On God and Justice
Full Title: Is the God
of the Old Testament a just God?
By James M. West. Copyright © 2002,
E-mail: ogdood@yahoo.com
Orthodox tradition tells us that the Old
Testament is the infallible revelation of a supreme and just God. This supreme
and just God is said to be the creator of the Human species. We Humans,
however, are said to be alienated from God. This alienation supposedly began
with the very first Humans, Adam and Eve, who disobeyed God in the Garden of
Eden. The Human race was then condemned once again by the Law that God later
gave to
In my opinion the purpose of this dogma–as
recited above–is to lay a massive guilt trip on people. Baptists, Catholics,
Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc., etc., all have a version of this guilt trip that
they try to lay on people. Its purpose is to inform you that you have offended
your Creator, and that the evils of the world are all your fault.
Therefore (so the logic goes) you need to accept the blame. On this basis
orthodox tradition offers a path to salvation for its guilty converts, where
they spend the rest of their lives saying “I’m sorry” to their Creator.
In this article I want to examine the
foundation of the judicial standard by which orthodox Christians condemn everyone
on behalf of their angry, jealous God. This standard I refer to is the Old
Testament; which is the foundation of orthodox Christian theology and ethics. I
quite simply question whether there is any viable standard of justice, or a
relevant theology thereof, in the Old Testament.
Historically the God and Justice of the Old
Testament have always been subjects of speculation and doubt. Among Jews, a
notable example can be seen in the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, Philo
Judaeus (25 BC–45 AD). Philo was an example of an educated cosmopolitan Jew who
could no longer accept the Bible at what we would call “face value.” Philo believed
that it was the wrong approach to read the scriptures literally; and to accept
the biblical accounts as literal reports of God’s activities. Philo believed
that the true message in the scriptures was not to be found through the
straight forward reading, but through allegory. Philo wrote regarding
the scriptures “let us then, not be misled by the actual words, but look at the
allegorical meaning which lies beneath them” (On Mating, 172). We must
note here that the word “allegory” is a Greek term which described the method
by which the older Greek philosophers converted the arcane myths of Homer into
symbols of lofty philosophical truths. Philo was a applying this method to the
Bible. (J. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the NT., pg. 86f. C. Pfeiffer, Between
the Testaments, pg. 87f. See also Luc Brisson, How Philosophers Saved
Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology.)
Philo regarded the literal biblical accounts
of God as material intended for lesser men who lacked wisdom: “But the
Scripture, which at all times advances its conceptions with respect to the
deity, in a more reverential and holy tone, and which likewise desires to
instruct the life of the foolish, has spoken of God under the likeness of a
man…attributing to him, with this view, the possession of a face, and hands,
and feet, and of a mouth and voice, and also anger and passion…not indeed using
all these expressions with strict truth, but having regard to those who are to
learn from it…” (On Dreams, 1:234-237)
As for the supreme Deity himself, Philo
wrote in reference to scripture that “the living God is not of a nature to be
described, but only to be” (ibid. 1:230).
From the passages quoted above it is obvious
that Philo did not regard the Bible as a literal account of the true living God.
Philo believed that the biblical God that most Jews believed in was really a lesser
god; and which Philo referred to alternately as a second god, or chief
angel, or logos (On the Confusion of Tongues, 146; Q&A
on Gen., 2:62). This was the form of God as seen by men of lesser moral
stature who were incapable of approaching God out of a pure motive, or in a
pure spirit (On Abraham, 24:121ff.). Philo even referred this second god
as the shadow of God: “But the shadow of God is his logos… And this
shadow, and, as it were, model, is the archetype of other things” (Allegorical
Interpretation, 3:96).
All of this theosophical art on the part of
Philo is evidence of the fact that he could not accept the biblical accounts of
theology and justice at face value.
The Old Testament scheme of God and Justice
was also questioned by some New Testament writers as well, some of whom were
contemporaries of Philo. St. Paul, as an example, was unable to affirm
consistently that the Law of Moses was given by God as is stated plainly in the
Old Testament (Ex. 20:1f. Lev. 26:46f.). Paul wrote instead that the Law was
“ordained by angels” (Galatians
St. Stephen actually denied numerous
cardinal points of Judeo-Christian tradition and theology. And in Acts we read
that Stephen was prosecuted accordingly by the Jewish religious authorities,
who accused him of “uttering blasphemous words against Moses, and against God”
(Acts
Other New Testament writers also questioned
the theology and justice of the Old Testament. The author of Hebrews states in
agreement with Paul and Stephen that the Law of Moses was the “word spoken by
angels” (Heb. 2:2). We also learn that the Law was “unprofitable” and made
nothing “perfect” (Heb.
