Show Them No Mercy: 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide by Stanley N. Gundry

Show Them No Mercy: 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide Reviews

• 
  Autumn Kotsiuba

  Here's my problem...this isn't a "let's deal with the obvious elephant in the room (Canaanites)" book; it's a "how do the OT and NT views of God line up" book with a shaky focus on military strategies/pacifism.
  
  I usually love the Counterpoints series, it makes you think for yourself from a variety of views, but I found myself sighing at something from at least every essay. I'm just not satisfied with these answers. I thought this would be a great companion piece to my own studies, and certainly it may to of great use to others (the theologians are, please understand, respectable people) but it's not what I was hoping for.
  
  If you want a clear-cut (and raw) opinion on the "uncomfortable spots" in the OT, check out anything by Peter Enns.
• 
  Andy Kline

  This book was helpful to me because it helped me think and pray better.
  
  The back cover claims all four writers’ views were within the evangelical tradition, but I question whether this is true of C.S. Cowles' position.
  
  I enjoyed Cowles because he refused to use “Christianese” or allegory to gloss over the horror of the conquest. On the other hand his responses to the other writers seemed sledgehammer like and angry – almost disdainful.
  
  Merrill, as a good historical/grammatical interpreter does a masterful job summarizing key “Yahweh War” texts.
  
  The other two writers (Gard, Longman III) lost me in their attempts to spiritualize and/or identify grand themes of Yahweh War – though they never questioned the historicity of the conquest and they seemed to appreciate Merrill even though they came from differing doctrinal starting points.
  
  Merrill, Gard and Longman III all identified Christ’s second coming as continuity between the OT Yahweh War and the NT. This was helpful.
  
  I was tempted to give the book only 2 stars because it failed to meet my expectations when it came to archeology, history, culture etc. I gave it three because my expectations are often misinformed.
  
  Along with "Show Them No Mercy" I’ve read through Genesis – Chronicles 3 times in the last 4 years and the entire bible twice. Not a great pace by any means but I’ve made these observations regarding the Canaanite genocide carried out by Israel at God’s command:
  
  1.God could have rightly executed every living soul during the time of the Israelite conquest of Palestine , or at any time in human history.
  
  2.The Israelites were not battle seasoned warriors. They were the sons and daughters of freedmen, more accustomed to a shepherd’s staff or a shovel than a spear or sword. The Transjordan battles under Moses helped prepare them for war but nothing could make up for the fact that they were not trained warriors.
  
  3.The Israelites at times outnumbered their enemies in a particular battle or campaign, but strategically they lacked the equipment and sufficient soldiers. And they often attacked fortified positions – something that required significant superiority in numbers and weapons.
  
  4.The Canaanites had well equipped, trained soldiers and at least some walled cities as defensive positions.
  
  5.Israel, when true to the covenant, consistently defeated large armies and coalitions. God Himself was fighting for and alongside Israel.
  
  6.Word had gone out among the Canaanites about the God of Israel, His powerful deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt and their (Israelites) crossing of the Jordan on dry ground.
  
  7.The propitiation of the Lord Jesus covered the Canaanites. The simple faith of Abraham was sufficient for righteousness to be credited to any believing Canaanite.
  
  8.Rahab was a pattern for all Canaanites, though not all believing Canaanites would necessarily have been spared, especially if they believed while their city was being sacked.
  
  9. In the same way that Israel’s disobedience resulted in blessing for the gentiles after Christ’s death and resurrection, so Israel’s disobedience resulted in blessing for the gentiles of Canaan before Christ’s death. Israel failed to destroy all the peoples under the ban. As a result, many Canaanite lives were spared and there are many instances of them embracing Yahweh – Uriah the Hittite and Ruth the Moabite being notable examples. God knew it would turn out this way.
  
  10. Nothing can be said or done to remove the fact that God ordered Israel to destroy men women and children of the 7 Canaanite nations and in fact many people from these nations were destroyed. This should cause us to realize that the God who is, is not always the God we wish Him to be. It should cause us to have a healthy fear of Him and a deep, abiding love for Him in providing a way for all people to be restored to a right relationship with Him.
  
