2

WAS ISRAEL A VIOLENT, GENOCIDAL, BLOODTHIRSTY NATION?

THE PROBLEM

Richard Dawkins, the well-known atheistic philosopher, has famously stated:

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.1

Even if you don’t know what some of those words mean, you can tell they’re bad. If Dawkins’s view of our “God of the Old Testament” contains even an ounce of truth, then we’ve got a real problem on our hands. Is the God of the Old Testament really a bloodthirsty, vindictive bully? An infanticidal racist? Or more specific to our topic: Does God command a bloodthirsty genocide in the Old Testament but enemy-loving forgiveness in the New? And if so, what do we do with the contradiction?

It’s not just atheistic philosophers who recognize the problem. Many Christians who love the Bible are troubled with the widespread carnage in the Old Testament. Biblical scholar C. S. Cowles described the Old Testament as “a bloody history saturated with violence,” and God is depicted as “full of fury against sinners”—quite unlike Jesus, who loved His enemies. Moses must have misunderstood what God meant, said Cowles, when He gave Israel such “genocidal commands.”2

There seems to be a lot of blood and guts in the Old Testament, while the New Testament is much more peaceful. So does God endorse killing in the Old Testament but not in the New? We’ll spend this chapter and the next three trying to answer that question. We will see that killing is sometimes sanctioned by God in the Old Testament, but that killing is not the ideal way God wants His people to deal with their enemies—not even the really bad ones. God’s original intention for humanity is shalom—peace—and not violence. And the Old Testament moves toward this goal.

VIOLENCE AND PEACE IN THE FIRST CHAPTERS OF GENESIS

Shalom (peace) is a rich and multifaceted Hebrew term that refers to the absence of war or conflict, but the word encompasses much more: wholeness, completeness, fullness, abundance, joy, and harmony. All of these words color in various facets of the Hebrew concept of shalom. According to one Hebrew scholar, shalom

signifies the well-being of a human in all imaginable aspects. It stretches from the well-being of satisfaction and contentment about one’s welfare, to security, to being unharmed including keeping healthy, to getting along with each other in every form of relationship.3

From the beginning, God wanted shalom to permeate His creation on every level. And in the end, God will achieve this goal.

Genesis 1–2 paints a picture of shalom, God’s original intention for creation. Here, we see nothing but perfect peace, harmony, and beauty—the way God intended things to be. Seven times in Genesis 1 God says that His creation is “good.” When He concludes His work, He considers it “very good” (1:31). There is perfect harmony between the Creator and His creation, and there is perfect harmony among all created things. Adam and Eve submit to God; the animals and vegetation submit to the human pair. When Adam stuffs a tomato seed into the soil, the earth obeys by popping out weed-free, luscious tomato plants. When Eve calls for an animal, it comes right to her. Everything in God’s good creation lives in perfect harmony. Humans with humans, animals with animals, creation with animals and humans. There is no violence. Just shalom.

But sin invades God’s good creation, and all harmony is shattered: harmony between God and humans, between humans and humans, and between humans and creation. Enmity, strife, and violence take the place of shalom, as we see with Cain, who rises up and kills his brother (Gen. 4). Interestingly, God responds not by killing Cain—meeting violence with violence—but by placing a mark on Cain so that no one else will take vengeance on him. God responds to the first murderer with grace—a visible preservation of shalom.

Yet sin continues to manifest itself in violent ways. Cain’s descendant Lamech shows up in the story with blood dripping from his hands. Cain slew his brother and knew the shame of his violence, but Lamech boasts in killing a teenager: “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me” (Gen. 4:23). Now, seven generations after Cain, people aren’t just violent. They’re celebrating violence.

Sin devastates humanity. It gets so bad that, years later, God decides to send a flood to (nearly) wipe out the evil human race and start over: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence” (Gen. 6:11). It’s not just random evil that God punishes, but specifically violence, which is understood as a form of corruption.4 Widespread aggression among humanity engulfs the earth, prompting God to punish the world by a flood.

