INTRODUCTION
Those who challenge the status of the Bible as God’s divinely inspired word often point to the problematic issue of God commanding the Israelites to exterminate seven Canaanite tribes as they take possession of the Holy Land (Deuteronomy 7:1-2; 20:16-17; Joshua 6:21; 8:22-29). Christians, too, are disturbed by these horrible passages. And that is a good thing; we should be bothered by this. I would worry about a Christian who could contemplate this matter serenely, without being disturbed by it at all. Of course, that is what makes it difficult to discuss this matter; it is not that there is no reasonable answer, but that the issue is visceral. People react with the heart, not the mind. But, as Proverbs 28:26 says, “He who trusts his heart is a fool;” we have to use our God-given sense of reason here, and not our emotions.
A BIBLICAL ANALYSIS
Before we begin, let us point out certain important facts regarding this matter. First, it is part of the historical narrative of the Bible, and not a didactic teaching. It speaks of what God commanded at a certain time and a certain place; it is certainly not a licence to practise such things at our own discretion. In fact, the covenant that revolved around the theocratic kingdom of Israel ended with the death and resurrection of Jesus. Christianity allows for no such things.
Second, the destruction of the Canaanite tribes is not the only time God has acted in an all-compassing judgment of destruction. There was the worldwide flood, which killed all but eight people (Genesis 6-9); the utter destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19); and the horrible destruction of Jerusalem. And such judgements were not confined to the OT, as Jesus makes clear in Luke 13:1-5 :
1There were present at that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? 3 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. 4Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”
1There is another key matter we have to consider ere we examine God’s command to destroy the Canaanites, and this is the matter of epistemology and its subset, moral epistemology. How do we know things in general, and how do we know what is right and wrong? Our opinion of this depends quintessentially on how we view the Bible. For the Evangelical, we view it as the inerrant word of God Himself, every word of which was breathed out by God (theopneustos) Himself (2 Timothy 3:16). This comes from our view of Jesus, Who is the very substance and centre of Christianity. Do we believe Jesus is Who He claimed to be, God the Son incarnate, endorsed as such by God the Father through the resurrection? If we are born again Christians, then we believe this by definition. It is not negotiable.
Now, if Jesus is indeed God incarnate, then it follows that He is fully authoritative, and we have to accept what He says; whether we like what He says or not is irrelevant. A Christian may not like the idea of hell, for example, but he cannot deny it in light of the fact that Jesus clearly affirmed it. He would only be fooling himself by denying it, and he would not be making it go away.
As far as the Bible goes, it is clear that Jesus treated it as fully authoritative. He quotes Scripture in response to every temptation of Satan in the wilderness, including the affirmation that man shall live “by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4b; note that it is “every” word, and not just some). In response to a passage some might see as problematic, He asserts that “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35b; note that even passages one deems problematic have to be accepted). Scripture is the place to find eternal life (John 5:39) , and if one makes errors in theology, it is because “you do not know the Scriptures...” (Mark 13:24b). Again and again, He says that “Scripture must be fulfilled.”
There is no question, then, that Jesus considered the whole Scripture fully authoritative and unbreakable, and there is also no question but that the Bible He fully endorsed included the Book of Joshua, with the account of the God-ordered destruction of the Canaanites. In endorsing the truth of the totality of Scripture (as does 1 Timothy 3:16-17 and Psalm 119:160a) it is undeniable that Jesus Himself accepted the fact that His Father did indeed command this destruction.
Now, since we believe in Jesus, we must accept what He said about the Bible. Therefore, we have to believe what it says, whether we like it or not. We cannot take away from the words of Scripture (e.g. Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32, in the same book that commands the destruction of the Canaanites). So, in answer to the question, “Did God command the destruction of the seven Canaanite tribes?” we note that the text clearly says that God ordered this total destruction and that Jesus affirms the reliability of the Bible. So, did God order it? The answer is yes. There is no other option for the thinking Christian, who takes seriously that Jesus is God in the flesh and is consequently always right.
RAUSER’S CASE AGAINST THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT
Nevertheless, there are Christians who insist that this is not so, that God did not command the destruction of Canaanites. One such is Dr. Randall Rauser, an associate professor of historical theology at Taylor Seminary in Edmonton, Alberta. He inveighs against the idea that God actually commanded such a thing, though it is difficult to see how he could justify his stance in light of the clear Biblical testimony. Let us see how he tries to do this.
The first and most obvious problem is the fact that he is arguing against that the Bible asserts as a historical reality, and that would seem to make his position a nonstarter. However, there is more.
The next problem we come to with Rauser’s case hinges on moral epistemology, i.e., how people can know what is morally right and morally wrong. Now, for the Christian, right and wrong is determined by what God says (what philosophers call the “Divine Command Theory”); there is no standard antecedent to God’s will. On the other hand, if we dispense with this, if we believe that there is no divine Creator and Judge, then there can be no absolute standard of right and wrong.[1] The concepts, in fact, become meaningless. Everyone can do whatever he wants, and the only basis of objection anyone has is only his own personal opinion.
Rauser adopts a very curious middle way; he accepts the reality of God, and the Christian God, at that, but seems to want to build his moral epistemology on something other than God’s word. It is an untenable position, as we shall see.
Is it wrong to murder six million Jews in death camps? Certainly! No doubt Rauser would agree. But absent the absolute standards of God’s word, on what basis would one argue that? Rauser may be certain it is wrong, but Hitler and his followers were equally certain it was right. Why should Rauser’s view prevail over Hitler’s? It would come down to who had the power to enforce his views, which would not really be an unchanging standard, would it?
Here is where Rauser runs into undeniable trouble. Since he has discarded what the Bible says about the Canaanite destruction, what is he left with? He writes, “we know intuitively that it is always wrong to bludgeon babies” (p.27)[2]; “I believe every rational, properly functioning person cannot help but know: it is always wrong to bludgeon babies.” (p.33); “My unqualified condemnation of those who bludgeon babies to death in Rwanda is rooted in a belief that you ought never ever bludgeon babies (NEBB). NEBB is not only a basic belief, it is as indubitable as any belief I have.” (p.34).
Already we begin to see the weakness of Rauser’s position, though he resorts to bluster to try to cover it up. Right in the midst of these statements, he writes of “the 1994 Rwandan genocide when Hutus slaughtered approximately four hundred thousand Tutsi and moderate Hutu children” (p.33). Now, Rauser knows intuitively that it is wrong to bludgeon babies, but clearly a million or so Hutus didn’t agree with him, and probably would tell him that they knew intuitively that it was right to do what they did. People may often do things they know are wrong, but they usually feel some level of shame over it; they don’t do it “with evangelistic zeal,” as Rauser says that the Hutus did (p.33).
