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Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did
A GOD OF LOVE AND GENOCIDE? For many Christians the problem of violence of Scripture can result in a crisis of faith—especially when we see how such passages have been used throughout history to justify horrific bloodshed in God's name. Moving beyond typical conservative and liberal approaches, which seek to either defend or whitewash over violence in the Bible, Disarming Scripture takes a surprising yet compelling Learning to read the Bible like Jesus did.Along the way the book deals with some very big issues, ranging from passages commanding genocide and infanticide in the Old Testament to passages in the New Testament that have been used to justify slavery, child abuse, and state violence. The take-away is an approach to Scripture that not only sees questioning as an acceptable part of a healthy faith, but as an absolutely essential part of it.
294 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 2014
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November 9, 2015
I should have investigated further before agreeing to read and review this book. With that said I only read 35% of it and will not waste any more time on lies. As a Christian, I want to love others as Jesus did but I don’t want to compromise who he was and Jesus is God. As I was reading, I felt that the author did not feel the same way and the part that I read the trinity was never mentioned. The trinity is the full work of salvation for mankind. What this book primarily did was delete the wrath of God and replaced with other writings. For those that deny the wrath of God, you are in essence denying the salvation of God. God desires for all to be saved but sin must be eradicated and is with the violence of the cross. The most famous and encouraging words of the bible are but God. There is wrath but God. There is pain, But God. It does not change who he is but it shows is great mercy and love to us sinners.
This book has done well with Goodreads rating, however, I hope that those that have read this book also have read the bible with God in mind. Not a God made in our own image but a God that redeems.
With the author’s own words, I was greatly discouraged.
This development moving away from the view that God causes evil towards a view that such evil is demonic can be seen much earlier with Judaism. In the intertestamental book of Jubilee which revises the biblical narratives found in Genesis and the beginning of Exodus. The book of Jubilee takes many passages, which in the Old Testament books are attributed to God, and instead states that these were in fact the work of Mastema the prince of demons.
Contrary to popular opinion, the Old Testament is not a single book with one unified view of who God is and how life works. It is instead a collection of books from multiple authors who articulate a multitude of opposing perspectives.
Old Testament attributes to God’s will as a just punishment for sin, but Jesus instead attributes to the work of the devil which he consequently does not affirm as God’s righteous judgment, but rather actively opposes in God’s name.
This study reminds me of what Satan said to Eve…Did God say? The bible is complex and not easily explained, however, God does reveal his plan of redemption and the reason why and the motivation, we believe and trust with response to that revelation. Revelation states with a warning that we cannot add or omit the word of the Lord and this study has done that.
A Special Thank You to Metanoia Books and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review.
This book has done well with Goodreads rating, however, I hope that those that have read this book also have read the bible with God in mind. Not a God made in our own image but a God that redeems.
With the author’s own words, I was greatly discouraged.
This development moving away from the view that God causes evil towards a view that such evil is demonic can be seen much earlier with Judaism. In the intertestamental book of Jubilee which revises the biblical narratives found in Genesis and the beginning of Exodus. The book of Jubilee takes many passages, which in the Old Testament books are attributed to God, and instead states that these were in fact the work of Mastema the prince of demons.
Contrary to popular opinion, the Old Testament is not a single book with one unified view of who God is and how life works. It is instead a collection of books from multiple authors who articulate a multitude of opposing perspectives.
Old Testament attributes to God’s will as a just punishment for sin, but Jesus instead attributes to the work of the devil which he consequently does not affirm as God’s righteous judgment, but rather actively opposes in God’s name.
This study reminds me of what Satan said to Eve…Did God say? The bible is complex and not easily explained, however, God does reveal his plan of redemption and the reason why and the motivation, we believe and trust with response to that revelation. Revelation states with a warning that we cannot add or omit the word of the Lord and this study has done that.
A Special Thank You to Metanoia Books and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review.
December 17, 2015
As I've mentioned in previous reviews, giving a book 5 stars need not imply that I agree with everything in it. Flood's argument here is well-articulated, passionate, and evidences a clear love of scripture. His assertions here are well worth grappling with, especially in conservative evangelical, fundamentalist, neo-reformed circles. Those who grew up in such settings, or have strong distaste for those cultures in particular, will find much to love about "Disarming Scripture." For my money, the chapter on biblical authority is worth the price of admission alone, and I would highly recommend the whole book, though many traditional American Christians will find much of his writing unsettling (which is possibly a good thing!).
December 29, 2015
This book challenges ones theology on the Bible and how we should interpret scripture. I have to say I didn't expect much from this book but I was surprised again and again. He draws on scholars such as Walter Bruggeman, William Webb and James Dunn and makes clear arguments for an alternative reading of the Scripture. It has shaken up my beliefs on the Word and will still take time for the dust to settle and for me to decide if I believe what he says or not. This is for sure though: I won't read Scripture the same again.
January 1, 2015
This book is essential reading for those who want to take scripture seriously, but struggle with portions of scripture that reflect a less than Christlike God. Derek Flood's thoughtful approach to this topic reflects his genuine interest in furthering the kingdom by seeking to understand how Christ, Paul, and other authors approached this topic. His writing is clear and easy to understand for the lay reader while still deeply examining the issues. Well done. This is a book that will hopefully be a part of leading many into a new era of reading scripture not just with the mind, but with the heart.
July 4, 2018
Interesting and thought-provoking book that looks at all those passages of scripture that make Christians go 'Um ... how do I deal with that?' It definitely provides a lot of food for thought in how to handle those areas and backs up its argument with scripture itself. Worth reading, especially if you struggle with this subject and even if you don't.
September 3, 2015
Parts of this book were really good and lots of it were not.
The underlying presupposition of the author is pacifism. All violence is immoral, no matter what. His thesis is that the Bible sets us on a trajectory of pacifism, even though the New Testament is not pacifist. The Old Testament started pushing people the right direction, the New Testament went a little further, but we have to take it from there. We should see that God really isn't violent, even if people historically could not grasp this.
Central to Flood's thesis that Jesus rejected parts of the Old Testament as incompatible with His message. He sees Jesus as a part of the Jewish tradition of "faithful questioning" as opposed to "unquestioning obedience," which he ascribes to the Pharisees. This is a valid perspective, which can be demonstrated within the Old Testament itself.
For example he sees a rejection of Elijah calling down fire from heaven when Jesus rebukes James and John for wanting to call down fire on the Samaritan village (Luke 9). Strangely this occurs in the same chapter as the Transfiguration in which Elijah and Moses appear. Flood does not address that John the Baptist has the spirit of Elijah and Jesus said of John the Baptist, "among those born of women there has arisen no one greater". In his epistle, James uses Elijah as the prototype of the righteous man whose prayers are powerful.
He takes issue with the book of Matthew, concluding that Matthew let his environment (a persecuted community) dictate the inclusion of an retributive judgment on the part of God. If Matthew had been 100% correct, then those bits would have been left out. Exegetically he bases this on a comparison of Matthew to Mark, who does not include Matthew's passages about judgment. I found this unconvincing on a number of levels, but not least of which is his failure to include Luke, which also attributes a lot of judgment language to Jesus.
He can take issue with Matthew because he has a very loose view of biblical inspiration. The only parts of the Bible that are inspired are those that are still congruent with the trajectory of peace that we should be on as enlightened modern people.
He runs with his thesis to its logical conclusion and continually references all corporal punishment of children as child abuse.
He steps outside the general scope of the book with regard to violence to insist that what the biblical authors say about homosexuality is incongruous with modern thinking and empirical evidence. He concludes we should embrace same-sex relationship just like we should shun all violence. For Flood it's all a part of the trajectory of the Bible.
In the end, he appears to be the sort of cherry-picking liberal he argues against early on in the book.
So why two stars instead of one? Flood makes very valid points about the approach of many conservatives to the Scriptures. He does recognize that the Old Testament presents conflicting views, particularly with regard to violence. The Old Testament has been used as a model by "Christian" governments to justify violence when the New Testament would not appear to condone it.
He pokes big holes in 20th century fundamentalist, and 21st century post-fundamentalist evangelical, views of biblical infallibility and inspiration. These are views that were formed in response to perceived threats of the day, yet they are ultimately unbiblical.
The alternative is not necessarily that Flood's ideas of very loose inspiration are correct. In fact, I think he uses the big holes as justification to go off in the direction he has chosen that is congruent with his pacifist agenda. But the logical holes are there for him to exploit nonetheless.
On the issue of violence in the Bible, I think Peter Enns' The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It is a better treatment, even with similar conclusions.
The underlying presupposition of the author is pacifism. All violence is immoral, no matter what. His thesis is that the Bible sets us on a trajectory of pacifism, even though the New Testament is not pacifist. The Old Testament started pushing people the right direction, the New Testament went a little further, but we have to take it from there. We should see that God really isn't violent, even if people historically could not grasp this.
Central to Flood's thesis that Jesus rejected parts of the Old Testament as incompatible with His message. He sees Jesus as a part of the Jewish tradition of "faithful questioning" as opposed to "unquestioning obedience," which he ascribes to the Pharisees. This is a valid perspective, which can be demonstrated within the Old Testament itself.
For example he sees a rejection of Elijah calling down fire from heaven when Jesus rebukes James and John for wanting to call down fire on the Samaritan village (Luke 9). Strangely this occurs in the same chapter as the Transfiguration in which Elijah and Moses appear. Flood does not address that John the Baptist has the spirit of Elijah and Jesus said of John the Baptist, "among those born of women there has arisen no one greater". In his epistle, James uses Elijah as the prototype of the righteous man whose prayers are powerful.
He takes issue with the book of Matthew, concluding that Matthew let his environment (a persecuted community) dictate the inclusion of an retributive judgment on the part of God. If Matthew had been 100% correct, then those bits would have been left out. Exegetically he bases this on a comparison of Matthew to Mark, who does not include Matthew's passages about judgment. I found this unconvincing on a number of levels, but not least of which is his failure to include Luke, which also attributes a lot of judgment language to Jesus.
He can take issue with Matthew because he has a very loose view of biblical inspiration. The only parts of the Bible that are inspired are those that are still congruent with the trajectory of peace that we should be on as enlightened modern people.
He runs with his thesis to its logical conclusion and continually references all corporal punishment of children as child abuse.
He steps outside the general scope of the book with regard to violence to insist that what the biblical authors say about homosexuality is incongruous with modern thinking and empirical evidence. He concludes we should embrace same-sex relationship just like we should shun all violence. For Flood it's all a part of the trajectory of the Bible.
In the end, he appears to be the sort of cherry-picking liberal he argues against early on in the book.
So why two stars instead of one? Flood makes very valid points about the approach of many conservatives to the Scriptures. He does recognize that the Old Testament presents conflicting views, particularly with regard to violence. The Old Testament has been used as a model by "Christian" governments to justify violence when the New Testament would not appear to condone it.
He pokes big holes in 20th century fundamentalist, and 21st century post-fundamentalist evangelical, views of biblical infallibility and inspiration. These are views that were formed in response to perceived threats of the day, yet they are ultimately unbiblical.
The alternative is not necessarily that Flood's ideas of very loose inspiration are correct. In fact, I think he uses the big holes as justification to go off in the direction he has chosen that is congruent with his pacifist agenda. But the logical holes are there for him to exploit nonetheless.
On the issue of violence in the Bible, I think Peter Enns' The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It is a better treatment, even with similar conclusions.
December 15, 2014
Disclaimer: I was provided with a free advance copy of Disarming Scripture in exchange for an honest review.
The western worldview is currently undergoing massive changes, which are in turn affecting the ways Christians everywhere read their Bibles. Past centuries of biblical study have (in some circles) produced a literalist reading of Scripture that is sometimes summed up as: “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it!” However, in the past, this reading has sadly led Christians to support violence, torture, and even genocide - all in the name of God! While many Christians in today’s postmodern environment intuitively revolt against the idea of a violent God, we often have a hard time finding new ways forward.
This is where Derek Flood’s brilliant book comes in. Disarming Scripture convincingly makes the case that the God behind even the most disturbing Bible passages is in fact a non-violent, self-giving Heavenly Father. To make his case, Derek Flood introduces several helpful hermeneutical lenses, such as:
- A Christo-centric approach to Scripture, which is understanding God’s character as fully revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. All competing biblical voices must submit to Jesus’ non-violent actions and teachings.
