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 4 – The Initial Implausibility of Targeted End Times Destruction

In my last post I critiqued the notion that unfortunate circumstances are normatively punishments from God. In today’s post we begin to consider apocalyptic notions of destructive judgment in the “end times” (prior to the eschaton, in a future post I will consider the matter of hell).

A number of world religions teach that this world will one day be destroyed. Of course, modern science predicts this as well. But from a purely natural perspective, this is seen as a brute inevitability. It is not (necessarily) seen as a positive act of punition.

In religions with a cyclical view of time, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, or Jainism, the universe’s destruction is seen as coinciding with the it being reborn again into a new set of  cycles of life, death, and reincarnation. In religions with a linear view of time, such as Judaism, Islam, or Christianity, the end of this current earthly age is seen as the time of final judgment and eternal reward or punishment.

Beyond teachings about a final judgment and possible punishment, many of these religions teach that prior to this, toward the end of history, earthly life will get worse-and-worse and God (or perhaps other spiritual forces) will inflict unusually devastating acts of judgment on humanity and the earth.

For example, many of these religions teach that immorality and violence will increase, as will earthquakes and other natural disasters. Some teach that supernatural acts of great destruction will be inflicted on the world by God or other spiritual forces.

In the Christian tradition, those such as  dispensational premillennialists who take a futurist and often literal approach to the book of Revelation place a particular emphasis on this pessimistic future and these kinds of violent events.

In these next few posts I plan on arguing that this view of God and violent end times judgment is undermined by a range of evidences.

It’s important for me to emphasize that I do believe in a form of God’s future eschatological judgment. Accordingly, at the end of this series I will take one post to survey my positive beliefs about future judgment. But in today’s post we start with the negative.

I will argue in this post that we should deem such judgments initially implausible. In my next few posts I will argue that we have positive evidence against many such views: namely, that their predictions of imminent judgment consistently fail to obtain. Finally, before moving on to a consideration of hell, I will argue that notions of destructive end times judgments also lead to harmful practical effects.

We turn now to the subject of today’s post. Why should we deem miraculous end times judgments initially implausible? Because, as I argued in my first post of this series, we don’t see such supernatural miracles of judgment today and most if not all past claims to supernatural miracles of judgment are undermined by evidence.

Evidence against past miracles of destruction in the Bible are particularly significant toward the plausibility of future miracles of destruction in the end times because many beliefs about end times judgment grew out of a reflection on Biblical narratives of supernatural judgment.

For example, Edward Fudge notes that,

As we move through the Old Testament, the descriptive language in these accounts gradually forms a lexicon of judgment and a vocabulary of destruction. When later biblical writers wish to describe some future judgment against sinners, they often go to this lexicon of judgment for an appropriate descriptive symbol. Although descriptions of historical judgments necessarily occur within the present age, both Old and New Testament books often borrow language from these historical judgments to describe God’s final punishment of the wicked in the age to come (Fudge, 2011, p. 59).

While Fudge is specifically considering the issue of hell, the same truth applies to supernatural judgments at the end of history but before the eschaton.

G. K. Beale, in his commentary on Revelation, notes that “John bases the plagues of chs. 8, 9, and 16 on the plagues of Exodus” (Beale, 2015, p. 13). He and other commentators observe how much of Revelation alludes to or directly references Old Testament impressions on God’s judgment in enunciating it’s own outline of coming events.

J. Richard Middleton argues that many of the later Old Testament and New Testament images of cosmic destruction at the eschatological coming of God draw from the Mount Sinai account of God’s coming and giving of the law.

To understand the Old Testament imagery of cosmic destruction, we need to turn to the central and paradigmatic theophany in the Old Testament. YHWH’s descent upon Mount Sinai in Exodus 19 in cloud, fire, thunder, and earthquake. The Sinai theophany draws on the terrifying experience of thunderstorms and also on classic storm images found in theophanies of ancient Near Eastern deities from Canaan and Mesopotamia. Perhaps more important for our purposes, the Sinai theophany becomes a model for many other Old Testament manifestations of the God of Israel, which tend to be depicted in poetic and prophetic visions (Middleton, 2014, p. 110).

