The Failure of Angry God Theology: Part 6 – End Times Errors In Church History

In my last post I surveyed some Biblical examples of failed apocalyptic predictions of imminent judgment in the end times. In today’s post, I turn to some further examples from throughout church history. In my next post I will look at a few examples in other religions.

Montanist Millenarians

Many believers in Christianity’s first few centuries held imminent apocalyptic beliefs. One well known group was the Montanists.

Montanus and two charismatic female prophets, Maximilla and Prisca, claimed to receive new revelation from God (“New Prophesy”). They claimed that a new age of the Spirit was dawning and that the New Jerusalem would soon descend near the town of Pepuza (Kirsch, 2006, pp. 104-105). This imminent end called for strict ascetic living and no compromise under Roman persecution.

According to Maximilla, “after me there will be no prophesy, but the End” (Kirsch, 2006, p. 104). Montanism impressed no less a theologian than Tertullian, who wrote of reports from Roman soldiers stationed in Palestine who claimed to “see the spires and towers of a  city hovering above the horizon at dawn – surely an early sighting of the celestial Jerusalem!” (Kirsch, 2006, p. 105).

Of course, none of this came about. Montanism was eventually condemned as heretical and mostly died out by the 6th century CE.

Apocalypticism and the Crusades

While Christianity has always sparked imminent apocalyptic movements, from Augustine till well into the middle ages much of this was subdued. The anticipated final end had not materialized. Christianity had gone from persecuted sect to the official religion of the empire. Finally, an allegorical and amillenial approach to prophesy came to predominate, with the millennial kingdom being seen as corresponding to the church age (Kyle, 1998, pp. 37-39).

But there were notable exceptions. Imminent apocalyptic expectations played into the violence of the Crusades. Timothy Weber explains:

Many believed that the rise and spread of Islam, the Viking and Magyar invasions, and the Muslim capture of Jerusalem meant that the end was near…In a version of his 1095 sermon that led to the First Crusade, Pope Urban II stated that an expedition to free Jerusalem would help the faith “flourish again in these last times, so that when Antichrist begins his reign there – as he shortly must – he will find enough Christians to fight.” Peasants by the thousands joined the People’s Crusade, hoping to be in the holy land when Jesus established his kingdom. They also believed it was their duty to kill Jews along the way. Their justification: the Antichrist will come from the tribe of Dan, and Jews will be among his most devoted followers (Weber in Walls, 2008, p. 371).

Jonathan Kirsch notes the apocalyptic fervor that accompanied the Crusades, including vivid religious experiences:

“Many portents appeared in the sky as well as on the earth, and excited not a few who were previously indifferent to the Crusades,” writes Ekkehard of Aura in Jerusalem Journey, an account from the eleventh century. “Some showed the sign of the cross stamped by divine influence on their foreheads or clothes or on some parts of their body, and by that mark they believed themselves to be ordained for the army of God” (Kirsch, 2006, pp. 163-164).

English Puritan Apocalypticism 

The Reformation would lead to another upswell in imminent apocalyptic expectations. Perhaps the most infamous incident is the disastrous theocracy that was attempted at Munster. However, I will use a few examples from the English and American Puritans.

Apocalyptic expectations exploded in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, peaking in the late 1640s and 1650s (Kyle, 1998, pp. 64-66). Many social and religious factors played into this phenomenon. Richard Kyle explains the outlook:

The Reformation paved the way for Christ’s return by exposing the papal Antichrist. The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 convinced many that England was God’s instrument – the elect nation. The advance of the Turks into Europe horrified many English, persuading them that the hordes of Gog and Magog were at their doorsteps…most contemporary English people saw the Thirty Years War as a religious conflict (Kyle, 1998, p. 66),

After England’s break with Roman Catholicism under King Henry VIII, fierce conflict ensued over what form the Church of England should take. The Puritans saw the Church of England as still too Catholic and they associated both it and the Papacy with the Antichrist. The persecution of the Puritans and their defiant opposition would eventually lead to the English Civil War.

In that war, both the Puritans and their opponents saw each other as in league with the Antichrist (Kirsch, 1998, p. 175). “The Puritans understood their quarrel with the king in prophetic terms: they were God’s army fighting against the army of the papal Antichrist and his ally, the English king” (Weber in Walls, 2008, p. 374) .

After the Puritan army under Oliver Cromwell defeated the royalists and captured and executed King Charles I, there was intense debate over what kind of government was needed until Jesus’ second coming, widely expected by 1736 (Weber in Walls, 2008, p. 375).

One group that almost gained control were the Fifth Monarchists. They took their name from Daniel 7, which described the world’s four great empires. Supposedly, the fall of the fourth empire’s final king would inaugurate the government of God and his saints (Weber in Walls, 2008, p. 375). Kyle surveys some of their basic beliefs:

The reign of God on earth would of course begin in England…The Antichrist was to be destroyed, England purified, and then the kingdom of Christ would spread throughout the world. The English armies led by Oliver Cromwell would sweep through Europe and defeat the pope. The Jews meanwhile would return to the Holy Land and defeat the Turks. These events would come to pass between 1655 and 1657 (Kyle, 1998, p. 67).

Cromwell ended up rejecting the Fifth Monarchists’ demands as too extreme. They revolted and were defeated. Kirsch narrates how, as soldiers broke into one of their rallies, they cried “Lord, appear, now or never.” “Needless to say, the Lord was once again a no-show” (Kirsch, 2006, p. 176).

Eventually Cromwell himself died and the throne returned again to Charles II, the beheaded king’s son.

The year 1666 and the connection between 1000 years (the millennium) and 666 (the number of the beast) led many to believe that 1666 would be the time of the end. “The Quaker George Fox wrote that in 1666 nearly every thunderstorm aroused end-time anxiety” (Kyle, 1998, pp. 67-68).

New England Puritan Apocalypticism

Imminent apocalyptic beliefs thoroughly colored the American Puritans and has colored much of American religion since then. As Kyle notes, “Americans have tended to see themselves as the chosen nation and their enemies as demonic” (Kyle, 1998, p. 78).

I note in passing that eschatological beliefs played a significant role in colonialism more generally. For example, Columbus wrote an apocalyptic Book of Prophesies and was partly motivated in his colonial endeavors by the desire to finance the reconquest of Jerusalem from the Muslims and convert the heathen in the East to help bring in the final end (Kyle, 1998, p. 57).

The Puritans saw America as a New Jerusalem, a City upon a Hill, and themselves as a kind of new Israel. For example, John Cotton preached that New England was “the new promised land reserved by God for his elect people as the actual site for a new heaven and a new earth” (quoted in Kirsch, 2006, p. 173).

These convictions played into the way they saw and treated Native Americans. For example, Increase Mather suggested that the red horse of the Apocalypse foretold the bloodshed between the colonialists and Native Americans in King Philip’s War. His son Cotton Mather regarded Native American opponents as in league with the Antichrist (Kyle, 1998, pp. 78-79). Not unrelatedly, some Puritans justified genocidal murder of Native Americans by appeal to Old Testament passages commanding the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites (Boyd, 2017, pp. 26- 27).

Imminent apocalyptic expectations also played into the hysteria of the Salem Witch trials. Speaking of Cotton Mather, the above mentioned Puritan minister, who also played an integral role in the trials, historian Damian Thompson explains: “Fear of witches is above all evidence of End-time anxiety, since it was believed that the Last Days would see a terrible loosing of the powers of darkness” (quoted in Kirsch, 2006, p. 178). Mather also dabbled in date-setting, predicting that the end would arrive first in 1697 and then 1716 (Kyle, 1998, p. 79). Needless to say, this did not happen.

The Millerite “Great Disappointment”

Moving to another example, one of the most famous failed apocalyptic predictions in American history was the Millerite “Great Disappointment” of 1844. American Baptist layman William Miller came to believe that the 2,300 days predicted in Daniel 8:14 actually corresponded to 2,300 years and that the sanctuary cleansing the text predicted referred to Jesus’ second coming. Through an elaborate analysis, Miller’s calculations indicated to him that Jesus would return in 1843 (Kyle, 1998, p. 89).