So, again, we ask: if we absent the Bible, how do we proclaim what is right and wrong? Since Rauser is not God, why should what he “knows” carry more weight that what the Hutu murderers “know”? Is it starting to become clear that Rauser’s intuition is a poor substitute indeed for the word of God?
Rauser goes on: “Though I am not clear on the mode by which I know NEBB, fortunately I need not know how I know to know that I know.” (p.34) There are several problems with this. First, with all due respect, Rauser does not ‘know’ NEBB; he believes NEBB. He himself called it a “belief” (p.34).
Second, he tries to buttress this belief by comparing it to the knowledge that a ball “cannot be red and blue all over.” This is a category error: the colour of a ball is an objectively verifiable fact. NEBB is not objectively verifiable, and it is a belief, not a fact.
Third, if we discard the need for a basis for what we “know” to be morally accurate, then we have lost any basis to say that what Hitler did was evil. After all, in his own mind, he “knew” that it was right to exterminate the Jews; it would have been very convenient for him not to have to explain how he knew that as long as he was sure that he knew that.
Let’s be clear on what we’ve seen so far. Rauser would have us discard what the Bible says about the Canaanite destruction, that very Bible that Jesus endorsed in toto, on the grounds that Rauser knows it could not be so, though even he himself cannot find a basis for how he knows that. The absolute standard of God’s word is to be replaced with personal opinion! With personal opinion, though, we cannot affirm that NEBB is wrong. So Rauser assumes NEBB to be objectively true, but since he cannot prove it, he is left only with his own opinion. This would mean that, in the absence of objective proof that NEBB is wrong, NEBB is only an opinion. This is logically incoherent.
It is important to understand this. To accept Rauser’s argument is to replace the absolute standards of God’s word with personal opinion, whatever that may be. It does no good to plead that most of what the Bible says should be accepted as true, for we must ask on what basis we decide which should be accepted and which should not, and the only answer is: we accept that of which we approve, and discard that of which we do not approve. The Bible thus becomes naught but a sounding board for our own voice, and, in that case, we may as well eliminate the middle man – the Bible – and proclaim ourselves authoritative. That, in effect, is what Rauser has done. As for me, the choice between accepting the word of the incarnate God, Creator and Judge, or the word of Rauser is no choice at all. I choose Jesus.
At the risk of being redundant, let us be clear about the implications of Rauser’s approach. When the next Hitler comes along, the only basis on which Rauser will be able to oppose him is that Rauser himself thinks that what this Hitler is doing is wrong. However, the new Hitler thinks it’s right, so why should people rather listen to Rauser? Even if Rauser would now point to Scripture, the new Hitler could point out that Rauser himself has (a) set the example of setting aside the Scriptures when he personally disagrees with it; and (b) by claiming that God did not do what the Bible says he did, Rauser has made the Bible of no effect by indicating it is not, after all, the infallible word of God.
Furthermore, since Jesus endorsed Scripture in toto, which Scripture includes God commanding the destruction of seven Canaanite tribes, Rauser’s approach also means that Jesus Himself didn’t know what He was talking about. Why then should we listen to Him at all, if He could be wrong about something so simple? We get rid of the “genocide,” but along with that we can also get rid of “love your neighbour” and “turn the other cheek” – and the Gospel itself – and be left with nothing but “survival of the fittest.” This is an unacceptable price to pay to assuage Rauser’s sensibilities.
Yet Rauser would have us accept all this on the basis of his NEBB principle. It is unacceptable in any case, but let us now look more closely at the NEBB principle, to see whether even this is sound. I am sure that, in addition to NEBB, Rauser “knows” that it is wrong to murder six million Jews in death camps. I am certain this would be in his list of “basic belief[s]. Indeed, he might accord NEMSMJ as “indubitable” a status as NEBB.
Now, let’s suppose that Rauser fell into a time warp and found himself in Braunau Am Inn, Austria, sometime in late 1889, where he is shown a cute baby boy named Adolf Hitler. Rauser knows that bludgeoning this baby will save the lives of six million Jews – men, women, children, and, yes, babies – and will prevent a war that will cost the world some fifty million lives in total. Should he bludgeon baby Hitler? On the basis of NEBB, Rauser may still piously say he wouldn’t do such a thing, but his piety will result in the deaths of fifty million people. Six million Jews will die because Rauser chose not to prevent it. What happened to NEMSMJ?
Of course, when war did break out, no doubt Rauser would fight against the Nazis and perhaps kill some German soldiers, many of whom were not supporters of Hitler and fought only because they had no other choice. These, Rauser would kill. But not the perpetrator. Or would he?
Now, Rauser and those who accept his line of thinking may accuse me of reductio ad absurdumhere, saying that the situation I describe is impossible. There are no time warps, and without that we could not know infallibly that a baby would grow up to kill fifty million people. Therefore, we could not possibly be justified in bludgeoning this or any other baby, since none of us can know what a baby will grow up to do.
Ah, but God does know, doesn’t He? It has been asked sometimes why God didn’t do away with Hitler before he started WWII and the Holocaust. Of course, if God had done that, there would have been no WWII and no Holocaust, and we’d have no way of knowing what we’d escaped. We can only know what did happen; we can never know what would have happened had not God interfered. The fact is there might have been a hundred other Hitlers, a thousand other Hitlers, all of whom God did “bludgeon” as babies; consequently, we can never know of them. In light of this, we must certainly countenance the possibility that God knew that every baby in these Canaanite cities would inevitably become a Hitler. Or Hitler-lite, more likely; one who did nothing but kill, sacrifice human beings, destroy. Maybe every one that died was truly irredeemable, and so God exercised His right to take them out before they could do such things.
Apropos to this, let us remember God’s discussion with Abraham, about Sodom and Gomorrah’s fate, in Genesis18.
