(The third and final excerpt on Old Testament morality from my book The Truth about God. This one picks up where yesterday's post ended.)
There is another problem with this attempted solution to the savagery promoted in the Bible [see previous post]. If worshipping other gods is regarded by Yahweh as such a great evil, why is the destruction of rival religious traditions no longer commanded by him today? What explains the change? One answer, offered by Gleason Archer, is that Christians don’t have to behave as the ancient Israelites did because, being empowered by the Holy Spirit within them, they “possess resources for resisting the corrupting influence of unconverted worldlings,” and are thus “able to lead [their] lives in the midst of a corrupt and degenerate non-Christian culture (whether in the Roman Empire or in modern secularized Europe or America) and still keep true to God.” It is for this reason that they “have no occasion as ambassadors for Christ to resort to physical weapons to protect [their] faith…” What Archer is maintaining here, in other words, is that if it were not for the empowering influence of the Holy Spirit, Christians would be justified in killing non-Christians! They don’t have to, but only because they have an inner strength that allows them to remain uncontaminated by the evil secularism and pagan religious practices that surround them. Such a view, however, is not only highly disturbing; it also fails to explain why the ancients couldn’t likewise have been given this kind of inner strength. ...
Quoted material: Gleason L. Archer Jr., Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, Zondervan, 1982, p. 159
There is another problem with this attempted solution to the savagery promoted in the Bible [see previous post]. If worshipping other gods is regarded by Yahweh as such a great evil, why is the destruction of rival religious traditions no longer commanded by him today? What explains the change? One answer, offered by Gleason Archer, is that Christians don’t have to behave as the ancient Israelites did because, being empowered by the Holy Spirit within them, they “possess resources for resisting the corrupting influence of unconverted worldlings,” and are thus “able to lead [their] lives in the midst of a corrupt and degenerate non-Christian culture (whether in the Roman Empire or in modern secularized Europe or America) and still keep true to God.” It is for this reason that they “have no occasion as ambassadors for Christ to resort to physical weapons to protect [their] faith…” What Archer is maintaining here, in other words, is that if it were not for the empowering influence of the Holy Spirit, Christians would be justified in killing non-Christians! They don’t have to, but only because they have an inner strength that allows them to remain uncontaminated by the evil secularism and pagan religious practices that surround them. Such a view, however, is not only highly disturbing; it also fails to explain why the ancients couldn’t likewise have been given this kind of inner strength. ...
Quoted material: Gleason L. Archer Jr., Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, Zondervan, 1982, p. 159
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