And then there is the evidence in the
Gospels: In Matthew 11:27 Jesus proclaimed that “no man knows the Father but
the Son” thereby indicating that Moses had no knowledge of the Father. In Luke
6:35 Jesus made his appeal to the “highest” God, who is “kind to the unthankful
and the evil” whereas the God of the Old Testament exercised his judgment, and
vented his wrath, against the unthankful and the evil (e.g. Numbers 14).
This passage from Luke shows clearly where some NT writers did not see the God
and Law of the OT as constituting a just standard by which men and women were
to be judged.
And then there is the passage in John
1:17-18, “For the Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ. No man has seen God at any time” and in John
The later Gnostics and Marcionites were
well-known for their rejection of orthodox principles of biblical theology and
justice. We need not labor this point further. A concise summary of this
position has been placed neatly in the mouth of Simon Magus in his challenge to
Peter as found in the Clementine Homilies,
“When I went away yesterday, I promised to return today, and in a
discussion show that he who framed the world is not the highest God, but that
the highest God is another who alone is good, and who has remained unknown up
to this time. … If then he is the Lawgiver, he is just; but if he is just, then
he is not good. … Now a lawgiver cannot be both just and good, for these
qualities do not harmonize.” (Homily,
18:1)
In the passage above “Simon” admitted that
the Lawgiver was just, but not good. In my view this is just another way of
saying that the Lawgiver is not really just, let alone good. Now, why exactly
some early Christians rejected the God and Law of the OT is a question that
historical records tend to obscure. It is easy enough to guess why. The
Catholic Fathers refused to report the strong side of Gnostic arguments: and
the extant Gnostic writings are too few and fragmentary to provide a complete
report. From the Catholic side, the best explanation comes from Irenaeus in his
complaint about Marcion: (Against Heresies, 1.27.2.)
“[Marcion] advanced the most daring blasphemy against Him who is
proclaimed as God by the Law and the Prophets, declaring him to be the author
of evils (cf. Isaiah 45:7), to take delight in war (Deut. 2:24ff.), to be
infirm of purpose (1 Sam. 1:35), and even to be contrary to himself (cf. Psalms
40:6, Numbers 28).”
I inserted the scriptural citations above so
that my readers can get an idea of the theological questions that Marcion must
have had, and which complicated his efforts to reconcile the Old and New
Testaments in accordance with his idea of an ethically consistent theology.
Extant Gnostic literature is less explicit
in this regard, in terms of a concise summary. The bias against traditional Old
Testament theology is a forgone conclusion in the extant texts. One of the few
really good examples of commentary can be seen in the Nag Hammadi text “The
Testimony of Truth.” Here the author offers a commentary on the
“But what sort of God is this? First he maliciously kept Adam from
eating of the Tree of Knowledge. And secondly, he asked, ‘Adam where are you?’
If God had foreknowledge would he not know from the beginning? And afterward he
said, ‘Let us cast him out from this place, lest he eat from the tree of life
and live forever.’ Surely he has shown himself to be a malicious grudger. And
what kind of God is this? For great is the blindness of those who read, and
they did not know him.”
This ancient writer recognized the injustice
of the Creator as reported in the Law. He realized that this was not the
supreme Being, and he wondered at the blindness of so many people who read
these OT passages and failed to recognize this. Indeed this writer has only
scratched the surface of the issues involved.
Right now I want to take my readers on an
excursion through the Old Testament. And on our little trip we will look at
examples in the scriptures where “God” is not really the lofty and just being
that he is made out to be. (The material below is based in part on the research
in Thomas Paine’s book The Age of Reason.)
Let us begin with the passage from Isaiah
45:5-7. This passage is unique in that it describes what I consider to be the
overall ethical nature of the Old Testament. The highlights of this passage are
as follows:
“I am the Lord, …there is no God besides me: (6) …I am the Lord and
there is none else. (7) I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and
create evil: I, the Lord, do all these things.”
(cf. Mt. 7:17-18, James 1:13-18)
This passage is meaningful and relevant to
the two popular conceptions “orthodox” Christians hold regarding the Old Testament:
The first being that the Old Testament is the revelation of a supreme God; and
second, that the God of the Old Testament is just and good. (Henceforth, the term “Old Testament”
will be abbreviated as “OT” where appropriate.)
I believe it is a mistake to assume that the
Old Testament is the revelation of a supreme God: The reason being that the
writers of the OT have immature ideas about the nature of God. In the OT we see
God depicted as displaying a nature, and behaving in ways, that are inconsistent
with the ways a supreme God would behave – which would certainly be the
opposite of the way that we sinful Humans behave. Yet what we witness in the OT
is a God who behaves like a petty tyrant who has fits of rage – which is a weakness. Thus we have this implausible
scenario in which the supreme God acts like a fool.
Moreover, we see this supreme God depicted
as the creator of a race of beings that it cannot govern: And then,
predictably, in classic Human form, this God responds to its own lack of power
by getting angry and destroying its own creation (Gn. 6-7).