23 And Abraham came near and said, “Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? 24 Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city; would You also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it? 25 Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” 26 So the LORD said, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.” 27 Then Abraham answered and said, “Indeed now, I who am but dust and ashes have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord: 28 Suppose there were five less than the fifty righteous; would You destroy all of the city for lack of five?” So He said, “If I find there forty-five, I will not destroy it.” 29 And he spoke to Him yet again and said, “Suppose there should be forty found there?” So He said, “I will not do it for the sake of forty.” 30 Then he said, “Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Suppose thirty should be found there?” So He said, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.” 31 And he said, “Indeed now, I have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord: Suppose twenty should be found there?” So He said, “I will not destroy it for the sake of twenty.” 32 Then he said, “Let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak but once more: Suppose ten should be found there?” And He said, “I will not destroy it for the sake of ten.” 33 So the LORD went His way as soon as He had finished speaking with Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.
As it turned out there were not even ten righteous in the city, so God destroyed it. But first He brought out those who were righteous. We see this principle elsewhere. Consider, for example, the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC. God removed the righteous before the destruction:
5 “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: ‘Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge those who are carried away captive from Judah, whom I have sent out of this place for their own good, into the land of the Chaldeans. 6 For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land; I will build them and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up. 7 Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the LORD; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart. 8 ‘And as the bad figs which cannot be eaten, they are so bad’—surely thus says the LORD—‘so will I give up Zedekiah the king of Judah, his princes, the residue of Jerusalem who remain in this land, and those who dwell in the land of Egypt. 9 I will deliver them to trouble into all the kingdoms of the earth, for their harm, to be a reproach and a byword, a taunt and a curse, in all places where I shall drive them. 10 And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence among them, till they are consumed from the land that I gave to them and their fathers.’” (Jeremiah 24:5-10)
15 Meanwhile the word of the LORD had come to Jeremiah while he was shut up in the court of the prison, saying, 16“Go and speak to Ebed-Melech the Ethiopian, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: “Behold, I will bring My words upon this city for adversity and not for good, and they shall be performed in that day before you. 17 But I will deliver you in that day,” says the LORD, “and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. 18 For I will surely deliver you, and you shall not fall by the sword; but your life shall be as a prize to you, because you have put your trust in Me,” says the LORD.’” (Jeremiah 39:15-18)
1 The word that Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch the son of Neriah, when he had written these words in a book at the instruction of Jeremiah,[a] in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying, 2 “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, to you, O Baruch: 3 ‘You said, “Woe is me now! For the LORD has added grief to my sorrow. I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest.”’4 “Thus you shall say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Behold, what I have built I will break down, and what I have planted I will pluck up, that is, this whole land. 5 And do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them; for behold, I will bring adversity on all flesh,” says the LORD. “But I will give your life to you as a prize in all places, wherever you go.”’”(Jeremiah 45:1-5)
So when God chooses to destroy a city, He is willing and able to deliver the righteous (and potentially righteous). Even in Jericho, He delivered Rahab and her family. Since all the rest were destroyed, it seems safe to believe that none of them was redeemable; God, looking ahead, saw they would all become little Hitlers. Of course, we cannot know this about them; only God can. Therefore, it seems foolish to argue on the basis of what we cannot know against God, Who is the only One Who can know. As we read in Romans 11:33-36
33 Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! 34 “ For who has known the mind of the LORD? Or who has become His counselor?” 35 “Orwho has first given to Him And it shall be repaid to him?” 36 For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.
This, then, is the bottom line: Let God be God. He made those babies; we didn’t. He owns them; we don’t. He loves them, but He sees everything in all eternity, and we don’t. So just because we can’t see a good reason why He commanded the utter destruction of the seven Canaanite tribes doesn’t mean that He doesn’t have one. (We no doubt would have mourned the death of baby Hitler had God taken Him out as a baby; we might even have blamed God, and seen no good reason that such a baby should die so young.) Not that God has to give us any reasons for what He does; He is not accountable to us, but we to Him.
In conjunction with this, I must say that it is a foolhardy thing Christians have done in soft-pedalling the awesome wrath of God. We have presented to the world a “semi-senile grandfather” image of God Who “loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” We have forgotten the fear of the LORD, which is “the beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10). When you object to the destruction of the seven Canaanite tribes, the entailment meaning in your objection is that people have a right to a long life. No. Everything is created and sustained by God. We are not ours, we are God’s (Psalm 100:3), and every moment of our existence continues only because He graciously upholds it (Hebrews 1:3). Therefore, He has the right to do what He wants with us. He can withdraw “life support” whenever He wants, because everything we have is grace, and no one, not even babies, have an entitlement to it.
Now, the fact that He does graciously give “life support” is consistent with His character as revealed in the Bible, which is loving, compassionate, and slow to anger (e.g. Psalm 30:4-5; 103:8; Jonah 3:10-4:2). That is why He created us and sustains us. But He is not obligated to do so. He can destroy for any reason He chooses, and we have to accept that. However, knowing the character of God as He reveals Himself in His word, I am fully confident that, when we no longer “know in part, but...shall know just as I also am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12) we shall understand why it was the right thing to do and agree with it. Until then, we have to remember that “we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Faith does not consist of believing God only when we agree with Him, but believing Him even when we do not understand what He is doing.
In my years as a Christian leader, I have always told people that I do my best to teach the word of God accurately, but, if after due consideration they think the Bible disagrees with what I’m saying, they should go with what they think the Bible says, as that is the basis on which you’ll be judged:
“45 Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”” (John 5:45-47).
Therefore, I would never counsel someone to doubt or disbelieve what God has said. You might recall that, in fact, this approach is the approach of Satan; when he approached Eve in the Garden of Eden, he first asked, “Has God indeed said...?” asking her to doubt, and then he moved to outright denial: “You will not surely die.” (Genesis 3:1b,4b). Unless you want to fall into the same trap as Eve, you should not listen to Rauser’s siren song.
Now, as to other specific points argued by Rauser.
RAUSER’S APPEAL TO THE “NEW ATHEISTS”
First, Rauser appeals to the “new atheists...Richard Dawkins...Daniel Dennett...Christopher Hitchens...surely they have a point” (p.28). I’m not sure what Rauser thinks he can accomplish with this appeal. What God did is, as we’ve said, is known certainly by what He said He did, whether or not self-professed haters of God like it or not. If Rauser thinks that we can (or should) redefine God to appease such people, he is engaged in self-deception. Of course, he can try to do so, but I predict that these God haters will continue to turn up their nose at Rauser’s sanitized god. Furthermore, there seems to be a huge element of hypocrisy in the bleatings of these “new atheists”. There seems to be a near 100% correlation between being an atheist and, for example, supporting legalized abortion. These new atheists do not seem to object to cutting viable babies to pieces in the womb when they choose to do it, and some, like Peter Singer, advocate for killing babies even after they are born. They think they should have the right to do this, though they have not made and sustained the babies, but they deny God that same right, and rail against Him for it. Hypocritical much?