Put simply: the early chapters of Genesis celebrate peace while showing disdain for violence among humans—even as “just” punishment for a killer.

VIOLENCE AND PEACE AMONG THE PATRIARCHS

You may think this changes once we get to Abraham and the patriarchs. But actually, the rest of Genesis continues to promote peace and discourage violence, even when it seems like people deserve the latter. For instance, when Abram and his nephew Lot arrive in the Promised Land, Abram gives Lot first dibs on the land so that there will be no strife between the two clans (13:8). Abram could take by force what is rightfully his, but peace takes priority.

Years later, Abraham’s son Isaac digs a bunch of wells that are now rightfully his, but he ends up giving them to Abimelech, the Philistine king. Why? So that there will be peace between the two (Gen. 26:1–33). In other words, Isaac forfeits what is duly his to prevent strife and maintain shalom. Isaac, in fact, is much stronger than Abimelech in terms of financial and physical power. According to Abimelech’s own confession, “you are much mightier than we” (Gen. 26:16). So if they fought over the wells, Isaac probably would pummel him. But Isaac chooses the Edenic ideal over the way of Cain. He chooses peace, not war, even if it means being wronged. Sometimes peace demands sacrifice—a truth broadcasted in the New Testament.

The stories of Jacob and Esau also celebrate nonviolent peace as the ideal. Jacob’s gets pretty messy, especially when he ventures to the land of Uncle Laban (Gen. 29–31). Still, Jacob has numerous opportunities to respond with vengeful violence toward evildoers, yet he never does. For instance, to prevent the potential clash with his brother, Esau, Jacob assumes the posture of a servant to his lord.5 Instead of meeting force with force, Jacob humbles himself as a servant in order to preserve peace. He then goes above and beyond by offering a massive gift to stave off any potential strife.6

Another story where violence is condemned is the incident with Levi, Simeon, and their sister Dinah. As the story goes, a Canaanite named Shechem rapes Dinah and then has the nerve to ask her father, Jacob, for her hand in marriage. Jacob agrees on one condition: Shechem and his people must get circumcised. Shechem (who must really have a thing for Dinah) agrees. So after he and his people go under the knife and are “sore” (Gen. 34:25), Levi and Simeon slaughter the entire city for what Shechem did to their sister.

Are their actions justified? It’s not altogether clear. Genesis 34 doesn’t clearly say that Levi and Simeon are wrong. Neither does the chapter say they are right. It just tells the story. Personally, everything in me wants to cheer for these two brothers. I mean, the guy raped their sister! But later in Genesis, their violence seems to be condemned, not celebrated: “Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords.… For in their anger they killed men.… Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel” (Gen. 49:5–7). Even though I want to applaud their killing, Jacob condemns it. And it’s likely that the inspired author of Genesis agrees with Jacob.7

The Old Testament does not offer a blank check toward violence. Genesis shows that the patriarchs are not far from Eden. God’s desire for nonviolent peace remains the ideal—even when confronting injustice and enmity.

There are two main exceptions to this nonviolent shalom in the book: Genesis 9 and 14. In Genesis 9:5, God seems to allow the death penalty for murders.

Whoever sheds the blood of man,

by man shall his blood be shed,

for God made man in his own image. (v. 6)

This verse elevates the sanctity of human life and therefore condemns murder by giving the strictest of penalties: death. However, several questions surround this verse. Is Genesis 9:6 a proverb or a command? In other words, does Genesis 9:6 give a general principle or an absolute command? You may assume the latter, but it’s interesting that even God didn’t kill Cain for murdering Abel. The same goes for Moses, David, and other murderers in the Old Testament. And does this verse give humans authority to administer the death penalty, or does it say that God will punish the murderer?8 The Hebrew is not as clear as our English translations imply. These questions should caution us against racing to Genesis 9:6 to show that God wants all societies to institute the death penalty. In any case, know that God will later institute the death penalty in the law of Moses, so Genesis 9:6 probably anticipates that law. But let us not ignore the plain meaning of this verse: God fiercely condemns murder, because all people are made in His image.

