Alleged Errors of Moral Repugnance
We may not tend to think of moral objections against the Bible as alleged errors, but I can assure you that those who bring it up do. They have a moral standard. It may be wholly unexamined. Yet all of their statements in this category really amount to saying that the God of the Bible—whether by direct action or by sanction to human action—is falling short of some moral imperative.
The Basic Problem of Saying “Evil” Moved Inside the Book
The problem of evil is actually a devastating problem to skepticism and powerful proof of the Christian faith. Now that may sound counter-intuitive, but allow me to explain. The Christian has a coherent response and the skeptical position has no sense to make of it at all. The reason is that “good” and “evil” are not objectively meaningful values in a non-theistic worldview. For the skeptic, there is no ultimate “way things ought to be.” When he appeals to one, he is borrowing from God's law and character, which he tells himself he cannot believe in. The Christian can say “evil” and the skeptic cannot: not in any objectively meaningful way.
Allow me to be more specific, so that this is not dismissed as mere rhetoric. In order for God to be wrong to have ordained such a reality, in its whole or in part, there would have to be a “right” (or moral principle) that his act is falling short of. But what is sufficient to function as such a principle of right? Such a moral principle would have to possess at least these four attributes. It must be:
(1) Real: that is, this moral object (perhaps, an alternative reality in which things are morally perfect so as to function as a standard for “the way things ought to be”) must exist.
(2) Objective: that is, an actually right moral criterion, independent of any finite perspective.
(3) Transcendent: that is, self-sufficient, eternal and immutable, in order to be right in its own right, at all times, in all places, and over all agents (including God).
(4) Known: that is, those judging God for wrong must know what they mean by this alternative sufficient moral object, and be able to show what is meant by his present effects “falling short” of that.
Others would argue that such a standard must also be infinite and personal, which I agree with; but I am starting the conversation off easy. Surely the skeptic ought to at least agree to this. Yet every kind of unbelieving viewpoint will reject at least that the standard must be transcendent.
Now since nothing can be prior to the First Cause, himself eternal, immutable, and self-existent being, it follows that nothing higher or prior could be. So that the attributes sufficient for any “way things ought to be” are what we call God. Consequently, God is the only possible standard for all that ought to be.1
If the problem of saying evil renders incoherent any atheistic or agnostic moral pronouncement in the world at large, the same follows for any moral pronouncement of the Bible. As a matter of fact, all atheistic and agnostic moral objections against the Bible logically disqualify themselves without any further justification of the biblical accounts. However, what if the moral objections against the Scripture are brought from those who claim to believe that morality is objective, but who reject only that claim of revealed revelation that the Bible represents?
Objection 1. The Bible Endorses Genocide.
We do need to remember that every single law of Moses, including every prosecution of war carried out by the armies of Israel (which is only the outward, or “international,” extension of the just force principle rooted in Genesis 9:5-6)—each and every case is always a lessening of the severity in punishment from the original total death sentence of Genesis 2:16-17. The punishment for a single sin was eternal separation from God. Everything on this side of Eden is a relaxing of that sentence. What we view as unjust in God’s dealing with human beings in the Pentateuch is viewed that way through skewed lenses. We may not want to hear that, but if the fundamental claims of the Bible are true, then the premise is that all of the actors in the story and all of the readers reading it begin as ungrateful rebels. They do not cease to be ungrateful rebels when it is reading time. In fact, their reading is an ungrateful rebel reading—not realizing that God’s kind telling of the story to them is to lead to repentance (cf. Rom. 2:4).
