Is God a Moral Monster? How can I make sense of the OT God? with Dr. Paul Copan - Podcast Episode 92

The Old Testament and New Testament as One Unified God

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. At gotquestions .org, we receive a lot of questions about things in the Old Testament. And frequently, those questions have to do with why does God seem to be a very different God in the Old Testament than he does in the New Testament?

So our guest today is Dr. Paul Koppen. He is the author of, Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament Gods. So Paul, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Shay.

Great to be on with you and look forward to engaging these tough questions.

Yes, so Paul has a PhD from Marquette University and he's currently a professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University. And they're now offering a philosophy of religion major at that school. So if you have any questions about that, we'll include links to where you can learn more about Paul, about the school, and about his books in the show notes at the description on YouTube and also at podcast .gotquestions .org.

Why God Seems Different in the Old Testament and the New Testament

So Paul, just to start out, my first question for you is a little more of a general one. Why would you say that God seems so different in the Old Testament than he does in the New Testament?

I would say that the question is a matter of degree rather than kind. So we're not talking about two different gods, which the ancient heretic Marcion maintained, but rather what we see is that in the Old Testament, God is aligning himself with a nation that has boundaries.

There are punishments, civic punishments and penalties. There's a nation to be protected given its national boundaries and so forth. And so God aligns himself with a political power. And that means warfare.

That means punishments. That means protection from enemies and so forth. So that's of a different order than what we see going on in the New Testament where God, rather than aligning himself with a nation and engaging in power and force and so forth, comes in from the margins.

Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem, not in the palace. But even though God comes in from the margins, faces human temptations, trials, weakness, dies at the hands of the Romans, laying down his life and so forth, we actually don't eliminate the use of force or if you wanna call it violence, although God isn't called violent, that's wicked people do that sort of a thing in scripture, but God is not called violent, but God is acting in counter-violent measures to bring justice.

Force will be used for, for example, Paul, when his life is under threat, rather than taking vengeance himself against a mob, he leaves it in the hands of the Roman military to protect him. So it's not as though that's off limits, given in contrast to the Old Testament.

No, political power and the use of force is still legitimate. So we see in both testaments that God is loving and severe. Paul says in Romans 11, 22, behold the kindness and severity of God. But we also see that there is a greater emphasis on, again, a kind of a ramping up of love as exemplified in Jesus of Nazareth.

But it doesn't mean that wrath or judgment go away. There is also an intensification of that as well. That to turn away from Jesus to, like the book of Hebrews says, is to actually incur greater wrath, that there's a greater severity.

Jesus is saying, if Sodom and Gomorrah and other ancient cities like Tyre and Sidon, if the miracles performed in them had been performed in these cities like Bethsaida and Chorazin of Jesus' day, he said they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes.

And therefore it will be much more severe for these cities in Jesus' day than it was for Sodom and Gomorrah and so forth that were judged. So we don't see that going away. Now we see kindness and severity in both testaments.

And Jesus is one who's involved in that severity, driving out money changers from the temple. He threatens to bring judgment upon this false prophetess Jezebel in Revelation 2. In red letters, that he's gonna cast her on a bed of sickness and strike dead her heretical followers.

So again, this is Jesus speaking. And in fact, Jesus is aligned with the Old Testament judgments like Jude 5, where it says Jesus, after he had delivered the Israelites from Egypt, destroyed those who did not believe.

So it's not as though it's all Old Testament is harsh and wrathful. You get to the New Testament, it's kind and loving. No, kindness and severity are found in both. And that's the sort of thing that we need to unpack.

And I go into a lot more detail on that in a forthcoming book called, Is God a Vindictive Bully? That seeks to reconcile those portraits of the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament as being unified rather than having this bifurcation.

So that's something that's coming out in October, 2022.

Yeah, I had to read, not I had to, I got to read Is God a Moral Monster for an apologetics class at Dallas Theological Seminary recently, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So I'm really looking forward to the next book as well.