The miracles of destructive judgment in the Old Testament not only provide much of the imagery of prophesied future judgment in the end times, the conviction that God so comported himself in times past plays into the plausibility for many that he would do so again in the future. Richard Kyle explains:

Another biblical teaching – that the world was destroyed by a flood – has encouraged apocalyptic thinking. Christians believe that God judged the first world by water because of its evil and wickedness. They are convinced that this world’s sin and violence will bring a second divine judgment…A crucial factor in convincing people that “the world would end catastrophically was their belief that a similar catastrophe had already occurred” (Kyle, 1998, p. 22).

All of this is important because, as I argued in my first post, we have excellent reasons for doubting most of these Old Testament events actually occurred. We have scientific and archeological evidence against a world-wide flood and against the Egyptian plagues in the Exodus account. Evidence against the Exodus account also calls into question the Sinai theophany narrative contained within it, as does critical analysis of Mosaic law, which shows it to be anything but 100 percent purely divine.

I note in passing that even if there was some kind of Sinai encounter with God and a revealing of law (perhaps accommodated to their ancient context), we can question if the Israelites were right in the threatening way they interpreted the glory of God. I think here of a point I made in my series on religious experience and God’s love:

People’s religious encounters with  the divine are at least partly structured and colored by their preconceived notions about it. In a violent culture [such as in the Old Testament] where earthly rulers were often tyrannical and where many saw God as the direct cause of both good and evil circumstances, it would be natural to be terrified at meeting such an awesome, overpowering, “kingly” Being…

It is interesting that when God or an angel appear to people in the Bible they tend to begin by saying “fear not.” Even today, even in experiences more sharply characterized by love, people often feel overwhelmed by the immensity of God.

I want to explain one final element of my case for the initial implausibility of end times miracles of destruction. In my first post in this series I referenced the principle of analogy. This is a principle of evaluating historical probability. The principle is two-sided. If a historical account contains descriptions of events that bear no analogy to our current experience today and which bears analogy to a different genre (such as mythology), it should be deemed initially improbable.

This principle does not say we can know for sure that such events did not happen. Nor does it say that other evidential considerations cannot override this initially improbability. It just says they are (initially) unlikely or improbable. Without recourse to a consistent application of such a principle, fantastical tales become just as plausible as sober ones. As Robert Price notes:

Again, we weren’t there and thus have do not know that natural law always operated as it does now…but there is no particular reason not to think so, and unless we do, we have no criterion at all. We will be at the mercy of old stories of people turning lead into gold, turning into werewolves, using magic to win battles. If in our experience it takes a whole army to defeat an army, we will judge improbable any ancient tale that has a single man defeating an army. What else can we do? (Price in Beilby and Eddy, 2009, p. 56).

While strictly speaking, the principle of analogy is a methodology for historical analysis, I think it rightly gives us a reason to deem future miracles of destruction initially implausible as well. This because, as we have seen, we do not experience such destructive miracles today and we have evidence against many such narratives of destructive miracles in the past.

All of this would undercut the probability of future miracles of destruction in the end times just on its own, by virtue of the principle of analogy. But the fact that teachings on future end times miracles of destruction directly draw on imagery from Biblical narratives that are positively undermined by evidence adds to their lack of credibility.

While this post has primarily considered supernatural miracles of judgment, my last post on unfortunate circumstances argues that such circumstances are rarely if ever judgments from God. To me, this undercuts the plausibility that God will positively initiate (rather than allow) greater natural disasters in the end times as a form of judgment. Indeed, as I will argue in a later post, this way of perceiving world events leads to superstitious misreadings of natural phenomena and fatalism about our relationship to others and our environment.