As to specifics, let us get some background. These are the “holy wars” of Israel. They were a unique set of events in the conquest of the land of Canaan at the end of the fifteenth century B. C. Part of this uniqueness was as a type of Christ and the church. The theocracy of Israel was designed by God to terminate on the coming King who would universalize his kingdom, first, spiritually through the church age (cf. Mat. 26:52; Jn. 18:36-37). Thus the Bible gives a clear framework for how those commands really were only for a singular, historic army under Joshua. But, as suggested, this is also an extension of the principle of a just use of force from Genesis 1:26-27 and 9:5-6.2 The Canaanites were demonically immoral. What they did effectively ends human nature as it was designed. So, “it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you” (Deut. 9:4). They are told, “you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan” (Lev. 18:3), and then follows their many abominations. This includes child sacrifice as the norm (v. 21; cf. Deut. 12:31). To put it another way, either Canaanites roam the earth or humanity will. This is intensely practical. If you leave them there, they will turn you and your children away (cf. Deut. 7:16; 20:18).
So there is both a moral and a typological dimension.
But the objection can be refined by a series of questions. First, did God command murder in the cases of the Holy Wars? Since it belongs to the Lord to take and give life, and since such a divine command would fit within that, there is no such case of unjust taking of like. Second, even if such principles are granted in theory, it seems wrong to take such life indiscriminately. It is true that they are told, “you shall save alive nothing that breathes” (Deut. 20:16); but if one reads before, “you shall put all its males to the sword, but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves” (vv. 13-14). In short, the extermination was to be of fighting men. Flannagan and Copan even argue that the dominant Hebrew language supports “driving out” in Exodus 23:28, Leviticus 18:24, Numbers 33:52, Deuteronomy 6:19, 7:1, 9:4, 18:12, Joshua 10:28, 30, 32, 35, 37, 39, 11:11 and 14. They then compare this language to other texts using the same words in places that no one would confuse the action with a total extermination (e.g., Gen. 3:24, 4:14, 1 Sam. 26:19).3
Now things get harder in Joshua 6-12, where the language is different and specifies: “both man and woman, young and old.”
The Yale philosopher, Nicholas Wolterstorff, makes a case that these words cannot actually not be interpreted with a wooden literalism. First, Joshua is part of a literary unity with Deuteronomy and Judges on either side. The theme with the next book is Israel’s failure to drive out all the Canaanites. Second, Wolterstorff accepts a final editor of the book, and says we either have a singular, immediate composition (which he rejects, with the critics), or else a redactor apparently too stupid to believe in. In other words, why would the final author miss Joshua having so universally been portrayed as faithfully exterminating all of the people whom that generation was judged precisely for not even driving out? “Something else is going on,”4 he says. Wolterstorff completes his argument: Third, what is going on is something called “hagiographic hyperbole.” In other words, Joshua is treated in an exemplary way—somewhat like Joseph is in Genesis—so that the details in those places are not meant to be taken with wooden literalism. And even the words in Joshua that “he left no survivor” would only refer to that casting out rather than extermination of every life.
We might also think of 1 Samuel 15:3, where God commands all the Amalekites to be wiped out. Here again, it specifies women and children. We actually see the same hyperbole used, as verses 7-9 go on to record the entirety of the Amalekites wiped out. But then, later on, in 1 Samuel 27:8-9 we find that David invaded an Amalekite territory. In other words, we have to read the Hebrew verbs used for these exterminations in light of the nuanced commands given back in Deuteronomy. Women and children were spoils within the context of the entire people group, as a people, being wiped out. That of course only brings up another objection: that these parts of the Bible treat women and children as less than full persons. However, the Christian must point out to the skeptic at this point that their argument has changed. They can no longer say that God commanded unqualified taking of every life in these cases, but that (now) He uses war as a justification for slavery or other forms of dehumanization.
Objection 2. The Bible Endorses Racism and Slavery.