In Genesis 14, a bunch of kings take Lot captive, and Abram goes to get him back. The text says that Abram “led forth his trained men” and “divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and defeated them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus” (Gen. 14:14–15). Though it’s probable that Abram’s militia used violence, the text leaves out the details. Most importantly, Genesis 14 doesn’t say that God commanded Abram to do this, nor does it sanction his actions. All is says is what Abram did without commenting on whether it was good or bad. The Bible often describes what a person did but doesn’t say that we should imitate him or her. We need to sort out whether the story is described or prescribed, or what I will call later the “is” and the “ought.” Abram fought against the kings to get his nephew back (the “is”), but this doesn’t mean that we “ought” to do the same.

In the end, Genesis 14 doesn’t clearly endorse violence, and it doesn’t celebrate violence in any explicit way.9

VIOLENCE IN OLD TESTAMENT LAW

Such aversion toward violence begins to change when we get to the law of Moses. By law of Moses I’m referring to all the commandments God gave Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai. These commandments are the dos and don’ts recorded in Exodus through Deuteronomy. And there are many commandments that sanction some sort of violence among the people of Israel. Much of the violence is punishment for crimes, including the death penalty for murdering someone (Exod. 21:12–14, 19; Lev. 24:17, 21), hitting one’s parents (Exod. 21:15, 17; Lev. 20:9), kidnapping (Exod. 21:16; Deut. 24:7), sacrificing a child to the god Molech (Lev. 20:3), or committing a whole range of other offenses. These laws may or may not seem problematic to you. After all, they only allow violence as punishment for wrongdoing, even if some of the wrongs (such as hitting your parents) don’t seem to merit such stringent penalties. I should point out, however, that in fifteen of the sixteen cases where the death penalty is sanctioned, other penalties such as a stiff monetary fine are allowed. The criminal doesn’t have to go to the chopping block.10 And some crimes, such as theft or damage to someone else’s property, receive a rather light penalty compared to other cultures in the world at that time.11 The Bible doesn’t sanction mutilation as punishment, but other cultures would hack off hands, ears, noses, and other body parts for a whole range of offenses.12

So the perceived strictness or violent nature of these biblical laws must be understood in light of other ancient cultures rather than our own.

The most glaring concern comes when the Old Testament sanctions wholesale slaughter of the Canaanites. Israel’s “warfare policy” has raised an ageless ethical problem for anyone who looks to the Old Testament for moral guidance. For instance, God commands Israel to

save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the LORD your God has commanded. (Deut. 20:16–17; cf. 7:1–2)

God tells Israel to slaughter everyone living within the borders of the Promised Land. We have a term for this sort of thing. We call it genocide.

So what does an enemy-loving, peacemaking, cheek-turning follower of Jesus do with this seemingly bloodthirsty God who condones violence in the Old Testament but not in the New?

One way to solve the tension is to recognize that the old and new covenants are different. Please note: I didn’t say that the God of the old and the God of the new are different. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But sometimes His rules change because His relationship to humanity is taken to a new level. The same is true for us. I don’t let my five-year-old drive my car, but when she’s sixteen, I just might let her. And I don’t let my nine-year-old daughter date boys, but when she turns … thirty-five, I might entertain the thought. You get the point. Just because something is commanded under the old covenant doesn’t mean it’ll be the same in the new. So I could save both you and me a lot of time by just skipping to the New Testament and ignoring the Old, not because it’s authored by a different God, but because God’s rules in the Old Testament are different from those in the New. God’s relationship with Israel was different from God’s relationship with the church.

There is a good deal of truth to this, but I’m uncomfortable driving such a thick wedge between the old and new covenants. They’re not the same, certainly. But didn’t Jesus say that He came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17)? Therefore, instead of writing off the violence in the Old Testament as a thing of the past, I’m going to explore a more cohesive way of understanding the Old Testament’s relation to the New. Yes, there is much discontinuity between the two. That’s undeniable. But there’s a good deal of continuity as well. And this is where our narrative approach will help us.

