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| Show Them No Mercy | 
 enlarge | Creators: C. S. Cowles, Eugene H. Merrill, Daniel L. Gard, Tremper Longman Iii, Stanley N. Gundry
Publisher: Zondervan
Category: Book
List Price: $17.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 221151
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0310245680
Dewey Decimal Number: 230.0411
UPC: 025986245689
EAN: 9780310245681
ASIN: 0310245680
Publication Date: April 1, 2003
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Product Description
A Counterpoints book that discusses various contemporary views held by evangelicals on God’s command to the Israelites to destroy utterly the Canaanites and how each view sees the relationship between this God of the Israelites and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has commanded us to love our enemies.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
An attempt at a defense of Hebraic genocide April 16, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
An attempt at a defense of Hebraic genocide. The most incisive of the articles are those by C. S. Cowles. The other three authors basically accept the traditional view with little else to add to the discussion.
In other words, three of the authors find that Yahweh-ordered genocide is not a real problem to one's faith.
Provocative Topic, Mixed Results June 4, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Four Old Testament scholars debate the ethical issue as to how a God of love could order the genocide of the Canaanite communities. CS Cowles handles this by stating that the Israelites misunderstood what God was saying, and that Canaanite genocide is incompatible with God's love shown in Jesus Christ. His essay was the weakest in my view because he in essence rejected the authority of the Old Testament. The other three writers called him to task on this, and also called on Cowles to strengthen his commitment to the infallibility of Scripture. Yikes!
The best article in my humble opinion was the one by Eugene Merrill of Dallas Theological Seminary, He goes through every salient Hebrew Bible text about holy war (herem) and concludes that God's call for the destruction of these communites was a unique time in history when God was executing judgment on historically oppressive, repressive societies in opposition to the Noachide commandments. He gives the following reasons: 1) the stubbornness of the Canaanites in their persistence in idolatry, child sacrifice, and their opposition to the revealed will of God, 2) because this was a special time in history when the people of Israel were emerging as God's chosen instrument to bring salvation and judgment to the nations (3 to bring Israel into the promised land and to prepare them for the coming of their Messiah (4 to show them that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and 5) to remove communities that would continue to oppress God's people and to tempt them toward idolatry and sin. Never mind that Israel didn't obey God completely, the article deals with the theological reasons for OT holy war.
This satisfies the biblical reasoning more than it solves the ethical dilemna, but nevertheless, I found it to be the most compelling discussion in the book, and John Gard and Tremper Longman (two of the other contributors found themselves in substantial agreement with a number of Merrill's arguments).
John Gard (the Missouri Synod Lutheran contributor) ties this topic in with God's eschatological judgment on His enemies. And Tremper Longman says that the NT carries on the Old Testament idea of holy war in the spiritual realm (pointing out Jesus' encounter with the demon world at His first coming).
This was a good book. It satisfied me. I have never really had a problem with the idea of God judging whole civilizations. He is the Lord, He can do what is right in His own eyes. I am just glad that He has given me life and allows me to live in His world.
I should also say that I commend all four writers for noting that this was an unusual time in history and that there is no authorization or word from God to continue this sort of action today. In the book of Revelation, God pours out His wrath on the beast and his minions, but that will be at His initiative.
This is a tough subject where it will be hard to find a unanimous consent. But I commend the writers for their courage in taking up such a hot potato.
 I was hoping for a better May 1, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
"When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations... then you must destroy them totally... and show them no mercy. Do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them... as the Lord your God has commanded you."
These statements found in Deuteronomy and Joshua serve as the backdrop to one of the hardest stories in the Bible to reconcile with my beliefs and with the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us, Jesus. It is the story of the genocide of the Canaanites. It is with that in mind that I picked up Show Them No Mercy: Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide edited by Stanley Gundry. It contains essays by four scholars, C.S. Cowles, Eugene Merrill, Daniel Gard, and Tremper Longman. What made it especially interesting for me was that I had read some of Longman's other work that he has done with Dan Allender, so that was at least one familiar voice.
The four essays widely varied in quality. While I liked Longman's article, I thought that Cowles, who was the least conservative of all of them, actually had the best argument. I thought Merrill's arguments were poor and would put Gard above Merrill but below Longman. Without a doubt, the three conservative articles shared the most in common in that they all defended the idea that God had actually told Moses and Joshua to conquer the land just as is recorded in the Bible. They solve the tension for themselves by jamming the proverbial square peg in the round hole and saying, "look it fits!" Cowles, to put it simply and most accurately, solves the problem by denying that the Bible records God's command to the Israelite leaders accurately.