The cautious Miller at first continued his studies and kept his ideas to himself. But he and others later started to share them widely in huge evangelistic tours that converted many. According to Kyle, at its high point, there may have been anywhere between thirty to one hundred thousand Millerites (Kyle, 1998, p. 89).

When Christ did not return in Miller’s 1843 timetable, he recalculated and came up with even more specifics dates: first March 21, 1844 and then October 6, 1844. Kyle describes what subsequently happened:

From about mid-August to October the Millerites engaged in a frenzy of activity. They flooded the country with their periodicals, books, and pamphlets. Many withdrew from their churches in anticipation of the second advent. They were instructed to get their affairs in order. Many did – selling their property, closing their stores, resigning their jobs, and abandoning their animals and crops…But the Great Disappointment was the last straw. When the Lord dis not return as expected, massive confusion and disillusionment set in…The Millerite movement fragmented and went in several directions (Kyle, 1998, pp. 90-91).

Dispensational Premillennial Predictions

As my last example from church history, I will look at still enormously influential dispensational premillennial teachings on the end times. I will spend a little more time on this view because it exercises enormous influence over American Christianity and politics. I will also highlight other problems with it in a later post.

Dispensationalism is a conservative Evangelical view that arose in the mid-19th century. It claims that God relates to people throughout history in different ways depending on which “dispensation” they live in. Classic Dispensationalism teaches that God has two eternally district peoples: Israel and the church.

Dispensational premillennialism teaches that God will restore the Jewish people to the land of Israel and that there will be a “rapture” of believers before and distinct from Jesus’ “second coming.” Dispensationalists believe that earth has a predetermined pessimistic future, with a single Antichrist figure who will gain world power, a seven year tribulation period, and a variety of severe supernatural judgments that will occur before Jesus’ second coming, the battle of Armageddon, the enactment of a one thousand year millennial kingdom, and after that a final resurrection and judgment.

There are a number of problems with dispensationalism. Most of them fall outside the scope of this series, but I note in passing that their beliefs about ethnic Jews being uniquely and eternally favored by God face serious evidential, moral, and theological problems. Such views are contradicted by the way the New Testament interprets the Old Testament and understands God’s one people. Their framework for interpreting the Bible is only selectively literal and involves implausible exegetical leaps. Finally, even if Jewish people were eternally chosen by God, they would be held to certain conditions under the Mosaic covenant, such as treating other inhabitants of the land with justice, which the modern state of Israel is violating.

In a future post I will note a number of serious moral and pragmatic problems that flow out of dispensationalism’s view of Israel and its fatalistic view of the end times. However, in today’s post I use it as an example of failed imminent apocalyptic expectations.

As Kyle observes, part of the genius of dispensationalism is that,

It does not lock itself into a specific schedule for the second advent. On one hand, it avoids setting exact dates for Christ’s return (though some dispensationalists have fallen into this trap). On the other, it maintains an intense expectancy for the secret rapture. Christ could return at any time. Yet he may delay his return for years. While the historic premillennialists were wedded to exact millennial arithmetic, the dispensationalists lived with “maybes,” (Kyle, 1998, p. 103).

With Kyle’s characterization in mind, I will obviously not be able to show that dispensationalism is definitively falsified by failed expectations. My more modest goal here is three-fold. I want to:

1) Show how a common dispensational interpretation of modern Israel as the fig tree in Matthew 24:32-34, supposedly signaling that Jesus will come again within a generation, is becoming ever more implausible. 2) Give some examples of prominent dispensationalists who have fallen into the date-setting trap and been shown to be wrong. And 3) point out how often dispensationalists have had to scramble their ideas about the end times cast.

First of all, we begin with a common dispensational interpretation of Matthew 24:32-34. This passage reads as follows:

“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”

In its original context, this passage probably referred to the generation of Jesus’ contemporaries (as I argued in a previous post). However, to get out of the implication that Jesus was wrong, some dispensationalists have argued that “this generation” actually refers to a future generation that will go through the events of the end.

The turbulent changes of the twentieth century and especially the emergence of the modern state of Israel played into dispensationalists anxieties and enthusiasm. They saw the re-emergence of Israel as a miraculous fulfillment of prophesy; though it is easily explicable as a normal historical event (see Bunton, 2013). This supposed fulfillment has played into the plausibility of dispensationalism to many (Kyle, 1998, p. 116).

According to Harold Lindsey and some other prominent dispensationalists, the fig tree that puts forth its first leaves (signally that the return of Christ is near) was the emergence of the modern nation of Israel.

Lindsey equates the fig tree with Israel: “When the Jewish people, after nearly 2000 years of exile…became a nation on May 14, 1948, the ‘fig tree’ put forth its first leaves.”…Lindsey contends that Jesus is here connecting his second coming with the rebirth of Israel. Noting that a biblical generation was about forty years, he goes on to say that “within forty years or so of 1948, all these things will take place” (Kyle, 1998, p. 119).

Later on, as it became clear that his prediction was not going to happen, Lindsey backtracked. He reminding his readers that he had qualified his earlier prediction and suggested that Matthew 24:34 might instead have the events of Israel’s 1967 Six Day War in mind. He also redefined a biblical generation as “somewhere between 40 and 100 years” (Kyle, 1998, p. 119).

But this too is becomes more-and-more implausible. The outer limit to these new predictions will be 2067. When Jesus does not return by then, I fully expect dispensationalists to change their narrative once again. Perhaps those who still hold to this interpretation of Matthew 24: 32-34 will abandon it for another. Perhaps they will say that the fig tree showing its leaves refers to some other event they expect related to Israel: the rebuilding of the temple, the expansion of Israel to its supposed “full biblical boundaries.” I expect for dispensationalists to push for these “fulfillments,” in spite of the violence and injustice they would necessitate.

Secondly, let me give some other examples of prominent dispensationalists who have made failed predictions of immanent apocalyptic judgment.

According to the Bible teacher and prophesy expert Leonard Sale-Harrison, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was the predicted Antichrist and the end would come in 1940 or 1941 (Kyle, 1998, p. 111).

In his 1950 crusade, Billy Graham told his audience: “We may have another year, maybe two years to work for Jesus, and [then] ladies and gentlemen, I believe it is all going to be over” (Kirsch, 2006, pp. 218-219).

Chuck Smith, the long-time pastor of Calvary Chapel in Southern California, declared in one of his books (Future Survival) that, “the Lord is coming for his church before the end of 1981,” a mistake Smith later repented of (Kyle, 1998, p. 120).

Influential televangelist and end times expert, Jack Van Impe, insisted in a 1975 newsletter that the “Soviet flag would fly over Independence Hall in Philadelphia by 1976” (Kyle, 1998, p. 120). One of his videos from 1992 indicated that the rapture, World War III, and Armageddon would occur in about eight years (Kyle, 1998, p. 120).

I remember chuckling to myself at a book I saw at my Aunt Connie’s called 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988, by Edgar Whisenant. According to Kyle the book sold 2 million copies (Kyle, 121). Presumably Whisenant’s rationales stemmed (like Lindsey’s)from his interpretation of current events and  especially the perceived significance of the modern state of Israel.

In his book Armageddon: Appointment with Destiny, Grand R. Jeffries indicated that the end is near and will probably occur around the year 2000 (Kyle, 1998, p. 120).

Of course, many dispensationalists discourage such specific and sensationalist date-setting. But many of the more popular proponents gravitate toward this, or claims very close to it.

Beyond the date setting problem, popular dispensationalist are regularly having to revise their understandings of which individuals, countries, and events will likely be the fulfillers of God’s end times plan.

For example, note how the common interpretation of Gog and Magog as referring the Soviet Union had to be scrapped after its collapse in the early 1990s. Now it is common for dispensationalists to see Gog and Magog as referring to an Islamic confederacy (Kirsch, 2006, p. 225).