• 
  Jonathan Roberts

  Great book! While I don’t always love these counterpoint books this one was very well done. I think their may have been a fifth view that would have worked in this too, but overall it was a good opportunity to think deeply about God’s Word
  
  Recommended
• 
  Wesley Morgan

  This book has two views on the Israelite conquest:
  
  1. C.S. Cowles argues against Biblical inerrancy. For him, Jesus Christ is the center of the gospel, and anything in the Old Testament that doesn't line up with his teachings should be discarded.
  
  I wish there had been more discussion of historicity. I like John Walton's explanation that "herem" can mean destroying a people's identity, not just killing all of them. Archaeological evidence shows that the conquest described in the Bible was greatly exaggerated, so it's disappointing that no scholars took this into account. Perhaps having Jewish authors, like other books in the series, might help.
  
  2. The other three writers show that holy war took place throughout the Bible, even in the book of Revelation, so it's consistent with God. They also point out that this command does not exist today.
  
  While I appreciate Tremper Longman and others showing that "holy war" has many characteristics, I don't like their justification for it: that God could/should kill all of us, so we should be grateful he doesn't.
  
  This book spoke to the turn of the millennium, when Christian terrorism in the US and Islamic terrorism from the Middle East was at the forefront of our minds. Today, no one needs a scriptural case for why those are wrong. But these three scholars fail to justify why what is described in the Bible is morally excusable.
• 
  Michel

  This extremely difficult question, in this book, turns out to be a matter of hermeneutics: what is the place and the value of the Old Testament in the canon of the Christian Bible?
  
  I mostly appreciated the contributions of Cowles and Longman as two opposite viewpoints. None of the essays, though, gives a fully satisfactory answer to the critical, postmodern mind, about how a God who reveals himself in the NT as the personification of love can play the part that he does in the wars of Israel. Ultimately, it comes down to the point of whether one would accept this paradox as a mystery or not.
  
  As such, I didn’t find this book very successful as an apologetic resource, which the book actually doesn’t claim to be.
• 
  Todd Miles

  What follows is a generic critique of all of the multiple views books.
  
  The essays are uneven. Some are better than others. The fatal flaw is not having each author respond to responses.
  
  Particular to this volume: One waits in vain for C.S. Cowles to address the primary criticism leveled against him - that he does not believe the OT to be inspired and inerrant. (This is a criticism that he cannot avoid when he argues that the OT conception of God makes him more diabolical than Satan.) So it seems that we have four authors, some of whom share common presuppositions about the Bible and some who do not. It was also difficult to differentiate the other three views from each other. Most differences seemed to arise from different theological system precommitments rather than in the substance of their proposals. This book, through no fault of its own, is a bit dated now. More work with other proposals has been done since.
• 
  Felicity Johnson

  Pretty straightforward- I enjoyed reading each authors critique of the other points; it helped me think through the og argument! None of the arguments stood out as being “the one” that answered everything, but they were each helpful to think through. Decently easy read. Not *too* much unnecessary technical language.
• 
  Matthew Richey

  As is almost always the case with this series, the contributions were uneven. I'll quickly summarize and evaluate each.
  
  Cowles argues for radical discontinuity between the Canaanite Genocide (I don't agree with using the word in this case, but none of the authors in this volume object) and the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament. In making his case, however, he descends into Marcionism and rejects the authority and goodness of the Old Testament as well as its status as divine revelation (he doesn't say this explicitly, but I think this is a fair conclusion. Fair enough but he doesn't offer a comprehensive or cohesive vision for Jesus' view of the Old Testament and completely ignores Revelation or any New Testament texts that would prove difficult to his view. 1/5 stars, not because I disagree but because he really does not engage the issues.
  