In short, the law was not God’s ideal moral code for all people of all time. Rather, God met the Israelites where they were and began to take “incremental steps” toward His moral ideal.13 Nonviolence—it’s not just a New Testament invention. It’s the capstone of the Old.

THE INTENTION OF THE LAW

Not everything in the law was intended to embody God’s ideal ethic—His perfect way of doing things for all people of every age. The law, rather, was intended to meet the Israelites where they were and set them on the right path toward the ideal. Many laws given in Exodus through Deuteronomy, in fact, were not God’s ideal moral code—His Edenic ethic, if you will. Rather, they were glimpses of God’s ideal that would be revealed fully in Christ. In other words, the law of Moses was designed to guide a particular nation, living in a particular land, for a specific time and in a specific culture.14

What we have in the law of Moses is a moral code that both accommodates to and improves upon the ethical systems of the surrounding nations. Here’s what I mean.15

The law of Moses accommodates to some of the moral norms of the ancient Near East (i.e., the cultures and nations that existed during Israel’s time). Some of these moral norms include polygamy, slavery, and divorce, as we’ll discuss. This is the world Israel lived in. To exist, they had to take part in these structures while at the same time critiquing them. And this is what the law of Moses did. It didn’t outlaw every less-than-perfect cultural practice; rather, the law took the practice as it was and improved it.

Take polygamy, for example. A classic example of God tolerating this less-than-perfect practice is seen when Abram takes Hagar to be his second wife (Gen. 16:3). As the story goes, Abram’s first wife, Sarai, is barren, so she tells Abram to marry Hagar in order to produce offspring. This was a common practice of the day and was tolerated by God.16 Now, God does rebuke Abram for failing to trust Him to give Sarai a son, but He doesn’t condemn Abram for taking a second wife. Polygamy, especially when one wife was barren, was tolerated by God but was not the moral ideal.

It’s clear from Genesis 1–2 that God’s Edenic ideal was monogamy, not polygamy. But by the time Israel came on the scene, polygamy was a common part of the culture, and God didn’t do away with polygamy overnight. Instead, He worked within this non-ideal form of marriage and improved it. For instance, Deuteronomy 21 says that “if a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved … he may not treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the unloved, who is the firstborn” (vv. 15–16). Now you may think: What’s the guy doing with two wives? And why doesn’t God nip the problem in the bud and condemn polygamy right then and there? Because again: God accommodates to this less-than-ideal practice, while at the same time improving it. In Deuteronomy 21, God improves upon the way polygamy was typically played out in the ancient world, where the sons of the unloved wife had no rights. Here, God works within a broken system to gradually improve it until it’s eventually done away with. Polygamy in Israel was much more humane than it was in the surrounding cultures.

The same goes for slavery. The Old Testament law doesn’t condemn slavery outright, even though slavery falls short of the Edenic ideal. Slavery was part of the ancient societal structures, yet God doesn’t crush these structures immediately. Rather, He takes incremental steps toward the ideal moral code in which there is no slavery. As part of these incremental steps, God improves upon the nature of slavery. Slaves were treated brutally in the ancient world. They weren’t considered human and didn’t have any rights. But in the Mosaic law there is a “humanized attitude toward servants/slaves” as Israel moves toward an “ultimate ethic” where slavery will be banished altogether.17

For instance, the law of Moses forbids a master from physically abusing his slave, but in other ancient cultures, the master could do whatever he wanted to his slave.18 According to other nations, slaves were nothing more than living tools, pieces of property. But in the Bible, slaves are treated with more human dignity. Israel is also commanded to offer refuge for slaves who ran away from a foreign nation (Deut. 23:15–16). Such laws, though, were foreign to—and a moral improvement upon—the laws of other nations, where harboring runaway slaves was punishable by huge fines or sometimes death, while the returned slave would be mutilated!19 Yes, Israel accommodated to the cultural practices of the day (slavery), but God made incremental improvements upon such practices (a much more humane treatment of slaves).