RAUSER’S ATTEMPTED LOGICAL ARGUMENT
Next, Rauser sets up a pseudo syllogism (pp.28-29), perhaps meant to make his argument seem more weighty, but it is fatuous, since it is a mix of truths from the Bible with his own baseless assumptions. It reminds me of the final scene from the “Destiny of the Daleks” Doctor Who serial, in which the Doctor says to Davros: “Listen carefully. Elephants are pink. Nellie is an elephant. Therefore Nellie is pink. Logical?” “Perfectly,” replies Davros. “Ah,” says the Doctor. “But a human would say, ‘Elephants aren’t pink.’” In other words, the conclusion of a syllogism is only as good as the premises on which it is based.
The following are Rauser’s seven points (quoted directly from his paper):
(1) God is the most perfect being there could be.
(2) Yahweh [sic] is God.
(3) Yahweh [sic] ordered people to commit genocide.
Next, I will argue at some length below, properly functioning, moral adults have another powerful intuition that
(4) Genocide is always a moral atrocity.
In addition, it seems very plausible to accept
(5) A perfect being would not order people to commit a moral atrocity.
As the new atheists would have it, we ought to conclude from this that there is no perfect being. The Christian however could instead reason in the following direction:
(6) Therefore, a perfect being would not order people to commit genocide. (4, 5)
(7) Therefore, Yahweh [sic] did not order people to commit genocide. (1, 2, 6)
We note, first, that bald assertions that people have a “powerful intuition” and “it seems very plausible to accept” have no place in a logical argument, nor should such an argument be based on the babblings of “the new atheists.” Now, if we look at Rauser’s seven points, we see that the first five are premises and the last two conclusions. Even from a purely logical standpoint, this is nonsense, since his conclusion point 7 (“Therefore, Yahweh did not order people to commit genocide”) is in direct contradiction to his premise point 3 (“Yahweh ordered people to commit genocide”), and, logically, no conclusion can be valid if it violates one of the premises. If Rauser’s “logical” format was meant to impress people, it utterly fails, at least for those who actually understand logic.
However, it is no surprise that Rauser’s syllogism is incoherent, since he mixes true premises from the word of God with his own contradictory opinions, which makes incoherence inevitable. Furthermore, his premises are unsustainable. Point 4 is “Genocide is always a moral atrocity.” We have already seen that such a statement cannot stand without an objective, absolute moral standard, and one who denies that status to the word of God has nothing to put in its place as an objective, absolute moral standard; Rauser’s personal “powerful intuition” is not qualified for such a standard.
However, Rauser goes on to try to justify his Point 4 by saying that “While genocide might be justified in the possible worlds with wholly malevolent societies or races of beings, there is no evidence for such a wholly malevolent society or race in the actual world: thus (4) is true.” This qualifier does not change the fact that what he is saying is still nothing but his own opinion. More to the point, while we can never know that a society is “wholly malevolent” without evidence, God can and does (John 2:24-25). The destruction of the seven Canaanite tribes was His call, based on His perfect divine knowledge, not our extremely limited and imperfect view, or on Rauser’s “powerful intuition.”
In passing, Rauser’s Point 5 is a misrepresentation, as anything that God chooses to do cannot be defined as a “moral atrocity” absent an absolute standard by which to judge it as such; Rauser is simply trying to stack the deck here. Furthermore, what a “perfect being” would do we know by what the Perfect Being did do and clearly said He did do; it is not defined by Rauser’s imagination or his “powerful intuition.”
RAUSER’S RESPONSE TO PAUL COPAN
Having tried – and failed utterly – to prove his contention that God did not order the Israelites to exterminate seven Canaanite tribes, Rauser now responds to an earlier paper by Dr. Paul Copan, entitled, “Is Yahweh [sic] a Moral Monster?”[3] According to Rauser, Copan’s “pivotal” argument is that genocide is not always a “moral atrocity.” Rauser states that he “will critique Copan’s position by providing rational and prudential arguments in defense of [Rauser’s own Point 4 from his syllogism] from which it follows that if Yahweh [sic] is God then Yahweh [sic] did not command the Canaanite genocide.” It is difficult to see how he could possibly do that, in light of the fact that his syllogism has already been shown to be an invalid mess. Nevertheless, let’s see if he manages to do it.
We should note first, though, that Rauser tries to stack the deck from the beginning by defining “moral atrocity” and “moral monster” in such a way that he has already prejudged God, and he has done so on the basis of a very subjective and untestable definition of “horrendous evils” from one Marilyn McCord Adams: “evils the participation in which (that is, the doing or suffering of which) constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant’s life could (given their inclusion in it) be a great good to him/her on the whole.”[4] The problem with this is obvious: Since good and evil are determined by God and not by Marilyn McCord Adams, one wonders why we should accept her definition instead of going with what God says. We also note that her definition is unworkable, without an objective way to determine whether a “participant’s life could...be a great good to him/her on the whole.” It seems more like word salad than a serious suggestion.
Rauser goes on to avow, “I define “moral monster” as a person who (a) willfully commits a moral atrocity or (b) commands another person to commit a moral atrocity.”
Now, it should be obvious that Rauser is poisoning the well by defining “moral monster” in such a way that affirming that God did what He says in His word He did makes Him a moral monster by definition; thus, Rauser wants us to accept his gambit that the Christian is faced with the dilemma of either saying that the Bible is wrong, lying, and/or not really the word of God, or admitting that God is a moral monster. That is an illusion, however, as the actual choice is whether to let God be the authority and believe His word or to make Rauser’s “powerful intuition” and Marilyn McCord Adams’ word salad be the authority. His implicit urging that we should choose the latter is risible. At this point, if not earlier, Christians should realize that Rauser cannot possibly be taken seriously.
Nevertheless, let us consider Copan’s arguments and Rauser’s responses and see if there is anything helpful there. Rauser sums up Copan’s first argument thus: “In the ‘collateral damage’ argument Copan explains that civilian casualties are an anticipated but regrettable aspect of war: ‘A cause might be morally justified (for example, stopping the aggression of Hitler and Japan), even if innocent civilians might be killed—an unfortunate “collateral damage” that comes with such scenarios.’”