If there does end up being destructive judgments in an end times (whether natural or supernatural destructions), I think we should still recognize that wide-spread destructive punishments do not mean that every single individual is guilty or being targeted by God. Indeed, the consistent teaching of the New Testament is that believers will also go through tribulation and be refined by it.

Also, we should bear in mind that Biblical judgment is often meant to prompt repentance and lead to restoration. Often predicted judgments are provisional and can be altered if people repent (Jeremiah 18:7-8, Jonah 3:10-4:2, see also Richard Bauckham’s comments on Revelation 9:20-21 (Bauckham, 1993, p. 40-41)).

Finally, much Biblical judgment involves a turning over to the destructive results of one’s own choices. Many of the agents of destructive in Revelation appear to be demonic. Greg Boyd argues that the author of Revelation views many of the destructions as God allowing Satan and his demons greater freedom to devastate the earth as people harden in their rejection of him (Boyd, 2017, pp. 593-628).

I sometimes wonder if some end times destruction will be the result of God giving us over to the effects of our own destructive habits of harming the environment and proliferating weapons of mass destruction. But if that is the case, we can still do something to prevent this by proactively changing our policies and behavior. Indeed, the God who calls us to steward the earth and partner with him in restoring all things expects nothing less from us.

In my next post I will begin to survey some failed predictions of imminent apocalyptic judgment in the end times.

 

References

Bauckham, R. (1993). New testament theology: The theology of the book of revelation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

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, Vols. 1. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

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.

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

Middleton, J. R. (2014). A new heaven and a new earth: Reclaiming biblical eschatology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Price, R. M. (2009). “Jesus at the vanishing point.” In Beilby, J. K. & Eddy, P. R. (Eds.). The historical jesus: Five views. pp. 55-83. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.

The Failure of Angry God Theology: Part 5 – Biblical End Times Errors

In my last post I argued that apocalyptic notions of destructive judgment in the end times are initially improbable. There I also noted that I do believe in a form of God’s future eschatological judgment and indicated that at the end of this series I would write about these positive beliefs.

In today’s post I will begin to survey a number of  predictions of imminent apocalyptic judgment that failed to (fully) be fulfilled. This is an important part of my cumulative case against many such views. It will also illustrate for us a variety of dangers that often flow out of end times thinking that we should seek to avoid.

So far, prophesies about the final end have been repeatedly wrong, and often to great harm (see Kyle, 1998; Kirsch, 2006; Gould, 1997; and Weber in Walls, 2008).

Let me start with some examples from the Bible itself. In my next few posts I will survey other examples throughout church history and in other religions.

Daniel 11:3-12:4 appears to be an unbroken discussion of the actions of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215-164 BCE)  and supposed subsequent happenings. The earlier part of chapter 11 is transparently about Antiochus Epiphanes and conflict between the kingdom of the North (the Seleucid Empire) and the kingdom of the South (the Ptolemaic Empire) (Sparks, 2008, pp. 116-118; Collins, 1994).

The problem is that the passage goes on to predict things that were never fulfilled. Specifically, the text predicts that Antiochus would die in Palestine (11:45) and that shortly thereafter the general resurrection and judgment would happen and God’s final kingdom would be established (11:40-12:4). We have three sources for Antiochus’ death and they all agree that he died in Persia, not Palestine (Sparks, 2008, p. 117). And obviously the final end did not occur in the 2cd century BCE.

Some conservative Christians believe that verse 36 marks a change of focus from Antiochus and the 2cd century to the time of the Antichrist and the eschatological end. Conservatives are virtually forced to make a break somewhere in 11:2-12:4. But so far as I can see, there is no contextual basis for this.

The text makes no clear break itself. If it is supposed to break, the description of Antiochus is left hanging unresolved. Verse 42 goes on to talk about more conflict with Egypt (the kingdom of the South); which, as John J. Collins notes, has been a constant theme in this whole section (Collins, 1994, p. 65), including parts that are unmistakably about Antiochus. There are abundant reasons for seeing the section as one whole and no reason to make an arbitrary break apart from the self-serving desire to save Daniel from being in error.