Perhaps the clearest example of this incremental improvement comes with the law’s perspective on divorce. The Old Testament law appears more lenient on divorce than the New Testament. Jesus Himself affirms: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). In other words, God accommodated to their hard hearts by allowing divorce in some circumstances. And yet, Jesus affirms that Moses’s allowance was not the Edenic ideal: “From the beginning it was not so.” Jesus sought to restore that Genesis 1–2 ideal, and He’ll do the same with violence. Stay tuned.

These three examples (polygamy, slavery, and divorce) show that God both accommodates to and improves upon the ethical systems of the surrounding nations.

Paul’s writings in the New Testament offer a fitting commentary on this temporary nature of the law. Paul recognizes that the law served the purpose of guiding Israel for a period of time but was not intended to give us never-ending moral absolutes. In Galatians 3, he says that the law was Israel’s “guardian until Christ came,” but after He came “we are no longer under a guardian” (vv. 24–25).20 The law was the ethical authority for those living under the old covenant but not for those in the new covenant.21 This doesn’t mean that the law is totally irrelevant for Christians. Indeed, Paul himself finds underlying principles in the law that are relevant for today, and Jesus Himself sought to draw out the true intention of the law.22 But the specific application of all the culturally bound laws given to Israel—what to do when your ox gores your neighbor, or how to build an altar to sacrifice your goat23—was designed to guide Israel for a specific time. God never intended the law to be binding on all people of all time. Jesus, not Moses, reveals God’s ideal ethic.24

To sum it up, the law of Moses reveals God’s progression toward an ideal moral code but isn’t in itself the ideal moral code. Paul Copan expressed this well:

Mosaic times were indeed “crude” and “uncultured” in many ways. So Sinai legislation makes a number of moral improvements without completely overhauling ancient Near Eastern social structures and assumptions. God “works with” Israel as he finds her. He meets his people where they are while seeking to show them a higher ideal in the context of ancient Near Eastern life.25

So what does this have to do with violence and warfare? As with polygamy, slavery, and divorce, the law of Moses accommodates to and offers moral improvements upon ancient Near Eastern warfare policy and violence. From our perspective, the Old Testament seems like an ongoing bloodbath. Compared to the laws of other nations, however, the Old Testament’s laws regarding war and violence are quite tame, and in some cases absurd. To understand violence in the Old Testament, therefore, we must view it within the “redemptive movement” of God’s plan. God meets Israel in its brutally violent world and takes incremental steps away from such violence and toward peace and nonviolence.

We’ll see this play out in the next chapter more clearly. Israel had a policy of warfare that not only accommodated to the warfare policy of the surrounding nations, but also improved upon it to pave the way back to Eden—the place where trees of life are nourished.

NOTES

1. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 31.

2. C. S. Cowles, “Radical Discontinuity,” in Show Them No Mercy, ed. Stanley Gundry (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 28–29. For a similar perspective, see Eric Siebert, The Violence of Scripture (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012).

3. Claus Westermann, “Peace (Shalom) in the Old Testament,” in The Meaning of Peace, ed. Perry B. Yoder and Willard M. Swartley (Elkhardt, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1992), 37–70.

4. The Hebrew word hamas (“violence”) occurs sixty times in the Old Testament. It is almost always used of physical violence toward fellow humans (Gen. 49:5; Judg. 9:24). Sometimes the word refers to extreme wickedness where physical violence may or may not be in view (Isa 53:8; 59:6). On a few rare occasions, God is said to be the agent of violence, but this seems to be from the perspective of the one suffering and not from God (see Job 19:7; 21:27; Lam. 2:6). See I. Swart and C. Van Dam, “Hamas,” in New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis, ed. Willem A. VanGemeren (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997), 2.177–180.