  Merrill presents a dispensational perspective that argues for the uniqueness of the conquest of the Canaanites because of Israel's unique place in the plan of God. My complaint is that although he does present a rather straightforward dispensational view of how the conquest of Canaan fits in salvation history he doesn't sufficiently deal with the difficulties of presenting a cohesive ethic (maybe his dispensationalism makes this unnecessary?). He is also unreasonably narrow (in my opinion) in defining what constitutes "YHWH warfare" and comes out poorly in his interaction with Gard and Longman. I think he presents his views well for the most part but I was unsatisfied with the scope of his answers. 2.5/5 stars
  
  Gard is rather like Merrill except that he comes from a Covenant perspective. I think he offers some helpful insights and observations into the continuity between Old Testament warfare and God's eschatological judgment. In terms of ethical difficulty, he doesn't really see one. All are deserving of God's judgment and it's only by God's grace that any are spared. He does seem to be overly aggressive with making the texts of the Old and New Testament fit his system (which he basically admits to doing) and I think he also avoids some of the difficulties. 2.5/5 stars
  
  Longman offers a helpful summary and biblical theology of Old Testament warfare and how it fits into the metanarrative of Scripture and how to read these texts in light of the New Testament. He sees both continuous and discontinuous elements and is less forceful in making the text fit his agenda that Gard I found his insights helpful and I will refer back to them. I would have liked to have seen more time spent on ethical considerations, but helpful nonetheless and easily the best of the four. 4/5 stars
  
  Overall I was disappointed. The authors mostly avoided the difficulties of the issues and pushed their theological systems instead. Not a strong volume. I would recommend Longman's contribution but I'd skip the other three. 2.5 stars overall, but I'm rounding down because a counterpoints volume in which 3/4 are relatively weak is not a book I'd recommend.
• 
  Jeremy Manuel

  This is a book I remember having read in school and not really enjoying it, but somehow it had stayed in my collection. So I decided to give it another read and see if I was mistaken or had changed my mind at all. The result was that I was not mistaken about how I had felt about the book and my thoughts really hadn't changed.
  
  The idea behind the book is worthy enough. To take a look at some of the violent passages in the Old Testament that are considered to be God endorsing and even commanding genocide of the Canaanites. This is an issue that should make people wonder and to look into how that fits into faith and particularly how that fits with Christ and how he tended to very much steer away from the violence of the Old Testament conquest narratives.
  
  However the book itself kind of falls short in a number of different ways. First, the book uses the backdrop of jihad and the 9/11 attacks to explore this topic, which just kind of falls flat in my mind. This is an issue that kind of supersedes that in my opinion and feels very much like a marketing gimmick of sorts.
  
  Second, the book takes a bit too much of a academic tone and I think would miss a rather wide audience appeal. Which in that approach they tend to look more broadly at violence in the Bible in general and not just tackling the conquest narratives which is what you would more expect in a book like this.
  
  Third, the views are so similar to each other, except for the first one, that it makes a lot of the views seem very redundant. There may be a slight difference in approach or nuance, but the general thrust lands them in a very similar position at the end. To top it all off none of the approaches really satisfied.
  
  Lastly, the idea of having the writers respond to each other is a good one, but doesn't really work the greatest. The one author who had a differing view tended to be a bit too dismissive of the other writers, even if I could understand why he would be that way. The other ones were so close to each other that their responses were pretty lackluster and felt like they had nitpicks more than substantial counter-points.
  
  Overall, the book just really falls kind of flat. It didn't really feel like they addressed the issue very well at all. There were just too many flaws in approach and execution that really set this book back. There may be some who get something useful or helpful from this book, but I wasn't really one of them.
  
  
• 
  Benjamin

  This was a worthy offering in the tradition of "4/5 views on...". The topic is, as the title states, the genocides commanded in the OT, or more generally the concept of holy war. The 4 views presented can be summarized by the denominational affiliation of their respective authors: Nazarene/Anabaptist, Dispensational Baptist, Lutheran, Reformed. Anyone familiar with the theology of these schools will not be surprised that the latter 3 (and especially latter 2) find much more common ground with one another on the question of violence in the OT than with the first.
  