To critics who would say that Cowles selection of scripture is arbitrary he would respond thus,
"... how can we speak of Jesus as the embodiment of deity when he not only fails to incarnate Israel's image of a warrior God, from whom `good and evil comes forth,' but discloses its exact opposite?.. what is our criterion for selection [of Scripture]? John Wesley would answer in a flash: Jesus! As the full and final revelation of God, Jesus is "the criterion" for evaluating Scripture, the prism through which the Hebrew Scriptures must be read."
For Cowles, Jesus is the "canon" so to speak. Now from what I've read from others who have read Karl Barth, this sounds like the logical extension of his idea that Jesus, as opposed to the Bible, is the true Word/Revelation of God. To loosely paraphrase N.T. Wright who put it something like this in a panel discussion with Anne Rice: Jesus didn't say all authority has been given unto the books and letters which you chaps will go on to write. He said all authority has been given unto me. Ostensibly, to bring a modern reformed voice into the discussion, Cowles quotes John Stott who says, "our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance... and that the secret of both is Jesus Christ."
(Disclaimer: I am pretty sure that none of the above mentioned writers would absolutely deny any kind of inspiration in Scripture).
Cowles goes on to say that "Jesus exercised an audacious prophetic authority over the Torah and on how it was to be interpreted... The benchmark of divine revelation in the era of the new covenant was no longer the Word of God mediated by Moses but by Jesus." He then traces the evolution of the Israelite beliefs, from blaming bad events on God (2 Sam. 24:1) to blaming bad events on Satan (I Chron. 21:1). He goes on to say it was not that the revelation of God was ever full of malice and genocidal intentions but that the Israelites misinterpreted and distorted God's command. He points out how God's command to annihilate everything was conveniently modified as the conquest went on.
To be fair, Cowles attempts to point out that the Israelites acted in good faith based on what they understood of God's will, much as a Crusader might have done back in the middle ages. He compares an Old Testament treatment of the unbeliever to the New Testament treatment by quoting Jack Ford and A.R.G. Deasley: "There can be no doubt that, armed with the Christian gospel and endued with the Holy Spirit, Paul would have entered Canaan as he entered Corinth to show God's triumph over evil in transformed lives."
He closes with the following,
"Where was God in Israel's genocidal conquest of Canaan? In the `lost hopes,' the `charred past,' the "extinguished future,' of the babies, the infants, the little children - all the `Julieks' of Canaan. It was in those like Melchizedek, the priest of God Most High, and Rahab, who might have glorified God had they been given the chance." [His quote marks are in reference to Elie Wiesel's book "Night".]
All in all, the book did not meet my expectations. Other than Cowles, the other 3 had very similar views and seemed to sort of shirk the question that still haunts me even after reading this book.
Intriguing topic tempered by author preconceptions October 24, 2006
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book deals with one of the more difficult questions arising out of the OT narratives: How could a God of love, as he is described in the NT, order the wholesale slaughter of the Canaanites in the OT? The answers and analyses in this book are certainly thought-provoking. I wasn't sure I appreciated the book's frequent use of the term "genocide" to describe the Israelite's warfare, as this word tends to produce a very emotional reaction in people and is often assumed to describe an inherently evil act which has no regard for the value of human life. (And all the contributors deny that God ever does evil or that he lacks respect for human life.) The word "genocide" seems more like an attempt to appeal to sensationalism and capitalize on the events of Sept.11, than a completely accurate term for what happened to the Canaanites.
Also, each of the authors' chapters is heavily based on unproven presuppositions which he simply assumes to be true. Specifically:
--C.S. Cowles assumes that parts of the OT (namely, those ordering the warfare) either are not inspired by God, or that they completely misconstrue God's true intent (Cowles doesn't specify which of these options he prefers), to the extent that they are of little if any value to modern readers.
--Eugene Merrill assumes that a dispensational interpretation of the Bible is accurate. (While I understand that many people today are dispensationalits, Merrill simply assumes this scheme without proving it).
--Daniel Gard assumes that an eschatological theme exists in 1-2 Chronicles (spending more time commenting on implications of this theme, and tracing it through the rest of the Bible, than establishing whether it even exists in the first place).
--Tremper Longman assumes that some of God's ways are inherently mysterious and impossible for finite humans to understand completely. (This allows him a very convenient excuse to what otherwise would be a major hole in his argumentation -- namely, why God orders the destruction of the Canaanites but protects the Israelites, when both groups were guilty of sin.)
Personally I was most convinced by Longman -- partly because I reject the presuppositions of Cowles and Merrill and agree with Longman's, and partly because of Longman's appeal to "intrusion ethics" (p.185 if you buy the book) as a way of linking God's OT savagery against the Canaanites w/ his future Final Judgment over all mankind. I find this a fascinating concept in explaining God's warfare-commands to Israel. Other readers are certainly free to side with other contributors of the book, but anyone who reads this will get 4 intelligent, well-argued, yet markedly different approaches toward making sense of a problem for which no easy answers exist.