G. K. Beale observes,

Interpreters who hold this view [a futurist approach to Revelation] are constantly changing their interpretation of historical events to make what is happening currently fit into the pattern. In the twentieth century alone, for instance, numerous individuals, from Hitler to Saddam Hussein, with various popes and other politicians (as has been the case from the medieval period up to the present), have been identified as the antichrist, and then quietly discarded when they pass from the scene. The same is true with specific historical events or institutions (the Second World War, the European Common Market, the Gulf War, Y2K, Saddam Hussein’s supposed rebuilding of Babylon). In short, the Bible is interpreted by modern events first, instead of by itself (Beale, 2015, p. 8).

In my next post I will look at some examples of failed apocalyptic predictions of imminent judgment in other religions.

 

References

Beale, G. K. and Campbell, D. H. (2015). Revelation: A shorter commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Boyd, G. A., (2017). Crucifixion of the warrior god: Interpreting the old testament’s violent portraits of god in light of the cross, vol. 1. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Bunton, M. (2013). The palestinian-israeli conflict: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Kirsch, J. (2006). A history of the end of the world: How the most controversial book in the bible changed the course of western civilization. New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco.

Kyle, R. (1998). The last days are here again: A history of the end times. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Weber, T. P. “Millennialism” in The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology. Ed. Jerry L. Walls. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. pp. 365-383. Print.

Love is God’s Primary Attribute: Part 6: Pragmatic Reasons

Introduction

In my last post of this series I argued that there is broad, interfaith consensus that the Ultimate is primarily loving, good, blissful, or beautiful. In today’s post I will turn to a range of pragmatic arguments for assuming that God is primarily loving based on how different concepts of God work and the differential effects they have on people.

I’ve argued that the phenomenological evidence strongly points toward God being loving. But say we didn’t have all that. Say we simply started out with different views of God, each initially just as plausible as the next. How might we proceed in the face of such uncertainty?

I contend that we should start out presuming that God is good in a way that is for us and analogous to what goodness elsewhere means to us, apart from strong evidence to the contrary. Views of God as predominately loving and as calling for us to reflect his love in our treatment of others should be presumptive.

Further, “love” should be assumed to be similar to our best notions of the word and our theology and ethics should be assumed to fit what we empirically know about the world. This view of God and his will should be our default baseline, apart from evidence to the contrary.

Pragmatics have to do with “what works best.” The truth is, different ideas about God and/or God’s will have demonstrably different effects on people. Some conceptions are generally more conducive to human happiness, connectedness, and well-being. Some tend to instigate fear, conflict, and ill-health.

Additionally, if God’s goodness can mean something different than what we everywhere else mean by that term—if arbitrariness, torture, genocide, and the like are really “good” when God is said to engage in them or command them—then calling them that involves equivocation, we end up with a God we cannot really trust or adore, we have no firm basis for ruling out heinous deeds as possibly being commanded by God, and theism’s typical grounding of human morality in God’s nature is fatally undermined.

Now, pragmatic considerations are not the only or even the most important ones. Truth and evidence are key. That is why I started there in this series.

However, we already saw that the evidence for a real physical world and this-worldly norms of love and justice are strong. We saw that in broad strokes, these realities are better evidenced than more debatable theological beliefs. In fact, I will argue in a later series that there is an element of ambiguity about what larger worldview is true.

This suggests to me that we should start out giving strong presumption to views of God and God’s will that fit with our physical and moral experience of the world and human flourishing. These should be our baseline assumptions, apart from evidence to the contrary.

If there were evidence to support a harsh view of God or God’s will, it would make sense to recognize that and act accordingly. But harmful, oppressive views need to bear the burden of proof. And in my view, this burden is both high and unmet.

As I said, I’ve presented positive evidence for thinking that God is predominately loving and for moral norms centered on love and justice. But apart from that, even if there ends up being no God, such a view is structured to make sense in this life; to bring good in this life, to ourselves or others. Views of God as primarily loving, gracious, and inclusive bring very good fruit and their opposites bring very bad fruit (as we will see).

Different Views of God Effect Physical and Psychological Health

Studies show that fearful, authoritarian views of God that prominently emphasize his anger or punitive wrath harm the brain, decreasing empathy toward others and our ability to use our rational facilities. By contrast, views of God that emphasize his love, compassion, and grace foster brain health and increase empathy and our ability to use our critical faculties. Psychiatrist Timothy Jennings observes the following:

Does it matter which God-concept we hold? Recent brain research by Dr. Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania has documented that all forms of contemplative meditation were associated with positive brain changes – but the greatest improvements occurred when participants meditated specifically on a God of love. Such meditation was associated with growth in the prefrontal cortex…and subsequent increased capacity for empathy, sympathy, compassion, and altruism. But here’s the most astonishing part. Not only does other-centered love increase when we worship a God of love, but sharp thinking and memory improves as well. In other words, worshiping a God of love actually stimulates the brain to heal and grow.

However, when we worship a god other than one of love – a being who is punitive, authoritarian, critical or distant – fear circuits are activated and, if not calmed, will result in chronic inflammation and damage to both brain and body (Jennings, 2013, p. 27).

Jennings goes on to give a fuller explanation of the kinds of damages that prolonged activation of the fear circuits in the amygdala can cause. These include increased risk of type 2 diabetes, obesity, elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, heart attacks, strokes, ulcers, infections and inflammatory disorders, decreased energy and motivation, impaired concentration, aches and pains, and sleep disturbances (Jennings, 2013, pp. 154-156).

Andrew Newberg, in the book Jennings cites, explains it this way:

Contemplative practices stimulate activity in the anterior cingulate, thus helping a person become more sensitive to the feelings of others. Indeed meditating on any form of love, including God’s love, appears to strengthen the same neurological circuits that allow us to feel compassion toward others.

In contrast, religious activities that focus on fear may damage the anterior cingulate, and when this happens, a person will often lose interest in other people’s concerns or act aggressively against them. We suspect that fear based religions may even create symptoms that mirror post-traumatic stress disorder. Brain-scan studies have shown that once you anticipate a future negative event, activity in the amygdala is turned up and activity in the anterior cingulate turned down. This generates higher levels of neuroticism and anxiety (Newberg and Waldman, 2009, p. 53).

Studies also show that loving, supportive views of God have a positive impact on health and healing. Harshly punitive views of God and medically unsound beliefs about his will can lead to physical and psychological harm or even death.

For example, in an article in The Cambridge Companion to Miracles, Niels Christian Hvidt surveys positive and negative coping resources that people can have in regard to medicine, prayer, and miraculous healing.

Negative coping resources include harmful beliefs such as the refusal of Jehovah’s Witnesses to accept blood transfusion or the “snake handling” practices of some Pentecostals (Hvidt in Twelftree, 2011, p. 317). They include people rejecting medical treatment because of the belief that they should trust in God’s miraculous healing as an alternative form of therapy capable of replacing medicine (Hvidt in Twelftree, 2011, p. 317). And they include demands of senseless extension of regular treatment in hope of a miracle (Hvidt in Twelftree, 2011, p. 318).

Positive coping resources include the hope and sense of relationship with God that trusting prayer can bring (Hvidt in Twelftree, 2011, p. 311). They include willingness to combine prayer for healing with proactive pursuit of medical treatment. And they include the ability to recognize and accept that God does not always heal (Hvidt in Twelftree, 2011, p. 322).

What I find most interesting for our purposes here is that different conceptions of God also have different effects on health outcomes in regard to sickness and healing. For example, the belief that God controls everything combined with the belief that God sends accidents, sickness, or suffering as punishment for misdeeds can lead to negative outcomes (Hvidt in Twelftree, 2011, pp. 315-316).

Alternatively, a view of God as loving, supportive, and as entering into the patient’s suffering with them can lead to positive health outcomes, as can a view of God as controlling all things when combined with the belief that he can bring good out of difficult situations (Hvidt in Twelftree, 2011, pp. 315, 319).

Hvich’s summary is worth quoting at length:

Research suggests that negative religious resources, such as belief in God as an agent of retribution, may augment the risk of cancer-related depression…Conceptions of God in which illness and crisis represent divine punishment have been shown to provoke stress and low self-esteem, whereas the opposite applies when patients believe that God enters into their suffering, bears it with them and supports them throughout the disease. The idea that God punishes through disease and traumas is, as Pragament’s research shows particularly clearly, considered an example of ‘negative religious coping.’ Such negative coping has been associated with a decrease in psychological functioning, quality of life and longevity (Hvidt in Twelftree, 2011, p. 315).