In spite of the appeals to the New Testament, the fact remains that God’s law itself in the Old Covenant gave some kind of sanction to slavery. Leviticus 25:44 even says most strongly, “As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you.” Others point to Exodus 21:20-21 in which there is only a financial penalty for the master. The slave is treated as a commodity and not as a human being. The only explanation that seems consistent with the whole of God’s law is that verse 22 is a summary way of saying that the death of the slave was unintentional. It may still occur to us that the sentence is light. Our own legal system recognizes the principle of gross negligence. This concept stands in between malicious intent and ordinary negligence. The person ought to have known better, and yet did not set out to intentionally take life. In this case, the master beat the slave, deceiving himself that he could inflict such harshness without it resulting in death. The Mosaic law more explicitly recognizes the same idea of gross negligence elsewhere, as in the case of the bull who gores a neighbor after a repeated pattern (vv. 28-29). I bring that balance in as a clue that the wording of this law in 21:20-21 may be focusing on the remedy aspect by itself.
In answering the more general objection, we must keep three facts in mind. First, slavery already existed in all nations, so that many of the commandments regarded fair treatment in cases where destitution from war would have resulted anyway. Second, in those cases where slavery is initiated by Israel, it was something more like indentured servitude—one became a slave to pay debt, whether in one’s own case or with the owner whom one had wronged—and not a form of slavery justified on account of notions that actually dehumanize other people. Third, in all cases where human beings were transferred from one of the pagan nations (whether “free” or slave) to Israel, they were being transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the community of God. In fact, the bulk of the laws of Moses on it were how to eventually move them toward free status in the Sabbath years and Year of Jubilee.5
It was also the case that many slaves were still captives of war and other kinds of prisoners. However, our answer to the genocide objection ought to inform us here as well. If God ever commanded Israel to go to war, was that war not just? And if it was, were not those on the other side committing a “crime” against both heaven and earth? Nowadays we build prison systems for the same thing. So our supposedly enlightened society actually practices slavery by a different name, but we hypocritically feel better about ourselves because we shew it far away from our attention in the orange jumpsuit chain-gang at taxpayer expense. Worse, we do not aim at their full citizenship and restoration. In short, Israel’s version was just. Ours is unjust. Israel’s version was merciful and held out hope for a new beginning; ours is merciless.
But it is crucial to ask the one making the objection: “Whose slavery?” and “What kind?” There is already a difference between that regulated by God’s law in the Old as opposed to the Greco-Roman form already present in the New. A slave in the Greco-Roman household was considered part of the family, which is why Paul includes slaves in the “household code” passages (Eph. 6:5-9, Col. 3:22-25, 1 Tim. 6:1-2). He was viewed as a steward. Or at least some main slave was in each wealthy household. The language Paul uses of stewards in several places (Eph. 3 for example) actually borrows from this institution. One New Testament scholar estimated that over two-thirds of the population of the Roman Empire was a slave by the time of Christ.6
We must avoid bad arguments here. It is common to distinguish this from the “race-based” chattel-slavery of the modern West (and particularly early America), but that is a highly dubious contrast. All one has to do is to examine Aristotle’s views on Greeks versus Barbarians, and the normal practice of all ancient civilizations, not to mention the Muslims and remote African tribes down to the present day. Differences between the “stocks” of people is nearly always central to the enslavers’ justification.
Where do we see this go away? The answer is the West, under the influence of Christianity.
Why did Jesus and Paul speak into the institution rather than directly against it? What would the critic have Paul do with respect to slaves who convert? Not talk to them at all, until or unless they are free? It may be objected: If Christ is God, he could have ended it all in an instant! Indeed, he could have. Just as with any evil. But what is our critic friend doing now to end all of the world’s evils? And how did slavery anywhere ever end but by Christian influence, or else by some other conquest that only wound up replacing one slave population with another? There is an old maxim, that Everything fails by irrelevant standards.
Besides that, 1 Tim. 1:10; 1 Cor. 7:21-3; Gal. 3:27-29, and Phm. 16 cumulatively provide a foundation for the fullest equality of those formerly slaves. NT scholar Benjamin Gladd suggests that even in the passages where Paul instructs masters and slaves on reciprocal duties, he is actually tacitly undermining the institution by “relativizing the status of the slave’s master.”7
If someone still wants to press the point and insist that allowing implies condoning, we must beg to differ. To condone means “to regard or treat (something bad or blameworthy) as acceptable, forgivable, or harmless” [Merriam-Webster]. Even a softer definition of condone will serve our purposes, such as, “to ignore or accept behavior that some people consider wrong” [Cambridge Dictionary]. If anyone objects that God Himself instituted slavery in Genesis 9:25 with the curse of the Ham, which is really effectually on Canaan, we reply that this is a curse. That is the point. It is a punishment, not a creational norm.