5. Gen. 32:4, 5, 18; 33:8, 13

6. Gen. 32:13, 18, 20, 21; 33:10

7. Whether God agrees with Jacob or with Simeon and Levi is debated. Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman said that the narrator of Genesis seems to support the brothers’ actions in Gen. 34 and that it’s unclear how the inspired narrator thinks about Jacob’s condemnation of it in Gen. 49 (personal conversation). The fact that the brothers have the last word in Gen. 34:31 seems to support this: “Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?” At the same time, Jacob’s words of condemnation in Gen. 49 seem to reflect God’s point of view, especially since the judgment that “I will divide them … and scatter them” refers to God’s judgment, not Jacob’s (see Claus Westermann, Genesis 37–50 [Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002], 226).

8. Scholars are divided on these questions. See the discussion in Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 467. If Gen. 9:6 is a proverb, then it should be understood as a general principle, not an absolute command. Jesus says a similar proverb in Matt. 26:52: “For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” This is a principle, not a hard-and-fast command or promise that always, everywhere comes true. Some warriors took up the sword but didn’t die by the sword. Scholars are also divided over how to translate the middle phrase in 9:6. Most translations read, “by man shall his blood be shed” (as in the ESV), which means that humans are to administer the death penalty for murderers. However, the Hebrew phase ba’adam could be translated “for that man his blood shall be shed” (as in the NEB), which is how the Greek Old Testament (LXX) reads. This latter translation says that God will mete out the punishment for murderers with or without a human agent. And thus, the death penalty by human hands would not necessarily be in view. See the discussion in Victor Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1–17 (NICOT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990), 315.

9. Heb. 7:1 refers to this incident as the “slaughter of the kings” and that Melchizedek “blessed him” upon his return. Hebrews still doesn’t explicitly endorse Abram’s violent actions. It says only that Melchizedek blessed him when he returned.

10. Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011), 95.

11. Property damage did not demand the death penalty in the Old Testament, but in other cultures it did. The Babylonian code of Hammurabi (ca. 1750 BC) sanctions the death penalty for robbery, property damage, and a whole host of other crimes where life was not harmed (e.g. Laws of Hammurabi §6–11, 21–22, 25; Chris Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004], 308).

12. The only reference in Old Testament law where mutilation is thought to be in view is Deut. 25:11–12. However, the reference to cutting off the woman’s hand could be translated as shaving her pubic hair.

13. The phrase “incremental steps” is from Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?

14. There are some laws that were intended to be more absolute, however. When a law is taken up in later parts of the Old Testament, especially in Wisdom Literature, it may be less culturally bound. And, of course, if a law is taken up by Jesus or the apostles and applied to the church, it also should not be limited to the Israelite culture (for instance, the Ten Commandments, except perhaps the Sabbath law).

15. My argument in this section is in agreement with several scholars including Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, 57–69; Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, esp. 48–75; William J. Webb, Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001), 30–66.

16. Cuneiform tablets discovered at Nuzi (Iraq) document the exact same practice of a barren wife giving her slave girl to her husband as a wife. For instance: “If Gilimnimu (the bride) will not bear children, Gilimnimu shall take a woman of N/Lullu land (whence the choicest slaves were obtained) as a wife for Shennima (the bridegroom)” (cited in Tremper Longman, How to Read Genesis [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2005], 97).

17. Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, 63.

18. On slavery, see Wright, Old Testament Ethics, 333–337; Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, 124–157.

19. Laws of Hammurabi §16; Laws of Lipit-Ishtar §12; Laws of Eshunna § 49–50; Hittite Laws §24; see Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, 131–132.

20. Gal. 3:15–29

21. 2 Cor. 3:7–18; cf. Heb. 8:6–13

22. 1 Cor. 9:8–12; Matt. 5–7

23. Exod. 21:28–32; 20:24–26

24. Matt. 5–7; John 1:16–18; Heb. 3:1–6

25. Copan, Is God a Moral Monster?, 61.