Bad Views of God Play Into Violence and Oppression

The belief that God is violent and domineering and can command violence and oppressive uses of power against others can lead to religiously justified violence and oppression. Such beliefs stir up fear and hatred. They inhibit dialogue, tolerance, and peace. They are used to justify heinously unloving and unjust behavior toward others.

I think this is especially the case when they are combined with a dualistic view of one’s in-group as opposed to other out-groups, imminent apocalyptic expectations of violent judgment, a sense of unique choseness or election, an exclusivist view of God and salvation, a rigid and oppressive interpretation of one’s religious tradition, and/or a perceived call to convert and/or dominate others. The issue is not just the specific harsh beliefs a group might have, it is also the prominence given to them within the system.

Examples of religious beliefs contributing to violence are numerous. They include the crusades, inquisition, various witch hunts, religiously inspired conflicts such as the Thirty Years War, conflict between Hindus and Muslims in East Asia, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East, religious justifications for colonial conquest, slavery, and genocide, Aztec and Ancient Near Eastern human sacrifice, Muslim conquests and violence against those perceived as infidels, religiously inspired terrorism and extremism, the use of Zen Buddhism to promote Japanese imperialism in the 1930s and 40s, and so on.

Religion has also often played a role in oppressive ideologies and systems that cause demonstrable harm to many. For example, religion has been used to justify racism, sexism, classism, slavery, homophobia and transphobia, economic exploitation and inequality, environmental degradation, and so on.

Its important to point out that violence and oppression are not just religious impulses. Tribalism, violence, and hierarchal structures of power are, to some extent, a part of our human (and even animal) nature (Pinker, 2011, pp. 31-58; de Waal in Oord, 2008, 242-262).

In her book Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence Karen Armstrong observes that,

The two world wars were not fought on account of religion. When they discuss the reasons people go to war, military historians acknowledge that many interrelated social, material, and ideological factors are involved, one of the chief being competition for scarce resources.(Armstrong, 2015, p. 4).

And as Tim Keller points out, religion is not the only type of ideology that has perpetrated violence.

The Communist Russian, Chinese, and Cambodian regimes of the twentieth century all rejected organized religion and belief in God. A forerunner of all these was the French Revolution, which rejected traditional religion for human reason. These societies were all rational and secular, yet each produced massive violence against its own people without the influence of religion. Why? Alistair McGrath points out that when the idea of God is gone, a society will “transcendentalize” something else (Keller, 2008, p. 55).

All of that to say that religion is not the only cause of violence and oppression and (as we will see) it does not inevitably lend itself to such things.

Good Views of God Promote Love, Peace, and Justice

On the other hand, views of God as predominately loving, gracious, peaceful, just, and inclusive (and calling for us to imitate such attitudes in our behavior toward others) lead to demonstrably good effects. They encourage open-minded, sympathetic engagement with others. They tend to promote love, peace, and justice in the world.

For example, an analogously good view of the Divine and its way played an integral role in the abolitionist movement in England and the United States, Gandhi’s non-violent actions for Indian independence from Britain, the Civil Rights movement in the United States, a peaceful end to apartheid in South Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the efforts of various “Engaged Buddhists” for peace and justice, and so on.

In their book Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft, Douglas Johnson and Cynthia Sampson give seven modern case studies of times when religion played an outsized role in enacting peace. Three case studies involved non-violent struggles that would have turned violent without church influence. Three involved ending wars that were already in progress. And one involved reconciliation after a major conflict ended (see the overview in Smith and Burr, 2007, pp. xl-xlii).

Many other sources survey examples of religious figures and movements that have worked to love others and advance peace and justice; and all of this specifically because of their religious experiences and teachings from within their religious traditions (see Smith and Burr, 2007; Hick, 1988, pp. 299-342; Witte and Green, 2012; Armstrong, 2006; etc.).

There are progressive religious movements that push for and seek to live out justice in regard to women, poor people, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ folk, religious minorities, people of all ages and abilities, and the environment.

As a final illustration of how analogously good views of God can lead to good effects toward others, in their book The Heart of Religion social science researchers Matthew T. Lee, Margaret M. Poloma, and Stephen G. Post document how perceived experiences of God’s love motivate and expand people’s benevolence toward others in statistically significant ways (Lee, Paloma, and Post, 2013, pp. 19-30). Here is one of their summaries:

Perhaps our single most important finding concerns the extent to which experiences of divine love are related to a life of benevolent service. For many Americans, the two are inseparable. And indeed, repeated experiences of divine love can provide energy for a “virtuous circle” in which a positive feedback loop fosters increasingly intense or effective acts of benevolence. This holds across religious and social groups. Whether liberal or conservative; male or female; young or old; black, white, or Latino; or Amish, Episcopal, or Pentecostal, powerful experiences of God’s love motivate, sustain, and expand benevolence (Lee, Paloma, and Post, 2013, p. 21).

The authors make clear that this is not only love towards family and friends, but also more extensive benevolence in caring for larger community and being a citizen in the world (Lee, Paloma, and Post, 2013, p. 51).

However, they do recognize that how love is exercised depends on one’s other beliefs and the interpretive grid through which they understand the world. Some belief systems will be more conducive to effectual love and justice than others (Lee, Paloma, and Post, 2013, pp. 189-222).

Finally, they make this fascinating observation:

Our work shows that emotionally powerful experiences are key, and they often reshape beliefs. Our interviewees generally moved in one direction: discarding a judgmental image of God picked up during childhood socialization in favor of a loving and accepting representation of God that is more consistent with their direct, personal, and affectively intense experience (Lee, Poloma, and Post, 2013, p. 21).

Critics of religion sometimes try to play down religion’s positive role in movements for peace and justice.

For example, Eric Reitan points out how Christopher Hitchens claimed that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who was executed for resisting the Nazis, was not truly motivated by religion, but by “an admirable but nebulous humanism” (Reitan, 2009, p. 18). And according to Hitchens, Martin Luther King Jr. was not “really” motivated by Christianity because he preached forgiveness of enemies and universal compassion rather than retributionism or hell (Reitan, 2009, p. 18).

Reitan goes on to cite direct passages from King’s writings that show he was profoundly shaped by his experience of God’s love. I cite an abbreviated portion here:

God has been profoundly real to me in recent years. In the midst of outer dangers I have felt an inner calm…I have felt the power of God transforming the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope. I am convinced that the universe is under the control of a loving purpose, and that in the struggle for righteousness man has a cosmic companionship. Behind the harsh appearances of the world there is a benign power (quoted in Reitan, 2009, p. 42).

Clearly good conceptions of God and God’s will can lead to ethically good effects in the world.

A Matter of Great Urgency

Finally, I think we need to keep in mind how high the stakes are here in relation to different conceptions of God and his will. I remember something Brian McLaren wrote on this matter:

In the twenty-first century, Christianity – along with all world religions – must develop a more mature, robust, and ethically responsible theology of violence and peacemaking. It was one thing for our ancestors to use God’s name to legitimize violence inflicted with swords and spears; it was another thing when more recent ancestors sought to justify violence with guns and artillery. But for us and our children, living in a world of nuclear bombs, biological and chemical weapons, and as-yet unimagined terrorist adaptations of these weapons of mass destruction; the issue of God and violence takes on unprecedented importance (McLarin in Hardin, 2013, p. xiv).

One could say the same thing about different beliefs about God and the world in regard to challenges such as climate change and systemic injustice.

Some Other Religious Beliefs and Their Practical Effects

In later posts I will survey a number of bad effects that can come from belief in imminent apocalyptic destruction. For example, these include superstitious misreadings of people and events, sanctified violence, and opposing efforts to work for peace, justice, and planet care. I will also argue that an eternal conscious torment view of hell has caused enormous fear, despair, and violence toward others.

