Issues-Perspectives: Biblical/Theological Resources: Violence: War

Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics by Joel B. Green, Jacqueline Lapsley, Rebekah Miles, Allen Verhey, eds. This one-stop reference book on the vital relationship between Scripture and ethics offers needed orientation and perspective for students, pastors, and scholars. Written to respond to the movement among biblical scholars and ethicists to recover the Bible for moral formation, it is the best reference work available on the intersection of these two fields. The volume shows how Christian Scripture and Christian ethics are necessarily intertwined and offers up-to-date treatment of five hundred biblical, traditional, and contemporary topics, ranging from adultery, bioethics, and Colossians to vegetarianism, work, and Zephaniah. The stellar ecumenical list of contributors consists of more than two hundred leading scholars from the fields of biblical studies and ethics, including Darrell Bock, David Gushee, Amy Laura Hall, Daniel Harrington, Dennis Olson, Christine Pohl, Glen Stassen, and Max Stackhouse.

Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics by Robert L. Brawley The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics (OEBE) explores the intersection between biblical sources and ethical issues, both historical and modern, through extensive analytical and constructive treatments of a wide range of topics by leading biblical scholars and ethicists. Combiningtraditional theoretical frameworks, such as comparative religion, with more recent approaches (postmodern, queer and gender theory, etc.), the OEBE provides a landmark reference overview of everything from ethics in books of the Bible to modern movements and hot-button issues, such as capitalpunishment, bioethics, and abortion.The two-volume Encyclopedia contains over 180 entries ranging in length from 1,000 to 7,000 words. With bibliographic references and suggestions for further reading, each entry provides a thorough introduction to the topic that will be of use to scholars and students alike. Given its contemporaryresonance and detailed summary of current scholarship, the OEBE offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary starting point for research.

The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought by Adrian Hastings, Alistair Mason, Hugh Pyper, eds. Embracing the viewpoints of Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox thinkers, of conservatives, liberals, radicals, and agnostics, Christianity today is anything but monolithic or univocal. In The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought, general editor Adrian Hastings has tried to capture a sense of the great diversity of opinion that swirls about under the heading of Christian thought. Indeed, the 260 contributors, who hail from twenty countries, represent as wide a range of perspectives as possible. Here is a comprehensive and authoritative (though not dogmatic) overview of the full spectrum of Christian thinking. Within its 600 alphabetically arranged entries, readers will find lengthy survey articles on the history of Christian thought, on national and regional traditions, and on various denominations, from Anglican to Unitarian. There is ample coverage of Eastern thought as well, examining the Christian tradition in China, Japan, India, and Africa. The contributors examine major theological topics such as resurrection, the Eucharist, and grace as well as controversial issues such as homosexuality and abortion. In addition, short entries illuminate symbols such as water and wine, and there are many profiles of leading theologians, of non-Christians who have deeply influenced Christian thinking, including Aristotle and Plato, and of literary figures such as Dante, Milton, and Tolstoy. Most articles end with a list of suggested readings and the book features a large number of cross-references. The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought is an indispensable guide to one of the central strands of Western culture. An essential volume for all Christians, it is a thoughtful gift for the holidays.

"Introduction to Judges," by Susanne Scholz in Women's Bible Commentary by Carol A. Newsom; Sharon H. Ringe; Jacqueline E. Lapsley , eds. The Women's Bible Commentaryis a trusted, classic resource for biblical scholarship, written by some of the best feminist scholars in the field today. This twentieth anniversary edition features brand new or thoroughly revised essays to reflect newer thinking in feminist interpretation and hermeneutics. It comprises commentaries on every book of the Bible, including the apocryphal books; essays on the reception history of women in the Bible; and essays on feminist critical method. The contributors raise important questions and explore the implications of how women and other marginalized people are portrayed in biblical texts, looking specifically at gender roles, sexuality, political power, and family life, while challenging long-held assumptions. This commentary brings modern critical methods to bear on the history, sociology, anthropology, and literature of the relevant time periods to illuminate the context of these biblical portrayals and challenges readers to new understandings.

Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics by Scott Rae Outlines the distinctive elements of Christian ethics while avoiding undue dogmatism. Introduces other ethical systems and their key historical proponents, including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Immanuel Kant. Describes a seven-step procedure for tackling ethical dilemmas, then uses case studies to guide critical thinking on social issues including Abortion, Reproductive Technologies, Euthanasia, Capital Punishment, Sexual Ethics, The Morality of War, Genetic Technologies and Human Cloning Ethics and Economics NEW: Creation Care, Animal Rights, Gun-Control, Race, Gender, and Diversity, Immigration, Refugees, and Border Control.

Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (2nd ed.) by David P. Gushee; Glen H. Stassen "Kingdom Ethics is arguably the most significant and comprehensive Christian ethics textbook of our time." -- Michelle A. Clifton-Soderstrom, North Park Theological Seminary Christian churches across the spectrum, and Christian ethics as an academic discipline, are often guilty of evading what Jesus actually said about moral life, focusing instead on other biblical texts or traditions.   This evasion of Jesus has seriously malformed Christian moral witness--which Jesus said is tested by whether we put his words "into practice." David Gushee and Glen Stassen's Kingdom Ethics is the leading Christian introductory ethics textbook for the twenty-first century. Solidly rooted in Scripture--and uniquely focusing on Jesus's teachings in the Sermon on the Mount--the book has offered students, pastors, and other readers a comprehensive and challenging framework for Christian ethical thought. Writing to recenter Christian ethics in Jesus Christ, Gushee and Stassen focus on the meaning of the Kingdom of God, perennial themes of moral authority and moral norms, and all the issues raised by the Sermon on the Mount--such as life and death, sexual and gender ethics, love and justice, truth telling, and politics. This second edition of Kingdom Ethics is substantially revised by Gushee and features enhanced and updated treatments of all major contemporary ethical issues--including updated data and examples, a more global perspective, gender-inclusive language, a clearer focus on methodology, discussion questions for every chapter, and a detailed new glossary. Kingdom Ethics is for readers anywhere wanting a robust, comprehensive understanding of Christian ethics founded on the concrete teachings of Jesus and will equip them for further exploration into the field.

War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence by Susan Niditch Texts about war pervade the Hebrew Bible, raising challenging questions in religious and political ethics. The war passages that readers find most disquieting are those in which God demands the total annihilation of the enemy without regard to gender, age, or military status. The ideology of the "ban," however, is only one among a range of attitudes towards war preserved in the ancient Israelite literary tradition. Applying insights from anthropology, comparative literature, and feminist studies, Niditch considers a wide spectrum of war ideologies in the Hebrew Bible, seeking in each case to discover why and how these views might have made sense to biblical writers, who themselves can be seen to wrestle with the ethics of violence. The study of war thus also illuminates the social and cultural history of Israel, as war texts are found to map the world views of biblical writers from various periods and settings. Reviewing ways in which modern scholars have interpreted this controversial material, Niditch sheds further light on the normative assumptions that shape our understanding of ancient Israel. More widely, this work explores how human beings attempt to justify killing and violence while concentrating on the tones, textures, meanings, and messages of a particular corpus in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror: Christianity, Violence, and the West by Philippe Buc Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror examines the ways that Christian theology has shaped centuries of conflict from the Jewish-Roman War of late antiquity through the First Crusade, the French Revolution, and up to the Iraq War. By isolating one factor among the many forces that converge in war--the essential tenets of Christian theology--Philippe Buc locates continuities in major episodes of violence perpetrated over the course of two millennia. Even in secularized or explicitly non-Christian societies, such as the Soviet Union of the Stalinist purges, social and political projects are tied to religious violence, and religious conceptual structures have influenced the ways violence is imagined, inhibited, perceived, and perpetrated. The patterns that emerge from this sweeping history upend commonplace assumptions about historical violence, while contextualizing and explaining some of its peculiarities. Buc addresses the culturally sanctioned logic that might lead a sane person to kill or die on principle, traces the circuitous reasoning that permits contradictory political actions, such as coercing freedom or pardoning war atrocities, and locates religious faith at the backbone of nationalist conflict. He reflects on the contemporary American ideology of war--one that wages violence in the name of abstract notions such as liberty and world peace and that he reveals to be deeply rooted in biblical notions. A work of extraordinary breadth, Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror connects the ancient past to the troubled present, showing how religious ideals of sacrifice and purification made violence meaningful throughout history.

Genocide, the Bible and Biblical Scholarship by Shawn Kelley Scholarship is currently engaged in a rich debate around the historical, hermeneutical and theological problems posed by the Bible's occasional yet enthusiastic endorsement of mass extermination. The article engages this ongoing scholarly conversation by way of a dialogue with the emerging field of genocide studies. Part I analyzes the scholarly debates that swirl around definitional and theoretical issues. Far from being an atavistic or irrational irruption into the ordered world of civilization, scholarship sees genocide as woven into the very structure of modern civilization. Part II and III look closely at specific biblical examples of mass extermination. Attention is paid to both ancient extermination campaigns and to textual moments where the Bible appears to endorse mass violence. The article concludes by challenging the widely held view that genocide arises out of ancient hatred and briefly sketches the wide range of ideological elements that inform genocidal thinking and practice.

