Question: Why does God act so violently in scripture and especially the Old Testament?

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Question: Why does God act so violently in scripture and especially the Old Testament?

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Introduction to Question

As Latter-day Saints turned their attention to the Old Testament for the 2022 Come Follow Me curriculum, our attention was drawn towards a problem that has vexed theologians and Christian philosophers for many years and that is the problem of Old Testament violence. The problem can be best summarized by the following question: “What ethical value is meant to be taught to modern believers by the existence of divinely commanded (and, presumably, sanctioned) violence in the Old Testament and other scriptures?”

It’s no secret that the Old Testament can be very retributive, harsh, and gruesome. Scholar Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan writes that there are over 600 instances of human violence and over 1000 instances of divine violence scattered throughout the Bible. There are crimes for which capital punishment is required and some of these can seem quite trivial. Among those crimes are blasphemy, cursing your parents, divination, and rebelliousness.

How could the Jesus of the New Testament be the God of the Old Testament? The same man that said to “forgive seventy times seven” is also the same one that appeared as vindictive as the God of the Old Testament?

If you think you’re alone in asking these types of questions, think again. 4th century Christian theologian Gregory Nazianzus struggled in reconciling the conquest of the Canaanites depicted in Deuteronomy and Joshua with the God revealed in Jesus in the New Testament. 1st century Christian theologian Marcion of Sinope believed that the God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testament were distinct beings and that the God of the New was superior to the God of the Old. Marcion was pronounced a heretic and excommunicated from the Church around 144 A.D. This is a problem which has haunted the Church for sometime.

For the Restored Church, we believe that this is fortunately not an insurmountable obstacle to it. We believe that the picture of God given in the Old Testament can be reconciled with the New Testament and other Restoration Scripture by drawing on all scriptural resources available to Latter-day Saints and the unique ideas that flow from them. We hope to outline those ideas in this article.

These ideas are gathered from the scriptures and the teachings of modern prophets and apostles. We believe that when the Old Testament is read with these ideas in mind, that we can discover the agapic Jesus that we know behind the seemingly ghoulish and petty bravado of Jehovah.

These ideas are not all mutually exclusive, and our hope is that interested Latter-day Saints will use them in the combinations that help them make the most sense of the God of the Old Testament.

It’s rather likely that the ideas we propose here are not entirely new nor entirely unique to Latter-day Saints. The germs of these ideas have probably been articulated elsewhere. We tend to believe that most “new ideas” aren’t really new. There is perhaps only the first people to articulate and popularize them. The corpus of Christian theology is also simply too gargantuanly large to believe that any idea is newly articulated.

With that, let's get to our response.

Response to Question

Preventative Clemency

The Book of Mormon presents a unique doctrine that we believe will be useful for anyone studying the Old Testament. We’ll call it the doctrine of Preventative Clemency. 3 Nephi 8 records great destruction by Christ just prior to his appearance to the Nephites. 3 Nephi 9 records that the Savior could then be heard thundering decrees from heaven. He declares that he has buried the lands of Zarahemla, Moroni, Moronihah, Gilgal, Onihah, Mocum, Jerusalem, Gadianhi, Gadiomnah, Jacob, Gimgimno, Jacobugath, Laman, Josh, Gad, and Kishkumen. Among the reasons given for destroying these lands, the Savior says that it was so that “the blood of the prophets and the saints shall not come up any more unto me against them” (3 Nephi 9:5, 7-9, 11). You can see that the Lord is having clemency on these cities by not allowing them to damn themselves more by committing more murder.

Given that murder has always been seen in scripture as an abominable sin even in the Old Testament (Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17), and that murder is unforgivable (Doctrine and Covenants 42:18-19), it seems reasonable that God would not allow us to kill more so that we do not damn ourselves more.

This idea does not necessarily have to be limited to instances of future murder. Could there be sins that are just as heinous in the eyes of God like murder that might warrant preventative clemency? That remains an idea ripe for exploration.

This doctrine will be strengthened if we can show that perhaps our psychological dispositions change as we murder such that we are more apt to commit them in the future and likely damn ourselves more. I believe the strength has been found in the concept of neural plasticity identified by scientists of the brain.

Moral Disappointment

Latter-day Saints hold that all humans had a pre-mortal existence as spirits in the presence of the heavenly hosts. According to the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price, there is at least a part of our human spirit that has always existed into infinity past and will always exist into infinity future (Abraham 3:18).

Well, during that time, it is certainly possible that a spirit or a large group of spirits can learn a lot about God’s laws and the way in which, by obedience to those laws, they can become like God. Could it be that the moral education we have received in perhaps eons past is sufficient enough to hold us deeply accountable for our actions such that we lose our lives for disobeying that moral law? This is what we’ll call God’s moral disappointment in his children.