However, I will also argue that a better view of God’s eschatological judgment is available and it can lead to good effects in the world.

In another series of posts I will also argue that exclusivist views of God and salvation tend to lead to bad fruit. For example, they play into anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and oppressive colonialist stances toward indigenous peoples. They often play into ignorant and false views of non-religious people and people in other religions.

But an inclusive view of God and salvation can lead to open-minded dialogue with others, mutual respect, ecumenical engagement on shared goals and values, and more fair and honest discourse about people of other faiths or of no faith.

A Good God Creates Harmony Between God’s Good Nature and Human Goodness

As I’ve already contended in my fourth post in this series, an analogously good view of God creates harmony between the God we imitate and are united to and the moral character we are expected to be transformed into. In that post I argued that this is the way believers tend to experience both God and moral transformation.

Here I am arguing that this way of conceiving God and morality bears a parsimonious simplicity, leads to good fruit, and cuts off a possible justification for heinous deeds at the roots. As I argued in that fourth post, we become like what we worship. Thus, what we think about God (or the Ultimate) is one of the most important things about us. Because of this, it makes sense to start out presuming that God and is analogously good, unless we have a good reason to think otherwise.

Non-Analogous Understandings of God’s Goodness Lead to Equivocation

In their book Good God, philosophers David Baggett and Jerry Walls argue that God’s goodness must have some recognizable similarity to our common notions of goodness and morality or his “goodness” becomes meaningless and we are left with a practical (theological) volunteerism where any alleged commands of God, no matter how abhorrent, could actually be “good” and reflect his good nature. Further, if God’s “goodness” is like this, we have no firm basis to trust him.

Baggett and Walls recognize that we are finite and sinful and that sometimes God’s actions or commands might seem problematic but actually be good. But they also believe some things have to be outside the bounds of what we would expect a good God to do. Because of this, they distinguish between what is difficult to reconcile with our moral intuitions and what is impossible to do so. They recognize that we might not be able to fully demarcate a line. They see torturing little children for fun as one thing that would fall into the impossible realm. There is no way a meaningfully good God could command such an action (Baggett and Walls, 2011, pp. 125-136).

Interestingly, they also argue that Calvinism falls into the impossible realm. This because the priority it assigns to God’s will leads to either ontological or practical volunteerism and its teachings on election imply that countless persons will be consigned to an eternity of utter misery as punishment for the very choices God unconditionally determined them to make (Baggett and Walls, 2011, pp. 65-81).

I note in passing that equivocation and making God into a moral monster are common criticism of Calvinism, ones with which I agree.

In his book The Human Faces of God Thom Stark shows how some views of God in the Bible are morally and practically problematic. Commenting on 1 Kings 22:19-23 , where God is said to intentionally send deceiving spirits, and Ezekiel 20:25-26, where Ezekiel claims that God himself gave evil commandments to the Israelites as punishment, calling them to sacrifice their own children, Stark observes that:

If Yahweh’s sovereignty entails the use of evil means to accomplish his undisclosed objectives, if Yahweh sent lying spirits in order to deceive, if Yahweh intentionally commanded the Israelites to sacrifice their children in order to punish them, if he intentionally gave them bad commands (at least one of which we know to be recorded in Exodus 22, where  it is depicted deceptively as a good command), then what is to prevent God from intentionally giving us other bad scriptures, intentionally obfuscating revelation as a form of punishment, or some sort of examination, to test our mettle? (Stark, 2011, p. 66).

In a later chapter Stark critiques traditionalist attempts to defend the moral rightness of texts calling the Israelites to genocide. After quoting one such apologist as saying that goodness is defined solely by God’s actions, and if God chooses to act differently today than yesterday, then goodness today is different than it was yesterday, Stark observes that,

In this picture of God, there is no consistent character. If God has no consistent character, then God’s self-revelation would be meaningless, because anything we learn about God could potentially be contradicted the moment God chose to be otherwise. Moreover to say that God is good when God does precisely what God has told us is evil is to render the language of good and evil meaningless (Stark, 2011, pp. 136-137).

I agree with these authors and others that God’s goodness must be at least analogous to what we everywhere else mean by “good” or it becomes meaningless and unrecognizable. That leads to a practical volunteerism. I believe it involves an equivocation with the word “good.” As Stark particularly shows, it undercuts our ability to trust God. And not only would it undermine our ability to trust specific messages, it leads to uncertainty about God’s actual, enduring benevolence toward us.

Many of us would find it impossible to sincerely worship such a God. We could go through the motions, but we could not truly love or adore such a being. Finally, such a view opens the door to heinous deeds being justified as God’s will. Or to put it negatively, we would have no firm basis for ruling out heinous deeds as possibly being commanded by God. 

Conclusion

In my next post I will share a personal and complementary reflection on pragmatic reasons for presuming that God is good in a way that is for us and analogous to what goodness elsewhere means to us. Doing so will help clarify the arguments from this post and also anticipate some common objections to my approach.

 

References

Armstrong, K. (2015). Fields of blood: Religion and the history of violence. New York, NY: Anchor Books.

Armstrong, K. (2006). The great transformation: The beginning of our religious traditions. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

Baggett, D. & Walls, J. L. (2011). Good god: The theistic foundations of morality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

de Waal, F. (2008). “Getting Along” In The altruism reader: Selections from writings on love, religion, and science. pp. 242-262. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press.

Hick, J. (2005) An interpretation of religion: Human responses to the transcendent (2cd Ed.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Hvidt, N. C. (2011). “Patient belief in miraculous healing: Positive or negative coping resource?” In The cambridge companion to miracles. Ed. Graham H. Twelftree. pp. 309-329. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Jennings, T. R. (2013). The god shaped brain: How changing your view of god transforms your life. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books.

Keller, T. (2008). The reason for god: Belief in an age of skepticism. New York, NY: Dutton.

Lee, M. T., Poloma, M. M., and Post, S. G. (2013). The heart of religion: Spiritual empowerment, benevolence, and the experience of god’s love. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

McLaren, B. (2013). “Forward” In The jesus driven life: Reconnecting humanity with jesus (2cd Ed.). Michael Hardin. pp. xiii-xvii. Lancaster, PA: JDL Press.

Newberg, A. and Waldman, M. R. (2009). How god changes your brain: Breakthrough findings from a leading neuroscientist. New York, NY: Ballantine Books Trade Paperback.

Pinker, S. (2011). The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. New York, NY: Viking.

Reitan, E. (2009). Is god a delusion: A reply to religion’s cultured despisers. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Smith, D. W. and Burr, E. G. (2007). Understanding world religions: A roadmap for justice and peace. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Stark, T. (2011). The human faces of god: What scripture reveals when it gets god wrong (and why inerrancy tries to hide it). Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.

Witte, J. and Green, M. C. (2012). Religion and human rights: An introduction. New York, NY; Oxford University Press.

The Failure of Angry God Theology: Part 7 – Non-Christian End Times Errors

In my last few posts I gave some examples of  failed apocalyptic predictions of imminent  judgment from the Christian tradition. In today’s post I will survey a few non-Christian examples of such mistaken apocalyptic expectations.

Traditional Judaism teaches that at the end of days God will regather the exiled Jewish diaspora to the land of Israel. God will raise up a Jewish Messiah who will defeat Israel’s enemies and usher in an era of peace and justice. There will be a resurrection of the dead, a final judgment, and reward in the world to come for the righteous and punishment for the unrighteous in Gehinnom.

Judaism has had a number of imminent apocalyptic movements within its history, sometimes connected with a messianic claimant and usually with the hope of reestablished national sovereignty in the land of Israel, with a return of exiled tribes.