As another Biblical example, consider the New Testament teaching on imminent coming judgment and vindication. While I believe that Jesus and the early church were wrong about the timing and perhaps some of the details concerning coming end times judgment, I also believe there are core truths we can draw from their eschatological outlook (on which see my future post).

A strong case can be made that Jesus explicitly said that the final end would occur within the lifetime of his contemporaries (Mk 8:38-9:1 c.f. Matt. 16:24-28 and Lk. 9:23-27; Mk. 13:30 c.f. Matt. 24:34 and Lk. 21:32; Mk.14:62; Matt. 10:23; 23:34-36). Attempts to reinterpret or spiritualize this fail: a.) in context, “generation” in Mark 13:30 refers to that (current) generation and b.) much of what these texts describe could not be said to have happened in the first century (Allision, 2010, pp. 31-220; Stark, 2011, pp. 160-207; Loftus in Loftus, 2010, pp. 316-343; and Dunn, 2003, pp. 431-437).

Elsewhere Jesus is remembered as speaking more generally of the kingdom’s imminent coming (Mark. 1:5; Matt. 10:7; 24:42-44; 25:1-13 c.f. Lk. 12:35-40; Lk. 10:8-11; 18:7-8; 21:34-36; etc.). Later Christian writings very much seem to be reinterpreting the tradition in light of its failure (John 21:22-23; 2 Pet. 3:3-13; 1 Clem. 23:3-5; Gospel of Thomas; etc.) (Allison, 2010, pp. 125-134; Stark, 2011, pp. 204-207; and Loftus in Loftus, 2010, pp. 327-333).

Much of the rest of Jesus’ message is illuminated by seeing him in this paradigm (apocalyptic prophet) (Ehrman, 1999, pp. 141-214; Grant, 1977, pp. 18-29. and Allison, 1998). Jesus’ message and actions closely mirror other millenary groups who expected the end in their lifetime (see particularly Allison, 1998, pp. 78-94 for the global pattern).

Finally, part of the reason it seems likely that Jesus taught an imminent apocalyptic end is that this was the view of both his mentor John the Baptist (Matt. 3:2, 7, 10; etc.) and the early church (1 Thess. 1:10; 2:19; 3:13; 4:15-17; 5:23; 2 Thess. 1:6-10;  1 Cor. 2:6; 4:5; 7:29-31; 10:11; 11:26; 15:51-52; 16:22; Phil. 1:6, 10; 3:20; 4:5; Rom 8:18, 22-23; 13:11-12; 16:20; James 5:1-9; Cor.7:28-31; Heb. 1:2; 9:26; 10:25, 37; 1 Pet. 1:20; 4:7; 5:1; Jude 14-15, 18; 1 John 2:17-18; Rev. 1:1, 7; 2:16, 25; 3:10-11; 22:6- 7, 10, 12, 20). It is unlikely that Jesus held a completely different view, seeing as that would involve two discontinuities: Jesus rejecting John’s apocalypticism and then some of Jesus’ followers rejecting that rejection (Allison in Miller, 2001, p. 85. Allison, 2010,.pp. 48-55).

As to the early church’s imminent apocalyptic expectations, not all of the verses cited above are explicit about imminence. But most are. Perhaps most clearly, in 1 Corinthians 7:17-31 Paul counsels people, including slaves and virgins, to not go out of their way to change their circumstances or focus on worldly things because the present form of the world is in crisis and passing away. In 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 he indicates his belief that both he and other first century believers will be alive when Jesus returns.