Rauser responds to this by saying, “just war is always defensive and proscribes the targeting of non-combatants.” Really? Rauser advances these assertions as if they are true simply because he, or some other philosopher, says so, and God must knuckle under to Rauser’s pronouncements. Yet neither is true by virtue of simply being asserted, and neither is correct. For example, neither Canada nor the United States had been attacked by Nazi Germany when our countries declared war upon them and made war against them and invaded their country – so neither Canada nor the USA was fighting a “defensive” war against Nazi Germany. Does Rauser want to stultify himself by arguing that our war against the Nazis was not a just war?
Rauser lists Copan’s next argument thus:
Copan’s ‘irredeemable culture’ argument defends the Canaanite genocide by charging that Canaanite culture was so corrupt that it was beyond redemption, rather like a house that is so structurally unsound that it must be condemned: So Yahweh fought on behalf of Israel while bringing just judgment upon a Canaanite culture that had sunk hopelessly below any hope of moral return. . . .Yahweh issued his command in light of a morally-sufficient reason—the incorrigible wickedness of Canaanite culture.
Rauser responds,
This defense assumes that a culture can reach a threshold of irredeemable moral corruption after which point the only answer for its citizens is mass extermination. But this is a highly suspect assertion….at the very least one should demand clear and compelling criteria for when a slaughter is required. Until these general guidelines are articulated and shown to apply in the case of Canaanite society, the irredeemable culture argument is little more than a macabre just-so story along the lines of ‘how the Canaanites lost their right to live’.” (pp.30-31)
The sheer hubris here is something to behold. Certainly, what Rauser says would apply if we were deciding on our own recognizance whether to slaughter a city or not – which, of course we should never do. But when it is God’s decision of judgment, only He needs to know the society is irredeemably corrupt, and He does, perfectly (and we remind you that even in such cases, as we saw earlier, God can and does deliver those who are redeemable). He is not required go give “clear and compelling criteria for when a slaughter is required” to Rauser or to anyone else. Rauser can pout about the fact that God has not satisfied Rauser’s curiosity about this, but to call God-breathed Scripture “little more than a macabre just-so story” is vile.
Next, Rauser raises the issue of “the seemingly gratuitous slaughter of infants and small children, and objects to Copan’s “mercy killing” argument, in which Copan asserts, “What then of the children? Death would be a mercy, as they would be ushered into the presence of God and spared the corrupting influences of a morally decadent culture.” Rauser responds, “In short, Copan would have us believe that the Israelites were saving the Canaanite children from their own fate …. But if we have no guidelines to determine when a culture is irredeemable, then we cannot determine when a mercy killing is justified since the latter is dependent on the former. Hence, these two arguments fall together.”
No, they don’t. Let’s try it again, slowly, so Rauser can grasp it. GOD knows – indeed, decides -when a culture is irredeemable and when to end the lives of the people of that culture, and that is what He did. It was not based on “guidelines” acceptable to Rauser. God, not Rauser, is the Judge of all people, but Rauser doesn’t seem to want to accept that. He wants to deny God the right to judge and punish. However, God will do both, whether Rauser likes it or not.
After this, Rauser goes completely off the rails, making the blasphemous assertion that “scripture does not understand these deaths as regrettable collateral damage, necessary exterminations, or merciful killings. Rather, they constitute ritual human sacrifices to Yahweh [sic] within Israel’s holy war...the slaughter constituted a religious act of worship, a mass human sacrifice on a scale rivalling the ancient Aztecs” (p.32).
Here, Rauser has moved from misrepresenting the Bible to blaspheming God Himself, and it is outrageous. God does not seek or accept human sacrifice, and it is vile to suggest that He does. For the record, God says about human sacrifice that it is something “which I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination” (Jeremiah 32:35b; see also Jeremiah 7:31b). Rauser compounds his sin by claiming that “Yahweh [sic] apparently never objects to child sacrifice simpliciter but rather to child sacrifice to any deity other than himself. See Exod. 22:20 and Lev. 18:21.”
Yet the two passages Rauser cites say nothing about child sacrifice. Exodus 22:20 says “He who sacrifices to any god, except to the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed.” Inasmuch as the Torah outlines in detail what sacrifices are to be made, these are the ones in view; there is nothing here about sacrificing children. Pagans who did such things are roundly condemned in Scripture.
Leviticus 18:21 says, “And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.” It was a common practice of the pagans to sacrifice their children to Molech, which is why it is forbidden here. Where exactly does Rauser get the idea that a command not to sacrifice children to Molech is tantamount to a command to sacrifice children to God? Even from a purely logical point, that is a non sequitur. And, in light of the fact that the Torah goes into great detail about what to sacrifice and how, and children are not on the list, the claim that the God of the Bible wanted or accepted child sacrifice is both intellectually dishonest and contemptible.
There are only two passages that could be considered as actually touching on this idea. The first is God calling on Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22). He does this to test Abraham’s loyalty, but, in a world in which child sacrifice is not uncommon, He does not allow Abraham to go through with it. He substitutes a ram in place of Isaac, and the Jews have always understood that one key lesson from this incident is that God does not want or accept human sacrifice.
The only other example is Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter (Judges 11:30-40), which is something that God did not ask for or authorize. It is one story in a book of atrocities meant to illustrate the depths of human depravity absent God’s laws.
On what, then, does Rauser base his risible claim that the destruction of Jericho is “ritual human sacrifices to Yahweh...a religious act of worship”? The basis he appeals to is that “The Hebrew word herem is pivotal here as it refers to the consecration of something to God by being consigned for destruction.” Rauser here shows appalling ignorance. As I’ve said, there are indeed many sacrifices commanded in the Torah. By far the most common term for them is zebach. The other terms, which are used only a few times, are debach, chag, minchah, ishshch, and todah. ‘Herem’ is never used for ritual sacrifice!
What does herem mean? It is the cognate noun of haram, which usually means “a ban for utter destruction, the compulsory dedication of something which impedes or resist God’s work, which is considered to be accursed before God...in respect to the objects to be destroyed, they were considered to be offensive to God and injurious to his work. Objects to be set aside because holy were pleasing to him and useful.”[5] So herem refers to something that is set aside for God; it could be for destruction, as in this case, or it could be for His use, but it is does not refer to sacrifices per se.
So in describing the Canaanites as herem, they are the opposite of ritual sacrifices, which are pleasing to God. God has pronounced final judgement on them and has set them apart for destruction (in which He takes no pleasure, per Ezekiel 18:32), and no one, not the Israelites or Rauser, is to be allowed to interfere with that. So Rauser’s “disturbing note” that “the slaughter constituted a religious act of worship” I would call a calumny against God, except that does not seem strong enough a term; it is an evil claim.