War and Ethics in the Ancient near East: Military Violence in Light of Cosmology and History by C. L. Crouch The monograph considers the relationships of ethical systems in the ancient Near East through a study of warfare in Judah, Israel and Assyria in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. It argues that a common cosmological and ideological outlook generated similarities in ethical thinking. In all three societies, the mythological traditions surrounding creation reflect a strong connection between war, kingship and the establishment of order. Human kings' military activities are legitimated through their identification with this cosmic struggle against chaos, begun by the divine king at creation. Military violence is thereby cast not only as morally tolerable but as morally imperative. Deviations from this point of view reflect two phenomena: the preservation of variable social perspectives and the impact of historical changes on ethical thinking. The research begins the discussion of ancient Near Eastern ethics outside of Israel and Judah and fills a scholarly void by placing Israelite and Judahite ethics within this context, as well as contributing methodologically to future research in historical and comparative ethics.

Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem by Heath A. Thomas; Jeremy A. Evans; Paul Copan, eds. The challenge of a seemingly genocidal God who commands ruthless warfare has bewildered Bible readers for generations. The theme of divine war is not limited to the Old Testament historical books, however. It is also prevalent in the prophets and wisdom literature as well. Still it doesn't stop. The New Testament book of Revelation, too, is full of such imagery. Our questions multiply.Why does God apparently tell Joshua to wipe out whole cities, tribes or nations?Is this yet another example of dogmatic religious conviction breeding violence?Did these texts help inspire or justify the Crusades?What impact do they have on Christian morality and just war theories today? How does divine warfare fit with Christ's call to "turn the other cheek"? Why does Paul employ warfare imagery in his letters?Do these texts warrant questioning the overall trustworthiness of the Bible?These controversial yet theologically vital issues call for thorough interpretation, especially given a long history of misinterpretation and misappropriaton of these texts. This book does more, however. A range of expert contributors engage in a multidisciplinary approach that considers the issue from a variety of perspectives: biblical, ethical, philosophical and theological. While the writers recognize that such a difficult and delicate topic cannot be resolved in a simplistic manner, the different threads of this book weave together a satisfying tapestry. Ultimately we find in the overarching biblical narrative a picture of divine redemption that shows the place of divine war in the salvific movement of God.

The Violence of Scripture:Overcoming the Old Testament's Troubling Legacy by Eric A. Seibert No one can read far in the Hebrew Bible without encountering depictions of violence carried out by human beings, sometimes in the name of God, or indeed violence carried out or commanded by God-from Cain's murder of Abel to the slaughter of Canaanite populations and much. For those who read the Bible as sacred scripture, such depictions can pose tremendous moral and theological challenges. Eric A. Seibert faces these challenges head-on, offering perspectives on the roles human and divine violence play in different parts of the Old Testament, evaluating the biblical presentation of "virtuous violence," and proposing strategies for reading the Bible out of a commitment to nonviolence. At last he offers "soundings" in biblical texts where we encounter alternative voices, often neglected, that seek and announce ways of peace.

Ritual Violence in the Hebrew Bible: New Perspectives by Saul M. Olyan, ed. Although the relationship of the Hebrew Bible and violence has been of interest to scholars in recent years, ritual violence in its various manifestations has been underexplored, as have the theoretical dimensions of ritual violence. This volume is intended to bring into relief the full rangeof violent rites represented in the Hebrew Bible, many rarely, if ever, considered. It seeks to explore what acts of ritual violence might accomplish socio-politically in their particular settings and the ways in which engagement with theory from a variety of disciplines can contribute to ourunderstanding of ritual violence as a phenomenon.The volume consists of an introduction and eight essays. Topics include cognitive perspectives on iconoclasm, the instrumental dimensions of ritual violence against corpses, the ritual killing of cities ("urbicide"), royal rites of military loyalty, the ends accomplished by political violence inDavid's story, comparison of the Rwanda genocide and material dimensions of the biblical herem, the exchange of women among men and its violent dimensions, and the ritual assault on cities. Authors include Debra Scoggins Ballentine, T. M. Lemos, Mark Leuchter, Nathaniel B. Levtow, Susan Niditch,Saul M. Olyan, Rudiger Schmitt, and Jacob L. Wright.

Coping with Violence in the New Testament by Pieter de Villiers; Jan Willem van Henten, eds. Violence is present in the very heart of religion and its sacred traditions - also of Christianity and the Bible. The problem, however, is not only that violence is ingrained in the mere existence of religions with their sacred traditions. It is equally problematic to realise that the icy grip of violence on the sacred has gone unnoticed and unchallenged for a very long time. The present publication aims to contribute to the recent scholarly debate about the interconnections between violence and monotheistic religions by analysing the role of violence in the New Testament as well as by offering some hermeneutical perspectives on violence as it is articulated in the earliest Christian writings. Contributors include: Andries G. van Aarde, Paul Decock, Pieter G.R. de Villiers, Ernest van Eck, Jan Willem van Henten, Rob van Houwelingen, Kobus Kok, Tobias Nicklas, Jeremy Punt, Jan G. van der Watt, and Wim Weren.