In summary, the Bible: (1) never endorses or condones slavery, (2) but does assume it, and therefore (3) does not eradicate it all at once, (4) but rather undermines it from its root.
Recalling that all human cultures, from the fall of man onward, enslaved others and held enormous slave classes whenever they could, what we see with Christianity is the long march out of pagan barbarism. We might wonder why God did not eliminate this or that evil all at once; but two things we cannot do is (1) find the historical ideal state of affairs outside of Christian culture, and (2) find a sufficient reason in any other worldview but the Christian view.
Objection 3. The Bible is Sexist and LGBTQ+phobic.
The cry of “sexism” can take on different forms. It can say, “The Bible is sexist from the start, as it blames Eve for the fall.” We reply that Adam and Eve are both blamed for their own particular sins. See the difference between Romans 5:12, 1 Cor. 15:22 on the one hand, versus 1 Timothy 2:11-13 on the other. The difference is that Adam gets the blame that matters most to the redemptive story (not Eve). This may not interest the skeptic, who hears what he or she wants to hear, but the actual Bible actually places the legal guilt and weight of the fall on the man, and that is actually central to the gospel. Read Romans 5:12-21 and 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 to see why. Someone may see that, and transfer their objection to this: “Paul implies that Eve was intellectually inferior!” We reply that such passages as 1 Timothy 2 have more to do with the total makeup of man versus woman (which are different, even as they are equal in dignity). God designed men and women differently, and in the serpent's lie we see him 1. go to the woman on purpose; 2. play upon her sense of fairness and emotions. These are not bad, but they are aspects of femininity and her station that could be exploited.
Evidence for sexism may also be located in the different laws for slaves. This can seem reflective of the same sort of valuation of women as property as what was mentioned about being captives of war. Indeed, this is just the end result of that. Of course, it is true that the law for liberating male slaves is more prominent and clear (Ex. 21:2). However, the laws for female slaves are designed for their protection. We take the safety of females for granted in the modern era because of the ways in which Judeo-Christian morality has fostered a civilization where they are safe. But this is not a given in mere nature, and was not outside of Judeo-Christian culture. It is also assumed that the rule of the female over society is outside of God’s design when He threatens it as the curse of Israel’s rebellion in Isaiah 3:12.
Sexism has also often been seen in the way that female sins are supposedly privileged over typically male sins. But this is a very dubious claim. In the first place, it is untrue. Think of the violence of war, theft, and other forms of oppression. It is plain that most actors in view here are male. In the second place, even if we focus on those sections, the Proverbs gives such statistical disparity to the “immoral woman” because she is being used to symbolize folly in a poetic way. In the New Testament’s 39 references to “sexual immorality,” only two kinds (and only 1 of those 39 references) specific to the sexual sins unique to the woman: adultery (which applies to men and women for the same reasons anyway) and prostitution (i.e. the prostitute of 1 Corinthians 6:15-16 and Revelation 17:1, 5, 15, 16, 19:2). 3 of the 39 references to sexual immorality speak of a “her,” but these are metaphors of the church in one, and Babylon in the other two. So even with prostitution, we must ask, how is that sin being talked about? Rahab is also mentioned twice. She was literally a prostitute. But in those two places, she is being commended for her faith.