And I encourage our listeners to check that out. But so Paul, if I were to give you like our top three questions we get related to topics that you cover in your book, that will be our next points of conversation.

Whether the Old Testament Is Misogynistic

So number one, and this has become more frequent recently, is the Old Testament God misogynistic? As in, does he hate women? Why are some of the things said about women in the Old Testament, at least to our modern sensibilities, seems harsh, seems to assign women a very low role or a very low value.

So what's the best way to respond to that?

I tackle some of this in the Moral Monster book, as you mentioned, Shay, but also I elaborate on this in the forthcoming book, Is God a Vindictive Bully? In which I talk about how the term misogynistic is actually a false portrayal of what is going on.

We see for one thing, male and female made in the image of God, there's a fundamental equality, that's the biblical vision. We also see women who are involved in leadership positions in ancient Israel.

You think of Deborah, you think of even folks like Ruth, who are elevated and presented as dignified and strong virtuous persons. You see Esther, who is acting courageously, even someone like Miriam, who is a part of the leadership team that brings the Israelites out of Egypt.

You see various strong female characters throughout the Old Testament. And in fact, we could also talk about how the Proverbs 31 woman is one who acts very independently of her husband, who trusts in her, but she's engaged in commerce.

She's engaged in purchasing real estate. She's very industrious and she is someone who has her own life, as it were. So there is, in fact, one scholar, Carol Myers, who had been the president of the Society of Biblical Literature from Duke University.

She contests the idea that the term patriarchy applies to Old Testament Israel. She uses a term, heterarchy, that is women had their own distinct professions and guilds in the Old Testament and that they operated fairly independently of men in this regard.

And that men had their areas of engagement, warfare and so forth, but women had their own professional guilds as singers, as midwives, as those who engaged in even the production of grain and things in the home, that they had their own spheres of autonomy and that there was a basic understanding of partnership in marriage.

Usually, in ancient Israel, men were seen as like the buffer between the family and the rest of society. But Carol Myers says that this is a relatively, if you wanna call it, egalitarian society. And more and more scholars are coming to recognize that it's not misogynistic at all.

I mean, you look at the honor your father and mother, the book of Proverbs talking about paying attention to your father and mother. If you curse them, then your light will go out, that this is something that is not just pay attention to your honor your father, but your mother's just a piece of property or something.

No, there is that fundamental equality. And so that is part of the broader vision of Israel. Even if there are laws that take into account some social structures and deficiencies in the ancient Near East, we need to keep a bigger understanding of the vision of ancient Israel where there's this fundamental equality.

And also we need to keep in mind that just because things are described in the Old Testament, where someone is being mistreated like the nameless concubine at the end of the book of Judges, there are subtleties within the text that actually reinforce this woman as a person of a dignity that what was done against her was terrible and created an uproar in Israel.

And so just because something is described in these narratives, doesn't mean that it's being prescribed as though this is the way that things ought to be. And so that is the fundamental picture here. And God is the one who sees Israel as his wife.

It's a covenant picture. It's a picture of love. And God is routinely giving himself to the people of Israel, sacrificing himself, pleading with them, sending prophets so that they will repent and so forth.

So that there is this fundamental dignity regarding the female in ancient Israel.

Yeah, I agree. And granted, we're not denying that there are some passages in the Old Testament that are pretty hard to reconcile, even some laws that women being treated differently. But when I look at the Old Testament law, you have to remember that the laws were given in the ancient Near East in a particular time and cultural setting, God's desire was not to, in the sense he needed to redeem people's souls.

And that would transform how they behave rather than giving an absolute law that would represent his absolute perfect standards on absolutely everything. And to me, that's been a helpful way of thinking through things is that there's a specific purpose for the laws he gave and they don't all represent exactly what God would desire for our society to respond.

It's more that culture of that particular time, these were the commands. And if you look at ancient Israel, the Old Testament law in comparison to surrounding cultures, it was revolutionary and the freedoms, the responsibilities, the protections that he gave to women.

