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?

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 principle(s) is (are) meant to be taught to modern believers by the existence of violence in the Old Testament and other scriptures that is either commanded by God or personally effectuated by him?”

It’s no secret that the Old Testament can be very retributive, harsh, and gruesome. Theologian 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 of 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 in part 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 various instances of human and divine violence in 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 gargantuan and large to believe that any idea is newly-articulated.

Some of these ideas may not be as developed and well-defended as they need to be. They may be inchoate. But we hope that with whatever deficiencies may exist in these ideas that those deficiencies can be used as a means of stimulating reflection and, hopefully, improvement or more documented and well-thought-out defenses of them.

These ideas are not presented as the final word on this issue nor is the author married to these ideas. Rather, these are simply all the logical possibilities that the author sees for potentially reconciling this issue with faith. These ideas are free to be embraced, rejected, strengthened, or weakened as other readers/analysts see warranted and possible.

With that, let's get to our response.

Response to Question

Description vs. Prescription

The first thing to keep in mind is that there is a big distinction between the scriptures describing a certain behavior and prescribing it. Many people take almost all instances of violence in scripture as prescriptive when they're really meant to be descriptive. In some cases, scripture is prescribing that you don't follow the same course of violent action as the people that it is describing.

Mere Justice

Are there certain evils that, when enacted, are properly responded to only through violence and other harsh punishment? Most of us would probably answer yes. This is what we'll call the idea of mere justice in responding to God's violence in the Old Testament and other scripture.

Christian scholar and apologist Paul Copan writes that "love is God's central attribute, and God's severity flows out of his love. God desires the ultimate well-being of humans, but he will sometimes have to say 'enough is enough.' He will have to act in judgement to stop dehumanization and other evils that undermine human flourishing."

Copan then quotes eminent New Testament scholar and Anglican theologian N.T. Wright:

Face it: to deny God's wrath is, at bottom, to deny God's love. When God sees humans being enslaved . . . if God doesn't hate it, he is not a loving God. . . .When God sees innocent people being bombed because of someone's political agenda, if God doesn't hate it, he isn't a loving God. When God sees people lying and cheating and abusing one another, exploiting and grifting and preying on one another, if God were to say, "Never mind, I love you all anyway," he is neither good nor loving. The Bible doesn't speak of a God of generalized benevolence. It speaks of the God who made the world and loves it so passionately that he must and does hate everything that distorts and defaces the world and particularly his human creatures.

The scriptures certainly treat murder as a type of action that deserves violence as the only just punishment. Genesis 9:6 reads "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man." Modern revelation echoes this idea. Doctrine & Covenants 42:19 reads "And again, I say, thou shalt not kill; but he that killeth shall die."

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 & 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 a question 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 likely to commit them in the future and likely damn ourselves more. We believe the strength has been found in the concept of neural plasticity identified by neuroscientists.

Defensive Violence

Closely related to the idea of preventative clemency is defensive violence. What differentiates this idea from preventative clemency is that defensive violence is taken when the violence hasn't yet occurred but must be countered with violence from the defender in order to preserve the defender's life. The scriptures record instances of the Lord helping his people in defensive battles. Israel defended against the Amalekites who attacked them while traveling (Exodus 17:8) and that the Canaanite king of Arad attacked and captured some of the Israelites (Numbers 21:1); Israel countered the efforts of the Midiantes to lead them away from Yahweh through sexual transgression and idolatry (Numbers 25, 31) Sihon refused peace offers from Israel and attacked them (Deuteronomy 2, Numbers 21), and so on.

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). This part is called our intelligence in Latter-day Saint scripture. This intelligence is a self-conscious, spiritual, material entity (Doctrine & Covenants 131:7–8) that has apparently always existed (Doctrine & Covenants 93:29).

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 at least a portion of 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.

Doctrine and Covenants 93:30–32 seems to teach this idea:

30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.

31 Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.