- Jesus’ own way of explaining the Old Testament, in which he consistently redeems violent views of God to reveal His true nature, which is centered around compassion and enemy-love.
- A Trajectory Reading, which holds that the morality of the Bible is on a gradually ascending track, moving towards inclusion, compassion, and enemy-love. According to this hermeneutical lens, we need to recognize the many areas in which we have actually moved (or should move) beyond 1st century morality today, for example in rejecting the evils of slavery, homophobia, racism, treating women and children as second-class citizens, etc….
- A tool to evaluate competing biblical interpretations: by their fruit. In the past, a literalistic approach to Scripture has led so many well-intentioned Christians to cause others tremendous amounts of pain - all in the name of God! Derek Flood argues that this surely runs counter to the spirit of Christ, who is about redeeming victims, not creating them.
Disarming Scripture is a truly groundbreaking book. It provides a theologically sound way for today’s Christians to understand the place of violent texts in our Canon, while following Jesus’ way of enemy-love. I highly recommend it!
The western worldview is currently undergoing massive changes, which are in turn affecting the ways Christians everywhere read their Bibles. Past centuries of biblical study have (in some circles) produced a literalist reading of Scripture that is sometimes summed up as: “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it!” However, in the past, this reading has sadly led Christians to support violence, torture, and even genocide - all in the name of God! While many Christians in today’s postmodern environment intuitively revolt against the idea of a violent God, we often have a hard time finding new ways forward.
This is where Derek Flood’s brilliant book comes in. Disarming Scripture convincingly makes the case that the God behind even the most disturbing Bible passages is in fact a non-violent, self-giving Heavenly Father. To make his case, Derek Flood introduces several helpful hermeneutical lenses, such as:
- A Christo-centric approach to Scripture, which is understanding God’s character as fully revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. All competing biblical voices must submit to Jesus’ non-violent actions and teachings.
- Jesus’ own way of explaining the Old Testament, in which he consistently redeems violent views of God to reveal His true nature, which is centered around compassion and enemy-love.
- A Trajectory Reading, which holds that the morality of the Bible is on a gradually ascending track, moving towards inclusion, compassion, and enemy-love. According to this hermeneutical lens, we need to recognize the many areas in which we have actually moved (or should move) beyond 1st century morality today, for example in rejecting the evils of slavery, homophobia, racism, treating women and children as second-class citizens, etc….
- A tool to evaluate competing biblical interpretations: by their fruit. In the past, a literalistic approach to Scripture has led so many well-intentioned Christians to cause others tremendous amounts of pain - all in the name of God! Derek Flood argues that this surely runs counter to the spirit of Christ, who is about redeeming victims, not creating them.
Disarming Scripture is a truly groundbreaking book. It provides a theologically sound way for today’s Christians to understand the place of violent texts in our Canon, while following Jesus’ way of enemy-love. I highly recommend it!
December 24, 2014
This is a highly provocative book on Biblical interpretation. I don't agree with everything written, but there are some very good points regarding the difficult violence passages in the scriptures (particularly the First Testament) which is incredibly necessary. I'm not convinced that his brief treatment regarding sexual ethics really held up to Webb's treatment of the topic. If you are going to throw in a few sentences regarding homosexuality and hermeneutics and use Webb's incredible "Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals" as your point of disagreement, you need to dig deeper (even if you do tip your hat). The disagreement with Volf also wasn't deep enough. Volf's endnote of the classic theological one liner, "I am not a universalist, but God may be" (and the work that brought this quote on) is not considered here. Again, a crucial work that is critiqued only in passing.
All of that said, I do feel that there is much to be praised here. The inter-dialogue between the prophets, the revamping and reinterpreting of scriptural texts by Jesus and Paul, for example is of great importance. Further, the importance of the authority of God, which the text is to lead us to, is of great importance and very well stated.
Although I have points of disagreement and feel that certain sections were not adequately addressed, the author has left me with much the think about and process in community. I will re-read certain chapters and continue to dwell upon some of the thoughts offered by Flood.
I would probably give this a 3.5 star rating if this were an option.
All of that said, I do feel that there is much to be praised here. The inter-dialogue between the prophets, the revamping and reinterpreting of scriptural texts by Jesus and Paul, for example is of great importance. Further, the importance of the authority of God, which the text is to lead us to, is of great importance and very well stated.
Although I have points of disagreement and feel that certain sections were not adequately addressed, the author has left me with much the think about and process in community. I will re-read certain chapters and continue to dwell upon some of the thoughts offered by Flood.
I would probably give this a 3.5 star rating if this were an option.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 28, 2014
After two readings of this fine book, already I feel equipped to be a more courageous, compassionate, Christological interpreter of scripture.
Towards the end of my second reading, I paused, knelt and thanked God for this book. It is such an answered prayer. It ministered to me deeply, as it showed me how compassionately and courageously Jesus and Paul read the scriptures. I want to do the same.
Biblical and theological questions that I had not been able to find satisfying answers for were finally answered! Most importantly, however, I had an experience (like that of the disciples in Luke 24.32) wherein my heart burned within me as Derek more adequately explained the scriptures to me. I feel like my love for Jesus is growing, and I am just genuinely excited to get the chance to live for Him.
I am confident that this book will be a game-changer when it comes to both your theology and your discipleship to Jesus. Tolle lege. Take up and read!
Towards the end of my second reading, I paused, knelt and thanked God for this book. It is such an answered prayer. It ministered to me deeply, as it showed me how compassionately and courageously Jesus and Paul read the scriptures. I want to do the same.
Biblical and theological questions that I had not been able to find satisfying answers for were finally answered! Most importantly, however, I had an experience (like that of the disciples in Luke 24.32) wherein my heart burned within me as Derek more adequately explained the scriptures to me. I feel like my love for Jesus is growing, and I am just genuinely excited to get the chance to live for Him.
I am confident that this book will be a game-changer when it comes to both your theology and your discipleship to Jesus. Tolle lege. Take up and read!
December 11, 2014
Wow, really great book. As a college student, this was a very insightful and thought provoking read. It was not hard to read nor was there too much of scholarly talk where it gets confusing or over my head. Flood brings up many great points about how Christ read the scriptures and how we should read them the same way. The book really opened my eyes to things I never picked up on or thought about before. As I was unsure of this book from the beginning, I am glad that I read it. I am grateful for Flood's knowledge and how he conveyed it in his work.
March 15, 2017
Opened me up to a completely new and compelling way to look at the Bible. Very interesting. Of course, it's heretical to many, but that just makes it better!
September 16, 2021
***AUDIOBOOK REVIEW***
This book initially frustrated me but by the end I thought the author did what he could to wrap up his points. Here are some key takeaways I remember:
1 - The Bible was never intended to be read cover to cover without a questioning mind and a conscience. When one reads each verse as their particular interpretation/translation reads without considering the whole context of Scripture and also their own conscience, you can get extreme fundamentalism and often violence.
2 - The author recommends what he calls a "trajectory reading" of Scripture. This means that the Bible is an ongoing conversation that's been occurring for thousands of years and reflects the evolution of morals, ethics, thoughts about God, ourselves, and how to function in society. I've heard this before and I think it's a solid approach.
3 - Somehow Jesus interpreted the Old Testament to mean love God and love your neighbor. We would do well to consider how that's possible given the violence the Old Testament is obviously full of.
What frustrated me was that if you say you need a trajectory reading and you can only interpret the Bible rightly in conversation with other believers and the evolving Church at large, then how do we know how to interpret any of it? Then I realized there's only so much the author can do because there is no easy answer. We're in the midst of the conversation right now and will continue to be in it going forward.
The last 20 pages or so summarized the issue well for me, where he discussed looking at the fruit of your interpretation. Does it lead to life or death? Violence or reconciliation? Does it conflict with your own conscience? Does it lead to love or hatred? Separation or union? We have to have an open mind and be humble in our interpretation, as we all get it wrong somewhere.
Another interesting tidbit I remember is that Matthew is the only Gospel that mentions much of the judgment verses we remember from the Gospels. Some scholars think Matthew was actually reacting to the violence he was seeing in his day (probably from the Romans) and possibly embellishing the stories to fit his worldview and what he wanted to see as a human. Essentially having a bad day.
The book makes me think of a fantastic idea I've heard before, and that is that your particular interpretation of the Bible says a lot more about who you are than who God is.
This book initially frustrated me but by the end I thought the author did what he could to wrap up his points. Here are some key takeaways I remember:
1 - The Bible was never intended to be read cover to cover without a questioning mind and a conscience. When one reads each verse as their particular interpretation/translation reads without considering the whole context of Scripture and also their own conscience, you can get extreme fundamentalism and often violence.
2 - The author recommends what he calls a "trajectory reading" of Scripture. This means that the Bible is an ongoing conversation that's been occurring for thousands of years and reflects the evolution of morals, ethics, thoughts about God, ourselves, and how to function in society. I've heard this before and I think it's a solid approach.
3 - Somehow Jesus interpreted the Old Testament to mean love God and love your neighbor. We would do well to consider how that's possible given the violence the Old Testament is obviously full of.
What frustrated me was that if you say you need a trajectory reading and you can only interpret the Bible rightly in conversation with other believers and the evolving Church at large, then how do we know how to interpret any of it? Then I realized there's only so much the author can do because there is no easy answer. We're in the midst of the conversation right now and will continue to be in it going forward.
The last 20 pages or so summarized the issue well for me, where he discussed looking at the fruit of your interpretation. Does it lead to life or death? Violence or reconciliation? Does it conflict with your own conscience? Does it lead to love or hatred? Separation or union? We have to have an open mind and be humble in our interpretation, as we all get it wrong somewhere.
Another interesting tidbit I remember is that Matthew is the only Gospel that mentions much of the judgment verses we remember from the Gospels. Some scholars think Matthew was actually reacting to the violence he was seeing in his day (probably from the Romans) and possibly embellishing the stories to fit his worldview and what he wanted to see as a human. Essentially having a bad day.
The book makes me think of a fantastic idea I've heard before, and that is that your particular interpretation of the Bible says a lot more about who you are than who God is.
January 2, 2018
I’m amazed how few followers of Jesus are there are alarmed by the violence in its pages, not least in terms of the stark contrast between the passivism of the new Testament and the militant aggression of the Old Testament. Finally in this book we have an author who is not afraid to face the facts and to make sense of them, this is easily one of the most profound and most powerful books within the realm of Christianity that I have ever had the pleasure to read.
P1
Christians have long sought to reconcile the loving God they encounter in the new Testament with the violent and angry depictions of God found in the pages of the Old Testament. On the one hand, Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matt 5:44). On the other hand, we read in the law of Moses the divine command for God's people to "show them no mercy" Deuteronomy 7:2 and "kill everything that breathes" Deuteronomy 20:16. Although it may be hard for us to face, such glaring contrasts found within the Canon of Scripture are hard to overlook.
P5
Genocide, infanticide, cannibalism, and rape are all attributed to God in the Old Testament. For those of us who see the Bible is God's Word, this presents a profound problem: How can we say that the Bible is inspired when it seems to approve of, and even command things, that we would in any other context clearly regard as being profoundly immoral?
P1
Christians have long sought to reconcile the loving God they encounter in the new Testament with the violent and angry depictions of God found in the pages of the Old Testament. On the one hand, Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matt 5:44). On the other hand, we read in the law of Moses the divine command for God's people to "show them no mercy" Deuteronomy 7:2 and "kill everything that breathes" Deuteronomy 20:16. Although it may be hard for us to face, such glaring contrasts found within the Canon of Scripture are hard to overlook.
P5
Genocide, infanticide, cannibalism, and rape are all attributed to God in the Old Testament. For those of us who see the Bible is God's Word, this presents a profound problem: How can we say that the Bible is inspired when it seems to approve of, and even command things, that we would in any other context clearly regard as being profoundly immoral?
July 29, 2016
Disarming Scripture by Derek Flood is about how the left and right both cherry-pick parts of Scripture for their own purpose. I was intrigued, mostly because I agree wholeheartedly with this premise.