Right, yeah, and Jesus himself said that the certain laws within the law of Moses were given because of the hardness of people's hearts, not because this was the ideal legislation. So, and we also need to understand that the law of Moses was kind of like a booster rocket as someone has suggested, that it is something that gets Israel going, it moves them in a redemptive direction.

But when Christ comes for the new covenant, that what preceded it falls away. It's done its job. It's not that it's been unimportant, but it's done its job to prepare the way, to prepare a mindset, a culture, a worldview, to establish certain things so that when Christ comes, he actually moves them forward toward that redemptive goal in a way that the law of Moses was kind of paving the way for what Jesus would come to complete.

Yeah, absolutely, so thank you.

Excellent explanation. So question number two, we've just covered it basically, but I think it's worth mentioning just the other day we received a question who's this person was borderline ready to depart from the Christian faith because they read in the Old Testament this passage where a person was gathering sticks on the Sabbath to create a fire and Moses decided, or God even talked to Moses, Moses inquired of God and God commanded this person who was working on the Sabbath be put to death.

And there are other commands in the Old Testament law that seem wow, or even like we agree with the command, but not necessarily agree with the punishment. So what is the best response to this, to some of the laws that to us seem harsh?

Right, I cover some of these things in the Moral Monster book, but I go into a lot more detail in this book is God of Indictive Bully. And I spent a lot of time on these laws and punishments. In the ancient Near East, laws like stoning this person or burning that person, et cetera, they were never literally carried out.

We do have two exemplary cases, again, breaking the Sabbath, again, something that was known not to do. And then also another was cursing God, blaspheming God. So there were two exemplary punishments resulting in death, but that was not how things were generally done when it comes to adultery, even though it's technically capitally punishable.

You have 16 potentially capitally punishable crimes but only one is always to be the result in taking of life in retribution. And that is committing murder. If you commit murder, then there ought to be, there is no mercy for the murderer.

But all of these other punishments could be commuted to some sort of a monetary payment, including adultery, which is what we see routinely, not only in the law of Moses, but also in the scriptures beyond.

So, as we look at the history of Israel, we actually don't see these sorts of punishments carried out. And it was understood in the ancient Near East, both outside of Israel and in Israel, that these were simply sending a warning signal like adultery, bad things can happen, don't do it, is the implication.

But it's not as though these were actually literally carried out. We just don't have that sort of a record of those sorts of things. And again, it was just something to, is like hyperbole, to wake people up, to startle them, to awaken them, to know that this is something that you ought to avoid.

So I go into more detail on the question of laws and punishments. There can be some exemplary cases, like I mentioned the two of picking up sticks on the Sabbath and also the blaspheming of God, slandering the Lord.

But you see in the early church, when Ananias and Sapphira lie, they try to make themselves look more generous than they really were by giving to the church. And so they're struck down by God. Doesn't mean that God does that all the time, but it serves as a warning with this fledgling church to not to engage in these sorts of things.

So God will do those sorts of things, but that's not the norm. And so we see that in the Old Testament, we see a couple of kind of exemplary cases, but that's not how things were ordinarily carried out.

And everyone in the ancient Near East with regard to these sorts of penalties understood that.

Yeah, I remember several months ago, I led our church's youth group and we did kind of a Q and A time. And one person asked the question, why in the Old Testament was there the death penalty for disobeying your parents?

And there's a verse in the Old Testament where it's not just like a one-time thing, but someone who is basically in serial rebellion against their parents that the death penalty could be the result for that.

And I pointed out, it's like, well, good two things I want us to focus on here is one, there's no record of that ever happening. There's no record in the Old Testament of anyone being put to death for being disobedient to their parents.

But two, if this law were in effect now, do you think there'd be a lot less disobedient children? And so it was really able to help her process. Okay, the strength of a warning, one, tells you what God thinks about children who disobey their parents, but also like you said earlier, it is a very bad thing to forsake the wisdom that they're trying to give you.

But then it also is such a strong deterrent from actually committing the act that it forbids that it has a preventative aspect to it. And I think that really helped her to understand it from that aspect.