What about more radical deviations from sexual norms, such as homosexuality and transgenderism? Genesis 1:26-27; 2:18-25 is clear that God made them male and female (cf. Matt. 19:4-6). Homosexuality and transgenderism run against that design. Contrary to popular belief, the New Testament continues that teaching, specifying natural law reasons (cf. Rom. 1:25-26; Jude 7).8 In other words, Paul and Jude are saying that homosexual relations are contrary to the immutable nature of sexuality. And contrary to contemporary myth, Leviticus 18:22 and 1 Corinthians 6:9 9 do not suggest anything other than improper relations between men. Deuteronomy 22:5 forbids what amounts to cross-dressing, namely, that “A woman shall not wear man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.”
The word “phobia” is a diversion. Either a moral judgment is right or wrong; either true or false. If our attention span can rise no higher than whether or not we are “afraid” of an idea, behavior, or group of people engaged in such behavior, then we are not really talking about the matter of what is true about the thing.
There are at least four main reasons we can say that homosexuality is wrong: 1. Because it directly violates God’s law, 2. Because it is contrary to the nature of gender and sexuality, 3. Because, being unnatural, it is harmful to the person who participates in that distortion, 4. Because, given the first three reasons, it will also lead to social pathologies, as society’s endurance depends on healthy sexual relationships and family bonds. Far from being a “phobia” much less a hatred, the biblical teaching on these deviations from God’s creation design are a loving corrective that sinners be reconciled to God and begin the process of healing.
Objection 4. The Law of Moses is Primitive and Cruel.
Usually elements of the ceremonial law is what is in view here. Take the examples of those cast outside of the camp for their menstrual cycle, or for accidentally touching a corpse, or for eating the wrong thing, or for developing skin sores, or for simply being deformed from birth. Some of these push us to the boundaries of moral incredulity.
As to the civil law, some of these are judged on account of their apparent senselessness. For instance, in Exodus 22:2-3, is it permissible to kill a home invader at night but not when the sun is up?
To give a brief explanation for each. In the case of Exodus 22:2-3, this “sun up” law is analogous to our many laws concerning self-defense, such as when an assailant is shot in the back versus in the front. In other words, it is shorthand for malice aforethought versus actual sense of violent threat. Our courts still evaluate this, using different terminology.
What about the child stoned for disobedience or execution for Sabbath breakers (Num. 15:32-36)? Surely this is barbaric! So we read that,
“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear” (Deut. 21:18-21).
First, note his age. He is called “a glutton and drunkard.” Offspring, yes; but still in the house by incapacity? No. And as Charles Hodge reminds us that this is also a very early stage of society, in which tribes and clans are spread out, and fathers are acting as magistrates, given charge of civil affairs.10 Consequently such punishments only appear strange to us because we hear “family” in a modern sense that does not overlap with the other social spheres. That is an easy facet of the Mosaic law to neglect. As far as the man gathering sticks, since the Sabbath was newly instituted and since everyone had just had it revealed to them crystal clear from God this was a flagrant shaking of the fist to God. It was precisely because it was over something “so small,” like gathering sticks on the Sabbath, that the reader is to catch the point about the dangers of slowly moving boundaries.
And how can the sons bear the sins of the fathers in Exodus 20:5, when Deuteronomy 24:16 and Ezekiel 18:20? The first answer is to distinguish between the general and the specific scope. We do this by recalling that Adam was everyone’s first father and his sin most certainly was imputed to all of his offspring (Rom. 5:12). God has the right to make the father such a representative.
People have sometimes attempted to evade this discussion by taking the God of the New Testament over the God of the Old. Marcionism was an example of this, and it was rightly considered to be a heresy. Every lie is a twisted truth. There is a truth in detecting more harshness in the Old. In describing what God did to initiate redemption, given that mankind had fallen into a pit too deep to climb out of themselves, C. S. Lewis put the Old Testament design in this context:
“He selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was—that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.”11
Objection 5. God’s Actions or Commands are Often Hypocritical.