Flood has some great points that he makes in this book. We should love our enemies, not hate them. You can tell he is a pacifist as you read the book. But what is dangerous is that he re-interprets Scripture as he goes.
My biggest issue with this book is that his main point is that we must “faithfully question” scripture and that is only doing what Jesus did: according to Flood, Jesus reinterpreted the Law (the Old Testament) and even ignored it at times.
Flood ironically writes a book about how not to cherry-pick scripture, while he himself cherry-picks scripture. As a few others have indicated, he consistently ignores many aspects of scripture.
When discussing violence in the first segment of the book, Flood references many citations of "God's commands of genocide" to His people, as if God is some bloodthirsty tyrant.
What Flood neglects is Scripture's arc that reveals God's plan for salvation and His extreme patience with fallen, sinful people (which is all of us). That arc in scripture includes God dwelling here on earth in the temple, which required the cleanliness laws. In addition to the priests being clean, this also means God washed the land of anything unclean. God gave the Canaanites over 4 centuries to repent of their ways . They don't. So God, who is is perfectly just, delivers that justice.
Scripture is perfectly consistent as well. God treats His own people the same as the Canaanites. When God's own people don't obey His command (keeping the Sabbath year of rest for the land), God expels His people from the land and they fall under Babylon captivity for 70 years, the number of Sabbath years they ignored. This way, God allows the land to rest for 70 years, His people are judged, His law maintained, and His patience is revealed (restoring Israel after those 70 years).
But Flood neglects this and instead says that we must "faithfully question" and reinterpret Scripture.
In another instance, Flood mentions the woman caught in adultery and says that "the law had given her a death sentence (Deut 22:22, Lev 20:10) but Jesus opts not to follow that law, forgiving and restoring her instead."
This makes it appear as if Jesus just decided on a whim to be a Social Justice Warrior and just ignore the law. What Flood neglects to mention is that under the law Flood himself cites, two witnesses are needed for the death sentence (Deut 19:15). Having only one is not enough to invoke the death penalty (Deut 17:6).
But even if we stay within the very verse Flood cites (Deut 22:22), the man AND woman are to be put to death. And the man is not there with the woman. So under the very law Flood cites, the woman cannot be put to death. So Jesus is adhering to the law by letter her go, not ignoring it.
These are but just a few of the cherry-pickings that Derek Flood makes in writing this book about avoiding cherry-picking.
One final point I’ll make. Towards the end, Flood lets his true feelings of Scripture come out when he discusses inerrancy. He bluntly says in the final chapter:
“If there are things endorsed in the Bible like genocide or slavery which we can and must clearly recognize as wrong, then in what sense can we say that the Bible is inspired, let alone infallible or inerrant?”
Here, he gets so many things wrong in one sentence. Never mind that God used His judgement against an rebellious nation (the Canaanites), or that slavery in Scripture is not the same as slavery in the mid 19th century America (those who were slaves during Christ’s day typically were released after 7 years, the received a wage and often bought out their own contract to be free).
But to say that the Scriptures endorsed these things just gets facts wrong. Case in point, the entire book of Philemon is Paul’s plea to buy Philemon’s freedom by paying off his debt to his master.
I also cannot understand how Flood can say the Bible is not inspired. Opening Scripture to 2 Timothy 3:16, states bluntly that “all scripture is God-breathed.” This illustrates his view of Scripture, and if we aren’t sure, he spends the rest of the chapter explaining why Scripture isn’t inerrant or infallible.
I ask this: If we can’t trust God’s Word, how can we believe Christ rose from the dead? This is the slippery slope on which we begin to descend once we begin saying that God’s Word isn’t.
When we read Scripture, we should be reading it with the lens of Christ. Everything in scripture points to Jesus Christ.
When we begin to say Scripture must always be questioned, we are placing ourselves as the authority, replacing God. Scripture will interpret Scripture. If we are unclear on a meaning in Scripture, looking at the big picture will help us understand it. Please pray for him, that he is drawn by the Spirit to better understand God’s law.
Flood has some great points that he makes in this book. We should love our enemies, not hate them. You can tell he is a pacifist as you read the book. But what is dangerous is that he re-interprets Scripture as he goes.
My biggest issue with this book is that his main point is that we must “faithfully question” scripture and that is only doing what Jesus did: according to Flood, Jesus reinterpreted the Law (the Old Testament) and even ignored it at times.
Flood ironically writes a book about how not to cherry-pick scripture, while he himself cherry-picks scripture. As a few others have indicated, he consistently ignores many aspects of scripture.
When discussing violence in the first segment of the book, Flood references many citations of "God's commands of genocide" to His people, as if God is some bloodthirsty tyrant.
What Flood neglects is Scripture's arc that reveals God's plan for salvation and His extreme patience with fallen, sinful people (which is all of us). That arc in scripture includes God dwelling here on earth in the temple, which required the cleanliness laws. In addition to the priests being clean, this also means God washed the land of anything unclean. God gave the Canaanites over 4 centuries to repent of their ways . They don't. So God, who is is perfectly just, delivers that justice.
Scripture is perfectly consistent as well. God treats His own people the same as the Canaanites. When God's own people don't obey His command (keeping the Sabbath year of rest for the land), God expels His people from the land and they fall under Babylon captivity for 70 years, the number of Sabbath years they ignored. This way, God allows the land to rest for 70 years, His people are judged, His law maintained, and His patience is revealed (restoring Israel after those 70 years).
But Flood neglects this and instead says that we must "faithfully question" and reinterpret Scripture.
In another instance, Flood mentions the woman caught in adultery and says that "the law had given her a death sentence (Deut 22:22, Lev 20:10) but Jesus opts not to follow that law, forgiving and restoring her instead."
This makes it appear as if Jesus just decided on a whim to be a Social Justice Warrior and just ignore the law. What Flood neglects to mention is that under the law Flood himself cites, two witnesses are needed for the death sentence (Deut 19:15). Having only one is not enough to invoke the death penalty (Deut 17:6).
But even if we stay within the very verse Flood cites (Deut 22:22), the man AND woman are to be put to death. And the man is not there with the woman. So under the very law Flood cites, the woman cannot be put to death. So Jesus is adhering to the law by letter her go, not ignoring it.
These are but just a few of the cherry-pickings that Derek Flood makes in writing this book about avoiding cherry-picking.
One final point I’ll make. Towards the end, Flood lets his true feelings of Scripture come out when he discusses inerrancy. He bluntly says in the final chapter:
“If there are things endorsed in the Bible like genocide or slavery which we can and must clearly recognize as wrong, then in what sense can we say that the Bible is inspired, let alone infallible or inerrant?”
Here, he gets so many things wrong in one sentence. Never mind that God used His judgement against an rebellious nation (the Canaanites), or that slavery in Scripture is not the same as slavery in the mid 19th century America (those who were slaves during Christ’s day typically were released after 7 years, the received a wage and often bought out their own contract to be free).
But to say that the Scriptures endorsed these things just gets facts wrong. Case in point, the entire book of Philemon is Paul’s plea to buy Philemon’s freedom by paying off his debt to his master.
I also cannot understand how Flood can say the Bible is not inspired. Opening Scripture to 2 Timothy 3:16, states bluntly that “all scripture is God-breathed.” This illustrates his view of Scripture, and if we aren’t sure, he spends the rest of the chapter explaining why Scripture isn’t inerrant or infallible.
I ask this: If we can’t trust God’s Word, how can we believe Christ rose from the dead? This is the slippery slope on which we begin to descend once we begin saying that God’s Word isn’t.
When we read Scripture, we should be reading it with the lens of Christ. Everything in scripture points to Jesus Christ.
When we begin to say Scripture must always be questioned, we are placing ourselves as the authority, replacing God. Scripture will interpret Scripture. If we are unclear on a meaning in Scripture, looking at the big picture will help us understand it. Please pray for him, that he is drawn by the Spirit to better understand God’s law.
December 31, 2018
In my journey towards cruciform theology, a crucial first stepping stone was "Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did" by Derek Flood. The reason this book was so important was I had been struggling with two major issues: firstly, Yahweh's apparently violent tendencies as depicted in the Old Testament, and secondly, why God doesn't prevent all evil. Disarming Scripture provided me some much needed guidance on how to approach the former without sidestepping the issue or worse, demanding acceptance that God is indeed violent and bloodthirsty. If we understand that God is exactly like Jesus, then we need a way to apply that thinking to troubling texts in the Bible. Derek's surprisingly simple answer is that we must learn to read the Bible like Jesus did. He then explains throughout the book how to do that. I would like to give my wholehearted recommendation for this well researched and clearly written book.
Disarming Scripture starts by talking about how violence in the Bible has and can easily be used as justification for religious bloodshed and how criticism typically comes from outside the faith, for example from Richard Dawkins: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction..." Placed on the back foot by such critiques, many Christians end up attempting to downplay and justify divine-sanctioned violence to the extent that some responses are not much better than "Try not to imagine their faces, and it isn't as upsetting" (in reference to the victims of biblical violence). He emphasises that people that argue these things are not bad people - what this shows is how easy it is for any of us to fall into that trap. He goes on to look at how some Christians cherry pick, essentially citing only the good verses as being representative of the whole Bible while almost pretending that the difficult verses are not there, which can lead to whitewashing. Flood says "The prophetic spirit however is one that lovingly critiques religion from the inside, not as a way to destroy it, but as a way to make it good and whole" and that this is what Jesus Himself did.
Derek begins to set out his hermeneutic using the Sermon on the Mount. He demonstrates how Jesus reinterprets Old Testament passages using the formula "You have heard it said...But I tell you..." Crucially, he takes Jesus's "fulfilling" of the law as meaning "perfecting" it or bringing it to its intended purpose by means of interpretations that may be utterly different to previous understandings. Jesus's priority, he says, was in defending people not a text and this put him into confrontation with the defenders of traditional interpretation, the Pharisees. He contrasts "unquestioning obedience" at the expense of harming people with "faithful questioning" that leads to love. Derek shows that Jesus was not the first to question, highlighting Isaiah's rejection of sacrifice commanded by the law and quotes Walter Brueggemann's description of the Old Testament as "testimony" and "counter-testimony" rather than a text that speaks with a single unified voice, the majority view being "unquestioning obedience" and the minority, "faithful questioning". For example, Job faithfully questions while his friends counter with unquestioning obedience. Quoting Rene Girard, he observes that it was exceptional for the voice of the victim to be heard in narratives contemporary with the Bible. He talks about Paul's conversion from zealous biblically justified violence to fulfillment of the law through compassion. Powerfully he demonstrates how Paul quotes from the Old Testament but crucially omits certain lines that reference violence giving a whole new meaning which could even be the opposite of what the Old Testament author intended. While Jesus used this approach rarely, Jesus "used paradox or a clever turn of phrase to re-define terms and concepts" for example in response to the accusation of working on the Sabbath.
Next the author examines how the church has historically interpreted Scripture highlighting the unfortunate divorce of ethics form exegesis. The development of the understanding of God in the Bible is mapped out, illustrating how at the beginning, evil was attributed to God but later to Satan (which can also be seen in the book of Jubilees). Prophets claiming to speak for God contradict each other and the archaeological evidence complicates matters further and so we must read ethically and engage critically with the Bible.
Part 2 introduces the idea of "reading on a trajectory". He begins by emphasising that although the New Testament is a break from the Old, there is still violence within its pages. He sees the prophets as trying to make sense of Israel's suffering by blaming the victim and focusing on God's anger. But that explanation looks weak after centuries of oppression and the conquering war god image becomes untenable by the time of the New Testament. "The warrior God has become the suffering God. God has been disarmed because Jesus reveals the true heart of the Father." He sees the New Testament as a protest narrative that articulates an "alternative way, characterized by forgiveness and enemy love" but importantly it is not the "final and ultimate picture". He gives slavery as an example where the New Testament improves on the Old, but does not go all the way to banning it outright. Hence guided by the Holy Spirit, we must distinguish between the redemptive direction that the Bible is taking and the cultural assumptions of the time to put us on the "cutting-edge of moral advance" instead of "fighting against moral progress in human and civil rights". How then do we know whether we are heading in the right direction when there may be multiple competing interpretations claiming to be right? If we use a cruciform (or Christocentric) lens, how do we deal with issues like slavery in the New Testament? The answer, Flood says, is that we need to read the Bible in the way Jesus did, evaluating biblical claims by their fruits - the observable effects in people's lives. "To continue on a course we know to be harmful, simply because 'the Bible says so' is morally irresponsible."