  The Anabaptist position on violence requires quite a bit of difficult maneuvering with the relevant OT passages. While not all in this camp would approve of Cowles's suggestion, his is certainly consistent and "easier" hermeneutically: the OT passages should be more or less disregarded as the flawed product of humans. Thus, one may easily discount their contents from a picture of God. Of course, most evangelical believers would not accept this view of Scripture.
  
  The last three have much in common: all acknowledge the infallibility of the OT and NT, all see a level of continuity between the holy wars in the OT and the final judgement at Christ's second coming (though they differ in the eschatological details as per their theological traditions), and all give reasons (many overlapping) why genocide is never acceptable practice in the current, post-theocratic-Israel era.
  
  However, these latter three spend more time on details of definition (what constitutes holy war) and eschatology, which leaves them focusing less time on what is obvious the biggest question: how does one reconcile the OT events with God's love? Of course, in reality, as they see the OT genocides in continuity with final judgment, the question is really the broader one of reconciling a God of love with a God who judges (whatever the exact form of that judgment).
  
  The replies to each position from the other authors sometimes seem to misconstrue the arguments given and focus instead on the minutia of their own theological tradition. This is, however, perhaps only due to the fact that the latter 3 agree with one another in the main points and still need to write about something.
  
  Overall, a decent overview of a few different positions on this difficult topic (with only 2 vastly divergent positions presented).
• 
  Jonathan Ammon

  Less helpful than it should of been, I can't help but think this four views book is a product of its time, with Longman, Gard, and Merrill largely in agreement but also largely glossing over the most challenging moral issues to give lengthy dives into biblical theology. The debate over these issues has progressed, thanks largely to the contributions of philosophical theologians and apologists like Boyd, Flannagan, Copan, Wolterstorff, Rauser, and others. While Cowles is the recipient of the fiercest criticism both within the book and in the reviews, his view at least grapples with the hardest questions. His answers are pretty direct--the OT contains theological error that is inspired when placed within the Canon and fulfilled in Christ. He does not claim to hold to inerrancy.
  The rest of the views are similar to one another, different variations of the same answer: God is just and the extermination of the Canaanites is as well, they also each suggest that the moral issues can be resolved if one understands the proper biblical and/or systematic theology. It is my humble opinion that they all fail to answer the hard questions, some worse than others, but it does seem like they do not take the moral questions seriously enough and certainly none of them spend as much time as I believe they should directly addressing the issue of soldiers close-combat killing an entire race of people including infants, the unborn, women, children, the handicapped, disabled, and elderly. One can point back to the flood and forward to the Apocalypse, but these events are not the same. What's more, what about the variety of views that do not argue that the extermination of a race of human beings is morally justifiable and also hold to a more robust view of inspiration? I know that Longman has subsequently developed his views on this subject. This book needs a new edition with more varied contributors.
• 
  Amy Johnson

  Worthwhile if a bit clunky. 3/4 authors agreed that destruction of any/all humans is the right of God, and that the non-violence of Jesus and the persecuted church is just a break between the Old Testament and eschatological times. Cowles posits that Jesus is out clearest revelation of God, and that some of the Old Testament writers claimed to hear orders from God that were inconsistent with Jesus' character and perhaps instead came from Satan. This is potentially supported by the conflicting reports of who incited David to take a census of Israel towards the end of his reign.
  
  The rebuttals/comments from every author at the end of each essay were quite helpful but potentially underutilised. Better editing could have made the book more cohesive and ensured the alternative views on each major text/passage were addressed (although admittedly cohesion is not the goal of the series).
• 
  Rachel

  I was disappointed with this book.
  
  There was one essay with a very different view, but between the other three the points of difference in their views weren't clearly delineated either within the essays or in the responses. It felt like "three general essays" rather than "three distinctive views".
  
  Also, at least two accidentally wrote their essay about "warfare in the Bible" rather than sticking to the Canaanite genocide.
  
  Finally, any addressing of the obvious (apparent) ethical/apologetics problem of a God who commands genocide was grossly inadequate, swept aside with comments to the effect of "add it to your list of questions to ask God when you get to heaven".
  
