According to the Scriptures?

The Challenge of Using the Bible in Social, Moral, and Political Questions

J. W. Rogerson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781134903306
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

If something is commanded in the Bible, the command must surely be obeyed if we are to be true to the Bible. This is what many people think, especially when they hear representatives of churches today arguing about moral issues. In fact, the matter is not as simple as this, and at various periods of history, churches have had quite differing views on how biblical commandments should be understood, and on whether they can be applied to their situations, if at all. The book falls into two sections. The first sketches the history of the use of the Bible in social, moral and political questions from the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament, to the present day. The second part looks at some case studies, including human and sexual relationships, life issues, attitudes to lawful authority, and the changing of interest.

Chapter 1CAN WE “GO BY THE BOOK”?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315541266-1

Some years ago the Bible Societies in Britain ran a campaign to encourage more people to read the Bible, under the slogan “Go buy the book; go by the book.” If we ignore the violence done to the English language in the first part, it has to be admitted that it is an eye-catching slogan. But what does it mean in practice? How does one “go by the book”?

Let us assume that someone has been persuaded by the slogan to buy a Bible, and that she begins to read it in order to discover what it means to “go by it” – to follow its commands. Because most people (except those who look first at the last pages of a detective story) open a book at the beginning, our reader starts with the first chapter of Genesis. The first commandment to the human race that she finds (Gen. 1:28) is to be fruitful and multiply. No doubt it made sense to have large families in a world in which many more children died in infancy than die similarly in today's affluent parts of the world. There was also the factor that war and disease made life expectancy much shorter in the ancient world than in the west today. But does the commandment make sense in today's over-populated world at the beginning of a century that will probably see even greater competition between nations for ever-diminishing natural resources such as water and oil?

The next command in Genesis (1:28) is to fill the earth, to subdue it and to have dominion over its other non-human inhabitants. The first part of the commandment, to fill the earth, has certainly been achieved; but it is arguable that the second and third parts have been so over-achieved that the human race ought to be diminishing the power it has to destroy rain forests and to drive many non-human species to extinction. Indeed, the ecological crisis facing today's world has been blamed on these verses (by White, 1967)!

In Genesis 1:29–30 our reader will find a passage that apparently envisages that humans will be vegetarians. Food for the human race will consist of “every plant yielding seed…and every tree with seed in its fruit.” If our reader is surprised by this and reads further on, she will find that Genesis 9:3–4 permits humans to eat the meat of animals, provided that it is prepared in such a way that the blood is first drained from it. This way of killing animals for food is practised today by Jews (kosher meat) and Moslems (halal meat) but not by Christians. If our reader reads further she will discover that not all animals may be consumed. Leviticus 11:2–23 and Deuteronomy 14:3–20 list animals whose meat may not be consumed. They include the hare and the pig. With regard to creatures that live in the water, only those with fins and scales are permitted, which presumably means that eels, crabs, lobsters, prawns and oysters are prohibited. If our reader looks almost to the end of the Bible, she will find that in Acts 10 Peter has a vision which apparently abolishes the distinction between clean (permitted) and unclean (prohibited) animals, and that Jesus is said at Mark 7:19 to have declared all foods to be clean (i.e., permitted for consumption). Our reader's researches will have uncovered the fact that “going by the book” is not simply a matter of reading a passage and obeying it. There may be other passages that modify it, as the permission to eat meat modifies the command to be vegetarian. The concession to eat meat may then first be restricted to certain types of meat, as in Leviticus 11 and so on; and may then be abolished altogether, as in Mark 7:19 and Acts 10. This will at least help our reader to understand why Jews (and Moslems) do not eat pork, while Christians do; but it will also be clear that some rules are needed about how passages are to be understood if one is going to “go by the book.”

The next passage that our reader will meet is Genesis 2:2–3 which explains that God blessed and hallowed the seventh day, because he rested on this day, having completed the creation of the world. If we assume that our reader has read about the Sabbath day and that she follows up what she has read in Genesis 2:2–3, she will discover that the Sabbath day and the need to imitate God by resting upon it (i.e., doing no work) is a prominent theme in the Bible. The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:2–17 and Deuteronomy 5:6–21 explicitly say that no work should be done on the Sabbath, and Exodus 20:11 justifies the commandment by referring back to Genesis 2:2–3. There are other passages that respect the injunction. Exodus 23:12 says that the Sabbath should be observed in order that the working domesticated animals and the slaves in a household should be allowed to rest for one day in seven. An earlier passage (Exod. 16:22–30) describes how the Israelites in the wilderness gathered twice as much manna on the sixth day than they did on previous days, so that they would not have to gather any on the Sabbath. At Numbers 15:32–36 a man is stoned to death because he was gathering sticks on the Sabbath day, presumably to light a fire. Jeremiah 17:19–27 condemns those who carry burdens in or out of their houses or the city of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, while Nehemiah (governor of Jerusalem in the latter part of the fifth century bce) takes measures to enforce the observance of the Sabbath (Neh. 13:19–22). In the New Testament, although Jesus comes into conflict with some of the religious teachers concerning whether it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1–6), he attends the synagogue worship on the Sabbath (Luke 4:16 – “he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the Sabbath day”). One of the surprising things about the Sabbath is that although it is such a prominent theme in the Bible, and there is no passage in the Bible that says that it has been abrogated, or superseded by Sunday, the almost overwhelming practice of Christians is to ignore the Bible's commandment about resting (i.e., doing no work) on the Sabbath (i.e., Friday evening to Saturday evening). Our reader will no doubt be curious to learn why, and upon what authority, such an apparently unambiguous command in the Bible has come to be so totally ignored, among Christians at any rate.