Derek next addresses state-sanctioned violence looking at the texts classically used to justify it - war imagery, the faith of the centurion, Jesus and buying swords, driving the money changers from the temple and Paul's statements on rulers in Romans 13. He explains these in various ways, typically by looking at the context of surrounding passages, considering the texts as counter-cultural protest narrative and demonstrating how the use of violent symbolism is often for the purposes of making a point about peace. He asks "What does it look like to shape our society in the way of Jesus?"
The central aim of Scripture, Flood continues, "as Jesus saw it, was to lead us to love" so how can we apply that in real life? He notes that he is not advocating passivity, for example telling a woman suffering domestic abuse to stay put, but rather the use of faithful questioning to evaluate how to end suffering. He describes how Jesus's provocative use of language can be misunderstood if taken literally, for example cutting off your right hand, hating your wife and children, denying yourself etc. - these are meant to jar us into being "more loving, not less", moving from "self-focus" to "social-focus". In practical terms, reflecting on a time when his daughter was having a "meltdown" and delving into neuroscience, he describes how one has to resists impulse or instinct where the fear-based part of the brain (amygdala) rationalises a swift and harsh response, and engage the higher social brain to break the hostile dynamic. Amazingly, Paul recognised that if we keep doing this we will be "transformed by the renewing of our minds", a concept known as neuroplasticity. Within society and the criminal justice system in particular, love of enemies challenges the popular notion of retributive justice encouraging us instead to look at restoration and rehabilitation. Derek makes a distinction between "love of enemies" as a general principle applicable to individuals and societies and "turning the other cheek" which is context-specific so that non-violent resistance works when the power dynamic is a weaker party struggling against a more powerful one, but not the reverse where conflict resolution techniques should be used instead.
As a sidenote in this summary, I fully agree with Derek's recommendation to train oneself to engage the higher social brain. I have found my faith leading to this in small steps. For example, I used to love violent action films and sports like boxing, but now I no longer watch them and as time has gone on, I no longer feel the urge to watch them, hopefully a sign that my primitive fear-based brain is losing its ability to control my responses and more importantly that I am undergoing the transformation that Paul describes. It's so easy when something goes wrong in life to let the amygdala kick in and look for someone to blame or worse to lash out at. It takes a real effort to let the social brain bring a calm, reasoned and compassionate response to a situation.
Flood says that broadly, "while the Old Testament commands humans to commit violence in God's name - including attempted genocide - the New Testament categorically forbids this for the people of God". Where violence exists in the New Testament, it is in the form of divine judgments. If we accept that God can rightly do what we cannot, we still struggle since both Jesus and Paul see God as our model for love of enemy so the divine and human standards of morality must be the same. Referencing Michael Gormann, the author says that "while God alone has the right to judge, God instead in Christ gives up that right and chooses the way of enemy love." He looks at various passages that present a problematic view of God's judgment in the New Testament, showing how Jesus, starting with people's cultural assumptions at the time, upends their and our thinking. He introduces a "hermeneutic of trust" where we "identify the original intent of promoting compassion within its cultural context" and a "hermeneutic of suspicion" that follows a trajectory beyond that context within which the gospel authors, particularly Matthew, are encapsulated. We must distinguish "the flower of the gospel" from the "socio-religious soil" out of which it grows.
Inerrancy and infallibility are the next areas the Derek examines observing that even if the Bible were infallible, humans can misunderstand at many different levels eg. in the translation into another language and culture, or in the reading. There are many scriptural interpretations - he suggests searching on Amazon for "four views" - so the idea that we cannot be misled by the Bible is demonstrably false. He says that what is far worse than arguments over scribal errors is the frequent usage of this unquestioning way of reading to justify things like slavery, child abuse and genocide. He contrasts this with faithful questioning that looks at "the evidence of observable effects in life" in evaluating the merit of a particular interpretation. Scripture is inspired when the Spirit brings it to life, drawing us into an experience of loving communion with Christ. Jesus, Paul and Peter prioritised this "experience" - something akin to empirical evidence - over a particular reading of the text whereas later theology elevated "Scripture, reason and tradition". The Bible should be read by building upon what Jesus taught rather than freezing our understanding in time. Uncertainty and questioning are not to be feared but to be embraced as signs of a healthy and mature faith. "Our faith is anchored in the living Christ, not in a book" - the aim of Scripture ultimately is to lead us to love.
Disarming Scripture starts by talking about how violence in the Bible has and can easily be used as justification for religious bloodshed and how criticism typically comes from outside the faith, for example from Richard Dawkins: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction..." Placed on the back foot by such critiques, many Christians end up attempting to downplay and justify divine-sanctioned violence to the extent that some responses are not much better than "Try not to imagine their faces, and it isn't as upsetting" (in reference to the victims of biblical violence). He emphasises that people that argue these things are not bad people - what this shows is how easy it is for any of us to fall into that trap. He goes on to look at how some Christians cherry pick, essentially citing only the good verses as being representative of the whole Bible while almost pretending that the difficult verses are not there, which can lead to whitewashing. Flood says "The prophetic spirit however is one that lovingly critiques religion from the inside, not as a way to destroy it, but as a way to make it good and whole" and that this is what Jesus Himself did.
Derek begins to set out his hermeneutic using the Sermon on the Mount. He demonstrates how Jesus reinterprets Old Testament passages using the formula "You have heard it said...But I tell you..." Crucially, he takes Jesus's "fulfilling" of the law as meaning "perfecting" it or bringing it to its intended purpose by means of interpretations that may be utterly different to previous understandings. Jesus's priority, he says, was in defending people not a text and this put him into confrontation with the defenders of traditional interpretation, the Pharisees. He contrasts "unquestioning obedience" at the expense of harming people with "faithful questioning" that leads to love. Derek shows that Jesus was not the first to question, highlighting Isaiah's rejection of sacrifice commanded by the law and quotes Walter Brueggemann's description of the Old Testament as "testimony" and "counter-testimony" rather than a text that speaks with a single unified voice, the majority view being "unquestioning obedience" and the minority, "faithful questioning". For example, Job faithfully questions while his friends counter with unquestioning obedience. Quoting Rene Girard, he observes that it was exceptional for the voice of the victim to be heard in narratives contemporary with the Bible. He talks about Paul's conversion from zealous biblically justified violence to fulfillment of the law through compassion. Powerfully he demonstrates how Paul quotes from the Old Testament but crucially omits certain lines that reference violence giving a whole new meaning which could even be the opposite of what the Old Testament author intended. While Jesus used this approach rarely, Jesus "used paradox or a clever turn of phrase to re-define terms and concepts" for example in response to the accusation of working on the Sabbath.
Next the author examines how the church has historically interpreted Scripture highlighting the unfortunate divorce of ethics form exegesis. The development of the understanding of God in the Bible is mapped out, illustrating how at the beginning, evil was attributed to God but later to Satan (which can also be seen in the book of Jubilees). Prophets claiming to speak for God contradict each other and the archaeological evidence complicates matters further and so we must read ethically and engage critically with the Bible.
Part 2 introduces the idea of "reading on a trajectory". He begins by emphasising that although the New Testament is a break from the Old, there is still violence within its pages. He sees the prophets as trying to make sense of Israel's suffering by blaming the victim and focusing on God's anger. But that explanation looks weak after centuries of oppression and the conquering war god image becomes untenable by the time of the New Testament. "The warrior God has become the suffering God. God has been disarmed because Jesus reveals the true heart of the Father." He sees the New Testament as a protest narrative that articulates an "alternative way, characterized by forgiveness and enemy love" but importantly it is not the "final and ultimate picture". He gives slavery as an example where the New Testament improves on the Old, but does not go all the way to banning it outright. Hence guided by the Holy Spirit, we must distinguish between the redemptive direction that the Bible is taking and the cultural assumptions of the time to put us on the "cutting-edge of moral advance" instead of "fighting against moral progress in human and civil rights". How then do we know whether we are heading in the right direction when there may be multiple competing interpretations claiming to be right? If we use a cruciform (or Christocentric) lens, how do we deal with issues like slavery in the New Testament? The answer, Flood says, is that we need to read the Bible in the way Jesus did, evaluating biblical claims by their fruits - the observable effects in people's lives. "To continue on a course we know to be harmful, simply because 'the Bible says so' is morally irresponsible."
Derek next addresses state-sanctioned violence looking at the texts classically used to justify it - war imagery, the faith of the centurion, Jesus and buying swords, driving the money changers from the temple and Paul's statements on rulers in Romans 13. He explains these in various ways, typically by looking at the context of surrounding passages, considering the texts as counter-cultural protest narrative and demonstrating how the use of violent symbolism is often for the purposes of making a point about peace. He asks "What does it look like to shape our society in the way of Jesus?"
The central aim of Scripture, Flood continues, "as Jesus saw it, was to lead us to love" so how can we apply that in real life? He notes that he is not advocating passivity, for example telling a woman suffering domestic abuse to stay put, but rather the use of faithful questioning to evaluate how to end suffering. He describes how Jesus's provocative use of language can be misunderstood if taken literally, for example cutting off your right hand, hating your wife and children, denying yourself etc. - these are meant to jar us into being "more loving, not less", moving from "self-focus" to "social-focus". In practical terms, reflecting on a time when his daughter was having a "meltdown" and delving into neuroscience, he describes how one has to resists impulse or instinct where the fear-based part of the brain (amygdala) rationalises a swift and harsh response, and engage the higher social brain to break the hostile dynamic. Amazingly, Paul recognised that if we keep doing this we will be "transformed by the renewing of our minds", a concept known as neuroplasticity. Within society and the criminal justice system in particular, love of enemies challenges the popular notion of retributive justice encouraging us instead to look at restoration and rehabilitation. Derek makes a distinction between "love of enemies" as a general principle applicable to individuals and societies and "turning the other cheek" which is context-specific so that non-violent resistance works when the power dynamic is a weaker party struggling against a more powerful one, but not the reverse where conflict resolution techniques should be used instead.
As a sidenote in this summary, I fully agree with Derek's recommendation to train oneself to engage the higher social brain. I have found my faith leading to this in small steps. For example, I used to love violent action films and sports like boxing, but now I no longer watch them and as time has gone on, I no longer feel the urge to watch them, hopefully a sign that my primitive fear-based brain is losing its ability to control my responses and more importantly that I am undergoing the transformation that Paul describes. It's so easy when something goes wrong in life to let the amygdala kick in and look for someone to blame or worse to lash out at. It takes a real effort to let the social brain bring a calm, reasoned and compassionate response to a situation.
Flood says that broadly, "while the Old Testament commands humans to commit violence in God's name - including attempted genocide - the New Testament categorically forbids this for the people of God". Where violence exists in the New Testament, it is in the form of divine judgments. If we accept that God can rightly do what we cannot, we still struggle since both Jesus and Paul see God as our model for love of enemy so the divine and human standards of morality must be the same. Referencing Michael Gormann, the author says that "while God alone has the right to judge, God instead in Christ gives up that right and chooses the way of enemy love." He looks at various passages that present a problematic view of God's judgment in the New Testament, showing how Jesus, starting with people's cultural assumptions at the time, upends their and our thinking. He introduces a "hermeneutic of trust" where we "identify the original intent of promoting compassion within its cultural context" and a "hermeneutic of suspicion" that follows a trajectory beyond that context within which the gospel authors, particularly Matthew, are encapsulated. We must distinguish "the flower of the gospel" from the "socio-religious soil" out of which it grows.