  Overall I have given a 3 mainly because I love the idea of the counterpoints format so much, but unfortunately I don't feel live learnt much from this book.
• 
  Parker

  Overall, these essays are helpful for anyone attempting (as we all should) to wade through some more difficult texts of Scripture. Cowles' contribution reeks of neo-Marcionism, and should be offensive to any who believe in the inspiration of all Scripture (or who value arguments free of logical fallacies). The remaining three scholars (Merrill, Gard, and Longman) all make valuable contributions that are worth careful consideration. I favor Longman's approach, though I admit that the disagreements between these last three are subtle. It's certainly possible, I think, to glean the best ideas from each without resulting in a self-contradictory solution.
• 
  Zachary Lawson

  Closer to 2 1/2 Views than 4
  
  As with many of these “4 views” books, the content is dependent on the quality of the contributors. In this case, there was not much daylight between the last 3 views (Gard, Merrill, and Longman). I was most disappointed with Cowles’s essay and responses; while rhetorically pointed, he did not engage with the text but merely resorted to driving a wedge between Jesus and the OT. There are stronger advocates of the “Old Testament as imperfect revelation of God”. The most ironic part was when Cowles quoted from Exodus to make his point! Quite muddled.
• 
  Marc Sims

  This was a helpful introduction of how a Christian ought to interpret Old Testament “herem” (genocide) passages. The book doesn’t deal directly with ethical applications, but makes some passing comments about it. One of the four contributors (Cowles) is entirely unhelpful, making only emotional arguments that don’t actually deal with the text. I found Longman’s position (spiritual continuity) to be the most convincing. If you are looking for resources in how to understand genocide in the Old Testament, this book will help, but won’t answer many of your questions.
• 
  Jerome

  The most helpful aspect of this book is to see scholars engage with each other. An excellent introduction to ancient warfare in the Hebrew Bible.
• 
  David Blankenship

  One of the better entries into this series, each of the writers gives a insight into different ways to look at genocide and holy war in Scripture.
• 
  Filip Sekkelsten

  Et særdeles viktig emne.
  
  1. Radikal diskontinuitet: NT representerer et radikalt brudd med GT og folkemordet var ikke et bud fra Gud. Dette åpner for at mye av GT ikke er Guds ord, men heller menneskers misforståelse av Guds ord.
  2. Moderat diskontinuitet: NT representerer et moderat brudd med GT. Folkemordet var Guds bud, men det var unikt til den tiden.
  De to siste synene representerer kontinuitet, altså fortsettelse og enhet, mellom GT og NT, enten eskatologisk (med hensyn til endetiden), eller åndelig. Disse vektlegger hvordan Gud i GT valgte seg ut Israel som sitt folk, og brukte disse som et instrument til å dømme andre folk. De ble også selv dømt av andre nasjoner (f. eks. Babylon og Assyria ved eksilene).
  I NT er Guds folk ikke lenger en fysisk nasjon, men alle som tror på Kristus og hører Gud til. Vi må dog ikke glemme at straffen ikke er ute av bildet. Johannes' Åpenbaring gjør dette klart for oss, f.eks. 19:11-21. Dette er beskrivelser av hvordan Gud kommer til å dømme verden – alle som ikke tror på ham.
  To andre gode tanker i dette henseende er:
  1. Jeg tror vi glemmer, i alt vårt fokus på Guds kjærlighet, at han også er rettferdig, og skal komme tilbake for å dømme levende og døde.
  2. Da Adam og Eva syndet i Edens hage fortjente de å dø. Romerne 6,23 forteller oss at syndens lønn er døden, og Romerne 3,23 sier klart at alle har vi syndet. Vi fortjener altså alle å dø, og vi burde derfor være i undring over at Gud lar alle leve som han gjør. Dette kan kanskje kalles Guds "generelle nåde" til alle mennesker. Men den vil ta slutt en dag – på dommens dag.
  Til syvende og sist vet vi ikke hvorfor akkurat Kanaanittene måtte dø, eller hvorfor én blir frelst og ikke en annen – alle stiller jo likt. Men Gud er kjærlighet og rettferdighet i alle tilfeller.
  
