God and War. Some thoughts about how we interpret the Old Testament

by Father Ian Dalgleish

Photograph: ‘Damage in the Gaza Strip during October 2023’ by Al Araby 

Earlier in September, in connection with an appeal from the World Council of Churches for a Day of Prayer for Peace, members of the Catholic churches in Bala, Harlech and Gellilydan prayed at Sunday Mass for an end to the violent conflicts that are taking place in different parts of the world today. I offered the following reflection on the subject.

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Recently I heard an American politician being interviewed by a news journalist about the Israel-Gaza conflict and he said that this isn’t the time for the New Testament turn-the-other-cheek stuff; this is the time for some Old Testament waging of war. Those weren’t his exact words - I’m quoting from memory - but that was the gist of his answer.

One of the aspects of the Old Testament writings which many people today find unsettling is the large part that violence and war play in the history of the Chosen People and their relationship with God, and the way that God very often seems to approve - or command - that violence be carried out. We can also think of the way that some of the psalms pray for the savage defeat and humiliation of enemies.

These passages of Scripture are treated as a gold-mine by people like Richard Dawkins who like to say that God is obviously a cruel, violent monster, and that no intelligent and moral person could possibly believe in, and worship, a God with this sort of moral character.

Perhaps ironically, atheists like Richard Dawkins and certain Christian church communities have one important thing in common: they both insist on interpreting the pages of the Bible in a literal and fundamentalist way – either to justify violence today, carried out with God’s approval and encouragement (the Christian fundamentalists), or else to show what a vindictive and repugnant person God really is (the atheists).

The Catholic way of reading the Old Testament (though not only the Catholic way, I'm sure) is to see it as the story of God’s gradual revelation of himself, his slow, patient revelation of his nature, his will and his plan of salvation for the human race. 

A example of a Catholic teaching document, from the Pontifical Biblical Commission 

(click on the picture for a link to an online version of the document)

To receive and understand this revelation the books of the Old Testament have to be read in their historical context, first of all, and, second, they have to be read as the type of literature that their authors wrote them as. Thirdly, and even more importantly, all the events in the Old Testament, covering several centuries, have to be understood as moving towards the coming of Christ and the full revelation of God’s nature and God’s values.

Scripture: the word of God in the words of men

It’s often said that the Bible is the Word of God in the words of men.

In other words, the Bible is certainly inspired by God, but there are always elements of the human authors’ ideas and attitudes mixed-in. The Old Testament has to be interpreted very carefully, and, as I just remarked, always in the light of God’s final saving activity in the person and mission of Christ.

For one thing, in the Old Testament, the witness to God is inconsistent. Greed, violence, social injustice, sexual immorality are frequently condemned. These tendencies are seen as expressions of our damaged human nature and human beings’ rejection of God’s moral law. But in other instances the Old Testament writers are perfectly happy to justify and approve of violence and injustice, when it’s carried out by Israel’s leaders.

Here we have to remember that the accounts of the wars waged by the Chosen People against their enemies were written many centuries after the events, and they were embellished with elements of epic conflict, with Israel’s leaders being described as having all sorts of legendary and heroic characteristics. This is what writers in every culture did at that time.

That means that very often we need to read the books of the Old Testament the way we read and understand Jesus’ parables and his other sayings, such as: ‘if your hand offends you, cut it off, if your eye offends you, pluck it out’. We know automatically that Jesus doesn’t mean these instructions to be taken literally. We understand immediately that he's using striking, exaggerated language to make an important point about the need to control our attraction to the pleasures of the senses.

We have to do the same sort of thing with the Old Testament authors.

In the accounts of Israel’s wars, for example, the numbers of people involved, the actions, and other parts of the story are all exaggerated to make a moral point, and everyone knew at the time that these accounts weren’t a scrupulously accurate history text book. History books in the modern sense didn’t even exist at that time.

 The Battle of Jericho by Jean Fouquet, (c. 1420-1481)

So when Joshua invaded Canaan and the walls of Jericho collapsed because a group of priests walked round the city walls blowing trumpets, people at the time knew that this isn’t literal history. In real wars, at that time just as much as today, walls don’t collapse because of the blowing of trumpets. This is epic, legendary, heroic writing.

But behind the epic style the authors make some important historical and moral points.

One is that the whole culture of Canaan was deeply immoral, with parents offering their children’s lives as a sacrifice to their pagan gods and a religious cult of prostitution and bizarre sexual practices. The inspired biblical writers are contrasting this evil society with the society of the Chosen People founded on the Covenant with God, on the moral code of the Ten Commandments, on the Law of Moses with its demands for holiness and justice and the care of the poor and weak, and so on. 

The second point is that Israel wasn’t some great massive super-power destroying a poor little weak neighbour. The situation was the other way round and the story of the conquest of Canaan is turned into a morality tale about God always being on the side of the weak and the righteous and always opposed to the strong and arrogant and wicked. What’s presented as an historical account is more like a parable, a story with a clear moral lesson.

Jesus the fulness of God's self-revelation

When Jesus finally appears on the scene his teaching surprised and shocked many people because, on his own authority, he simply did away with inaccurate notions of God’s moral values when he declared: ‘you have heard it said…but now I say to you…’.

As against the idea that revenge and retribution are God’s idea of justice Jesus taught that what God really commands is: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you. And of course at the end of his public ministry Jesus went to his death refusing to resort to violence, refusing even to defend himself from the accusations that were made against him.

What Jesus taught and practised were the values that God had always held. God didn’t somehow change his personality over time from being a God of impulsive temper and violence to being a God of love and peace.

What did happen over time is that God adapted himself to the limited understanding of those with whom he was communicating. He gradually and patiently revealed his true nature, so that in terms of the faith of the Jewish people the understanding of what God was really like expanded and deepened and developed - away from the idea of God as a tribal God who only favoured his own people and approved of their violence to the God of the Sermon on the Mount. 

Biblical truth vs modern ideologies 

A still photo from the documentary film Bad Faith: Christian Nationalism’s Unholy War on Democracy 

 directed by Stephen Ujlaki and Chris Jones

There are many instances in the Old Testament where this is true. The main point for us is that, in the interests of proclaiming and defending an accurate picture of God, we, as the Christian community, have to criticise and reject all the attempts by people today to set aside the real God and his real values in favour of a man-made version which – often for political rather than religious motives - wants to align God with the very human desire to achieve goals by violence and injustice, using the argument that ‘God is on our side. God commands this’.

We have a duty to contradict these sorts of false images of God and to constantly put forward the true image. 

I hope I've given an accurate idea here of the Catholic approach to the Scriptures. If not then we have a saying: Si quid male dixi, totum relinquo correctioni Ecclesiae. If I've said anything wrong, I submit to the correction of the Church!