The “primitive” charge can also extend itself to the claim of hypocrisy, or that God is acting contrary to His own law. Abraham being commanded to kill Isaac in Genesis 22:1-14 doesn’t seem to us, at first glance, to fall under any just use of the sword, even if one grants the special circumstance of divine command. First, God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac was not an institution of child sacrifice. The law of Moses is quite clear that the Canaanite religions who practice child sacrifice are an abomination (Lev. 18:21; Deut. 12:31; 18:10), and that the notion of Israel taking up this combination of idolatry and murder violates the will of God, and hence the anthropomorphic expression about that sin: “which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind” (Jer. 19:5). Now as to the special circumstance, if someone wants to object further that this is “convenient” or that anyone else can then claim to have heard the same from God, that would have to be addressed separately. But there is little point starting that part of the conversation until or unless the skeptic first acknowledges that the initial objection falls. There is nothing logically necessitating this command of God from having to be applied across the board in the nature of the case.
Another example often cited is that God actually commands abortion. This is referring to Numbers 5:11-31. However, this is actually a divine punishment for unfaithfulness, having nothing to do with abortion’s causes or motives. That a human is involved only has to do with the test and the one pronouncing the curse. The phrase about the thigh “falling away” was almost certainly an idiomatic expression for the curse of barrenness, though may possibly include other ailments.. In either case, this is a punishment initiated by God. Perhaps, then, the objection will shift to its Draconian nature. Wouldn’t this also imply that both the immoral woman and the other man be put to death, per Leviticus 20:10? Evidently not. And if the reason for the difference should be asked, the most reasonable answer is that this test exists because proof, or even witnesses, do not. If someone further asks: If God Himself is validating the guilt in the case of the womb swelling up and falling away, how would that not function the same way? Our answer can only be that God has this right, to punish the one by proof and instant death, and to punish the other by lifelong pain and shame. The few commentaries I have on Numbers do not specifically address it, and it is not outside of the realm of possibility that the offending man was still put to death. But we are not told.
And what about polygamy? First, nothing ever changed in God’s moral law and therefore he was displeased in each case. The Bible is clear that sex outside of a one-man, one-woman marriage is a violation of the seventh commandment. It does not contradict moral law in the least to find God graciously overlooking transgressions of it for his own purposes in history. Consider that He overlooks it in us, as evidenced by the sunrise every morning when, by rights, He could have taken us out for the sins in the day before. Another dimension of moral law is the natural consequences for sin. In the case of those Old Testament men taking multiple wives and concubines (Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon), we will notice that no good comes from the sin in itself. In fact, it undermines their authority, evidences bad fruit from their lack of faith, and produces a bad example for their children.
Objection 6. Its Worldview of Creation, Fall, Damnation is Generally Evil.
This often comes in the very personal form: “I didn’t ask God to create me! Now He demands that I worship Him or else I burn for all eternity? How is that loving or even good?” And besides, there are different places in the Bible that seem to claim that God is loving (Jn. 3:16, 1 Jn. 4:8-10) and for peace (Isa. 2:4, Rom. 15:33), and other places that depict God as vengeful and making war against His enemies (Ex. 15:3, Rev. 19:11).
Now there are two stories that will be brought as moral objections, but which touch upon this very “hammering process,” to use Lewis’s imagery. These are the cases of Nadab and Abihu with their strange fire (Lev. 10:1-3), and of Uzzah trying to steady the ark (2 Sam. 6:5-8). These strike the modern reader as unworthy of a kind and gracious God.
We might also think of Jephthah’s vow in Judges 11. First, we have to see that Jephthah’s vow was evil. He said to God, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whatever comes out from the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the Ammonites shall be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering” (Judges 11:30-31). Now why did God not prevent it? He is not obliged to do so—though Matthew Henry concludes that the deed is not done in the end 12—and it highlights the grave danger of taking God’s name in vain, as this is ultimately what the Third Commandment is about. In fact, the very dutiful reaction of the girl in this account really does point to the justice of God. She was more concerned for God’s holiness, and the gravity of going through with what he promised, than her father was.