Inerrancy and infallibility are the next areas the Derek examines observing that even if the Bible were infallible, humans can misunderstand at many different levels eg. in the translation into another language and culture, or in the reading. There are many scriptural interpretations - he suggests searching on Amazon for "four views" - so the idea that we cannot be misled by the Bible is demonstrably false. He says that what is far worse than arguments over scribal errors is the frequent usage of this unquestioning way of reading to justify things like slavery, child abuse and genocide. He contrasts this with faithful questioning that looks at "the evidence of observable effects in life" in evaluating the merit of a particular interpretation. Scripture is inspired when the Spirit brings it to life, drawing us into an experience of loving communion with Christ. Jesus, Paul and Peter prioritised this "experience" - something akin to empirical evidence - over a particular reading of the text whereas later theology elevated "Scripture, reason and tradition". The Bible should be read by building upon what Jesus taught rather than freezing our understanding in time. Uncertainty and questioning are not to be feared but to be embraced as signs of a healthy and mature faith. "Our faith is anchored in the living Christ, not in a book" - the aim of Scripture ultimately is to lead us to love.
July 13, 2022
Christians face a dilemma, namely, how to reconcile the Old Testament Lord of War with the New Testament Prince of Peace. Derek Flood proposes a way to resolve the perceived conflict that does not require trying to justify or to ignore genocide. His solution is to interpret Scripture the way Jesus did, a way that led him to radical forgiveness and enemy love.
Flood does not flinch from or try to downplay the grim fact that "violence and bloodshed committed in God's name is a major theme of the Old Testament. Entering into the 'Promised Land' is a story of mass genocide, described in terms of a holy war."
In addition, God's anger and punishment are mentioned more often than any other topic. Five times God threatens to cause parents to cannibalize their own children. (Lev. 26:29; Jer. 19:19; Lamentations 2:20; Exodus 5-10; Isaiah 49:25-26)
"Genocide, infanticide, cannibalism and rape are all attributed to God in the Old Testament." The Psalmist states that God wants the infants of Babylon smashed against the rocks. (137:8-9)
In more than 100 passages, God explicitly commands people to kill. Religiously justified violence is a major theme. That's all hard to whitewash, and even harder to harmonize with the Golden Rule.
Some Christian apologists who embrace inerrancy, such as John Ortberg, seek to defend genocide. In doing so, they dehumanize the victims just as the Nazis did with the Jews. Flood refuses to defend the indefensible, calling genocide "always categorically unjustifiable." To which the fundamentalist answers, "unless God orders it."
Most Christians down through history have ignored enemy love, and some have cited Old Testament verses to justify violence. The Crusaders, for example, slaughtered the whole population of Jerusalem in 1099. Cromwell labeled Irish Catholics as Canaanites to justify their slaughter. Early American Christians also compared the indigenous population to Canaanites and Amalekites to rationalize killing them.
"This is our legacy as Christians, and we need to face it head-on, rather than trying to ignore or excuse it." A different way of understanding the Bible may prevent further violent policies made in the name of Scripture.
Flood urges progressive Christians to confront Biblical violence from the perspective of faith without compromising their conscience. "The prophetic spirit is one that lovingly critiques religion from the inside, not as a way to destroy it, but as a way to make it good and whole." Which is what Jesus did.
The Sermon on the Mount reveals the revolutionary way Jesus interpreted and applied Scripture. He quotes verses and then amends them. Jesus insists that he seeks to fulfill the law not to destroy it. Fulfill as Jesus uses it means to perfect, "to lovingly bring it into its fully intended purpose."
The Old Testament does not explicitly say hate your enemy, but God does say "show them no mercy...show them no pity." (Deut. 7:2,16). The psalmist clearly hates his enemies when he prays for their punishment and death.
By contrast, Jesus teaches an ethic of forgiveness and enemy love, not payback justice such as an eye for an eye. Where an eye for an eye put a limit on retaliation, Jesus would eliminate retaliation as a way to restore enemies. In other words, restorative justice instead of retributive justice.
When Jesus announced his ministry in the temple (Luke 4:18–19), he quoted from Isaiah, but he omits the very next phrase in the same sentence, "and the day of vengeance of our God." (Isa. 6:1-2) Jesus goes beyond omission, however, when he seeks to replace hate your enemy with love your enemy. Here he is not trying too achieve the same goal by fulfilling the law.
The Pharisees repeatedly accused Jesus of breaking the law. Healing someone on the Sabbath, for example, was a violation. By touching the leper, Jesus became unclean. To Jesus, compassion and healing were a higher priority than following rituals. Love of God and of neighbor was the most important message, said Jesus.
"Such acts of faithful questioning were how Jesus understood faithfulness to Scripture because Jesus understood that the aim of Scripture was to love." The Pharisees disagreed, making obedience to rules their greatest good. Jesus recognized that strict rule following sometimes causes harm.
The gospel writers also changed the interpretation of certain Old Testament passages into prophecies referring to Jesus. This was an interpretation that had not been held by the Jews, who expected their messiah to be a military leader.
Paul also ignores violent passages. Paul taught that without love, doctrine and biblical interpretation are meaningless noise. (1 Cor 13:1–3). “Whoever loves others has fulfilled the law...Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:8–10). In Romans 15, Paul quotes Scripture about Gentiles enjoying mercy, but he omits the next sentences about violent vengeance against them.
Paul does this throughout his letters, finding radical new meaning in Scripture pointing to Christ. What Paul does is a "redemptive transformation resulting in the disarmament of these texts."
We can interpret Scripture the way of Jesus or of the Pharisees, the way of faithful questioning or of strict obedience, of love or of keeping the letter of the law.
"The goal of Scripture is to lead us to love." Jesus understood this. Paul wrote that "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." (2 Cor. 3:6)
Faithful questioning also has "a long and noble heritage within Judaism and throughout the Hebrew Scriptures." The prophets are prime examples
.
Isaiah wrote that animal sacrifices are meaningless to God and should be stopped. Here he contradicts Leviticus where methods of sacrifice are prescribed. The prophet also claimed that God does not hear the people's prayers because "their hands are full of blood." Instead people should be defending the oppressed and lifting up the poor. In other words, how we treat others is what matters to God, not rituals. Isaiah challenged the law to prioritize compassion. Jesus did the same.
Unfortunately, American Christians have repeatedly used the Bible to hurt others. For example, many Christians interpreted Scripture as supporting slavery, de jure racial segregation, and discriminating against gays.
Yet the essence of Scripture, said Jesus, is to love God and neighbor. "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matt 22:37–40). Consequently, love is a higher value than the law.
Jesus and Paul used "faithful questioning motivated by compassion" in interpreting Scriptue.
By contrast, most churches make maintaining orthodoxy their top priority in interpreting Scripture. Those who depart from orthodoxy are labeled heretics. During parts of church history, heretics were persecuted, tortured and killed.
Even today, pastors or seminary professors risk losing their jobs if their views stray from unquestioning obedience. Dissent is not tolerated.
"The course taken by the church very quickly moved in the direction of unquestioning obedience, resulting in staggering acts of violence and inhuman cruelty committed in the name of the faith and in the name of the Bible."
The method of interpretation Jesus used is a thoroughly Jewish way to read Scripture. Judaism differs in this regard from Christianity. Debate and dissent are found not only in the Hebrew Bible but in the Talmud, "a collection of dissenting views of various rabbinic sages presented side by side in a record of discussion and dispute."
So how should Christians deal with violent passages? The modern church tends to read them literally, but does not evaluate them ethically. Yet moral engagement is essential in Biblical interpretation, Flood argues. This is how the Psalmists, the prophets, and Job engaged with Scripture, raising moral questions and challenging the law. Jesus and Paul also made ethical critiques. These are models for us in how to interact with Scripture.
"This entails incorporating the insights of contemporary biblical scholarship into a Christ-centered ethical reading of the Bible." The first step in that ethical engagement is to recognize that infanticide, genocide, and cannibalism are categorically wrong. Those of us who faithfully question Scripture in the name of compassion should use our consciences to make sound moral judgments.
By contrast, those who embrace unquestioning obedience automatically defend and rationalize moral atrocity in the Bible. "The Bible says so; that settles it. End of discussion, end of thought, end of conscience."
The Jesusian interpretation method "prioritizes compassion over commands, and the other systematically leads to justifying violence and atrocity in God’s name."
For example, some parents believe corporal punishment is their duty according to the Bible. “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he will not die.” (Proverbs 23:13).
“Blows and wounds scrub away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being” (Prov 23:30).
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, insisted that children should be whipped regularly starting at one-year old "to break their will."
Modern fundamentalists such as Dr. James Dobson also advocate corporal for the sake of the child's salvation.
While rods and whips were recommended in the Hebrew Bible, Flood recommends that instead of strict adherence to Scripture, Christians move in "a redemptive direction towards more humane parenting."
Besides beating young children, the Bible is also used to justify capital punishment and war. Some see violence as the pathway to justice.
Flood summarizes his case this way: "Scripture should not be read in a way that it tethers us to some frozen-in-time view from the past that we unquestionably apply now even though we can see it conflicts with what we understand about life, even though we can see that our reading leads to harm. Rather it must be read in a way that allows us to grow and build upon what Jesus taught." As Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these” (Jn 14:12).
While Flood makes a tempting case, I'm not entirely convinced. For example, Flood asserts that Jesus was not violent when he chased the money changers out of the temple, and cites the narrative in John 2 to support his argument. John says that Jesus used a whip to drive the livestock out, with no mention of whipping people. Mark's version, however, states that Jesus "began to drive out those who were selling and buying." The wording is virtually identical in Matthew and Luke, with no mention of livestock.
Flood's explanation has another problem. The temple incident in John happens at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, while it happens near the end in the synoptic gospels. It's possible there were two such incidents, and John describes the first, which tells us nothing about the later one. It's also possible John got his chronology wrong. If he was wrong about chronology, perhaps he was wrong about how Jesus used the whip. In short, Flood's treatment of cleansing the temple is less persuasive than his analysis of other verses suggesting violence.
Revelation is a bigger obstacle to Flood's whole thesis. In the New Testament, he writes, "The warrior God has become the suffering God." Religiously justified violence was replaced with forgiveness and enemy love. To Flood, it is misreading the New Testament to see Jesus as embracing violence.
Yet the Lamb surely indulges in massive violence in Revelation. If Christ-followers are to emulate Jesus, do we follow the warrior lamb in Revelation or the Prince of Peace?
Flood approvingly quotes Richard Hays as saying, “from Matthew to Revelation we find a consistent witness against violence." I don't know how Revelation can be interpreted as anti-violence.
As New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman puts it, "This is not the Jesus of the Gospels, but it is the wrathful Lamb of the Apocalypse...The book (of Revelation) celebrates judgment, bloody vengeance, and divine wrath – not love, mercy, forgiveness, or reconciliation. In the end, the Lamb who was once bloodied avenges his blood a thousand-fold. For John, Christ came the first time in meekness, but he is coming back in power. History will be guided by the vengeance and wrath of God and his Lamb."
Unfortunately, Flood does not explain why Revelation is consistent with his thesis. The Hay quote by itself doesn't do the job.
Despite some weaknesses in the book, its thesis remains compelling. In a choice between faith based upon blind obedience or a thinking, questioning faith, the latter is clearly preferable. There is plenty of reason to agree with Flood that unquestioning obedience leads to injustice and abuse. Flood is persuasive in showing how Jesus, Paul and the Gospel authors reinterpreted Scripture, and were guided by compassion and love. If believers are to emulate Jesus and his disciples, then we should engage in faithful questioning of the Bible, not blind obedience when it causes harm. -30-
Flood does not flinch from or try to downplay the grim fact that "violence and bloodshed committed in God's name is a major theme of the Old Testament. Entering into the 'Promised Land' is a story of mass genocide, described in terms of a holy war."
In addition, God's anger and punishment are mentioned more often than any other topic. Five times God threatens to cause parents to cannibalize their own children. (Lev. 26:29; Jer. 19:19; Lamentations 2:20; Exodus 5-10; Isaiah 49:25-26)
"Genocide, infanticide, cannibalism and rape are all attributed to God in the Old Testament." The Psalmist states that God wants the infants of Babylon smashed against the rocks. (137:8-9)
In more than 100 passages, God explicitly commands people to kill. Religiously justified violence is a major theme. That's all hard to whitewash, and even harder to harmonize with the Golden Rule.