Another example is where this God is
depicted as using one group of people, the Israelites, to exterminate another
group of people including their defenseless children. And I want to emphasize
the level of brutality implied in these biblical scenarios. The Lord’s
followers, in obedience to their God, are slaughtering little children with
their swords. And the Israelites are specifically commanded to commit these
atrocities in a number of OT passages (see below). There is no logical reason
why I should believe that these OT scenarios are evidence of a supreme and
righteous God or a higher spirituality. And if I try to read the Old Testament
in accordance with such a prejudice then I find that what I am reading is
unreal and contradictory in terms of the basic moral principles that Christians
expect everyone to abide by in a civilized world.
Another example of the dubious justice of
the OT may be seen in Genesis 3. This is where Adam and Eve disobey the
commandment by the Lord not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. In reaction to this infraction, the Lord spoke these enigmatic words:
“Behold, the man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil.” (Gen. 3:22)
It was after the utterance of these
enigmatic words that Adam and Eve were driven away into the hostile wilderness
in order to make sure that they would die. But why should the Lord be concerned
about Adam becoming just like him? Perhaps the Creator feared that with
the knowledge of good and evil Adam and Eve would recognize that the Creator
was something other than good. This
is a most plausible theory as to why this God would not want his creation to
know good from evil. This is the type of ignorance that would be fostered by a
king or tyrant. A tyrant would not want his subjects scrutinizing or making
value judgments regarding the tyrant’s activities or morality. The author of
Genesis 2-3 appears to have been thinking along these lines when he wrote this
fable. This man did not worship a just God: he worshipped a tyrant, and he
believed that the tyrant alone has the right to decide what is good and evil –
just like a petty king or war-lord.
To me there is no question that the author
of Genesis 2-3 is a man of suspect character. Do we really want this man
shaping our conceptions of who and what the supreme Being is like? And do we want
this man’s base ideas serving as a standard by which we judge ourselves and our
children?
Another question is why should Adam and Eve
be held accountable for an act of disobedience if they had no prior knowledge
and understanding that an act of disobedience is evil? In other words: how can
Adam and Eve be held responsible for their errors if they had no knowledge of
good and evil when they committed their infraction? Is this really an act of justice?
Any reasonable and moral person would have to answer no. To accept the
Bible here as a “just” standard we must discard all of our practical notions of
right and wrong, which we would expect from our peers, and from the courts.
The irony of the
My readers can take comfort in the fact that
not all early Christians looked at things the way so-called “orthodox”
Christians do today.
Now some of you may be inclined to reject
the analysis that I have just set forth. And you may be of the opinion that my
statements are off-base or baseless. But I will stand by what I have written
because if I were to believe that the Old Testament is revelation of a supreme God,
and that our sinful world is likewise the work of a supreme God, then I would
be forced into calling good “evil” and evil “good.” And I will now begin to
document from the Old Testament scriptures themselves that the OT is not
revelation of a supreme and good God. And I will demonstrate that if we choose
to think otherwise, then we will be forced to call good “evil” and evil
“good.” (cf. Hebrews 5:14ff.)
Let us begin with the Lord’s commandment in
Exodus 20:13, which says:
“Thou shalt not murder.”
The enigma of this commandment will soon
reveal itself.
In Deuteronomy 7 the Lord/God commands his
followers to attack the various nations of
Let us note here right away that the Lord’s
words in Dt. 7:4-10 are actually a bizarre combination of love confessions and
death threats. If you were talking to someone, whether a friend or stranger,
and they started talking to you this way, would you trust them? – or would you
think they were deranged, and dangerous? What kind relationship is it where you
know that the person who claims to love you will suddenly kill you if
you fail to obey them – is this truly a relationship of love and trust?
Furthermore, would you want someone like this in your government, or in the
White House? (Even Bush isn’t this bad.)
Needless to say, the Israelites obeyed their
lover…
In Deuteronomy 2:24-37, the Lord/God
commands the Israelites to invade the Amorite
The same basic scenario of mayhem and murder
is repeated again in Deuteronomy 3 where the Israelites invade the
There is no demonstration of a higher spirituality
here. As Thomas Paine once observed, this is just plain old thuggery and bloody
murder.
In Numbers 31 we read where the Lord
commands the Israelites to attack and destroy the Midianites. The Israelites
win the battle and all the soldiers of Midian are killed – but the women and
children are spared. Moses becomes angry about this and commands that all the
male children and all the females who are not virgins be executed. Now, I am
trying to imagine this scene: I see heavily armed soldiers, with swords, clubs
or axes, walking among hundreds of defenseless women and children, and checking
between the legs of these frightened women and girls, and slaying them if their
genitals do not look right. And I can see terrified little boys without hope
awaiting their turn; and watching as their mother’s throats are cut, or their
heads bashed in with clubs.