This has sometimes combined with revolutionary (or colonial) violence and tragic miscalculations. Probably the most famous failed messianic claimants were Simon bar Kokhba and Sabbatai Sevi. Dale Allison narrates a lesser known episode from the 5th century CE. A Jewish man from the island of Crete took for himself the name of Moses and,

Perhaps prompted by belief that the Son of David would come in the eighty-fifth Jubilee (cf. b. ‘Abod. Zar. 9a-b), as well as by deteriorating conditions for Jews throughout the empire, Moses, over the course of a year of itinerant ministry, persuaded large numbers that he was the long-awaited Messiah, who would lead the faithful, via a dry sea, to the land of Israel. Those who believed in him abandoned their businesses and possessions. On the appointed day of redemption, he promised followers that they would, following their second Moses, see the miracle of the Red Sea duplicated. Some of the faithful, having ventured to a promontory overlooking the sea, flung themselves from the precipice, expecting the waves to part before them. The sea, indifferent as always, took no notice, with predictable and disastrous consequences (Allison, 2010, pp. 259-260).

Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam also believes in a future resurrection and final judgment, with the righteous rewarded in Paradise and the wicked punished in hell.

Before that time, Islamic sources seem to indicate that a number of signs will occur and things on earth will generally become more chaotic and corrupt (Yusuf, 2015, pp. 1829-31). An antichrist-like deceiver will arise and a coming Mahdi (“guided one”) with the returned prophet Jesus will battle against him – eventually establishing a time of peace, justice, and a return to Islamic values. At some time after this it appears there will be another falling away into evil before world-wide destruction, the resurrection of the dead, and final judgment (Yusuf, 2015, pp. 1830-1831; Islamic eschatology).

A number of Muslims have claimed to be the coming Mahdi, perhaps most famously, Muhammad Ahmad of the Mahdist revolt in Sudan. Of course, none of them have brought about lasting victory or widespread peace and justice.

One modern example of a failed Muslim apocalyptic movement is the terrorist group known as ISIL, IS or ISIS. Joseph Keating explains ISIS’ apocalyptic worldview and how it is failing to be fulfilled:

In ISIS’s apocalyptic propaganda, the otherwise unremarkable Syrian town of Dabiq was to be the site of a showdown with “Rome,” the Christian invaders of the Middle East, which was to immediately precede the conquest of Constantinople, and then the Day of Judgment. ISIS named its English-language magazine after the city, which it captured in the summer of 2014, and heavily fortified the town, despite it having little strategic value. But in October 2016, ISIS lost Dabiq after a short battle with Turkish-backed rebels. The Day of Judgment hasn’t happened yet…

ISIS has now lost not just Dabiq and Mosul—the Iraqi city where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself caliph in 2014—but most of the territory that was once under its control. The crumbling of the caliphate presents a problem for the organization’s propagandists. But ISIS is hardly the first movement to have to adapt when a doomsday prophecy turned out wrong. And past examples suggest that it isn’t even necessarily the end of the world for ISIS.

Let me survey a few examples from indigenous religious movements. One example comes from the South African Xhosa people. John Illife explains how Christian eschatological ideas mixed together with a traditional Xhosa cosmology in a volatile way.

Its power was displayed in 1857, at a time of cattle disease and white expansion, when prophets persuaded many Xhosa to kill their cattle and abandon cultivation because their ancestors were to be reborn with finer cattle and drive the Europeans back into the sea. Perhaps one-third of Xhosa died and the Cape Government seized the opportunity to destroy their society, alienating more than half of their land and admitting at least 22,150 of them to work in the colony (cited in Gould, 1997, p. 54).

One last example of failed apocalyptic expectations is the Native American Ghost Dance movement. In the late 18th century an apocalyptic movement began to arise among many Native American tribes that combined Ghost Dance lore with Christian apocalyptic beliefs. After the prophet Wovoka experienced what he believed was a vision from God, he proclaimed that,

if the Indians separated themselves from the world, and dutifully performed the Ghost Dance at the appointed intervals, and for the specified time, a millennial renewal would occur; the ghosts of ancestors would return to dwell with the living; the land would be restored to its original cover, richness, and fertility; the white man would disappear; and the buffalo would return (Gould, 1997, p. 56).

Although the Ghost Dance movement was separatist and pacifist, the incomprehension and racism of most whites caused them to be alarmed by it. This led to military action that culminated in the murder of Chief Sitting Bull and the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890 (Gould, 1997, pp. 56-61). Despite supposedly heavenly revelations that special medicine shirts were invulnerable to bullets, many Native American men, women, and children were killed and the movement mostly died out afterward.

In these last three post I have shown that ideas about imminent apocalyptic judgment have been ubiquitous in a variety of religious movements and these predictions have consistently ended up being wrong. In my next post I will survey a number of harmful practical effects that (often) flow out of imminent apocalyptic beliefs.

 

References

Allison, D. C. (2010). Constructing Jesus: Memory, imagination, and history. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Gould, S. J. (1997). Questioning the millennium: A rationalist’s guide to a precisely arbitrary countdown. New York, NY: Harmony Books.

Yusuf, H. “Death, Dying, and The Afterlife in the Quran” In The study quran: A new translation and commentary. (Ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr). pp. 1819-1855. New York, NY: HarperOne.

The Failure of Angry God Theology: Part 3 – Unfortunate Circumstances

In my first post in this series I looked at evidence against (most) modern and historical miracle claims of destruction. In my second post I looked at problems with original sin, a cursed creation, and genocide as supposed punishments from God. In today’s post I will look at the notion that unfortunate circumstances are judgments from God.

There are evidential and theological problems with this notion. We have natural explanations for things like natural disasters, disease, poverty, and military defeat. Unfortunate circumstances often seem to be indiscriminate in who they harm. “They do not distinguish the culpable from the innocent or the more culpable from the less culpable.” In fact, they tend to harm the poor and vulnerable the most.

As the Jews and others came to realize, often the righteous suffer and the wicked flourish. Our circumstances in life are often an injustice which the faithful wait for God to correct. Relatedly, the suffering inflicted by unfortunate circumstances at least in some cases do not seem proportional to any wrongs done. That is to say they appear “cruel and unusual.” Take for instance the suffering of children in war or in childhood diseases like cancer.

As Randal Rauser points out, unfortunate circumstances fail to unambiguously link the punishment to an offense. For example, unfortunate circumstances can happen months or even decades after a deserving offense. Sometimes they don’t happen at all. Or they happen to relatively innocent people but not guilty ones. When they happen, there is normally no credibly communicated link between the circumstance and a particular offense. Rauser compares it to parents disciplining a child for something he did six months earlier and failing to even tell him the reason for their actions.

Seeing unfortunate circumstances as punishment can blind people to actual, causal explanations and patterns. For example, my friend Caleb once pointed out that religious climate change deniers will likely see increased flooding and extreme weather patterns as simply God’s judgment in the end times. This is dangerous because there is evidence that these kinds of things are at least partly related to human causes and there are actual things we can do to combat them. The same could be said about many other unfortunate circumstances.

Blaming everything on God’s judgment plays into fatalism, an indifference to suffering, and a dereliction of our duty to partner with God in the restoration of all things. In the worst cases, it can even encourage self-fulfilled apocalyptic expectations.

Related to that, seeing unfortunate circumstances as punishment (or fortunate circumstances as a sure sign of God’s blessing) plays into health-and-wealth, victim blaming, and imperialistic mindsets. For example, as American settlers engaged in dishonest and genocidal policies towards Native Americans, they saw their westward expansion and success as God favoring them in manifest destiny (Spencer in Spencer & Spencer, 1998, pp. 37-62). Numerous other examples could be supplied.

These kinds of notions prop up injustice and oppression. In reality, “success” is sometimes sinful and those who suffer or “lose” are often the kinds of people who, according to Jesus, God has promised to bless in his “upside-down” kingdom.

Another problem with seeing fortunate or unfortunate circumstances as a blessing or curse is that they seem so fickle and inconsistent. An example would be the Nazi’s early success, which they interpreted as their historic destiny but which quickly turned to ashes. Does God really bless one group and then turn around and curse them or favor their rivals in a willie-nilly fashion? I don’t think so. At least not normatively.

While the dominate view of the Hebrew Bible is that those who are righteous will be blessed with good things in this life and those who are wicked will be cursed, there are counter-narratives such as the books of Job and Ecclesiastes that buck up against the notion that unfortunate circumstances are God’s judgment.