32 And every man whose spirit receiveth not the light is under condemnation.

It is certainly the case that there is a part of our experience that required getting a body. Latter-day Saint scripture portrays the body as a coveted thing—crucial to our learning. Doctrine & Covenants 93:33–34 tells us that a fulness of joy can only be obtained when the spirit of a person and his or her body are inseparably connected. It is clear in scripture, though for reasons not fully explained, that bodies are wanted by both righteous and wicked spirits (Matthew 8:28–32; Doctrine & Covenants 45:17; 138:14–15, 18, 50). All this mentioned, it seems that there is something about wickedness and righteousness that is known by anyone no matter what stage of development they find themselves at. We obviously know from scripture that Satan and a third part of the hosts of heaven in the premortal life turned away from God because of their agency (Doctrine & Covenants 29:36–39). Thus there must be something of a moral and intellectual education that we can receive or perhaps have always held from all eternity and by which God can judge all of us as we enter this mortal life and have the Light of Christ placed within us (Moroni 7:16; Doctrine & Covenants 84:46).

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 the means of instilling the gravity and seriousness with which one should obey the law, given the high responsibility and award that awaits a person after this life? This is what we’ll call proximate motivation.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks taught:

We read again and again in the Bible and in modern scriptures of God’s anger with the wicked and of His acting in His wrath against those who violate His laws. How are anger and wrath evidence of His love? Joseph Smith taught that God “institute[d] laws whereby [the spirits that He would send into the world] could have a privilege to advance like himself.” God’s love is so perfect that He lovingly requires us to obey His commandments because He knows that only through obedience to His laws can we become perfect, as He is. For this reason, God’s anger and His wrath are not a contradiction of His love but an evidence of His love. Every parent knows that you can love a child totally and completely while still being creatively angry and disappointed at that child’s self-defeating behavior.

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? Helaman 12:3 tells us that "except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him." Perhaps violence turns people to God and spurs them to believe in him and be in alignment with his will. This is what we’ll call generative chastisement.

The Lord told Brigham Young that "[m]y 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." The Lord told the Saints in August 1833 that "I will prove you in all things, whether you will abide in my covenant, even unto death, that you may be found worthy. For if ye will not abide in my covenant ye are not worthy of me." In December 1833 he said that "they must needs be chastened and tried, even as Abraham, who was commanded to offer up his only son." King Benjamin taught us that "the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."

Ethical Deterrence

Going along well with the already-mentioned ideas is the idea of ethical deterrence. Violence against those that don't keep God's commandments will surely act as good motivation to not follow the deceased's same course of action and to keep God's commandments.

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. Lehi tells us in his valedictory that "it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things" (2 Nephi 2:11). Perhaps the Old Testament serves as a kind of "opposition" to the New and other scripture. If we didn't have this stark portrayal of rather disturbing violence and other ethical dilemmas in the Old Testament, then perhaps we wouldn't more plainly recognize and appreciate the good and divinity of the light and moral progress demonstrated in the New Testament and other scripture.

This doctrine may find scriptural support in a particular interpretation of Mormon 9:31 in which Moroni exhorts us as follows: "Condemn me not because of mine imperfection, neither my father, because of his imperfection, neither them who have written before him; but rather give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been." The exact nature of the imperfection that Moroni is exhorting us not to condemn is not certain. A couple of verses later in Mormon 9:33, Moroni says that "if we could have written in Hebrew, behold, ye would have had no imperfection in our record." Does Moroni, then, refer to moral imperfection in 9:31? Or perhaps a scribal imperfection? Moroni says that we need to learn to be "more wise" than Book of Mormon authors, and that language ("more wise") seems to lend itself more naturally to interpreting the passage as referring to morality rather than scribal practice. Correct interpretation of this passage remains uncertain.

Moral Compromise

A sixth 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 even trivial offenses can be a type of moral compromise. If you're going to be allowed to engage in morally repugnant activities, then you are going to be held to higher standards elsewhere. The penalty for not abiding by these little rules is death itself, given the atrocities that the Lord is allowing the Israelites to indulge in elsewhere.

You might not think that this is a very palatable idea, but Jesus already seems to teach this idea in the New Testament. He says in the Matthew 19:7–8:

7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?

8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

Do you catch that? Jesus is saying that God compromised with humans to allow divorce because of the hardness of their hearts. It admittedly doesn't say that God stipulated harsher punishments elsewhere for other sins, but it does show that God conceded something to humans because of the hardness of their hearts—which can make this idea more plausible. God's compromise to Israel and giving them a less-than-ideal moral law—including the scriptures that support the idea—is explored and documented more on YouTube by Christian philosopher and apologist Michael Jones.