So far, Rauser has utterly failed to refute Copan’s views, and now he comes to Copan’s fourth point, the “‘divine right’ argument (p.32). He quotes Copan saying, “If God is the author of life, he is not obligated to give us seventy or eighty years of life. That being the case, he can take the lives of the Canaanites indirectly through Israel’s armies (or directly, as he did when Sodom was destroyed in Genesis 19) according to his good purposes and morally sufficient reasons.” Copan is, by the way, completely correct in this assertion.
Rauser, however, takes issue with it, summing up Copan’s argument thus:
(a) God can rightly allow creatures to die.
(b) God can rightly allow creatures to be killed.
(c) God can rightly kill creatures.
(d) God can rightly direct some creatures to kill other creatures.
(e) God can rightly direct a human being to kill a healthy baby.
Here, Rauser magnanimously grants Copan certain points, “[b]ut even granting (a)-(d), it is by no means obvious that we must also accept (e).” Wrong again; if (a)-(d) are true, as they are, then (e) is also inevitably true. And, as we have shown, “divine right” means God can do anything He wants, regardless of whether Rauser wants to “accept” it or not. If “it seems to [Rauser] obviously false,” that is completely irrelevant; Rauser’s personal views do not determine objective morality.
That does not stop Rauser from continuing to push his case that he knows better than God. He starts by saying, “When they are not busy defending moral atrocities in the Old Testament, virtually every Christian will express an unqualified and absolute condemnation of horrors like the vicious execution of children in war.” This statement is rubbish; Christians do not “defend moral atrocities”; we defend the truth of the Bible. Rauser commits a basic logical fallacy here of begging the question, assuming that God’s sovereign acts of judgment are “moral atrocities,” presupposing what he needs (and fails) to prove, and couches it in a sneering, mocking fashion. That tells us more about the person of Randal Rauser than it does about the issue at hand.
RAUSER’S EXTRA-BIBLICAL ARGUMENTS
Now, we have already utterly debunked Rauser’s NEBB argument, which is the heart of his case, but he keeps trying to demonstrate it, now with extra-biblical arguments. The first argument he calls “Calley’s Corruption” (pp.35-37), after the perpetrator of the 1968 My Lai massacre of the Vietnam War. His argument is summed up in the claim that the command to destroy the Canaanites “would itself constitute a moral atrocity due to the soul-destroying effect on the perpetrator” (p.37).
There are several problems with this line of argument. First, he cites some unknown psychologists (practitioners of a very inexact science whose researchers often come to conclusions contradicting each other right and left) to the effect that “Contrary to popular myth...the evidence suggests that war creates, rather than merely uncovers, moral monsters.” If Rauser would stop and think for a moment, he might recall that more than 3.4 million Americans served in-theatre in the Vietnam War. What was noteworthy about Calley was his rarity. The vast majority of soldiers – nearly all of them, in fact – did not become “moral monsters,” which destroys his thesis. So, too, does citing soldiers disturbed by their experiences; the fact that they were disturbed indicates that they did not, in fact, become “moral monsters.” Moral monsters would not be disturbed by such things. How Rauser misses something so obvious is difficult to understand.
Second, it is highly questionable whether the experiences of people in the modern industrialized West can really be used as a template for people living 3,500 years before in a world where brutal war was a fact of everyday life.
Third, Rauser might want to re-read Genesis 3. He will find that there is nothing that is as soul-destroying as disobeying God.
Rauser’s next extra-biblical argument revolves around rationale vs. rationalism: “the ‘criterion of extraordinary exceptions’ proposes that our skepticism of an alleged rationale should increase in proportion to the radicalness of the exception being proposed...[and] the ‘criterion of common origin’ demands suspicion if an alleged rationale conforms to a well established pattern of rationalization” (p.37).
Again, there are fatal problems with this. First, we ask where these two criteria come from, and we find Rauser saying, “I would propose that we can distinguish rationales from rationalizations by the following two criteria” (p.37, italics added). Quelle surprise! The criteria come from the unsupported imagination of the man arguing for one side of the issue. Can we not expect that the deck will be stacked? Again? And can we ask again why Rauser’s personal opinions should be accepted as the standard by which God is to be judged?
The second problem with this argument is another logical fallacy, in the case, the Fallacy of the False Dilemma. Rauser gives us only two choices: rationale and rationalism. Both are reasons offered by the perpetrator himself, the only difference being the first is justified and the second not. But the destruction of the Canaanites was not based on human reasoning or reasons given by people; it was commanded by God Himself. Yet Rauser shamelessly eliminates this as a possible explanation.
Even if we overlook those problems, we still do not reach the conclusion Rauser wants. Regarding the first criterion, he writes, “The alleged rationale for the Canaanite genocide fails the criterion of extraordinary exceptions, for what could be more extraordinarily exceptional than the claim that one has a special license to bludgeon babies?” (p.37) The careful observer will notice the “bait-and-switch” here. Rauser explained his criterion as dealing with increasing skepticism. This may or may not seem reasonable, but here this is not what he has done. He has not said that a very high degree of skepticism should attach to this account; he has simply proclaimed it impossible by fiat. This conclusion does not follow from his own criterion.
Furthermore, there is no good reason to accept this criterion. It is analogous to the liberal attempt to claim that the resurrection could not have happened, because it is exceedingly unlikely. The lower the likelihood of an event, the greater the skepticism, and what could be more unlikely than that a man should come back from the dead? So they define it as impossible by fiat. Both this argument and Rauser’s founder on the same fact, viz. that probability applies to random events and populations, not to discreet events. We do not believe the resurrection because it is “probable” but because of the supporting evidence. Likewise, we do not believe God commanded the destruction of the Canaanites because it is not radical, but because it is clearly stated in the very Bible that Jesus Himself endorsed.
Rauser then writes that the account of the God-ordered destruction of the Canaanites “fails the criterion of common origin as becomes evident when we consider the typical elements in the narratives that are always invoked to justify genocide” (p.37) He argues that “justifying narratives” of genocide can be judged false if “their rationalizations conform to the same old ‘divide, demonize, destroy’ typology that characterizes virtually all genocides” (p.39). Furthermore, he says, “the strongest form of teleological justification is religious where one believes God has chosen the in-group to visit his punishment upon the out-group” (p.38). And, since “The Canaanite genocide also conforms to this terrible pattern” (p.39), it cannot be true.