Some such objections can be more miscellaneous, since they do not regard the commandments of the law per se, yet they still fall under the umbrella of “harshness.” For instance: Why did God kill 42 children for calling Elisha bald (2 Kings 2:23-25)? Answer: That is the reason, namely, for calling him bald. That is sufficient. It was an infinite impertinence, given that he was God’s prophet, analogous to if commoners should insult a king. Now the trouble we moderns will have with this will multiply from there. Their parents should have kept them far away from a prophet with infinitely more resolve than when a parent keeps their child away from the bears themselves or the precipice of a lava pit. It is the prophet who speaks of dangers far greater than these.
Obviously the Flood, the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah, and the plagues on Egypt all fall under this category as well. But it is the idea of hell itself—and the fact, once recognized by more honest skeptics, that Jesus spoke about it with more clarity than anyone else (Mat. 5:22, 13:41-42, 25:41, 46)—that becomes the biggest moral objection. A justification of hell requires a greater study in one sense. On the other hand, we must remember our fundamental problem of saying “evil.”
The late “New Atheist” Christopher Hitchens oddly fixated on the Gadarene swine in one debate. I think this was appropriate. Hitchens’ fixation actually mirrors one of the main lessons of the episode. When I preached on this text in Matthew’s Gospel, I called it “Men count pigs, demons tell time.” Hitchens found himself in the former category being a mere man. So he counted pigs. What aroused his moral disapproval was not the cause of the ultimate human suffering, nor that the townspeople so easily missed it, but that the pigs were lost. Granted, Hitchens did not have quite the base motives as the commercial loss that the townspeople did, and so they urged Jesus to go away. Yet in comparison to one’s eternal soul, what is a pig? What is even a whole herd of pigs? Hitchens could not tell—and he still could not say “evil” in any meaningful way.
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1. A common misunderstanding here involves Divine Command Theory—a species of voluntarism—as opposed to the traditional realist account of morality rooted in God’s nature (and thus His command). This is only the overarching principle behind the kind of “moral argument” favored by Kant concerning the final judgment as a sufficient ground. No matter how sophisticated, it can be heard on the most popular level in retorts such as, “So basically, morality is: ‘Do X, or else God will punish you in the end!” The realist metaphysic goes together with natural law. It maintains that God has willed all that is, commands only what is right, and that both of these dimensions (moral natures and moral obligations) are what they are precisely because of what they say about God (the divine nature). Hence the natural law is rooted in the eternal law. All compelling moral arguments must therefore be rooted in a real sufficient cause for objective morality.
2. The duality of moral and typological will not be agreed upon among all of the Reformed. The Escondido Theology, with its Klinian Covenant Theology and Radical Two Kingdom doctrine, will want to say that this is typological-not-moral, whereas some would push back against them (whether Theonomists or otherwise) and say that this is moral-not-typological. The Reformed Classicalist view is that both are in play.
3. Matthew Flannagan and Paul Copan, “Does the Bible Condone Genocide?” in Cowan and Wilder, ed., In Defense of the Bible, 306-07.
4. Flannagan and Copan, “Does the Bible Condone Genocide?” 307.
5. R. Alan Cole, Exodus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 176.
6. Merrill Tenney, New Testament Survey (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985),
7. Benjamin Gladd, “Philemon” in Biblical-Theological Introduction to the New Testament, Michael Kruger, ed, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), 403.
8. The use of akatharsia and aselgeia in Galatians 5:21 to describe additional sexual sins, when porneia was already used first in verse 19, suggests to some that sins like homosexuality were in view. For example, R. Alan Cole has a discussion on this, not ruling either way: Galatians (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1989), 213.
9. Kevin DeYoung writes, “It’s a new word; we don’t know of any other instances of the word until Paul coins the word in 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1. It’s a compound word: “arsen” means man and “koite” or “koitas” or “koitai”—depending on a verb or a noun—means bed. It’s men who bed with other men.”
10. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, III.19.9.
11. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), .
12. Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991),