Blake Ostler on Categories and the I-Thou Relationship

Latter-day Saint theologian and philosopher Blake Ostler in his book Fire on the Horizon: A Meditation on the Endowment and Love of Atonement (2013) gave an interesting insight and possibility for understanding the God of the Old Testament.

Ostler begins by citing the work of German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant argued that humans come into the world with a set of categories that are pre-loaded and that make sense of all experience. Prior to any experience, there are categories that are ready to take in experience and interpret it; label it and categorize it. These categories include space, time, and quantity. Ostler next turns to Austrian-Israeli philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965) and his thought on the I-Thou relationship. Buber attempts to make sense of how persons can fully and properly relate to one another. Persons cannot be objects but must be full subjects. When two persons encounter each other as full subjects, they are part of the I-Thou relationship. When one of the persons becomes an object, the relationship between one person and the other becomes an I-It relationship. Fuller explanations are available at the hyperlinks.

Ostler says that in order to truly encounter God and treat God as a full subject—a true Thou—he must do things that break free of the categories that we impose on him—including moral categories. If he didn't, we would continue to ossify our relationship with him and treat him as an It.

Ostler explains and explores this more on this podcast episode of Exploring Mormon Thought.

Other Theological/Doctrinal Questions

At least some of these solutions and some of the logical implications of them will naturally will bring up questions about how to conceive the purpose of the atonement of Jesus Christ and how people will be judged in the next life. For example, say that we take the scriptural allergism approach to reconciling a thorny passage or two. What if a writer or group of people from Old Testament times or other scripture faked receiving revelation from God to hurt and kill innocent people who had never heard of the Gospel? How is God going to judge the innocent people? How will he judge the writer and people? Do either get a chance at the Celestial Kingdom? Does baptism for the dead cover the innocents? But what if baptism for the dead didn't exist or wasn't instituted until New Testament times (since there's no evidence of it in the Old Testament nor Book of Mormon)? Does the atonement cover them and offer them ability to receive ordinances necessary for salvation? Can it?

Much of the answers that might be offered to these questions, especially if such answers attempt to be exhaustive and definitive, will involve speculation that goes beyond scripture and attempting to articulate a formula for every situation (considering all the questions that we're attempting to answer and moving parts of a potential answer) would thus be irresponsible and perhaps bring more obfuscation and frustration than light. But here are some scriptural truths that, when considered, should bring us comfort and at least enough answers to be at peace with these questions.

1. God is an all-knowing, perfect judge.
2. God judges people factoring in all relevant considerations including the light people received before they came into this world (Doctrine & Covenants 93:30–32) and the light they receive and act in adherence to while in the world (Doctrine & Covenants 59:2).
3. The atonement of Jesus Christ serves to provide a way for little and innocent children to be saved in the Celestial Kingdom.
4. That same redemption for children is offered to "all them that have no law" according to the same chapter: Moroni 8. The atonement may cover those people that never received essential ordinances if not instituted during the mortal life of someone. It may also cover those that don't have the chance to receive ordinances via the vicarious work of those that are still living including New Testament Christians and modern Latter-day Saints.
5. God condemns murder and has done so throughout the ages. Doctrine & Covenants 42:18–19 lists it as an unforgivable sin but does not describe the exact punishment ascribed to the sin of murder.
6. Sin is to know what is right and fail to do it, according to James 4:17. It is to disobey the explicit law of God as defined by 1 John 3:5 and, apparently, 1 John 5:17.
7. No one is damned to hell (or in the Latter-day Saints' case: "outer darkness") unless under very, very harsh and unique circumstances and instead receives differing levels of glory based upon their works, the desires of their hearts, and their potential (or future potential) to receive the Gospel. Under this view, the Canaanite Conquest, for example, becomes much more reconcilable. Of course, the knowledge of the Three Kingdoms would have been anachronistic to, for instance, the Israelites who fought against Canaan. That wouldn't come (even in seed) until New Testament times. Ancient Israelites would have been under the understanding of Sheol, which is similar to the Restored Gospel's concept of the Spirit World. However, the concept of the Three Degrees of Glory would obviously not be unknown to God who, in theory, had not revealed his knowledge of the Plan of Salvation—including knowledge of the three degrees of glory—in its fullness.

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.

Further Reading

• Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011.
• Copan, Paul. Is God a Vindictive Bully? Reconciling Portrayals of God in the Old and New Testaments. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022.

Notes