Beyond clear passages such as these, the sheer ubiquity of more general immanency indicators is problematic (see Babinski). For various New Testament authors to assert that Jesus’ coming was going to happen “immediately” (Mk. 13:24) after events in their generation or that it was “right at the very gates” (Mk. 13:29), that “He who is coming will come, and will not delay” (Heb. 10:37), that “the coming of the Lord is at hand…Behold, the Judge is standing right at the door” (James 5:8-9), or that Jesus was “coming quickly” (Rev. 3:11; 22:6, 7, 10, 12, 20) etc. when in reality this would not happen for 2000 + more years is misleading at best. Robert Price aptly asks,

But what sort of a revelation is it that is couched in terms unintelligible to those whose sake it is vouchsafed? Given God’s infinite expanse of cosmic eons, what could ‘soon’ possibly mean if it bears no relation to our own use of the word? After all, if God is talking to human beings, he has to use human terms if he wants to be understood. And if he really meant, ‘I am coming thousands of years in the future,’ why didn’t he just say so? (Price, 2007, pp. 159-160).

Again, although I think there are general principles we can glean from the New Testament’s eschatological teachings, in my view its errors regarding end times judgment play into other reasons to reject a number of overly rigid and violent eschatological expectations contained within it and/or associated with it.

 

References

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

Allison, D. C. (1998). Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian prophet. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Allison, D. C. (2001). A Response. In The apocalyptic jesus: A debate. Ed. Miller, R. J. Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press.

Collins, J. J. (1994). Daniel: A commentary on the book of daniel (Hermeneia: A critical & historical commentary on the bible). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Dunn, J. D. G. (2003). Jesus remembered: Christianity in the making volume 1. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Ehrman, B. D. (1999). Jesus: Apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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

Grant, M. (1977). Jesus: An historians review of the gospels. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

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.

Price, R. M. (2007). The paperback apocalypse: How the christian church was left behind. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

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.

Weber, T. P. (2008). “Millennialism.” In The oxford handbook of eschatology. (Ed. Jerry L. Walls). pp. 365-383. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

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 1: Personal and Natural Reasons

My ethic is centered on love. Beyond ethics, love is at the center of my entire worldview. I believe we are called to ascribe worth to others (and ourselves) and act to promote their holistic well-being.

I find that a love ethic is strongly supported by my own moral experience. It uniquely suits my personality and personal strategies for surviving and thriving. Given this, living benevolently and promoting these types of norms is certainly important to me, whether or not it makes sense to anyone else.

This is especially the case since I don’t live in a social or moral vacuum. A given society always operates under some norm as its default mode. Living benevolently doesn’t work well in societies where the norm is selfishness, violence, and brute assertions of power. As Nigel Barber observes,

The whole reward structure within warlike societies favors homicidal aggression. Individuals who are reluctant to fight are not commended for their humanitarian restraint. Instead they are ridiculed as cowards and lose social status (Barber, 2004, p. 312).

But a love ethic is not just based on my own moral experience or survival strategies. There is a broad consensus around the world that ethical norms rooted in love are pragmatically and morally best.

As I’ve read about different religions, cultures, and worldviews, there are a lot of things they clearly don’t agree on.

They have, for example, different purity codes, taboos, religious beliefs and rituals, philosophies, and supposed justifications for their own exceptionalism and right to out-group violence.

But where they do agree (or significant streams in each one agree, at least) it is on ethical norms such as love, compassion, honesty, fidelity, and harm reduction.

Virtually all societies prohibit lying, stealing, murder, and the breaking of solemn commitments (for example, adultery) – at least within the in-group. Conversely, they tend to promote traits like honesty, loyalty, generosity, courage, self-sacrifice, and respect for others (Lewis, 1996, pp. 91-109; Donald Brown cited in D’Souza, 2007, pp. 230-31).

This is because communities must promote pro-social norms and condemn anti-social ones to function well as tight-knit societies. People need to be able to generally trust each other, and when and where they can’t, they and society suffer for it.

I mean, we could be incredibly selfish and pursue a strategy of default suspicion of others. Everyone for themselves. But we can’t survive very long on our own, without the aid or mutual cooperation of others. Beyond mere survival, always having to be on guard and watching for others to stab you in the back takes a psychological toll. In general, communities that trust and take care of one another, that love each other, are safer and more pleasant places for us to live life and raise our children than ones characterized by violence, intra-mural tension, and mistrust. That’s within the in-group.