Genesis, chapters 2 and 3, contains material that has been used to teach male superiority over females. The man is created before the woman in Genesis 2:7 and indeed the woman is created from part of him to be a helper (Gen. 2:18). Following the disobedience of the first human couple, the woman is told that her husband will rule over her (Gen. 3:16). If our reader turns to the New Testament looking for an abrogation of these indications of male superiority, she will be disappointed. Ephesians 5:22 instructs wives to be subject to their husbands, while 1 Timothy 2:11–15, referring back to Genesis 3, declares that no woman is to teach or to have authority over men. Our reader does not have to be an ardent feminist to feel that such teaching hardly accords with the situation in the West today, where women work in all the professions in which men are active, including, in some Christian churches and also branches of Judaism, the exercise of priesthood, ministry, or the office of Rabbi. Does “going by the book” mean that such manifestations of female emancipation are contrary to God's will? This would certainly be the view of those churches that follow such an authoritative conservative work as Grudem (1994: 459–66). Yet the problem of the apparent counter-cultural demands of the Bible becomes particularly acute when the question of the death penalty is considered.

Genesis 9:6 states clearly that “whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” That is to say, the punishment for homicide, namely the intentional killing of another human being (other than in war, for the Old Testament seems to take it for granted that killing in war is legitimate within certain limitations) is the judicial execution of the murderer. This is immediately problematic in today's world, for many nations, including those that were traditionally Christian in culture, have abolished the death penalty altogether. Great Britain, for example, as a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights will not extradite a person to a country that retains the death penalty. Clearly, if there ever was a case of resisting cultural change by being faithful to the teaching of the Bible, it was on this issue; but the battle seems to have been lost. One does not hear “Bible-believing Christians” actively campaigning for the return of the death penalty in Britain, nor does one hear their leaders denouncing their country's apparent disregard for biblical teaching on this matter.

However, if our reader looks beyond Genesis 9 to Exodus 21, she will find that the death penalty is also required for the following offences:

• striking one's father or mother (Exod. 21:15)
• stealing a man (Exod. 21:16)
• cursing one's parents (Exod. 21:17).

In subsequent passages the death penalty is demanded for:

• being a sorceress (Exod. 22:18)
• having intercourse with an animal (Exod. 22:19)
• sacrificing to another god (Exod. 15:20)
• committing adultery (Lev. 20:10)
• various types of incest (Lev. 20:11–12)
• homosexual intercourse (Lev. 20:13)
• violating the Sabbath (Num. 15:32–36)
• inciting people to worship other gods (Deut. 13:1–18)
• being a stubborn and rebellious son (Deut. 21:18–21).

The point hardly needs to be made that anyone who maintained today that “going by the book” involved obedience to the regulations that prescribed the death penalty for these offences, would be regarded as insane. But this conclusion has implications for the earlier discussion about male superiority. If biblical commandments about enforcing the death penalty are either no longer appropriate to the modern world or are no longer enforceable, why should this not also be true of the Bible's teaching on male superiority? “Liberals” are often accused by “conservatives” in the churches of picking and choosing what they want from the Bible, whereas the “conservatives” are faithful to biblical teaching. But our reader might well ask why she should take notice of what the Bible says about male superiority when “Bible-believing Christians” clearly do not insist on the death penalty for adultery or cursing one's parents.

If our reader has not given up by now, she may reach Leviticus chapters 18 and 20 and may wonder what sort of families are implied by them. Leviticus 18:8–9 says that a man may not uncover the nakedness of (i.e., have intercourse with) his father's wife or the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother. It seems odd to refer to one's mother and sister in this way, until it is realized that what is envisaged here is a polygamous family, that is, one in which a man has more than one wife. What is being prohibited is not intercourse between a man and his mother or sister, but intercourse between a man and one of his father's other wives, and between a man and the daughter that his father has had with another wife. Our reader will remember that various characters in the Old Testament have more than one wife, including Abraham (he fathers Ishmael by means of his wife's maid Hagar, Genesis 16:1–16), Jacob (who marries two sisters, Gen. 29:15–30), Samuel's father Elkanah (1 Sam. 1:2), David (1 Chron. 3:1–7 names seven wives), and Solomon (1 Kgs 11:3 mentions 700 wives and 300 concubines). These practices are clearly at variance with the laws of modern nations.