  Jeg er helt klart i den siste kampen. Jeg tror IKKE Gud er annerledes i GT og NT, det ville jo underbygge hele troen. Jeg ble også minnet av Tony Thomasson på at straffen som kommer kommer til å bli fæl – Herrens dag er en stor og skremmende dag for de som ikke tror. Jesaja sier flere ganger: "De urettferdige har ingen fred" 48,22.
• 
  The other John

  Jesus loves me,
  This I know
  For the Bible
  Tells me so...
  
  Ah, if only theology were so easy. The problem is, if you actually read the Bible, you might get confused. You read of a God who loved humanity so much that He would let His Son be killed to pay for their sins. But you also read of a God who rains down fire and brimstone on a defenseless city; who apparently sanctions the genocide of certain peoples. What's up with that? Are we talking about two different gods here? Was God just off his meds that day? Is there some part of the story we're not getting? Well, this issue has puzzled folks for centuries, and back in 2001, the terrorist attacks on September 11th made the issue of "holy war" a bit more interesting to Americans. Show Them No Mercy takes a look at the issue of how a loving God could allow His people to kill, especially as told in the Biblical book of Joshua. The book contains essays (and rebuttals) from four theologians trying to reconcile the issue. Simply put, Professor Cowles takes the stand that ol' Moses and Joshua had things wrong; that the conquest of the land of Canaan was quite against God's will. Professor Merrill takes the dispensationalist view, that the ancient Israelites were following the rules in effect at that time, but nowadays we have a different standard to follow. Professor Gard sees that past violence as events which point to the final Day of Judgement. Finally, Professor Longman sees the death and destruction of the Canaanites as part of the ongoing battle against evil--a battle that has currently progressed from the physical to the spiritual realm. (I should point out that none of these gentlemen advocate or excuse the concept of "holy war" in this day and age. So for those of you who were thinking about it, put away your sword and keep turning the other cheek.) All in all I enjoyed this book and it's style of presenting differing viewpoints on this particular issue. It was good to read some well thought out, biblical arguments from each writer and to challenge my own beliefs on the topic.
• 
  Ben

  This was a great book featuring 4 concise and very different perspectives on the "Canaanite Genocide" in the Old Testament. Again, the beauty of these "4 Views" books is that you get to digest 4 very different views of the same topic, it is short and to the point, and you get to see the interaction between the authors as they critique each other.
  
  At the heart of this discussion lies the reliability of Scripture, the nature of God, and the nature of sin, to name just a few doctrines. Not an easy issue to sort through, but this book gives you a great handle on how scholars have dealt with the topic. A worthwhile read for any thoughtful believer wishing to better understand the OT, and good for apologetics when confronted with this topic by unbelievers.
• 
  Douglas Brock

  A good discussion of various views on a sticky "problem." I find myself agreeing with the last two, and struggling to tell much of a difference. I still want to study a fifth view I have run across, to the effect that the order was not strictly literal, but idiomatic; roughly equivalent to a football fan telling his team to "knock their block off!" That being said, all three of the last presenters do God's Word justice by maintaining that whatever we say about the Canaanite "genocide," removing it from authoritative Scripture or apart from God's will is not an option.
• 
  Andrew

  This is an excellent little book on this very difficult topic. The format of the book presents 4 different views on the Canaanite genocide in the Old Testament. While it does not answer all the questions one may have of this difficult aspect of biblical history (a point admitted by the writers), it certainly helps to frame one's understanding better from an historical and Christian perspective. I would highly recommend this book.
• 
  Rebekka

  It's really good if you want to get some different interpretations on the violence behind the Old Testament. The last two views are really similar, but different perspectives are better than no perspectives.
  
  If you get angry over viewpoints that show your religion in a semi bad light, then don't read it, because it should be read with an open mind.
  
  Peace
• 
  Paul Jeon

  I always enjoy this series as they present different perspectives on relevant and difficult questions. One often finds agreement and disagreement with all positions. The series also demonstrates how devoted and brilliant Christians can disagree--profoundly so--without being disagreeable. This isn't the same, of course, as saying there isn't a "right answer."