Constant conflict between different groups can also be dangerous and non-ideal. It can be hugely profitable if one society has the means to subdue or oppress another (or other types of people). But even this can be psychologically and morally draining. And there is always the possibility that the oppressed will revolt and seek vengeance.

Where two conflicting groups are more equal in strength, constant conflict can lead to the trauma of unending, irresolvable violence.

Nigel Barber describes the tragedy of constant inter-tribal warfare many horticultural societies such as the Yanomamo find themselves in (Barber, 2004, pp. 307-13). At least one quarter of the men die in constant back-and-forth raids and battles. The need for soldiers leads to the devaluing of girls and female infanticide. But then, part of the motivation for more fighting is to abduct women for wives. Peace is often not an easy option because of prior broken truces and a lack of trust. Various parties recognize the tragic futility of it all, but to not resist or retaliate is to look weak and risk extermination. To a lesser extent, a similar dynamic can also be found in gang violence, civil wars, and in other similar contexts.

Perhaps because of this, some of the lessons we have learned from history, and (arguably) God’s progressive leading; humans have tended to ever more widely extend those who are considered encompassed by the in-group to a more broad circle of people. To those of other tribes, nations, races/ethnicities, religions, otherly-abled people, other genders and sexual orientations, and even to historic enemies. I hope to discuss this more in a future post.

In varying degrees, religion has played a role in this. Karen Armstrong argues in her book, The Great Transformation, that decreasing violence and increasing empathy and the circle into which it is applied was one of the primary motivations for the original founders of the great Axial Age religions. In their book, The Heart of Religion, social science researchers Matthew T. Lee, Margaret M. Poloma, and Stephen G. Post explore quantitative and qualitative evidence of how people’s experiences of divine love tends to lead them to be more loving. Steven Pinker documents the significant contribution of secularism and Enlightenment philosophy to our increased empathy and decreased violence in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature. Obviously, both religious and secular ideologies have often also been used as a pretext for violence.

On an individual and community level, there are naturalistic reasons to be good toward others. There is “kin selection.” Humans and other animals naturally tend to care for their own children and close relatives. In an evolutionary sense, this is adaptive because it helps promote the spread of our own genes. Such a trait is something we might expect natural selection to favor and increase, as a generalization. Richard Dawkins explains:

A gene that programs individual organisms to favor their genetic kin is statistically likely to benefit copies of itself. Such a gene’s frequency can increase in the gene pool to the point where kin altruism becomes the norm. Being good to one’s own children is the obvious example, but it is not the only one…In general, as my late colleague W.D. Hamilton showed, animals tend to care for, defend, share resources with, warn of danger, or otherwise show altruism towards close kin because of the statistical likelihood that kin will share copies of the same gene (Dawkins, 2008, p. 247).

Human children have an unusually long maturation process among animals before reaching self-sufficiency. Thus, human parents (particularly mothers) generally have a particularly strong ingrained love and commitment to their children’s survival and well-being.

And since humans likely lived for most of our history in small groups were many people in the community were related to some degree or another, it was generally adaptive to care for others in the community as well.

Another naturalistic reason to be good is “reciprocal altruism.” Humans are innately social creatures. We congregate together for protection and cooperate with one another for survival and self-promotion. Like some other animals (particularly our primate relatives), we nurture friendships and alliances with others toward those ends (protection, survival, and self-promotion) (de Waal in Oord, 2008, pp. 242-62).