Here, Rauser has gone from the erroneous to the ludicrous, and one wonders whether he is even listening to himself. Emotive rhetoric aside, his argument actually boils down to saying that (a) if someclaims of divinely mandated genocide are false, then all such claims must be false (which is yet another logical fallacy, the Fallacy of Accident); and (b) if there is more than one similar claim, then none can be true. This is unquestionably nonsense. It is as nonsensical as claiming that Jesus’ miracles cannot be true because there are claims of miracles attributed to others in other religions.
The foolishness continues with the statement “Of course, Israel’s neighbours also practiced herem warfare [sic] and presumably invoked very similar justifying narratives. But then any objective observer can see the gross double standard. Surely it is implausible to believe that the Israelites’ genocide is the single divinely mandated exception in a long history of horrifying atrocities!” (p.39). Fascinating! Now Rauser wants to give equal time to Baal, Molech, Chemosh, and Asherah! We cannot accept that the One True God ordered the destruction of the Canaanites unless we also believe that false gods legitimately mandated such destructions? Can Rauser be serious?
But let’s extend his reasoning. Israel’s neighbours all claimed to follow true gods. “Surely it is implausible to believe that the Israelites’ God is the only true god in a long history of claims for all sorts of gods, such as Baal and Molech!” Can any Christian take Rauser’s argument seriously here?
Rauser’s last extra-biblical argument is in respect to “The Cost of Genocide” (pp.39-41). He writes, “reason and experience establish that belief in the Canaanite genocide has contributed to a long history of moral atrocities. Hence, if we reject the Canaanite genocide we remove a powerful ideological repository for genocide rationalization” (p.39). He goes on to claim that “There is widespread agreement that ‘baptism’ of violence in the past justifies the use of violence in the presence [sic]” (p.40), and cites John Howard Yoder and Jeremy Cott (p.40) in support of this claim.
Once again, however, Rauser’s argument, like the proverbial emperor, has no clothes; neither reason nor experience establish any such claim. What Rauser must do to maintain his claim is to show a causal link between the Canaanite genocide and any future such action; simply making assertions, or citing others making such assertions, is worthless. A bald assertion with a footnote remains nothing but a bald assertion.
In fact, there is a host of problems with this line of argument. There have been plenty of genocides perpetrated by people who never even heard of the Bible (e.g. pre-Columbian North American and meso-American peoples); apparently, they had no need of the Canaanite narrative to go ahead with genocide. Those who want to commit genocide will do so, with or without any Old Testament narratives. Apropos to this, Rauser should give us good reason to believe that, if he were to go to a genocide-minded dictator and say to him, “Hey, you know, God didn’t really order the genocide of the Canaanites; the Israelites just said that to justify it,” that dictator would change his mind. Even to enunciate this is to show how absurd it is.
Furthermore, Rauser’s claim that “It is a simple fact of history that time and again the church has appealed to the legacy of divine violence to justify heinous and murderous actions” (p.40) needs to be examined carefully. As Yoder says, in the quote Rauser provides, “for centuries, at least from the time of Augustine to the age of Enlightenment, mainstream Christians took for granted that the ancient Hebrew model does count as justification for Empire and genocide” (p.40, italics added). Just so; “from the time of Augustine!”
For more than three hundred years after Jesus’ time, no Christian advocated either Empire or genocide – even though they were familiar with, and believed, the Biblical accounts of the conquest of Canaan. Neither of these happened until the Roman state did a hostile takeover of the church and gradually took it over, filling it with a large majority of unregenerate pagans who called themselves Christians, and perverted the gospel to use it to attain power and wealth. In other words, the Christian church, who believed the Old Testament accounts, as we must do, never “appealed to the legacy of divine violence to justify heinous and murderous actions.” It was the Roman Catholic church that did so, and there is no reason to think that the Roman Catholic church’s murderous libido dominandi would have been slowed in the slightest were they to think that the Canaanite genocide had not been authorized by God.
Also, by writing “if we reject the Canaanite genocide we remove a powerful ideological repository for genocide rationalization” Rauser embarrasses himself. He seems to have an overly inflated opinion of the importance of liberal theologians such as himself and Yoder. If they were to “reject the Canaanite genocide,” no one would pay the slightest attention. There is a reason liberal churches are dying, even though they are kept on life-support by state support in many countries. People who don’t believe Christianity are not interested in what any theologian says, and people who do believe it reject those who deny what the Bible says. Rauser is deluding himself if he thinks his pronouncements would make any difference, one way or the other.
In addition, we note that far more people have been slaughtered by atheists than by Roman Catholics, let alone by actual Christians. From revolutionary France to the USSR and Maoist China, those who reject the Bible slaughtered more people in less than a century than Roman Catholic believers have killed throughout all history. It would seem more reasonable to believe that rejecting the literal truth of the Bible leads to genocide than to believe that accepting it does so.
Finally, the key reason we cannot follow Rauser’s suggestion here is that the historicity of the account of the God-ordered Canaanite genocide, since it is endorsed by Jesus, must be accepted as true, and we cannot deny what is true, even if we did want to do so. Rauser’s attempt to do so calls to mind the observation of a famous Doctor: “The very powerful – and the very stupid – have one thing in common: They don’t alter their views to fit the facts; they alter the facts to fit their views.”[6] The judgment of the Canaanites is an historical fact, and we cannot alter that simply to accord with our views, let alone our “powerful intuitions.”
Let me try to put these in terms that the “new atheists” can understand. They all believe in Darwinism; they all believe it is true. Now, it is undeniable that Darwinism was the fundamental underpinning of Marxism, in its Leninist form, Maoist form, and National Socialism (Nazism) form. Thus, belief in Darwinism has caused more deaths in less than a century than all other beliefs throughout history combined. If we were to suggest denying Darwinism for pragmatic purposes, to “remove a powerful ideological repository for genocide rationalization,” does anyone think the “new atheists” – or Rauser – would agree? I’m sure they’d bluster that the truth is the truth and cannot be denied, no matter what. That’s what I say about the Bible. And I will point out that there is plenty of good evidence to support the Bible, while Darwinism is a scientifically impossible theory that can easily be disproven.[7]
Rauser summarizes this last argument “by retooling the old apologetics chestnut where you consider whether, upon meeting a gang of intimidating men in a dark alley, you would be relieved to learn that they had just come from a Bible study group” (pp.40-41). Rauser asks us to consider two different such gangs, one coming from a study that “taught that God is a warrior who occasionally directs his followers to engage in violent acts including human sacrifice” and the other taught that “the Canaanite genocide was abhorrent and that God, as perfectly loving, considers all human sacrifice abominable” (p.41). He then asks, “All other things being equal, which group would you prefer to meet?” Obviously, he’s expecting an epiphany from his readers who are supposed to think they’d rather meet the second group. He will not get it.