And especially the fact that, like you said, we were saying earlier, there's no example in Old Testament of that law or that penalty actually being enforced.

Right, right.

And we could also add to that, that we're not talking about some little kid who's saying, I hate you to his parents after he's been disciplined, but rather this is a middle-aged person who isn't taking responsibility for kind of pulling his weight in the family, but is someone who is a glutton and a drunkard and is actually squandering his life rather than being a part of the tightly knit family unit where everyone pulls his weight that you're not creating kind of a drag on the rest of the family by shrinking your responsibility.

So there's something very significant. It's not as though this is some sort of a minor issue. This is very weighty.

Why God Commanded the Destruction of the Canaanites and Amalekites

Yes, excellent clarification. So now for the most common question we get that there's a topic that's covered and is God a moral monster? And that is why did God command the extermination or the genocide of the Canaanites?

And so that's in the book of Joshua. Then also a little bit later, God commands Saul to completely destroy the Amalekites. And we look at it, if we could just narrow it down just to a warfare, one nation attacking another, but the fact that God commands that both women and children also be destroyed in these attacks, that's what seems to really stir up more, wow, why would God command such a thing?

And really makes us a more emotional issue than just the fact that two nations were going to war with each other. So obviously we could do an entire episode on this particular one, but maybe for the last 10 minutes, let's really dive into this.

You explain it excellently and is God a moral monster, but for our listeners, help us to understand why God commanded that the entire Canaanite nations and the Amalekites to be completely destroyed.

All right.

Well, again, to mention this forthcoming book, is God a vindictive bully? I take a lot of the arguments and challenges a step further from my moral monster book and really elaborate on a number of these points that I think will be very helpful for the readers.

But a few things to keep in mind here. One, there is no racial or tribal issue here. In the earlier chapters of Genesis, where the patriarchs are interacting with the Canaanites, there are good relationships and so forth.

And even when there is judgment that is coming on Sodom and Gomorrah, God is willing to relent from bringing judgment. He says, if there are even 10 righteous people in the city, I will relent from bringing judgment.

But turns out there weren't 10 righteous people in those cities. So there is that opportunity that it's not, again, something, when we talk about genocide, we think about something that's directed at a particular ethnicity, that there's an animus or a hatred, and that certainly isn't the case.

In fact, what we see with regard to the Canaanites is that they're engaging in practices that would have been considered criminal in any civilized society. Incest, bestiality, ritual prostitution, infant sacrifice.

Those are the sorts of things that had a corrupting influence. And God did not want His plan with His redemptive plan for Israel to be thwarted or sidetracked because the Israelites were getting caught up in these sorts of practices.

So God puts in motion a redemptive plan. He waits over 500 years before He actually carries it out. He, in Genesis 15, 16, talks about God waiting until the sin of the Amorite is filled up or completed.

So the time was not right. It would have been wrong for the Israelites to go into the land of Canaan earlier than God had prescribed. So it was a matter of waiting until the time was right. And again, even as the Israelites went into the land, there was the possibility of the Canaanites joining up with the Israelites.

Of course, they could flee to another place. And the primary command is to drive out the Canaanites. But you see Rahab from Jericho who aligns herself with the Israelites. You see in chapter eight, there is a group of Canaanites in the city of Shechem where they are part of a covenant renewal ceremony where Joshua is reading the law.

You see the Gibeonites, even though they're kind of deceptive in connecting with the Israelites and joining up with them, they are also aligning themselves with Israel. And we read in chapter 11, it says that none of the Canaanite cities, even though they had seen the signs and wonders, they all knew there were reports.

Yeah, we saw how the Lord brought you out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders. And now you cross the Red Sea and cross the Jordan River and so forth. And there's this pillar of cloud by day and fire by night over the camp of the Israelites.

So something is going on here. And the Canaanites had 40 years to recognize these sorts of things going on. So, but it says none of the Canaanite cities attempted to make peace with the Israelites. Again, the implication being that was available to them.