Another interesting detail connected with
this gross atrocity, in Numbers 31, is that the Midianites were the people who
originally took Moses in from the desert when he fled from Egypt (Ex. 2:15-22).
We can see how Moses paid them back.
Another example of the systematic murder and
mayhem connected with the God of the Old Testament is found in Joshua 6. This
passage contains the conclusion of the siege of
“And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and
woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.”
In this scenario we also have the detail of
Rahab the prostitute who betrays the city. No prostitute or whore was ever
tolerated among the Israelites. And yet when a prostitute or whore is useful to
them in their quest to murder others and steal their land, she is rewarded. And
the lesson in this is that the end justifies the means: If prostitutes and
traitors are of use in bringing about the
“I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace and create evil…”
The moral questions of what is right or
wrong, or just and unjust, or merciful and unmerciful are irrelevant issues in
regard to the goals that the Creator seeks to achieve. This point is also
relevant to the issue of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden: If Humans
are overly aware of what is right and wrong, or good and evil, then they are
not of use to their Creator – but are a threat: because the OT God is not
concerned about what is right or wrong: This God’s only real concern is his
lack of power over the affairs of men. This pattern is in turn indicative of
the fact that the men writing about this God are really just channeling their
own personal frustrations into their theology (read: propaganda).
The theology and justice of the Old
Testament are defined by the theme of a quest for power by people who lack
power. And it is “God’s” quest for power, via the Israelites, that defines
the type of spirituality, morality and ethics that we read about in the Old
Testament. An example is the Ten Commandments, which contain common sense
wisdom such as: Thou shalt not murder, or Thou shalt not commit
adultery, or steal, or covet thy neighbor’s property, etc.
The problem is that these commandments of wisdom were not given to Humanity as
universals; but were handed down as a bogus deception to divide Jew from
gentile. Worded another way: The Lord did not give the wisdom of the Ten
Commandments for the purpose of enlightening Humanity. To the contrary, these
commandments were given as a code of ethics in order to strengthen the Hebrews
in their preparations to destroy their targeted neighbors, steal their land,
and establish the so-called “
That overall agenda was incorporated in the
entirety of the Law of Moses, which contains over 600 commandments and ordinances.
And that overall agenda is the reason that we find the Law devalued in the
Gospel According to John and in Paul’s letters (i.e. Phil. 3:5-8, etc.). It’s
not that Paul or John were actually against the moral wisdom of the Ten
Commandments. The problem is the overall agenda which those commandments are
used to validate. And this is why we learn from John the Baptist that the Law
came through Moses, but the Truth
came through Christ. Otherwise, we can look throughout the Old Testament, and
we can find all kinds of flowery rhetoric about justice, goodness, integrity,
fidelity, etc. But is this rhetoric ever really put into practice by the Lord,
or his anointed Kings, or the Israelites themselves? – No. There are no moral
absolutes at work in the Old Testament.
The ethics of the OT revolve around the
issue of Power and total and unquestioning obedience to Power. And therefore,
consequently, all morality is in fact relative to the one issue of Power. And
it is within the context of that relativity that we find good and evil being
intermingled in the worship of the God of the Old Testament. And this reality
brings us back to the reason that the Law of Moses, and the Lawgiver, are
devalued in certain NT passages which I have cited above. Furthermore, we must
acknowledge that the simple worship of Power is not the same as the worship of
God in Spirit and in Truth. The worship of Power is a form of idolatry, and
that is the reason why we see the denial that Moses saw God in certain passages
of the New Testament (e.g. Mt.
For me personally there is no doubt that the
real issue at stake in the Old Testament has nothing to do with what is right
or wrong – the real issue is the acquisition of Power by the Israelites and
their priesthood. They portrayed the nature of their God accordingly. In
contrast with the OT, I believe that the primary concern of the true God
regarding Humanity is that we Humans have a moral compass; that we are able to
discern good from evil and to make our judgments accordingly. This is truly
what makes us better people: and this is the true benefit of having a true
gnosis of God.
Whether or not this world was created by a
supreme Being is really not the issue here. The simple point I’m trying to make
is that the Law of Moses, and the history of
I would like to conclude with one such
example from the Epistle of 1 John 4:12,
“No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in
us; and his love is perfected in us.”
Let us also note these words attributed to
Jesus in Matthew 5:8.
“Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.”
One of the sublime points implicit in these
passages is that Moses never really saw God. The most important implications of
these statements for us is this: The only way we can really know if “God
dwells in us” and that we are “pure in heart” is if we look we look
within ourselves. This is a question of maturity and self knowledge.
This fundamental truth is affirmed by the teachings of Jesus in the Gospel
of Thomas: “When you know yourselves…you will realize that it is you who
are the children of the living Father.”
Amen! –jw
Readers
can e-mail their comments, etc., to me at ogdood@yahoo.com