This is the second in a series of blogs about Ending Abusive Theologies by Adrian Thatcher. The first blog is here.
In the second section of his book, Adrian describes in detail the problem of divine violence in the Bible. His premise is that the violence of the biblical God “is frankly sickening and has become a major obstacle to belief today. Christians deal with the problem mainly by a strategy of avoidance and evasion.”
Old Testament - Sola scriptura
After the Protestant Reformation the Bible was to be read literally. The content of belief had to be determined by Scripture alone – sola scriptura. Today’s Christian theologians have yet to learn from contemporary Hebrew Bible scholarship. As a result, the rest of us have yet to catch up with scholarly developments and are largely unaware of their influence. There is instead an insidious and negative ignorance abroad in the churches, a refusal to acknowledge or confront the extent of the problem facing honest believers when they open their Bibles.
Divine violence
Much of the violence described in the Bible probably never happened. Such awareness is not available to evangelical fundamentalist Christians. Adrian reviews Genesis texts: the Fall and the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham and Isaac, moving on to Exodus and the liberation of the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt with the plagues and their ‘mindless ecological violence’. These narratives are all about God showing off, says Adrian, concluding with the coup de grace, the killing of the firstborn. As the Hebrews march onwards into the Promised Land, things don’t get much better. The ‘steadfast love’ of the Hebrew God has a condition for his people: total obedience, enforced by fear and threat.
Divine abuse
The God of divine violence evolves to become the God of divine abuse.
God’s jealousy and propensity towards violence is written into the Ten Commandments.
“I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who reject me.” (Exodus 20.5)
“This commandment assumes what is easily recognisable within abusive relationships: a frightening combination of benevolence and chastisement, of love and anger, that confuses by its alternations, takes advantage of unequal power dynamics; utilises threats, and shows a propensity for punishment and revenge that has no regard whatever for justice.”
Following Jeremy Young (2007) Adrian notes that “these are easily recognisable as common traits of male patriarchal behaviour. Like the typical abusive man, God is emotionally aroused by Israel’s disobedience.” The Hebrew Bible depicts the God of Israel as a narcissistic character who requires constant adoration, or else he flies into a rage.
To question the existence of an abusive God is in itself a sign that there is a God beyond the OT God of violence and abuse.
The afterlife of Divine Violence
The threat of doom and violence continues intro Deuteronomy and on through the centuries. Like the covenant, doom and violence are eternal. Every misfortune, national or individual. can be ‘explained’ in terms of sin, real or imagined. Fear of the Lord is fixed in the hearts of believers. The afterlife extends far beyond the history of the Jewish people – doom and violence become part of Christian Scriptures and the culture of the countries influenced by Christianity, shaping them for good and for ill. Divine violence has given direct encouragement to making war. Belief in the specialness of a race or people becomes an imperial theology or ideology justifying further conquest of other peoples and nations. In Facing the Abusive God (1993), Jewish theologian David Blumenthal reflects on the many examples of divine violence in the Hebrew Bible in the aftermath of the unspeakable darkness of the holocaust. Grace Jantzen (2004) finds the West to be ‘in the grip of a cultural neurosis of which its death-dealing structures are symptoms’.
Divine Child Abuse?
In this chapter, Adrian answers the question: whether at the heart of Christian faith an abusive act is instituted by God. The idea of redemptive suffering is rejected by Adrian . . . Jesus is understood as the victim of human violence, standing in solidarity with victims of violence worldwide.
Adrian’s concern is whether the cruel death of Jesus was necessary for the world and all its creatures to be reconciled, to become ‘at one’ with their source and goal. If God required Jesus’ death, then the Crucifixion is a supreme act of divine violence. The common use of the term ‘Son of God’ suggests a real parent-child relationship. This father allows his son to be crucified. Adrian agrees with Will Rose-Moore’s 2025 ‘reading of the cross as a place of male-on-male violence that calls for a rejection of redemptive suffering’. Jesus’ Crucifixion ‘occurs not as a work of God but at the hands of other men’. The violence is human, not divine.