Jesus could occasionally see unfortunate circumstances as a form of judgment (Luke 13:1-5; 21:20-24; John 5:14), but more often his message radically subverted the notion that our present circumstances are indicative of God’s favor or judgment (John 9:1-3; Matt. 5:45; Luke 6:35-36; Matt.13:24-30; Matt. 5:3-11; Luke 6:20-22).

I am open to the notion that unfortunate circumstances are occasionally a form of divine judgment, especially in the sense of God giving people over to the harmful affects of their own decisions – reaping what they sow (so to speak). But the notion needs careful qualification.

It seems clear that relatively good people also suffer unfortunate circumstances. And it can be difficult to parse out personal guilt from other non-culpable factors. Thankfully, God is the one to judge, not us. Even if and when such circumstances are a judgment, I think we have good Biblical and other reasons to see divine judgment as generally intending to lead to eventual restoration.

Instead of seeing bad things that happen as a sure sign of God’s unyielding anger, a healthier perspective is to (generally) see God as the compassionate One who identifies with us in our suffering, who graciously extends us forgiveness and restoration (even if and when bad things are a judgment), and who gives us hope that someday all things will be made new (in this life or the next). Jesus also calls us to see God in the suffering of others; helping them is akin to helping Jesus (Matt. 25:31-46).

In my next few posts I will continue to present reasons why overly harsh or wrathful views of God’s judgment deserve to be rethought or discarded. There I will consider ideas about God’s apocalyptic judgment in the “end times” and the final judgment resulting in heaven or hell.

 

References

Spencer, W. D. (1998). God of power vs. god of love: The united states of america. In Spencer, A. B. & Spencer, W. D. (Eds.). The global god: Multicultural evangelical views on god. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

 

The Failure of Angry God Theology: Part 1 – Miracles of Destruction

In my previous series I listed positive evidences to support the idea that God is primarily loving. But there is also indirect support of this notion in the form of arguments against opposing views that emphasize God’s harshness or violence.

In this series I plan to briefly survey some of these arguments.  Obviously, I can only scratch the surface.

It’s important for me to start out by emphasizing that I do believe that God is just and will punish evil. For example, I believe that God convicts people, administers Fatherly discipline, gives people over to the destructive results of their foolish choices, and executes final judgment after death (and/or at the eschaton).

Notions of divine judgment are widely intuitive, taught in some form by most of the world religions (see the essays in Walls, 2008), are endorsed by both Jesus and the Bible more generally (Allison, 2005, pp. 56-100), and perhaps also bear some support from cross-cultural near death experiences, with a life-review and a weighing of one’s deeds (Allison, 2016, pp. 54-63).

In general though, I would contend that God’s judgment is 1) secondary to his love and only administered when people persistently resist his way of love, 2) ideally aimed at instigating repentance and restoration, and 3) fair: according to people’s culpability and proportionate to the wrongs committed.

Accordingly, I join other progressives in deconstructing views of God’s judgment that don’t fit with evidence, with God’s character as a primarily loving being, or that are unjustifiably harmful and unfair. And there are a number of traditional understandings of God’s judgment that are undermined by these kinds of considerations.

Let’s start with our present experience and work out from there. No one knows for sure what kind of judgment awaits us in the future; and although we can make probabilistic judgments about history based on the evidence, this too is more precarious than our current experience.

To begin with, we don’t tend to see unambiguous miracles of unilateral judgment by God today. For example, we don’t see particularly evil cities destroyed by fire and brimstone or squads of soldiers miraculously struck dead at a prophet’s word.

We do see occultic miracles of harm (Keener, 2011, pp. 788-856). But these are easily (and rightly) attributed to evil spirits, not our good God.

We also see unfortunate circumstances such as natural disasters, military defeats, poverty,  or ailments that some claim are God’s judgment. However, I will note some problems with such a view in a future post. There are good reasons to believe that such circumstances are rarely if ever God’s judgment.

Lack of modern miracles of judgment tie into evidential problems with supposed historical miracles of judgment in the Bible (and in other ancient narratives). Many such miracles violate the principle of analogy (see Price in Beilby & Eddy, 2009, pp. 56-57), are archeologically or scientifically disconfirmed, or are in other ways suspect.

For example:

– The fall/curse narrative violates what we know from science about cosmology, human origins, and the earth’s ancient history of death and decay (Lamoureux, 2008, pp. 105-50, 202-206).

– Geological, paleontological, and other scientific evidences show that there was never a worldwide flood as described in Genesis (Prothero, 2007, pp. 54-85; Young & Stearley, 2008, pp. 243-87; Issak, 2007, pp. 222-42; Lamoureux, 2008, pp. 216-27).

– Linguistic study shows how languages can be grouped into families and nested hierarchies. This and other evidential considerations undermine the story of judgment at Babel and the confusion of the languages (Lamoureux, 2008, pp. 231-35).

– Archeological evidence does not fit with the Bible’s story of the plagues in Egypt, an exodus on the Bible’s scale, or the supposed conquest of Canaan. For example, there are no Egyptian allusions to such a momentous calamity and many cities that were supposedly destroyed were either not inhabited or not destroyed in the timetable in which the conquest could have occurred (Kugal, 2007, pp. 373-85; Sparks, 2008, pp. 99-100; Stark, 2011, pp. 140-144)

– At least some prophetic (and thus, miraculously anticipated) judgments in the Bible did not happen. For example, Ezekiel 26:7-21 prophesies that Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon will completely destroy the Phoenician city of Tyre and that it will never be rebuilt, something which the author of Ezekiel himself seems to recognize did not happen (Ezekiel 29:18-20) (see the discussion in Sparks, 2008, pp. 108-09). Today Tyre is Lebanon’s fourth largest city.

Many other examples could be given (for example, see Carroll, 1979; for a critique of conservative attempts to argue for fulfilled prophesies of judgment, see Carrier; for problems with many imminent apocalyptic expectations of judgment, see future posts in this series).

There are possible problems with some other Biblical accounts of miraculous judgment. Some Biblical accounts of judgment (such as sickness or defeat in battle) could be natural occurrences that were simply interpreted as divine judgment (and perhaps exaggerated). Some judgment narratives are arguably etiological attempts to explain natural phenomena such as storms, ancient ruins, or volcanic activity (Kugal, 2007, pp. 129-30). Others seem to serve a questionable literary/propaganda purpose. Additionally, I believe we have ethical and theological bases for critiquing some depictions of God and/or God’s will as intractably evil and counter to what goodness everywhere else means to us.

I certainly believe that God is capable of miraculous judgment. Unlike some progressives, I don’t have any problem, in principle, with either miracles or lethal divine judgment (granted it is genuinely deserved and a sorrowful last resort). However, it would seem God rarely, if ever, acts in that way on this side of the eschaton.

The reality that many of these lethal historical miracles likely did not happen also has huge implications toward our notions of final judgment and hell. Historical judgment accounts such as the Egyptian plagues and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah serve as a sort of lexicon from which later notions of final judgment drew in their symbolism, development, and perceived plausibility (see Fudge, 2011, p. 59; Kyle, 1998, p. 22).

What are the implications toward those notions if the view of God and his behavior they are based on is more violent than the evidence really warrants? I will pick this topic up in a future post when I discuss final judgment and hell.

In my next post I will draw from our survey above and look at problems with original sin, a cursed creation, and divinely inspired genocide as judgments from God.

 

References

Allison, D. C. (2016). Night comes: Death, imagination, and last things. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Allison, D. C. (2005). Resurrecting jesus: The earliest christian tradition and its interpreters. New York, NY: T & T Clark.

Carroll, R. P. (1979). When prophecy failed: Reactions and responses to failure in the old testament prophetic traditions. London, Great Britain: Xpress Reprints.

Fudge, E. W. (2011). The fire that consumes: A biblical and historical study of the doctrine of final punishment, 3rd Ed. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books.

Isaak, M. (2007). The counter-creationism handbook. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Keener, C.. S. (2011). Miracles: The credibility of the new testament accounts, Vol. 2. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Kugal, J. L. (2007). How to read the bible: A guide to scripture, then and now. New York, NY: Free Press.

