditional love and forgiveness that Jesus proclaims in the New Testament is the same God. There is, to be sure, a shift in emphasis between the Old and New Testaments, but it is the same God who is loving and forgiving, who is angry and punishing. God in the Old Testament shows his love for his people in rescuing them from slavery and from their enemies. In Hosea God's mercy overrides his anger against his people. It is because he is God and not human, that he will not carry out the punishment they so richly deserve (Hos 11:9). The Old Testament describes God as "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (e.g. Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2; Ps 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Neh 9:17).

The language of violence is not absent from the New Testament. The war lamb of the Book of Revelation is not a warm and fuzzy creature. Eternal punishment is still on the horizon for those who fail to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned (Mt 25:41-46).

Second, I would like to situate this discussion within its historical and theological context. The story of Israel's life as a nation testifies to the notion of a God who is at work in the history of the nation, even in the horrific trauma of the wars that nation experienced. It is not easy to see God at work in the pain and misery of life, but Israel taught us how to do that so that we could see even in the cross of Jesus, God is to be found, and by extension we can find God in the pain and misery that may plague our own lives. The biblical witness affirms that God is not found simply in the glory of nature or is active only in the good things we experience in life, but also God is to be found in the messiness of life, even in the mess we make of life in war.

Finally by way of introduction to this topic of war and violence in scripture, these battle stories of the Old Testament tell us something of the nature of God. In a world where the defeat of a nation was seen as the defeat of the gods of that nation, the Old Testament tells us that Yahweh is in control, his power is not to be doubted, even when Israel is defeated; indeed Yahweh is using the other nations to punish Israel for its sin. The biblical stories tell us that Yahweh does not use his power arbitrarily or for trivial reasons, as we find in some of the stories of the gods of Israel's neighbors. To explain defeat in battle as the result of sin is to affirm that we live in a moral universe. There is a reason for what happens. If God sends punishment, it is because Israel has sinned, and so has merited punishment. That this answer is ultimately inadequate or at least incomplete is already addressed in the book of Job. The New Testament will be more radical in its view that God does not hold our sin against us, but has redeemed us in Christ.

Holding these three things in mind, we need to address the thorny issue of Holy War which I will pick up in my next post.

Pauline Viviano

The "National Catholic Bible Conference" was held this summer in Chicago. Among the talks it advertised was one entitled "Old Testament Wars and the Spiritual Battle." I did not go to the conference, but I was intrigued by the description of this talk in the brochure I received: "How should we interpret all the wars and violence recorded in the Old Testament? This presentation shows how we can uncover the spiritual meaning of Israel's battles by reading them in light of the fullness of revelation given in Christ ... Interpreted properly, Israel's wars contain powerful lessons of the spiritual battle all Christians are engaged in."

In light of the fact that the biblical text has been used over the centuries to support all kinds of atrocities, this description raises an important question, "how should we interpret all the wars and violence recorded in the Old Testament." Will the speaker deal with the difficulties posed by the notion of a Warrior God actively involved in violence? Will the speaker address how we as Christians can reconcile the violent God of the Old Testament with the God of unconditional love and forgiveness proclaimed by Jesus? Will the speaker tell us how to reconcile Israel's battles with Jesus' command to love our enemies and his refusal to allow his disciples to do violence to save him from the cross?

None of these questions will be addressed; rather the presentation will "uncover the spiritual meaning of Israel's battles" and show how when "interpreted properly" these wars "contain powerful lessons of a spiritual battle all Christians are engaged in." "Spiritual battle" language was not a part of my Catholic upbringing, so I googled the phrase "spiritual battle" and found over 2 million sites informing me in rather terrifying language of this battle. After reviewing several of the sites, I wondered how the nuns who taught me missed the opportunity to "scare the hell out of me" with this "spiritual battle" stuff. Maybe they thought it was just too "Protestant."

I find it odd to assume that what the battles of the Old Testament have to teach us when "properly interpreted" is something which is not said. I find it dismissive of the biblical text when we say that an imagined "spiritual meaning" is more important than what the text actually says. My concern is with what the biblical text says and how we can appropriate that message in our lives today, but if what we say it means is not connected with what it meant in its historical, literary and theological context, then why bother reading the biblical text at all? To speak of the battles of the Old Testament as referring to spiritual warfare strikes me as a cop-out. It dances around the real challenge of the biblical text: what do we do with all the violence and battles of the Old Testament? It is a question I will address in my next post.