First, let’s note that the way Rauser has painted what the two groups are taught is quite deceptive[8] and twisted in such a way as to elicit the answer Rauser wishes. In reality, no such things are taught in isolation. A more fair depiction of the debate that has been covered in the paper is that Group A is taught that the Bible is inerrant and fully reliable, and therefore, God really did command the Canaanite genocide; and Group B is taught that, since we can’t accept that God would command a genocide, we overrule what the Bible says. We cannot consider the Bible inerrant and infallible, after all.
Frankly, I would much rather meet the first group. They take the Bible seriously as the word of God, and therefore are much more likely to try to follow it, which means they will follow the Christian mandate to love their enemies, etc. The second group puts their own opinions ahead of the word of God, which means they are not really restrained by God’s laws at all but will do what is right in their own eyes, which may include violence against me, even though they do not accept the account of the Canaanite genocide. Historically, those who do not believe that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible word of God are much more likely to commit violence than those who do. So any thinking person would much rather meet Group A than Group B.
CONCLUSION
We have reached the end of Rauser’s arguments. He has inveighed strenuously against the Biblical account of God’s command to the Israelites to destroy utterly the Canaanites that He delivers into their hands. Rauser would have us believe that his “power intuition” about this issue trumps God’s own testimony about this in the Bible. He adduced a number of arguments meant to prove that God could not have ordered such a thing. Each argument has been examined and shown to be an utter failure. The word of God continues to stand.
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON RANDAL ROUSER AND A WARNING
Now, I have some general observations on Rauser and his paper, other than what has already been mentioned. There are some rather disturbing things here. First and foremost is Rauser’s handling of the Bible. Never once in his fifteen-page paper does he quote from the Bible. That is rather strange, considering that the paper is about an account from the Bible. He does see fit to quote Dawkins, Chomsky, Coloroso, and a host of unknown psychologists, but never once does he quote from the Bible itself, the very book he is challenging. Should not the accused have a chance to speak in its own behalf? Or does Rauser think that the opinions of the “new atheists” and psychologists should carry more weight than the word of God? In fact, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that Rauser doesn’t think the Bible has any independent weight at all, but must sit under the judgement of human wisdom. I would think that this already disqualifies him from being someone Christians should take seriously.
We further note that, not only does Rauser not quote from the Bible even once, he does not even reference specific passages until page 13 of his fifteen-page paper, and, when he does so, he misrepresents them and engages in egregious “stacking of the deck.”
I am also disturbed by the frequent appearances of logical errors, misrepresentations, stacking the deck, and attempts to pull emotive strings rather than resorting to facts and logic. We noted some of these in the paper. Claims that God does not object to child sacrifice as long as is directed to Him are rabid nonsense and do despite to the Bible. Rauser’s attempt to paint the Canaanite genocide as “ritual sacrifice” is also wildly wrong and blasphemous.
Apropos to both of these points, and illustrative of his problematic methods, we should ask why he includes the quote from Las Casas to start his article. Since his article is about the Canaanite genocide, why does he not quote from that account in the Bible? Is it because the Las Casas quote sounds more horrible, inasmuch as the Roman Catholic murderers are taking monstrous glee in killing, whereas the Israelites showed no such thing?
I am also concerned about his statement, “Although there are many problem passages in scripture, those relating to genocide are surely the most distressing” (p.28). One wonders what other “problem passages” Rauser has in mind. It is hard to quell the suspicion that “problem passages” are those ones with which Rauser personally disagrees. It should be noted that the effect of Rauser’s analysis of “the most distressing” example undermines biblical authority, and those who accept it would then be able to discard any passage with which they do not agree, be it about male and female roles or sexual ethics or any other thing. Whether or not this is Rauser’s intention, it is the practical result.
So we will be left with no authority at all. If we accept Rauser’s case, we will be back to the days in which “every man does what is right in his own eyes,” or, as Rauser may put it, what his “powerful intuitions” tell him. That is “a deal with the devil” that no Christian should be willing to make. Rauser’s attempt to insist that God never commanded the extermination of the seven tribes in Canaan despite the fact that the word of God says that He did has been shone to be an utter failure. That comes has no surprise. The fact that he attempted to do so, based on naught but his own “powerful intuition,” and that his attempt was bathed in logical errors, mocking, misrepresentations, and outright blasphemies, in our view compels us to advise serious Christians to have nothing to with the teachings of Randal Rauser; they are toxic to a correct understanding of “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
Footnotes
[1] See Tors, John. “Cheating Themselves Through Philosophy: A Demolition of ‘The Rights and Wrongs of Alan Dershowitz’.” Posted at https://www.truthinmydays.com/post/cheating-themselves-through-philosophy-a-demolition-of-the-rights-and-wrongs-of-alan-dershowitz, March 21, 2011, and Tors, John. “The Euthyphro Dilemma and the Source of God's Standards.” Posted at https://www.truthinmydays.com/post/the-euthyphro-dilemma-and-the-source-of-god-s-standards, July 5, 2020.
[2] All quotes and references from Rauser are from Rauser, Randall. “‘Let Nothing that Breathes Remain Alive’ On the Problem of Divinely Commanded Genocide,” Philosophia Christi, Vol.11, No.1, 2009
[3] Copan, Paul. “Is Yahweh [sic] a Moral Monster? The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics,” Philosophia Christi 10 (2008), pp. 7–37.
[4] Rauser quotes this from Adams, Marilyn McCord. Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God. Ithaca, NY: Cor-
nell University Press, 2000, p.26
[5] Harris, R. Laird, Gleason L. Archer, jr., and Bruce K. Waltke. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Chicago, Moody Press, 1980, p.324
[6] Who, Doctor. “Destiny of the Daleks.” Part 4.
[7] See our 49-part Podcast series “Evolution Expanded — A Detailed Look at Evolution and Creation by John Tors,” beginning with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2pv5FdvCAk
[8] We have already pointed out that God does not ask for human sacrifice, so no Christian Bible study group would teach such a thing.
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