Christians United For Genocide speaks out October 19, 2006
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
"Show them no mercy" is a book published by the mainstream Christian publisher Zondervan. But are the ideas contained in the book mainstream among evangelical Christians? If they are, I suddenly became more sympathetic to the wackos that are waging war on Christmas. I found the book to be both disturbing and revealing.
The book deals with the perhaps most shocking part of the Bible, the Book of Joshua, included in both Jewish and Christian Bibles. Joshua and the Israelites conquer the land of Canaan (Palestine) and exterminate the entire civilian population of several towns, most notably Jericho. This genocidal butchering is commanded by God himself, who is also portrayed as the leader of the war effort. In plain English, God commands genocide against civilian men, women and children. They are all evil, and every one must die, lest they pollute the Israelites with their wicked heathen cults. Indeed, "Show them no mercy" is actually a quote from the Bible.
By modern standards, Joshua was a war criminal. There is also an obvious difference between the message of the Book of Joshua, and the message of Jesus, for instance as recorded in the Sermon on the Mount. Yet, Christians are supposed to believe that the God of Joshua was the same as Jesus Christ. Does this mean that genocide is justified from a Christian perspective?
Disturbingly, only one of the four contributors to this volume reject genocide. The exception is C.S. Cowles. Judging by his contributions, he is some kind of Methodist. He argues for a radical downplaying of the Old Testament in favor of the New. Cowles articles are very spirited and emotional, indeed the only contributions that are. He's getting it.
The three other writers are all pro-genocide. I couldn't decipher their exact denominational affiliations, but I guess one of them is a Baptist and the two others Calvinists. Their texts, by contrast to that of Cowles, are dispassionate, scholarly, even boring. Given the subject, this give them a truly bizarre appearence. All three of them argue that genocide is not allowed today, neither for Christians or anyone else. It was allowed "only" in the past, "only" for God's chosen nation Israel, and "only" at God's express command.
So that makes it alright, then?
It's very difficult to interact with these kinds of ideas in a dispassionate way. However, I will make my best. But first, a hot coffee....
OK, I'm back.
First, the practical problem. The fact that Merrill, Gard and Longman limits genocide to the distant past (but also to the future, in the form of the apocalypse) may convince their own followers, but the real world is more complicated than that. And more evil. A prophet or churchman may claim that it's the will of God that a certain people, say the Tutsi, should be exterminated. He may claim that the apocalypse draws near, and that his people are simply doing Gods work. The prophet may even claim to have recieved a direct communication from God himself as to that effect. It's unclear what Merrill, Gard or Longman would say in such a situation. "You are right, God does occasionally command genocide, but not in the present dispensation. You have to wait until the apocalypse for the next chance". Oh my...
Indeed, every argument used by the three writers defending Joshua is used to justify genocide still today. The Jews are not the only people who claim to be chosen. For all I know, the Hutu claimed to be God's chosen people. One of the writers even argues that not even the children of the Canaanites were innocent, since they were part of an inherently wicked culture. They too must therefore die. The same line of reasoning was used by White settlers to kill Indian babies, and (I imagine) by Nazis to kill Jewish children. Nits, after all, make lice. Its pretty chilling to see every genocidal argument on record in a Christian book!
But what about the theological arguments? According to Merrill, Gard and Longman, God isn't simply loving, good and forgiving. He is also holy. The holiness of God means that he cannot suffer sin, but must exterminate it completely. That is what happened at Jericho and Ai. But what exactly is holiness? The contributors seem to regard it as something existing in and of itself, without any attributes. God is altogether different from everything human and created, and this Wholly Otherness is his holiness. Logically, this means that God stands apart from our modern human morality, according to which genocide is always wrong and its perpetrators should be brought to justice for crimes against humanity. Should we simply say "Amen" to such a God? It's indeed absurd that our gut reflex when reading the Book of Joshua, one of shock and horror, is brushed aside by arguments about the unfathomable workings of God, his holiness, how we puny humans cannot judge him, and so on.
Let's grant for the sake of the argument that God exists. How do Merrill, Gard and Longman know that his holiness is a separate quality? Perhaps Gods holiness, his perfect nature, means that he is loving, good, forgiving and long-suffering. After all, perfect goodness would also set God apart from fallen humanity and creation.
If God is unfathomable, how do Calvinists and Southern Baptists know that the entity they are worshipping is really God? For all we know, it could be the Devil. Indeed, if holiness lacks any qualifying attributes, the result can only be nominalism: what God does is right by definition. But a God whose raw power and will isn't coupled with moral goodness, is not much different from Satan. I'm not being demagogical. I'm trying to make a serious point.
For what is power without morality if not the very definition of evil?
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