Some Christian apologists who embrace inerrancy, such as John Ortberg, seek to defend genocide. In doing so, they dehumanize the victims just as the Nazis did with the Jews. Flood refuses to defend the indefensible, calling genocide "always categorically unjustifiable." To which the fundamentalist answers, "unless God orders it."
Most Christians down through history have ignored enemy love, and some have cited Old Testament verses to justify violence. The Crusaders, for example, slaughtered the whole population of Jerusalem in 1099. Cromwell labeled Irish Catholics as Canaanites to justify their slaughter. Early American Christians also compared the indigenous population to Canaanites and Amalekites to rationalize killing them.
"This is our legacy as Christians, and we need to face it head-on, rather than trying to ignore or excuse it." A different way of understanding the Bible may prevent further violent policies made in the name of Scripture.
Flood urges progressive Christians to confront Biblical violence from the perspective of faith without compromising their conscience. "The prophetic spirit is one that lovingly critiques religion from the inside, not as a way to destroy it, but as a way to make it good and whole." Which is what Jesus did.
The Sermon on the Mount reveals the revolutionary way Jesus interpreted and applied Scripture. He quotes verses and then amends them. Jesus insists that he seeks to fulfill the law not to destroy it. Fulfill as Jesus uses it means to perfect, "to lovingly bring it into its fully intended purpose."
The Old Testament does not explicitly say hate your enemy, but God does say "show them no mercy...show them no pity." (Deut. 7:2,16). The psalmist clearly hates his enemies when he prays for their punishment and death.
By contrast, Jesus teaches an ethic of forgiveness and enemy love, not payback justice such as an eye for an eye. Where an eye for an eye put a limit on retaliation, Jesus would eliminate retaliation as a way to restore enemies. In other words, restorative justice instead of retributive justice.
When Jesus announced his ministry in the temple (Luke 4:18–19), he quoted from Isaiah, but he omits the very next phrase in the same sentence, "and the day of vengeance of our God." (Isa. 6:1-2) Jesus goes beyond omission, however, when he seeks to replace hate your enemy with love your enemy. Here he is not trying too achieve the same goal by fulfilling the law.
The Pharisees repeatedly accused Jesus of breaking the law. Healing someone on the Sabbath, for example, was a violation. By touching the leper, Jesus became unclean. To Jesus, compassion and healing were a higher priority than following rituals. Love of God and of neighbor was the most important message, said Jesus.
"Such acts of faithful questioning were how Jesus understood faithfulness to Scripture because Jesus understood that the aim of Scripture was to love." The Pharisees disagreed, making obedience to rules their greatest good. Jesus recognized that strict rule following sometimes causes harm.
The gospel writers also changed the interpretation of certain Old Testament passages into prophecies referring to Jesus. This was an interpretation that had not been held by the Jews, who expected their messiah to be a military leader.
Paul also ignores violent passages. Paul taught that without love, doctrine and biblical interpretation are meaningless noise. (1 Cor 13:1–3). “Whoever loves others has fulfilled the law...Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:8–10). In Romans 15, Paul quotes Scripture about Gentiles enjoying mercy, but he omits the next sentences about violent vengeance against them.
Paul does this throughout his letters, finding radical new meaning in Scripture pointing to Christ. What Paul does is a "redemptive transformation resulting in the disarmament of these texts."
We can interpret Scripture the way of Jesus or of the Pharisees, the way of faithful questioning or of strict obedience, of love or of keeping the letter of the law.
"The goal of Scripture is to lead us to love." Jesus understood this. Paul wrote that "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." (2 Cor. 3:6)
Faithful questioning also has "a long and noble heritage within Judaism and throughout the Hebrew Scriptures." The prophets are prime examples
.
Isaiah wrote that animal sacrifices are meaningless to God and should be stopped. Here he contradicts Leviticus where methods of sacrifice are prescribed. The prophet also claimed that God does not hear the people's prayers because "their hands are full of blood." Instead people should be defending the oppressed and lifting up the poor. In other words, how we treat others is what matters to God, not rituals. Isaiah challenged the law to prioritize compassion. Jesus did the same.
Unfortunately, American Christians have repeatedly used the Bible to hurt others. For example, many Christians interpreted Scripture as supporting slavery, de jure racial segregation, and discriminating against gays.
Yet the essence of Scripture, said Jesus, is to love God and neighbor. "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matt 22:37–40). Consequently, love is a higher value than the law.
Jesus and Paul used "faithful questioning motivated by compassion" in interpreting Scriptue.
By contrast, most churches make maintaining orthodoxy their top priority in interpreting Scripture. Those who depart from orthodoxy are labeled heretics. During parts of church history, heretics were persecuted, tortured and killed.
Even today, pastors or seminary professors risk losing their jobs if their views stray from unquestioning obedience. Dissent is not tolerated.
"The course taken by the church very quickly moved in the direction of unquestioning obedience, resulting in staggering acts of violence and inhuman cruelty committed in the name of the faith and in the name of the Bible."
The method of interpretation Jesus used is a thoroughly Jewish way to read Scripture. Judaism differs in this regard from Christianity. Debate and dissent are found not only in the Hebrew Bible but in the Talmud, "a collection of dissenting views of various rabbinic sages presented side by side in a record of discussion and dispute."
So how should Christians deal with violent passages? The modern church tends to read them literally, but does not evaluate them ethically. Yet moral engagement is essential in Biblical interpretation, Flood argues. This is how the Psalmists, the prophets, and Job engaged with Scripture, raising moral questions and challenging the law. Jesus and Paul also made ethical critiques. These are models for us in how to interact with Scripture.
"This entails incorporating the insights of contemporary biblical scholarship into a Christ-centered ethical reading of the Bible." The first step in that ethical engagement is to recognize that infanticide, genocide, and cannibalism are categorically wrong. Those of us who faithfully question Scripture in the name of compassion should use our consciences to make sound moral judgments.
By contrast, those who embrace unquestioning obedience automatically defend and rationalize moral atrocity in the Bible. "The Bible says so; that settles it. End of discussion, end of thought, end of conscience."
The Jesusian interpretation method "prioritizes compassion over commands, and the other systematically leads to justifying violence and atrocity in God’s name."
For example, some parents believe corporal punishment is their duty according to the Bible. “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he will not die.” (Proverbs 23:13).
“Blows and wounds scrub away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being” (Prov 23:30).
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, insisted that children should be whipped regularly starting at one-year old "to break their will."
Modern fundamentalists such as Dr. James Dobson also advocate corporal for the sake of the child's salvation.
While rods and whips were recommended in the Hebrew Bible, Flood recommends that instead of strict adherence to Scripture, Christians move in "a redemptive direction towards more humane parenting."
Besides beating young children, the Bible is also used to justify capital punishment and war. Some see violence as the pathway to justice.
Flood summarizes his case this way: "Scripture should not be read in a way that it tethers us to some frozen-in-time view from the past that we unquestionably apply now even though we can see it conflicts with what we understand about life, even though we can see that our reading leads to harm. Rather it must be read in a way that allows us to grow and build upon what Jesus taught." As Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these” (Jn 14:12).
While Flood makes a tempting case, I'm not entirely convinced. For example, Flood asserts that Jesus was not violent when he chased the money changers out of the temple, and cites the narrative in John 2 to support his argument. John says that Jesus used a whip to drive the livestock out, with no mention of whipping people. Mark's version, however, states that Jesus "began to drive out those who were selling and buying." The wording is virtually identical in Matthew and Luke, with no mention of livestock.
Flood's explanation has another problem. The temple incident in John happens at the beginning of Jesus's ministry, while it happens near the end in the synoptic gospels. It's possible there were two such incidents, and John describes the first, which tells us nothing about the later one. It's also possible John got his chronology wrong. If he was wrong about chronology, perhaps he was wrong about how Jesus used the whip. In short, Flood's treatment of cleansing the temple is less persuasive than his analysis of other verses suggesting violence.
Revelation is a bigger obstacle to Flood's whole thesis. In the New Testament, he writes, "The warrior God has become the suffering God." Religiously justified violence was replaced with forgiveness and enemy love. To Flood, it is misreading the New Testament to see Jesus as embracing violence.
Yet the Lamb surely indulges in massive violence in Revelation. If Christ-followers are to emulate Jesus, do we follow the warrior lamb in Revelation or the Prince of Peace?
Flood approvingly quotes Richard Hays as saying, “from Matthew to Revelation we find a consistent witness against violence." I don't know how Revelation can be interpreted as anti-violence.
As New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman puts it, "This is not the Jesus of the Gospels, but it is the wrathful Lamb of the Apocalypse...The book (of Revelation) celebrates judgment, bloody vengeance, and divine wrath – not love, mercy, forgiveness, or reconciliation. In the end, the Lamb who was once bloodied avenges his blood a thousand-fold. For John, Christ came the first time in meekness, but he is coming back in power. History will be guided by the vengeance and wrath of God and his Lamb."
Unfortunately, Flood does not explain why Revelation is consistent with his thesis. The Hay quote by itself doesn't do the job.
Despite some weaknesses in the book, its thesis remains compelling. In a choice between faith based upon blind obedience or a thinking, questioning faith, the latter is clearly preferable. There is plenty of reason to agree with Flood that unquestioning obedience leads to injustice and abuse. Flood is persuasive in showing how Jesus, Paul and the Gospel authors reinterpreted Scripture, and were guided by compassion and love. If believers are to emulate Jesus and his disciples, then we should engage in faithful questioning of the Bible, not blind obedience when it causes harm. -30-
May 1, 2015
I wish every Christian I knew would read this book - the perspective it offers is simply invaluable to our context today. Derek Flood introduces three common reactions to/ways of reading Scripture, and then contends passionately and intelligently for a fourth. The three common reactions to/ways of reading Scripture are:
- Conservatism, which insists on turning off all thought or ethical concern and letting the Bible trump these things, even when the Bible seems to be contending for ethically questionable things like slavery, child abuse, and even genocide,
- Liberalism, which cherry picks the nice parts out of the Bible and white-washes over the questionable, and
- Atheism, which focuses heavily on the ethically questionable parts of the Bible as proof positive that Christianity is a horrible religion.
Flood refers to the Conservative methodology of letting the Bible trump ethical concern as unquestioning obedience and argues that when we look at Jesus and Paul, what we see instead is faithful questioning, and he contends for a way of reading Scripture as a trajectory. Reading it this way recognizes that Judaism was on a long, slow path away from violence, and that Jesus completely rejected all forms of violence and calls his followers to do the same. A trajectory reading of Scripture also recognizes that we, today, are not called to go back in time to an ethical model that exists centuries ago (as if that were possible), but to recognize that the Scriptures actually call us to go beyond themselves.
As a preview of the excellence within this book, I provide the following extended quote:
- Conservatism, which insists on turning off all thought or ethical concern and letting the Bible trump these things, even when the Bible seems to be contending for ethically questionable things like slavery, child abuse, and even genocide,
- Liberalism, which cherry picks the nice parts out of the Bible and white-washes over the questionable, and
- Atheism, which focuses heavily on the ethically questionable parts of the Bible as proof positive that Christianity is a horrible religion.
Flood refers to the Conservative methodology of letting the Bible trump ethical concern as unquestioning obedience and argues that when we look at Jesus and Paul, what we see instead is faithful questioning, and he contends for a way of reading Scripture as a trajectory. Reading it this way recognizes that Judaism was on a long, slow path away from violence, and that Jesus completely rejected all forms of violence and calls his followers to do the same. A trajectory reading of Scripture also recognizes that we, today, are not called to go back in time to an ethical model that exists centuries ago (as if that were possible), but to recognize that the Scriptures actually call us to go beyond themselves.
As a preview of the excellence within this book, I provide the following extended quote:
Because of the multi-vocal quality of the Old Testament, we see Jesus embracing certain narratives that speak of restoration and mercy, and rejecting other narratives found in those same Scriptures which instead uphold committing or justifying violence in God’s name.
Not only does Jesus reject these narratives, he attributes them to the way of the devil, rather than the way of God. Consider for example the story of Elijah calling down fire from heaven as proof that he was on God's side. Elijah declares, “If I am a man of God, may fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men!” Then fire fell from heaven and consumed the captain and his men (2 Kings 1:10). Hoping to follow Elijah’s example, James and John ask Jesus in response to opposition they were experiencing, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” (Luke 9:54-55). Perhaps that was why they got their nickname “the sons of thunder.”