Proximate Motivation

To add to this, we know that God’s ultimate destiny for his children is for them to become like him. We know that if one disobeys the moral Good, they can lose their status as a God (Alma 42:13, 22, 25). Could it be that the law of Moses and some of the violent punishments attached to it are meant to be like a stern coach in the fourth quarter that censures you when you miss your biggest assignment in the most important game of the season? This is what we’ll call proximate motivation.

Generative Chastisement

Proverbs, Hebrews, and Helaman teach that God chastens us and even scourges us because he loves us (Proverbs 3:11-12; Hebrews 12:5-6; Helaman 15:3). This so that people will be humbled enough so that they will turn back to him. Could it be that these divine punishments serve ends to restore certain people’s connection back to God or provide them motivation to establish connection with him for the first time? This is what we’ll call generative chastisement.

Doctrine & Covenants 136 given to Brigham Young teaches that the Lord’s “people must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that I have for them, even the glory of Zion; and he that will not bear chastisement is not worthy of my kingdom.”

Scriptural Allergism

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf told a story about Solomon based in Ecclesiastes in the October 2018 General Conference of the Church:

The ancient King Solomon was one of the most outwardly successful human beings in history. He seemed to have everything—money, power, adoration, honor. But after decades of self-indulgence and luxury, how did King Solomon sum up his life?

“All is vanity,” he said.

This man, who had it all, ended up disillusioned, pessimistic, and unhappy, despite everything he had going for him.

Only a little more than three minutes after broaching the story of Solomon and these words from him, Elder Uchtdorf triumphantly declares that “Solomon was wrong, my dear brothers and sisters–and life is not ‘vanity.’ To the contrary, it can be full of purpose, meaning, and peace.”

It is true that there are times when scripture intends to give us a negative example of how to behave morally so that we can learn from it today. Such is almost certainly the case with the book of Judges and its chronicle of the fall of Israel. But could there be times when scripture intends to portray a given teaching or phenomena as divinely-approved or inspired and yet not actually be divinely approved or inspired? We think it is possible, and Elder Uchtdorf is at least one example of an orthodox, faithful Latter-day Saint who saw no problem with this possibility. Elder Uchtdorf recognizes the moral impracticality and, indeed, falsity of proclaiming that all is vanity. Jacob informs us that we were created with the end of keeping God’s commandments and glorifying him forever (Jacob 2:21). This is certainly in contradiction with a teaching that all is vanity. There remains the question: why would God allow a false teaching to be portrayed as inspired in scripture? As an answer to this, we propose an idea we’ll call “scriptural allergism”. Scriptural allergism is the affirmation of a small collection of propositions. We're almost certain that this set of ideas is not entirely our own.

We’ve already mentioned how Latter-day Saints believe that at least a part of our spirit is eternal both backwards and forwards and how there can be a moral law that we have known from all eternity past and will know to all eternity future that allows us to achieve mutual self-realization. Along with these propositions, scriptural allergism would affirm that God exists, that he reveals his will through mortal messengers such as prophets, that those prophets record their teachings in sacred texts, and that God allows seemingly false moral ideas to be incorporated into scripture (and even allowing those propositions to appear morally inspired) so that readers have an almost allergic reaction to those ideas given the moral law that they have written on their hearts and have known from all eternity past.

We hesitate to propose this idea because we can already sense that it will be exploited by those who wish to disregard any prophetic directive that doesn’t immediately appeal to their current, culturally-conditioned morals. Thus, let us state here and emphasize that we believe it is the duty of any Christian (Latter-day Saint Christian or otherwise) to defend the moral teaching of scripture as correct as much as humanly possible. That said, we can believe it plausible that there may come a time where we simply won’t be able to, and that’s where an idea like scriptural allergism can apply.

The beauty of the doctrine is that it teaches us that God exalts the fallen to teach us exaltation. It reaches down to the depths and basest desires of humanity and uses it as a means of bringing us all collectively higher. That is where, perhaps counterintuitively, scriptural allergism finds its strength.

Moral Compromise

A fifth idea might go like this: we know that there are fallen social structures in the Old Testament. For instance, Leviticus clearly allows a form of chattel slavery—Israelites enslaving non-Israelites (Leviticus 25:44–46). Perhaps the instances of capital punishment for trivial offenses can be a type of moral compromise

Conclusion

These ideas can perhaps find some more development and refinement as we continue to think, debate, pray, and do the work of the Restoration. We don’t expect this to be the final word on the problem of Old Testament violence. But we do think that it can show that Latter-day Saints have what we think are some unique resources to add to the conversation already in progress in other faiths.

Notes (click to expand)

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