But Leviticus 18 and 20 became the basis for the rules formulated by the churches about who could marry whom. They laid down the close family relationships within which marriage was not permitted. Until the introduction of the Alternative Services in the Church of England in the late 1960s, generations of choirboys diverted their attention from boring sermons by reading the “Table of Kindred and Affinity” appended to the back of older printings of the Book of Common Prayer which listed those who were “forbidden in Scripture and in our laws to marry together.” Among those listed was “Wife's sister,” prohibiting a man from marrying the sister of his deceased wife. In the late-nineteenth century various attempts were made in the British parliament to abolish this particular prohibition, the attempt being opposed by the Church of England on the ground that the prohibition was part of the law of God. A supporter of the change was the playwright George Bernard Shaw, the plot of whose Major Barbara (1905) partly depended on the fact that marriage to the sister of one's deceased wife was legal in Australia but illegal in Britain. Thus, in the play, Adolphus Cusins, whose mother was the sister of her husband's first (deceased) wife, had been legitimately born from an Australian perspective but had been born out of wedlock according to British law. In 1907 the law was changed in Britain in spite of opposition from the Church of England. After the Second World War the Church also changed its rules to allow such marriages, and the “Table of Kindred and Affinity” was amended accordingly. What this example shows is that, in at least one particular, a national Church abandoned its attempt to uphold the “law of God” as derived from the Bible in the face of secular pressures, not to mention common sense.

Because our reader is blessed with particular stamina, she keeps reading until she gets to Deuteronomy 20:10, where she is frankly shocked by what she reads. She finds a passage saying that if the Israelites reach a city in time of war that will not accept the peace terms being offered to it, and in subsequent fighting defeat that city, then all the males in it are to be “put to the sword” (i.e., killed), while the women, children, cattle and other things found there, will be spoil for the Israelites. Our reader will surely be right to protest that such behaviour falls below even the dubious practices of supposedly civilized nations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and that it is certainly in breach of various Geneva conventions. She will begin to wonder whether those who advised her to “go by the book” had ever read this far themselves, and how they would justify such injunctions as expressions of the will of God.

It is time to end this account of our reader's experiences of going through the first five books of the Bible, and to draw up a balance sheet. She has discovered the following things:

1. Some commands cannot be taken at face value because they may be expanded, modified or countermanded by other biblical passages. This was illustrated by the command to humanity to be vegetarian in Genesis 1:29, the modification allowing the consumption of meat in Genesis 9:3–4 and the question of which foods were permitted and which were prohibited.
2. Some commands appear to have been completely disregarded without any justification for this in the Bible itself. An example is the injunction to rest on the Sabbath day (i.e., from Friday evening to Saturday evening).
3. Some commandments could not be observed in today's world even if someone desired to do so. Cases in point would be the application of the death penalty to people who struck or cursed their parents, or who committed adultery, as well as the injunction to kill all the males of a conquered city and to take what remained of the population and possessions, as spoil.
4. There is a problem because some Christian groups hold that biblical teaching on male superiority is applicable in today's world, while apparently not wanting to claim the same for the cases mentioned in paragraph 3 above. It is reasonable to want to know who decides what remains applicable and what ceases to be applicable, and on what grounds. A cynic could be forgiven for thinking that only those biblical commandments remain relevant that have not been declared illegal in modern nation states.

In the remainder of the book attempts will be made to deal with these, and other similar questions. The next chapter will consider Jewish insights into the matter, since the observance of commandments in the Hebrew Bible is at the heart of Judaism. Subsequent chapters will sketch the history of the use of the Bible in moral questions in the Christian churches, and the book will conclude with three specific case studies.

Chapter 2“GOING BY THE BOOK”: INSIGHTS FROM JUDAISM

DOI: 10.4324/9781315541266-2

Following the commandments of God as set down in the Bible is at the heart of Judaism. An observant Jew believes that God has graciously revealed his will to Israel, the people of God, so that his people can be assured in every detail of daily life that they are following God's commandments. However, it is not just the written Bible that is the source of this knowledge for Jews. The written law contained in the Bible is completed by an oral law, believed to have been revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, and to have been passed down by word of mouth through many generations until it began to be set down in writing early in the Common Era. It is contained in the Mishnah, Tosephta, the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds, and its implications for modern living are drawn out from the principles contained in these writings as well as in the Bible.

It is not surprising that the Bible alone cannot be a complete guide to life in today's world. Its writers knew nothing of modern science, technology and travel, and the problems that are bound up with these things. Thus, road accidents or delays and cancellations in air travel or heart tran...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 Can We “Go by the Book”?
• Chapter 2 “Going by the Book”: Insights from Judaism
• Chapter 3 The Old Testament Law in the New Testament
• Chapter 4 The Apostolic Fathers and Apologists
• Chapter 5 From the Third Century to the Reformation
• Chapter 6 The Reformation
• Chapter 7 The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
• Chapter 8 The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
• Chapter 9 A New Approach: Example not Precept
• Chapter 10 Case Studies
• Bibliography
• Index of References
• Index of Names and Subjects