They could have done that. And so, but again, that doesn't happen. Furthermore, a lot of the wars that are actually being fought, even in the book of Joshua are defensive wars. So when the various Kings see that the Gibeonites have made an alliance with the Israelites, they all converge and seek to fight against the Israelites, these Canaanite Kings and so forth.

So, but let me go more to some specifics now. When we see that there is this warfare taking place, we also have in ancient near Eastern literature, and we see it exemplified in Joshua and elsewhere, that there is this strongly hyperbolic language where it says we utterly destroyed the man and woman, young and old, et cetera.

This is what is, you know, this is hyperbole. This is what's called sometimes a merism, where you talk about all of the extremes, every possible scenario, all people in the population, they're thrown into the mix, even though there are one, lots of survivors, and we read in Judges chapter one, they could not drive them out.

They could not drive them out. They could not drive them out repeatedly. And even in the book of Joshua, we see where, you know, one city is quote utterly destroyed, you know, that the, again, there's a question of how do we even interpret that term, utterly destroyed?

And we'll talk about that in a minute. But you see a chapter later, or even verses later, that where even where there's a city that's been quote unquote utterly destroyed, there are lots of survivors.

So you have on the one hand mentioned of utter destruction, but on the other hand, you have lots of survivors. And this is common rhetoric in the ancient Near East. Oh, we like in our sports talk, our trash talk.

Oh, we totally annihilated those guys. We totally destroyed that team. That's how it worked in the ancient Near East. Also, as part of the rhetoric, not just are there lots of survivors, but you also have language that brings in man and woman, young and old and so forth, even if those non-combatants are not present.

So I'll give you an example. And I talk about this more in the forthcoming book. In Numbers 21, there are these two kings, Sihon and Og, who are, you know, the Israelites want to pass through peacefully and these kings rise up and they attack the Israelites.

And it says that there's a battle against them. And then we see that it's basically the king or the kings, their sons, and their armies. That's again, those are the ones against whom Israel is fighting.

And it says they defeated them. And it uses that kind of sweeping language. Then you go to Deuteronomy 2 and 3. Even though the on the ground account says that they're fighting against an all-male army, it throws in man, woman, young, and old on those same battle, you know, those battle accounts.

Clearly this is being imported into the rhetoric of Deuteronomy, which does that. It intensifies the earlier rhetoric of say Exodus and Numbers and intensifies things to make it look like, wow, this is a really drastic scenario.

Man, woman, young, and old, but they were not present. Some people say, well, okay, what about, what about say Saul and the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15 where it mentions man, woman, young, and old, and so forth.

Well, a couple of things here. For one thing, of course, that the Amalekites had already attacked the Israelites in chapter 14, 48, that they were raiding the Israelites. So God tells Samuel that you're to attack the Amalekites.

So what happens? Well, in verse five, they fight at this localized battle. They're fighting against the Amalekites in what's called a city of Amalek, probably this citadel or a fortress. And notice too, that the Kenites are there and the Israelites have had good relationships with the Kenites.

So Saul sends word to the Kenites, hey, we're gonna have an issue with you. We're gonna be fighting against the Amalekites. Well, do you think that in this battle that women and children and the elderly are gonna be at this pitch battle site?

Of course not. There's a, it's gonna be against Amalekite warriors. So, and then, get this, the narrator says, after the battle's been done, that the Amalekites were, quote, utterly destroyed. And well, what does that mean?

Well, it doesn't mean that they were annihilated because we read later on in 1 Samuel that David fights against an army of the Amalekites and 400 of them end up escaping. And what's an interesting rhetorical device is this.

You will have in ancient Near Eastern war texts mention of a single localized battle. And then you will have mentioned of this like universal conquest. And that's exactly, which is the hyperbole, the exaggeration where there's, the localized battle is, takes place with the Amalekites in verse five of chapter 15.

And then Saul fights the Amalekites from Saudi Arabia, all the way to, from Arabia, all the way to Egypt, which is a vast terrain. And again, and also David has a local battle and then fights the Amalekites on that same vast terrain.