Lamoureux, D. O. (2008). Evolutionary creation: A christian approach to evolution. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.

Price, R. M. (2009). Jesus at the vanishing point. In Beilby, J. K. & Eddy, P. R. (Eds.). The historical jesus: Five views. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.

Prothero, D. R. (2007). Evolution: What the fossils say and why it matters. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Seibert, E. A. (2009). Disturbing divine behavior: Troubling old testament images of god. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Sparks, K. L. (2008). God’s word in human words: An evangelical appropriation of critical biblical scholarship. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Stark, T. (2011). The human faces of god: What scripture reveals when it gets god wrong (and why inerrancy tries to hide it). Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.

Walls, J. L. (Ed.) (2008). The oxford handbook of eschatology. New York, NY: Oxford University Presss.

Young, D. A. & Stearley, R. F. (2008). The bible, rocks, and time: Geological evidence for the age of the earth. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.

Why My Ethic is Centered on Love: Part 6: The Connection of Love to Justice

In my last post I wrote about how the logic of love helps us discern which moral norms  are cultural or time-bound and which are meant to be universal and invariant. I also contended that love helps us determine when generally binding moral norms should be bent or broken. In today’s post I want to look at how the logic of love plays into a concern for justice.

As I see it, penal justice, at least at its best, is meant to protect people from further victimization, deter would-be offenders, and perhaps even (ideally) reform and restore the offender (Marshall, 2001). Arguably there is also a punitive, “recompense” element to penal justice; whether as a retributive just desert (a traditional position I am undecided on) or pragmatically, as an adaptive tit-for-tat means of punishing “cheats” (Barber, 2004, pp. 133-58).

In any case, love is or can be a rationale for each of these elements to penal justice. Love of others means protecting them against victimization and upholding their right to justice when they are wronged. The demand for compensatory penalties honors the value and worth of those victimized. Love of offenders means deterring them from wrong-doing, upholding their right to a fair trial, not punishing them in unfittingly harsh or disproportionate ways, and in seeking their reformation and restoration (when possible).

As I understand it, social justice starts out by recognizing humanity’s shared value, equality, interconnectedness, and our mutual responsibility to love and care for one another (Donahue, 2014, p. 30; Smith & Burr, 2007, pp. 42, 124-26; 158-59; 239-42; Sandel, 2009, pp. 244-69).

Coming to see our shared value and identity comes with an increased responsibility to provide for the common good. But it also comes with an expanded community of family to learn from, rejoice with, and depend on.

Choosing to love and value others means spending time with them, really listening to them, and caring for them as wholistic persons in their environments.

Spending time with others shows us more our commonality and equality. It has the power to elicit our empathy and compassion. It gives us a stake in the struggle and tends to prompt more robust solidarity with vulnerable people. They become not just a “cause” or “principle,” but family. Our lives become bound up together with one another (Johnson, 2006, pp. 71-73).

Spending time with others also shows us more our differences. Social justice learns from paying attention to neighbors and through the study of social science, history, and other discipines about our many differences and how they are often related to oppression. It seeks to overturn differences that flow out of injustice and celebrate and defend differences that are life-giving.

Seeing how various injustices harm others and fail to match the ideal, social justice intentionally sides with the oppressed and courageously, creatively, and unrelentingly seeks to overturn the ideologies, systems, and structures that perpetrate harm and oppression (Boff & Boff, 2004, pp. 1-10; Johnson, 2006).

Put more positively, social justice seeks to ensure that people’s rights are upheld, their needs met, and their diverse identities honored. It seeks to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of resources, opportunities, and privileges (Donahue, 2014, p. 8). It further seeks to structure society such that people’s inherent value, rights, and well-being are collectively prioritized and promoted. Not merely as charity, but as their just due (Wolterstorff, 2008, pp. 4-6).

There’s a lot more that could be said, but that is the basic logic of social justice as I see it. And the logic flows out of love, solidarity, and awareness at every turn.

Some aspects of loving others are universal to all individuals and groups. For example, for all people, love means being honest to them, respecting them, listening to them with an open mind, treating them with kindness and compassion, and seeking their happiness and maturity.

But vulnerable and oppressed people need more than the everyday kindness or courtesy we might extend to another. They have urgent needs that more well-to-do souls simply don’t struggle to have met. They face oppressive circumstances that sometimes are quite different from those of majority groups. Discerning people from different times and places have been wise enough to recognize this – including Jesus and the Biblical authors (Sider, 2005, pp. 41-116; Borg, 2006, pp. 188-90, 225-60; Donahue (2014); and Marshall, 2005).

It is important to keep this love component in mind because, of necessity, movements for social justice must confront those in power and disrupt everyday norms. As Frederick Douglass noted, those in power never willingly give it up.

If one does not recognize the injustice(s) that are being confronted or the love for the oppressed that is (or can be) a motivation for action, such confrontation can seem divisive, unpeaceful, hateful, or even an injustice itself. That is often how such actions seem to those with power and privilege, at least.

Certain movements for social justice can become dominated by anger, fear, and vengeance. Although I see this as sometimes straying from the spirit of love, oftentimes it might be justified. Fear, anger, and a desire for restitution (if not vengeance) are justifiable reactions to gross injustice.

However, social justice can also be pursued out of love. It’s driving motivation can be love for and solidarity with oppressed people. One might even seek to love those complicit in injustice and seek eventual forgiveness and reconciliation (King Jr. in Washington, 1991, 12-15). But this does not mean that they should not be sharply confronted about their injustice and called to turn from it and make restitution. And if a choice of love and loyalty is forced, those who care about social justice must always side with the oppressed.

Parenthetically, I believe that our best notions of love and justice need to influence how we approach various ethical issues such as pride vs. humility, envy vs. contentment, and so on. Recognizing the structural nature of how power and oppression tend to play out, we need to be aware that these concepts can be deployed in oppressive ways.

For example, there is a difference between an empowering pride which seeks to lift up and humanize the downtrodden and the arrogant oppressive pride of those in power who think they are superior to those they dominate. There is a difference between the destitute desiring the basic things they need, which their more well-to-do neighbors might have; and the rich coveting even more of the resources of others, which they don’t genuinely need.

A “flat” condemnation of “pride,” “envy,” “divisiveness,” and so on that does not take these structural differences into account will tend to be deployed by those in power in a way that shores up unjust realities and as a weapon that beats oppressed people down. For example, in rich people telling poor people not to “envy” or “covet” things like healthcare or a living wage, to which they have an arguable right.

Finally, since I see justice as an application of love to a broader societal level, I see it as primarily about promoting human welfare on that level. Penal justice might be one necessary way this is done. But I tend to see social and restorative justice as getting closer to the heart of what justice is most deeply about. As I will argue in a future series on justice, I think Jesus and the Bible’s overall message also supports this.

In my next post I will turn to how the logic of love can help us evaluate social traditions.

 

References

Barber, N. (2004). Kindness in a cruel world: The evolution of altruism. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Boff, L. & Boff, C. (2004). Introducing liberation theology. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Borg, M. J. (2006). Jesus: Uncovering the life, teachings, and relevance of a religious revolutionary. New York, NY: HarperOne.

Donahue, J. R. (2014). Seek justice that you may live: Reflections and resources on the bible and social justice. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Johnson, A. G. (2006). Privilege, power, and difference, 2cd Ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

King Jr., M. L. (1991). The power of nonviolence. In Washington, J. M. (Ed.). A testament of hope: The essential writings and speeches of martin luther king jr. New York, NY: Harper.

Marshall, C. D. (2001). Beyond retribution: A new testament vision for justice, crime, and punishment. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co.

Marshall, C. (2005). A little book of biblical justice: A fresh approach to the bible’s teachings on justice. New York, NY:  Good Books.

Sandel, M. J. (2009). Justice: What’s the right thing to do?. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.

Sider, R. J. (2005). Rich christians in an age of hunger: Moving from affluence to generosity. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

Smith, D. W. & Burr, E. G. (2007). Understanding world religions: A roadmap for justice and peace. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Wolterstorff, N. ( 2008). Justice: Rights and wrongs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Unitversity Press.