Pauline Viviano

One of the traditional ways for Christians to understand the prophets of ancient Israel is to see the prophets as those who predicted the coming of the Messiah. Such connections were made early on, even in the New Testament itself, making it is hard for Christians to hear "a voice cries, 'in the wilderness'" (Isa 40:3) and not think of John the Baptist (Mk 1:3) or "a virgin shall conceive" (Isa 7:14) and not think of the annunciation to Mary (Mt 1:23). This way of looking at the prophets has given us a vocabulary to speak of who Jesus is and what he was about. It has lent richness to our liturgical celebrations and enabled us to see Jesus firmly grounded in the Jewish tradition that began with Abraham. But does this approach do justice to the prophets and to their message?

If we simply think of prophets as predictors of Christ, then their job is done, and apart from being aware of the prophetic statements that are linked to Christ, we need not bother with prophets or their message. But isn't that precisely the problem? Haven't we ignored the message of the prophets for too long?

If the Bible is the Word of God and if it is a living text that continues to have meaning for us today, then don't we have a responsibility to read the whole book of a prophet and not just pull out a few sentences and apply them to Jesus? Contemporary biblical scholars have been attending to questions about who prophets were, how they functioned in the ancient Israel, and what their message was. Though there are no easy answers to these questions, what is clear is that the prophets had a message that was a challenge to those in power. In the prophecies of Amos and Isaiah the elites stand indicted for their failure in justice, especially justice to the poor; in the prophecies of Hosea and Jeremiah no compromise in one's worship of God will be tolerated. These prophets use strong language that was vehement in tone and shocking in harshness and crudeness. Their words made their audiences uncomfortable, and when we hear them they still have the power to make us uncomfortable.

We would rather tame the prophets, put them in a box labeled "Jesus predictors" and dismiss them, but if scripture means anything to us, we must allow ourselves to be challenged and transformed by its message, especially the message of the prophets in their call to create a just society centered on God.

Pauline Viviano

I raised the issue of doing typological interpretation in our time in my last post, and let me reiterate that I have no problem with typology as a method of interpretation employed by the early Church. Moreover, I find typology meaningful in the liturgies at Christmas and Easter. What I have a problem with is attempting to do typological interpretation today. I acknowledge that typological interpretation is found in the New Testament, but does that make it what we should be doing today? It may have been good enough for Paul, but does that mean it must be good enough for me? Would Paul be doing typological interpretation if he were living today?

Once I "discover" that putting garments on the ground before Jehu bears a similarity to the people putting garments on the ground before Jesus on Palm Sunday, must I conclude that Jehu is a type of Christ? Is that all it takes? Is the brutality of Jehu simply to be disregarded or do I also apply that to Christ in some clever fashion? But even if I accept that this one sentence correspondence between the Old Testament and the New makes Jehu a type of Christ, then what have I learned? Does it draw me into a deeper understanding of who God is and what God is about? Does it inspire me to become a more loving human being?

Is my only task as a biblical theologian to find clever connectives between the Old Testament and the New Testament? If such is the case, one would think 2000 years ought to have been more than enough time to find every possible connection between the Testaments. Can we move onto something else now? Must I understand the Old Testament as the place where God spent his time inspiring its human authors to put in clever little things that I will only understand once I have faith in Christ? What kind of a God does that? What kind of a God has the time to do that?

The early Christians read the Old Testament through the lens of the Jesus event. I have no problem with that. We all read the text through some lens. Some today try to understand the biblical text from within its historical context (Historical Critical Method) or from within its literary context (New Literary Criticism; Rhetorical Criticism). Others interpret the biblical text privileging the position of the poor (Liberation criticism); others focus on gender issues (Feminist criticism). These methods and others are different and valid ways to approach the biblical text. What I object to is the notion that reading typologically, or any approach in search of the spiritual sense of the text, IS the theological reading of the text and what contemporary biblical scholars do is not theological. I find what contemporary biblical scholars are doing to be profoundly theological. Maybe the problem is that some just don't like the theological insights that we have gained from contemporary biblical interpretation and want to return to those "good old days" of the early Church Fathers ignoring entirely that not only has the world changed, but also that "the good old days" weren't all that good.

Pauline Viviano