So again, that is a clear exaggeration or hyperbole. And so what we see going on here is that these, what is going on, so what is going on is that there is this singular battle that Saul doesn't destroy the animals at this battle and so forth, and he's chastised for it.

But women and children and the elderly aren't on the, aren't at the battle site. And again, I go into a lot more detail on this in my forthcoming book, Is God a Vindictive Bully? And I tease out a number of these scenarios and try to bring clarity to a number of these issues.

So stay tuned for the book. I think that's probably all we have time for at the moment, but unless you've got a follow-up question, but perhaps that gives us a little bit of an idea of what's going on in these ancient Near Eastern war texts and specifically in Israel.

While I completely agree with everything you said, and it's a good reminder of the stuff I read in your book, so many follow-up questions, but as you said, we're out of time, but what you just described, I think it lays a really good foundation for a clearer understanding of what the Bible is talking about when someone totally destroy this people does not mean to completely annihilate all the people.

And you can see that again and again and again, where someone was totally destroyed and yet there's still people left afterwards. And another good point that I've heard is that God commanded particularly to completely destroy Jericho and Ai, the two first cities in the conquest is sort of a warning sign to the rest of the Canaanites.

You know, fleeing is an option. You do not have to engage in warfare. So even God being a little more completely destroying the first two cities served as a warning to prevent further conflict, further bloodshed, hopefully encouraging some Canaanites to flee, encourage the Gibeonites to make peace and so forth.

So even in the midst of God commanding warfare, and don't mishear us that, I mean, war is brutal, war is ugly, war is terrible, war is always a result of sin. But ultimately God's motives for commanding this were not for a group of people to be annihilated.

No, it was to establish His covenant people through whom eventually the Messiah would come. So even in the midst of warfare and brutality, you see hope, you see grace, you see mercy in how God is dealing with people.

Yeah, exactly. And you see how God in His redemptive purposes, yes, there is judgment in the short term, but the goal is that all of these nations, including the Canaanite nations, that they would be the recipients of salvation.

So we see throughout the Old Testament that Assyria, Egypt, Edom, the Philistines, the Jebusites and so forth, that the goal is that they would be included in the redemptive purposes of God, even though in the earlier stages, they're engaging in wickedness and need to be stopped and that their pernicious actions and influences need to be held in abeyance because otherwise the purposes that God had for Israel to be a light to the nations would be thwarted, it would be undermined.

So there's a lot at stake. It's like a cosmic battle going on here. It's not just like one nation invading another. In fact, I talk about this in the forthcoming book too, that it's not as though the Israelites were going into this group of nations and these hapless Canaanites were being attacked.

It was a fearful thing to fight against the Canaanites because they had large cities. They felt like the Israelites felt like grasshoppers when they looked at them. They were intimidated by them. And so if someone was fearful and didn't want to go to battle, God said, then don't.

But again, it required trust in the Lord. It was not something that the Israelites could pull off on their own. And I think that that's a helpful reminder too, that it was a scary prospect to fight against the Canaanites, not something where they had superior military forces.

And everything.

No, they're actually militarily disadvantaged. And so we see the power of God at work even in the taking of the land.

Yeah, absolutely. So again, it's been the Got Questions podcast with Dr. Paul Copan. And he's the author of, Is God a Moral Monster? And author of the forthcoming book later this year, Is God a Vindictive Bully?

So Paul, I would love to have you back on so we can talk about some of the issues that you raise in that book. So do we have a deal?

We do, sounds great.

Fantastic. So we'll include links where you can learn more about Paul and his books, his ministry, and the school where he teaches and the new course they're offering in the show notes at podcast .gotquestions .org.

Also on the description of YouTube when this video goes live. So Paul, again, thank you for being on the show today. I truly appreciate your insights and the help you've given me and knowing how to answer some of these questions better.

Appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Good to be with you, Shay.

All right. This has been the Got Questions podcast. Got questions?

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