What are we to make of scriptural passages which promote slavery, patriarchy, and violence? How do we understand Old Testament commands to slaughter entire populations, or to kill people for offenses such as witchcraft or adultery? Why do we not obey those commands today? Is it because the Spirit is leading us into deeper truth that can supersede certain passages of Scripture? Let us discuss this, focusing on the question of violence in the Old Testament and leaving slavery and patriarchy for other essays.
From earliest times, opponents of Christianity quoted Old Testament passages to show the brutality of the Christian God. As a result, the Church was tempted to abandon certain portions of Scripture. Rather than this, however, the early Church studied Scripture in greater depth. They arrived at a theory of types, an early and enduring way of understanding Scriptures which has its basis in Scripture itself.
According to the New Testament, Jesus fulfilled the various Old Testament types, and these types were completed, abolished, or strengthened in their application to the Church. For example, the Old Testament sacrificial system was a type of Jesus' suffering, but abolished as it was fulfilled on the cross. The nation of Israel was a type of the New Israel the Church, but its civil legislation did not directly apply since the Church was not a territorial nation state. The Old Law was a type of the New Law in Christ, and Jesus strengthened it by making it a matter of the heart and not simply external obedience. Article VII (BCP, p. 869) sums up the matter by saying that Christ offers everlasting life in both the Old and New Testaments, and that the Old Testament civil and ceremonial law no longer applies, though Christians are bound by its moral law.
In regards to violence, the severe penalties and judgments of the Old Testament were based on the belief that death was the just penalty for sin. These penalties were a type of Christ's suffering, and without them, we could never grasp Jesus' atoning work. We could not know what was at stake when Jesus protected the woman caught in adultery though the law said she should be stoned, or why he refused to call down fire on his adversaries, and above all, why he willingly died on the cross. By his death Jesus confirmed the Old Testament view that death is the just penalty for sin, yet his death abolished death as the penalty for our sins. From this perspective, the punitive Old Testament view of God was an incomplete but necessary revelation. The full revelation came in Jesus Christ, a God who wills life not death.
Given this understanding, a knowledge of the Old Testament, God's judgments, the Hebrew sacrificial system, the old law, were critical for understanding and receiving Christ's redeeming work. Therefore, the early Church refused to surrender any part of the Old Testament, including those parts that appeared to put God in a bad light.
In recent years I have read many letters or articles that quoted various barbaric biblical verses and then claimed that we can ignore these and other passages since we now possess a more enlightened view. This idea is not new. It was proposed by the heretic Marcion in the second century, claimed by various movements in the Middle Ages, and claimed again in the 16th century. Against Marcion the Church chose not to ignore any passage of Scripture, but related parts to the whole with Christ at the center. The response of classical Anglicanism can be found in Articles VI and VII (BCP, pp. 868-9), written to oppose the Anabaptists who claimed revelations of the Spirit that superseded portions of Scripture. Scripture, all of it.
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