The crucified Christ is a victim but not as an offering to God the Father that God somehow requires. For contemporary Christians, rejection and resistance of the sinful violence of patriarchal, racist, misogynist, queerphobic, disablist, classist structures is an essential element of Christian faith. A shift is underway in contemporary constructive theology from understanding the Passion of Christ as a ransom – like the lamb of God bearing away the sins of the world (John 1.19) – to Jesus having a profound identification of himself with sinners and the victims of the sins of others. It is a move from Christus Victor to Jesus as Victim, from sacrifice to solidarity.
However, the Bible does suggest that Jesus sacrificed himself. Helen Paynter (Blessed are the Peacemakers, 2023) insists that ‘the rejection of penal models of the atonement on the basis of a nonviolent God cannot be sustained by Scripture. “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures (1 Cor. 15.3). Adrian identifies other NT references of the Crucifixion made as a sacrifice to God (Rom. 5.7-9; Gal. 3.13; Eph. 5.2; 1 Peter 2.24; 1 Cor 11,25). He suggests that the gruesome torture and death of Jesus Christ is also the death of the violent and abusive God evident in the Hebrew Bible. The New Covenant is ‘new’ in the precise sense that the character, life and teachings of Jesus transform our understanding of the life and character of who and what the followers of Jesus call ‘God’.
An end to sacrifice?
Adrian reminds us that the roots of abusive theologies are found in the Bible and particular ways of reading the Bible but the ideologically held beliefs of conservative evangelical theology are followed at the expense of a ‘core care and regard for every human being. There is no escaping a violent God in the Bible, nor that it is a violent holy book. The abusive character of God is unmistakable. Sacrifice was everywhere, not least at the temple in Jerusalem. It was inevitable and understandable that the new Jewish sect, an offshoot of Jewish faith, should retain its identity, customs and laws including blood sacrifice. As more converts from outside the fledgling churches joined them, incomprehension of the ritual practice of sacrifice in the Jerusalem temple grew. When the temple was destroyed in 70 CE temple sacrifice ended.
Wherever the global Church witnesses to its faith at present, there is replicated the idea of an eternal God who is alternately loving and angry and who demands blood sacrifices. The language and thought-forms through which the representation of Jesus occurred – covenant, redemption, ransom, sacrifice, offering, bleeding, propitiation – are embedded within the Christian scriptures.
In the twentieth century a new biblical fundamentalism arose; ‘conservative evangelicalism’. The attempt to interpret the Bible authoritatively resulted in preferring a literal understanding wherever possible. This led to a neglect of history and tradition and the expectation that the Bible could’ speak’ directly to individual believers. In many parts of the world where there has been missionary expansion, fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism predominate. In the USA opposition is found to science and to any doctrine, theological or political, that can be characterised as ‘liberal’. Their ‘biblical’ gospel is inseparable from the violent God and ‘his’ violent ways.
Conclusion
“What next, then, for a Christian faith that is being largely abandoned by those countries in which it was once prominent? It seems essential that the churches should pay close attention to what they believe and to acknowledge the harm they cause whenever they fail to satisfy the harm criterion. There is too much emphasis in the churches on mission at the expense of reflection, as if anxiety and panic at the loss of membership justifies not examining some of the causes of empty pews.”
“Constructive theology is needed, but constructive theology must not connive in lengthy evasion. An abusive God cannot be wished away. He is in the Bible and the preaching of the churches. Secular cultures are right to reject him. Indeed, their rejection is a sign of moral health, rather than simple unbelief or apostacy. The question is whether any version of Christian faith is now possible.”
“It means we may no longer be able to believe in God who demands satisfaction for our sins however hard the ‘will to believe’ may be. We require instead a God who satisfies us, our curiosities, our searches for meaning, our yearnings for ourselves and for our world, our hopes for peace and an end to violence.”
Adrian explores this possibility in the final part of his book. I will post a third section of this blog, “Revelling in the Mystery – Towards a Post-Abusive Theology”, next.
Please share this blog on your own Facebook page or timeline. My thanks to Jeremy Timm for the photo.
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