Luke tells us that the response of Jesus was not to affirm this narrative, but to sternly rebuke his disciples. In that rebuke of Jesus is an implicit yet clear rejection of the way of Elijah as well. Later manuscripts include the response of Jesus, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9:55-56). In other words, Jesus is essentially saying that the way of Elijah is not of God, but instead belongs to the spirit of the one who seeks to destroy, that is, of the devil.
While Elijah claimed that his actions proved he was a “man of God,” this passage in Luke’s Gospel makes the opposite claim: The true “man of God” incarnate had not come to obliterate life, but to save, heal, and restore it (Luke 19:10 & John 3:17). Jesus not only recognizes this himself as the Son of God, but rebukes James and John for not having come to this conclusion on their own. In other words, Jesus expects his disciples - expects you and me - to be making these same calls of knowing what to embrace in the Bible and what to reject.
March 12, 2015
Unquestioning obedience, or faithful questioning? Which hermeneutic a reader of the Bible uses can either lead to violence or love.
The above is, in a nutshell, the thesis of this book by Derek Flood. Christians have frequently struggled with the amount of violence in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, though there is still plenty to be troubled about in the New Testament. Two common options for dealing with these is to skip it altogether (common in liberal Christianity); or, justify violence and maintain it is still applicable today (conservative and fundamentalist Christianity).
Derek proposes a third option: to accept it as reality of how the culture and the times saw God and violence, but to question if it is really ever was representative of God's ways. Ask the question, how does the text fit into the overall trajectory of the Bible which culminates with the command for enemy-love that Jesus gives? This is the hermeneutic of faithful questioning that Derek proposes as the most appropriate way to read the Bible. He suggests that this is how Progressive Christians ought to read it.
Derek highlights some of the most problematic passages in both the Old and New Testaments to argue his case. He shows how the Hebrews and Jews did not have issues with conflicting views of God in scripture, but rather used them as springboards to argue and dialog about the nature of God; that for them, scripture is not the final authority, but a tool to lead them to greater understanding. Derek shows how Jesus and Paul used scripture in this way: not as the final say, but as starting points; and that they had no difficulties in intentionally changing or omitting portions of texts in their interpretations.
Derek also discusses the common arguments raised by inerrantists, infallibists, and literalists (i.e., conservative and fundamentalist Christians) against this kind of hermeneutic. His key argument is that Jesus spoke about leaving the Holy Spirit to guide future Christians into greater truth. His next argument is a corollary: that Paul writes about how "we have the mind of Christ" and because of that, no static text can be the final authority. Inspiration is found in the act of reading; not inherently in the words.
Derek's conclusion is that in order to defend the authority of a static text, force and violence must eventually be used. When a person or a religious group sees the Bible in this way, they must defend their "rightness" and the violence found in the Bible is justification for their means. In order to disarm violence and embrace enemy-love taught by Jesus, this static reading of the text must be abandoned to a more robust and flexible hermeneutic.
This book will appeal to many Progressive Christians and questioning believers. It provides a way out of the rigidness of traditional ways of reading and interpreting scripture while still maintaining faithfulness (Derek would say it is more faithful ) to God and his inspiration of scripture. This book will help liberal Christians take another look at the problematic parts of the Bible. And hopefully for those who hold to a conservative position on scripture, it will at least help explain how Progressives can claim faithfulness while rejecting inerrancy, infallibility, and literalism.
The above is, in a nutshell, the thesis of this book by Derek Flood. Christians have frequently struggled with the amount of violence in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, though there is still plenty to be troubled about in the New Testament. Two common options for dealing with these is to skip it altogether (common in liberal Christianity); or, justify violence and maintain it is still applicable today (conservative and fundamentalist Christianity).
Derek proposes a third option: to accept it as reality of how the culture and the times saw God and violence, but to question if it is really ever was representative of God's ways. Ask the question, how does the text fit into the overall trajectory of the Bible which culminates with the command for enemy-love that Jesus gives? This is the hermeneutic of faithful questioning that Derek proposes as the most appropriate way to read the Bible. He suggests that this is how Progressive Christians ought to read it.
Derek highlights some of the most problematic passages in both the Old and New Testaments to argue his case. He shows how the Hebrews and Jews did not have issues with conflicting views of God in scripture, but rather used them as springboards to argue and dialog about the nature of God; that for them, scripture is not the final authority, but a tool to lead them to greater understanding. Derek shows how Jesus and Paul used scripture in this way: not as the final say, but as starting points; and that they had no difficulties in intentionally changing or omitting portions of texts in their interpretations.
Derek also discusses the common arguments raised by inerrantists, infallibists, and literalists (i.e., conservative and fundamentalist Christians) against this kind of hermeneutic. His key argument is that Jesus spoke about leaving the Holy Spirit to guide future Christians into greater truth. His next argument is a corollary: that Paul writes about how "we have the mind of Christ" and because of that, no static text can be the final authority. Inspiration is found in the act of reading; not inherently in the words.
Derek's conclusion is that in order to defend the authority of a static text, force and violence must eventually be used. When a person or a religious group sees the Bible in this way, they must defend their "rightness" and the violence found in the Bible is justification for their means. In order to disarm violence and embrace enemy-love taught by Jesus, this static reading of the text must be abandoned to a more robust and flexible hermeneutic.
This book will appeal to many Progressive Christians and questioning believers. It provides a way out of the rigidness of traditional ways of reading and interpreting scripture while still maintaining faithfulness (Derek would say it is more faithful ) to God and his inspiration of scripture. This book will help liberal Christians take another look at the problematic parts of the Bible. And hopefully for those who hold to a conservative position on scripture, it will at least help explain how Progressives can claim faithfulness while rejecting inerrancy, infallibility, and literalism.
April 7, 2015
Exegesis Without Ethics Is Immoral
Derek Flood has written a wonderful book on Biblical interpretation. Drawing on the Wesleyan quadrilateral of Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience as tools for interpreting scripture he adds the category of the social,sciences to help us break free from the chains of biblicism. In this book he shows us that the correct interpretation of scripture all comes down to how we love. The questions we must consider is if we are interpreting scripture in the way the Pharisees did, forcing God to conform to the written word with unquestioning obedience to a piece of paper, or if we interpret scripture as Jesus did, reimagining the law and the prophets by faithfully questioning them and allowing them to teach us how to love. This is not a book that shies away from the violence and ugliness we see in so much of scripture. Flood contends that the only way to heal such is to face it head on and allow Jesus to transform us out if our violent past.
As Flood points out, Jewish exegeses is often more comfortable with asking questions than it is with giving answers and faithfully questioning scripture in the way of Jesus is one of the best ways for us to be faithful as believers.
While I may not agree 100% with Flood on every point of His interpretation, I do believe that this is an excellent introduction to Biblical interpretation and listening to Jesus as guide when reading our sacred texts. Strongly recommend.
Derek Flood has written a wonderful book on Biblical interpretation. Drawing on the Wesleyan quadrilateral of Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience as tools for interpreting scripture he adds the category of the social,sciences to help us break free from the chains of biblicism. In this book he shows us that the correct interpretation of scripture all comes down to how we love. The questions we must consider is if we are interpreting scripture in the way the Pharisees did, forcing God to conform to the written word with unquestioning obedience to a piece of paper, or if we interpret scripture as Jesus did, reimagining the law and the prophets by faithfully questioning them and allowing them to teach us how to love. This is not a book that shies away from the violence and ugliness we see in so much of scripture. Flood contends that the only way to heal such is to face it head on and allow Jesus to transform us out if our violent past.
As Flood points out, Jewish exegeses is often more comfortable with asking questions than it is with giving answers and faithfully questioning scripture in the way of Jesus is one of the best ways for us to be faithful as believers.
While I may not agree 100% with Flood on every point of His interpretation, I do believe that this is an excellent introduction to Biblical interpretation and listening to Jesus as guide when reading our sacred texts. Strongly recommend.
May 19, 2017
The fact that it took me about 4 months to read this should suggest a lot. I read a book a week easily. And though I read many other books during this time, with Disarming Scripture I just slooooowed way down.
The book content is so full of depth, and really wonderful ideas in concrete form- that would have to chew on a chapter for a week. It really was a splendid read and I think Flood has written a very important book to Christians, and in particular the evangelical community.
I especially was moved by the chapter on non-violence and his idea of trajectory reading throughout the book.
The only fault is that as a reader I felt the book became a little redundant at times. It might also be because I understood a lot of the ideas before I even read the book, but there is still a small sense of repetition.
The book content is so full of depth, and really wonderful ideas in concrete form- that would have to chew on a chapter for a week. It really was a splendid read and I think Flood has written a very important book to Christians, and in particular the evangelical community.
I especially was moved by the chapter on non-violence and his idea of trajectory reading throughout the book.
The only fault is that as a reader I felt the book became a little redundant at times. It might also be because I understood a lot of the ideas before I even read the book, but there is still a small sense of repetition.
August 25, 2019
This is a book that discusses the trajectory way to read the Bible. The idea is that Christ sets a trajectory for the church. To interpret the Bible in a way that justifies violence is to travel in the opposite direction of the trajectory. To ignore violence recorded in the Old Testament is to neglect the reason for needing the trajectory in the first place.
I really liked this book, it was a great perspective. My favorite part was when he used Jesus’ sermon on the mount and the words “you have heard that it was said, but I tell you” to address the violent history of God’s relationship with people. It was very convincing.
I also liked how the author consistently focused on grace. He encourages empowerment of marginalized people and victims without pretending like the parts of the Old Testament that seem to suggest we do otherwise don’t exist.
I really liked this book, it was a great perspective. My favorite part was when he used Jesus’ sermon on the mount and the words “you have heard that it was said, but I tell you” to address the violent history of God’s relationship with people. It was very convincing.
I also liked how the author consistently focused on grace. He encourages empowerment of marginalized people and victims without pretending like the parts of the Old Testament that seem to suggest we do otherwise don’t exist.
February 21, 2017
While there were some good points in the book, overall this is far from the neutrality it supposedly endorses. There's one character from the Old Testament that Flood never addressed, much less even mentions (unless I overlooked it): Abraham. Without so much as even addressing the story of Abraham and Isaac, it is hard for me to accept this as a serious "wrestling" with the violent parts of scripture. Don't bother with this if you're expecting neutrality. Flood comes out looking like a cherry-picking liberal.
October 28, 2017
Mind blowing, life changing, myth destroying, clarifying; I could go on. I underlined more in this book than I think I ever have. Flood writes simply, with conviction. When he seems to be repeating himself, the sentence or paragraph ends with a congruent thought. If you have trouble with biblicism and fundamentalism, this is a book to grab on to.
January 12, 2017
I couldn't finish it. Not impressed
August 2, 2025
I’m thankful this book exists as a resource in the world for those of us who struggle with those tough questions about God’s character, scripture, Jesus, and how our faith meshes with biblical genocide, murder, rape, war, and violence. In an age of Christian Nationalism which idolizes military and law enforcement, this book is a powerful reminder of just who we’re supposed to be following and what he stood for.
I’m also thankful for a book like this that’s willing to “go there” and ask the tough questions. To hold the not-so-nice biblical passages up to the light and ask, “What do we do with this?” I think that in itself will make a lot of conservative Christians uncomfortable because there’s such a culture of “unquestioning obedience” when what we should actually value is the “faithful questioning”that this book does such a great job of exploring.
At times I felt almost impatient, reading in hopes for a quick, succinct answer to my basic question of how could a loving, merciful God command horrific things like genocide? But it’s not a quick or easy answer, so I had to learn (and perhaps other readers may also have to learn) to be patient as we go on the journey and explore what’s in scripture before we can get to the answers.
That said, when we did finally reach the answers, I found them thought-provoking and at times, really groundbreaking. There were moments in this book that really rocked my views and assumptions about scripture. For example, learning that Jesus and Paul very blatantly selectively quoted the Old Testament, often completely subverting the original meanings of passages. Learning something like that sort of goes against all the standard platitudes we are taught in Sunday School, and I found it exhilarating to learn something new that reframed scripture in the way it did.