The general arrangement is “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Give and take. There is also a tit-for-tat impulse toward punishment for “cheats” who only take but never give back. Reciprocal altruism is adaptive because of asymmetries in needs and in capacities to meet them (Dawkins, 2008, p. 248). It is also adaptive because many activities can be performed more efficiently and with a greater chance of success by a group of people cooperating together. Hunting large prey, for example. Also, not every individual might be successful in obtaining food on a given day. If one person obtains more than they need, it is to their advantage to share their surplus with others. That way, when their luck has not been as good, others who have been more successful are inclined to share with them. One might say that this is the ancient equivalent of modern insurance programs and safety nets.

reciprocal altruism works best in small enough communities where individuals are likely to encounter each other somewhat regularly and can remember who has been a faithful cooperation and who, alternatively, tends to “cheat;” that is, take without giving back. In such communities, while cheating may be beneficial in the short-term, it can be disadvantageous over the long haul because cheats tend to lose the trust and support of others. Depending on the level of betrayal, they may incur ostracism or even violence against themselves.

Humans are somewhat distinctive in our degree of intelligence, our excellent memories, our ongoing sense of self, and our propensity for narrative. As Greg Epstein notes,

“A bear can help another bear find food, but it can’t gossip about how a third bear, a year or two ago, tried to swindle him out of a pot of honey. We humans can and do, and we therefore live our lives with the constant awareness that our behavior may be seen and evaluated by others, for better or for worse” (Epstein, 2009, p. 23).

Thus, reputation is another reason to be good to others. Even sometimes when this gives us no immediate benefit.

There is evidence from game theory that benevolent tit-for-tat strategies of cooperation and reciprocity are a relatively robust and flexible way of engaging the world and ordering societies (Axelrod in Oord, 2008, pp. 236-41).

While these are the primary evolutionary/naturalistic reasons to be good to others, some other possible reasons are surveyed by Dawkins, Epstein, Barber, and others.

There is evidence from medicine and social science that, in many cases, a range of benevolent pro-social actions contribute to our physical and psychological health. These include volunteerism, compassion, forgiveness, loyalty in relationships, listening and presence, and so on (see Post & Neimark, 2007).

There is also a wealth of scientific evidence from a broad array of disciplines that close family relationships characterized by warmth, acceptance, care, stability, and healthy forms of teaching and discipline are hugely important to healthy development and our physical and mental health. At least all things being equal. Dysfunctional family life can cause enormous harm.

Safe environments and various kinds of loving relationships are also some of the most important protective factors in promoting healthy childhood development and preventing psychopathology (Schroeder and Smith-Boydston, 2017, pp. 25-27).

There is evidence that kindness and generosity are integral to long-term romantic relationships (Esfahani-Smith, 2014). Beyond science, these things tend to be common sense.

Of course, in spite of these general, rational reasons to act benevolently toward others and promote love and mutuality, in some situations acting benevolently can be costly or dangerous. There are contexts in which it would not seem to make sense from a purely pragmatic standpoint to act benevolently. It is also true that humans and other animals have traits within us that gravitate us toward selfishness, competition, and out-group violence. That is part of why my commitment to an ethic of love is also based on a deeper spiritual and theological foundation.

In my next post I will look at the Golden Rule and begin to survey the spiritual basis for centering one’s ethic on love.

 

References

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

Axelrod, R. (2008). The Robustness of Reciprocity. In Oord, T. J (Ed.), The Altruism Reader: Selections from writings on love, religion, and science (pp. 236-41). West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press.

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

Dawkins, R. (2008). The god delusion. New York, NY: Mariner Books.

de Waal, F. (2008). Getting Along. In Oord, T. J (Ed.), The Altruism Reader: Selections from writings on love, religion, and science (pp. 242-62). West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press.

D’Souza, D. (2007). What’s so great about christianity. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc.

Epstein, G. M. (2009). Good without god: What a billion non-religious people do believe. New York, NY: Harper.

Esfahani-Smith, E. (2014, June). Masters of love. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com

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

Lewis, C. S. (1996). The abolition of man. New York, NY: Touchstone. (Original work published in 1944, 1947).

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

Post, S. & Neimark, J. (2007). Why good things happen to good people: The exciting new research that proves the link between doing good and living a longer, healthier, and happier life. New York, NY: Broadway Books.

Schroeder, C. S. & Smith-Boydston, J. M. (2017). Assessment and treatment of childhood problems: A clinician’s guide. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.