Theological Journal – August 1 Genocide?

 

“I don't disagree with the need to make hermeneutical decisions, or with a hermeneutic that starts with Christ (which was the hermeneutic of the Church Fathers). But ... using the phrase "commanding genocide" here isn't really helpful. "Genocide" is a modern term legal term, created for the UN Genocide Convention in 1944. It is, of course, an invaluable feature of modern international law resulting from the experience of the Holocaust. But the focus of the term is on the actions of nation-states acting with a post-Westphalian liberal order. It's hopelessly anachronistic to apply this term to the ancient near east and a category mistake to apply it to God. Which isn't to suggest some kind of voluntarist / nominalist Divine command ethic in which God can command anything and we have to say the command is "just" and "good" no matter what its visible moral content seems to be. Yet, if we're going to venture into this territory, surely we have to see God as ultimately the righteous judge and rightful owner of all of humanity, not akin to the human head of a modern nation-state subject to the UN Convention.”

I don’t remember and didn’t note the source of this quote. If any readers recognize it please let me know, if you would. I think it raises important issues that are too easily glossed in current discussions that assume without further that “genocide” is what is happening in Joshua. When we question that easy assumption as this author does on grounds of anachronism the door is opened for other important questions to get on the table. Our author notes the question of God and the propriety of treating him as a ”human head of a modern nation-state.” This seems a “category mistake to our author (and to me).

And once we get the character of God on the table the question of the nature of his involvement in a fallen world and his “incarnational” drive to be closer and closer to and more and more involved in the life of his people can take the central roles the Bible gives them.

In that’s kind of analysis I believe, the views of Israel and God committing genocide, on the one hand, or God willing and ordering the slaughter of the Canaanites without further ado, on the other both seem simplistic and inadequate.