I’m also thankful for a book like this that’s willing to “go there” and ask the tough questions. To hold the not-so-nice biblical passages up to the light and ask, “What do we do with this?” I think that in itself will make a lot of conservative Christians uncomfortable because there’s such a culture of “unquestioning obedience” when what we should actually value is the “faithful questioning”that this book does such a great job of exploring.
At times I felt almost impatient, reading in hopes for a quick, succinct answer to my basic question of how could a loving, merciful God command horrific things like genocide? But it’s not a quick or easy answer, so I had to learn (and perhaps other readers may also have to learn) to be patient as we go on the journey and explore what’s in scripture before we can get to the answers.
That said, when we did finally reach the answers, I found them thought-provoking and at times, really groundbreaking. There were moments in this book that really rocked my views and assumptions about scripture. For example, learning that Jesus and Paul very blatantly selectively quoted the Old Testament, often completely subverting the original meanings of passages. Learning something like that sort of goes against all the standard platitudes we are taught in Sunday School, and I found it exhilarating to learn something new that reframed scripture in the way it did.
March 29, 2015
A few weeks ago, I watched the live Web interview of Soulstream partner Brad Jersak interviewing Derek Flood, the author of this book. This interview is now on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYbva...
Flood describes the dilemma we face as Bible believing Christians: Do we endorse carte blanche the violence of the Old Testament that vilifies the infidel and justifies violence today, or do we ignore these OT texts because we would rather not answer to them. This leads to what Flood refers to as "cherry picking" the Scriptures. Flood describes cherry picking as a "classic logical fallacy that involves misrepresenting evidence – citing only the good parts as if they are representative of the whole, while ignoring the bad parts as if they were not there".
Flood goes on to imply that cherry picking might be defensible if these themes of violence in the Old Testament were rare and exceptional. However, he cites numerous Old Testament examples of how "divine-sanctioned violence being promoted and even commanded in the Bible is not an anomaly or exception. On the contrary, it constitutes a pervasive and major theme of Scripture that simply must be faced and addressed by us if we purport to read Scripture as Scripture".
Flood speaks to our need for "a developed hermeneutical rationale for our reading which can stand its ground against a conservative reading that seeks to legitimize violence in God's name."
There are certainly plenty of people from the outside who are willing to attack the integrity of the entire scriptures for the bloody trail of violence that even most Christians today would agree to be highly immoral, i.e. legitimizing retributive violence against Babylon by seizing their infants and dashing them against the rocks (Psalm 137:8-9).
The prophetic spirit, however, is one that lovingly critiques religion from the inside, not as a way to destroy it, but as a way to make it good and whole. This was the focus of Jesus, and is characteristic of how he read and applied Scripture in the context of confronting the fundamentalism of his day. Flood offers examples of this prophetic spirit occurring within the Old Testament itself. Jesus was not the first to challenge elements of Old Testament religion that did not represent the true heart of God.
Flood's suggestion for how we tackle this challenge with integrity is to very simply follow the example that Jesus offered on how to read and interpret the Old Testament. It was fascinating for me to read the number of examples Flood provides in which Jesus “edited out” the violence in the Old Testament quotes that he incorporated into his teaching. Similar examples were given of how Paul did exactly the same in his teaching.
Just a short reference to a few more critical themes that this book develops. Flood expounds on the idea that the entire course of biblical history was on a trajectory that accommodated the cultural and moral mores of a relatively primitive society, but anticipated a better day. Jesus entered a Judaist culture that was still heavily rooted in violence and retributive justice. Yet his introduction of enemy love marked the greatest single advancement on this trajectory toward a society that would over the centuries, increasingly frown on the use of violence to achieve justice.
Flood suggested that the following words of Jesus showed how he himself recognized that he was limited, by the societal values of his day, to live and teach within this violent tradition. He could only proceed so far with his mandate of enemy love. But he saw a future time when this trajectory, if followed faithfully, would allow for the unthinkable: the elimination of slavery, the emancipation of women, and even the elimination of corporal child abuse: “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12).
Flood spends a lot of time talking about the dangers of biblicism – a literal translation of Scripture that defies our conscience and elevates the authority of Scripture beyond what God ever intended. Flood asserts that evangelicalism has taken several steps backward from the days of Wesley when the “quadrilateral” of scripture, reason, tradition, and experience were used to determine truth. In contrast, the new fundamentalist wing of evangelicalism of today elevates Scripture to the pinnacle of authority, eliminating experience altogether and relegating reason and tradition to a much lower level. Flood suggests that the end result is a method of interpreting Scripture that is equivalent to how the Pharisees in Jesus day dealt with scripture.
I have long been concerned about the under-emphasis in contemporary evangelicalism on the inner-witness of the Holy Spirit combined with the dangerous over-emphasis of biblical authority – which has resulted in the idolization of the Bible in a process referred to above as “biblicism”. This inner witness often speaks to us with deep conviction about the morality of everyday experience. Flood gives the example of Ruth Graham writing about how she had to look away in great agony when her husband Billy would beat their son Franklin because of his conviction that the Bible told him to. I suspect Billy himself today would do it diffwerent if he could. Our contemporary justices system would rightly imprison him for such extreme child abuse. Thankfully, this trajectory of truth has led us a generation later to the conviction that such child abuse is wrong, despite how some might interpret biblical imperatives to commit such violence. Flood warns us of placing unquestioning confidence in Scripture when it defies our inner conscience.
I close with this quote from Flood which sums up well the thesis of his book:
“The simple fact of history is that biblicism’s unquestioning way of reading the Bible ends up fuelling and legitimizing violence and abuse, and does so precisely because we have been persistently taught to believe that biblical commands override conscience. As morally responsible adults, we need to recognize the moral bankruptcy inherent in the narrative of unquestioning obedience and its contemporary expression in authoritarian biblicism, and instead adopt a better way of reading the Bible modelled after Jesus and his way of faithful questioning motivated by compassion.”
Flood describes the dilemma we face as Bible believing Christians: Do we endorse carte blanche the violence of the Old Testament that vilifies the infidel and justifies violence today, or do we ignore these OT texts because we would rather not answer to them. This leads to what Flood refers to as "cherry picking" the Scriptures. Flood describes cherry picking as a "classic logical fallacy that involves misrepresenting evidence – citing only the good parts as if they are representative of the whole, while ignoring the bad parts as if they were not there".
Flood goes on to imply that cherry picking might be defensible if these themes of violence in the Old Testament were rare and exceptional. However, he cites numerous Old Testament examples of how "divine-sanctioned violence being promoted and even commanded in the Bible is not an anomaly or exception. On the contrary, it constitutes a pervasive and major theme of Scripture that simply must be faced and addressed by us if we purport to read Scripture as Scripture".
Flood speaks to our need for "a developed hermeneutical rationale for our reading which can stand its ground against a conservative reading that seeks to legitimize violence in God's name."
There are certainly plenty of people from the outside who are willing to attack the integrity of the entire scriptures for the bloody trail of violence that even most Christians today would agree to be highly immoral, i.e. legitimizing retributive violence against Babylon by seizing their infants and dashing them against the rocks (Psalm 137:8-9).
The prophetic spirit, however, is one that lovingly critiques religion from the inside, not as a way to destroy it, but as a way to make it good and whole. This was the focus of Jesus, and is characteristic of how he read and applied Scripture in the context of confronting the fundamentalism of his day. Flood offers examples of this prophetic spirit occurring within the Old Testament itself. Jesus was not the first to challenge elements of Old Testament religion that did not represent the true heart of God.
Flood's suggestion for how we tackle this challenge with integrity is to very simply follow the example that Jesus offered on how to read and interpret the Old Testament. It was fascinating for me to read the number of examples Flood provides in which Jesus “edited out” the violence in the Old Testament quotes that he incorporated into his teaching. Similar examples were given of how Paul did exactly the same in his teaching.
Just a short reference to a few more critical themes that this book develops. Flood expounds on the idea that the entire course of biblical history was on a trajectory that accommodated the cultural and moral mores of a relatively primitive society, but anticipated a better day. Jesus entered a Judaist culture that was still heavily rooted in violence and retributive justice. Yet his introduction of enemy love marked the greatest single advancement on this trajectory toward a society that would over the centuries, increasingly frown on the use of violence to achieve justice.
Flood suggested that the following words of Jesus showed how he himself recognized that he was limited, by the societal values of his day, to live and teach within this violent tradition. He could only proceed so far with his mandate of enemy love. But he saw a future time when this trajectory, if followed faithfully, would allow for the unthinkable: the elimination of slavery, the emancipation of women, and even the elimination of corporal child abuse: “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12).
Flood spends a lot of time talking about the dangers of biblicism – a literal translation of Scripture that defies our conscience and elevates the authority of Scripture beyond what God ever intended. Flood asserts that evangelicalism has taken several steps backward from the days of Wesley when the “quadrilateral” of scripture, reason, tradition, and experience were used to determine truth. In contrast, the new fundamentalist wing of evangelicalism of today elevates Scripture to the pinnacle of authority, eliminating experience altogether and relegating reason and tradition to a much lower level. Flood suggests that the end result is a method of interpreting Scripture that is equivalent to how the Pharisees in Jesus day dealt with scripture.
I have long been concerned about the under-emphasis in contemporary evangelicalism on the inner-witness of the Holy Spirit combined with the dangerous over-emphasis of biblical authority – which has resulted in the idolization of the Bible in a process referred to above as “biblicism”. This inner witness often speaks to us with deep conviction about the morality of everyday experience. Flood gives the example of Ruth Graham writing about how she had to look away in great agony when her husband Billy would beat their son Franklin because of his conviction that the Bible told him to. I suspect Billy himself today would do it diffwerent if he could. Our contemporary justices system would rightly imprison him for such extreme child abuse. Thankfully, this trajectory of truth has led us a generation later to the conviction that such child abuse is wrong, despite how some might interpret biblical imperatives to commit such violence. Flood warns us of placing unquestioning confidence in Scripture when it defies our inner conscience.
I close with this quote from Flood which sums up well the thesis of his book:
“The simple fact of history is that biblicism’s unquestioning way of reading the Bible ends up fuelling and legitimizing violence and abuse, and does so precisely because we have been persistently taught to believe that biblical commands override conscience. As morally responsible adults, we need to recognize the moral bankruptcy inherent in the narrative of unquestioning obedience and its contemporary expression in authoritarian biblicism, and instead adopt a better way of reading the Bible modelled after Jesus and his way of faithful questioning motivated by compassion.”
November 23, 2018
Solid Trajectory, But Not Far Enough. I'm not completely sold that the "trajectory" reading of the Bible Flood bases his premise on is entirely correct, but for now let's go with it. Flood raises a lot of good points that will, as the title implies, "step on toes" across "both" sides of the American political divide. But there are certainly times where he contradicts himself and others where he reveals his own cloudy understanding of violence, choosing to view violence only as genocide, murder, explicit assault, and the like. But in the end, Flood doesn't go quite far enough in his own line of reasoning and instead tends to embrace certain forms of "acceptable" violence, in ways reminiscent of the very blatantly antiquated notions he is attacking in this book. Absolutely recommended for those that either openly embrace the wanton slaughter of the Old Testament or those that fully reject it, as this will at least open you to the basic concepts of nonviolence.
August 24, 2018
How to read and interpret the Bible, how to make sense of troubling violent passages? Derek Flood suggests two ways: unquestioned obedience or faithful questioning. He says the first leads to abuse and violence while the second allows for conversation and diversity in understanding. He says Jesus is the one the Bible points to and we need to read scripture asking ... does this interpretation lead to life and love? Good food for thought, I recommend it.
January 12, 2018
Excellent and accessible exposure of a subject so important and over looked by many. We must always interpret the scriptures in the same way that Jesus and his first followers. A great challenge: Who would you follow to? Jesus? Or a book?
April 29, 2022
As someone who only became a Red Letter Christian about six months ago, I found this book interesting and enlightening.
I might not agree with everything Flood says, but I am certainly now reading scripture under a different state of mind.
#Enemy Love!
I might not agree with everything Flood says, but I am certainly now reading scripture under a different state of mind.
#Enemy Love!
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