Violence in Ancient Christianity by Albert Geljon; Riemer Roukema, eds. Ancient Christianity had an ambivalent stance toward violence. Jesus had instructed his disciples to love their enemies, and in the first centuries Christians were proud of this lofty teaching and tried to apply it to their persecutors and to competing religious groups. Yet at the same time they testify to their virulent verbal criticism of Jews, heretics and pagans, who could not accept the Christian exclusiveness. After emperor Constantine had turned to Christianity, Christians acquired the opportunity to use violence toward competing groups and pagans, even though they were instructed to love them personally and Jewish-Christian relationships flourished at grass root level. General analyses and case studies demonstrate that the fashionable distinction between intolerant monotheism and tolerant polytheism must be qualified.

Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity by Thomas Sizgorich In Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity, Thomas Sizgorich seeks to understand why and how violent expressions of religious devotion became central to the self-understandings of both Christian and Muslim communities between the fourth and ninth centuries. Sizgorich argues that the cultivation of violent martyrdom as a path to holiness was in no way particular to Islam; rather, it emerged from a matrix put into place by the Christians of late antiquity. Paying close attention to the role of memory and narrative in the formation of individual and communal selves, Sizgorich identifies a common pool of late ancient narrative forms upon which both Christian and Muslim communities drew. In the process of recollecting the past, Sizgorich explains, Christian and Muslim communities alike elaborated iterations of Christianity or Islam that demanded of each believer a willingness to endure or inflict violence on God's behalf and thereby created militant local pieties that claimed to represent the one "real" Christianity or the only "pure" form of Islam. These militant communities used a shared system of signs, symbols, and stories, stories in which the faithful manifested their purity in conflict with the imperial powers of the world.

Christians and War: A Brief History by A. James Reimer Religion, and specifically Christianity, has often been blatantly invoked to support or oppose war and violence of all kinds. Christians are deeply divided over whether and when such violence is justifiable. James Reimer offers a fair presentation of these controversial standpoints, including the classical Christian attitudes toward war: crusading or holy war, just war, and pacifism. His thoughtful survey of Christian teachings and practices on issues of war, violence, and the state takes readers from classical Greco-Roman times to postmodernity. Arguing that the church's responses to war can only be understood through the church's changing relationship to culture, Reimer concludes with an analysis of the contemporary debate and proposes criteria for legitimate and illegitimate use of force by nation-states. Through confronting the Christian church's history, which is complex and sometimes difficult to endure, Reimer encourages readers to think criticially and come to hold their own position that promotes both peace and justice.

Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Pacifism, Just War, and Peacebuilding by Lisa Sowle Cahill This book is a contribution to the Christian ethics of war and peace. It advances peacebuilding as a needed challenge to and expansion of the traditional framework of just war theory and pacifism. It builds on a critical reading of historical landmarks from the Bible through Augustine, Aquinas, the Reformers, Christian peace movements, and key modern figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reinhold Niebuhr, and recent popes. Similar to just-war theory, peacebuilding is committed to social change and social justice but includes some theorists and practitioners who accept the use of force in extreme cases of self-defense or humanitarian intervention. Unlike just-war theorists, they do not see the justification of war as part of the Christian mission. Unlike traditional pacifists, they do see social change as necessary and possible and, as such, requiring Christian participation in public efforts. Cahill argues that transformative Christian social participation is demanded by the gospel and the example of Jesus, and can produce the avoidance, resolution, or reduction of conflicts. And yet obstacles are significant, and expectations must be realistic. Decisions to use armed force against injustice, even when they meet the criteria of just war, will be ambiguous and tragic from a Christian perspective. Regarding war and peace, the focus of Christian theology, ethics, and practice should not be on justifying war but on practical and hopeful interreligious peacebuilding.

War in the Bible and Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century by Richard S. Hess; Elmer A. Martens, eds. In February 2004, Denver Seminary's annual Biblical Studies conference addressed the question of modern war and the teachings of biblical ethics regarding it. The conference was envisioned as a collaborative effort between the Association for Christian Conferences, Teaching, and Service (ACCTS), and the Biblical Studies division of Denver Seminary. A year earlier, the invasion of Iraq had taken place. The questions created by the outbreak of war prompted an urgency in the consideration of the topic. ACCTS, which sponsors international symposia in military ethics with officers from armed forces around the globe, provided ethicists and practitioners from within the military of both the U.S. and Great Britain. Hess and Martens also solicited papers from leading theologians and advocates representing pacifist and just-war views. They have succeeded in bringing together in this fine volume a group of Christians representing a wide range of perspectives to debate and discuss their heritage and biblical roots with regard to questions of war and its ethical dilemmas.