Strachan reviews 1917

Owen Strachan reviews the film 1917: "Keep Your Eyes on the Trees: An Essay on 1917, the Most Profound Film Since Tree of Life".

I also reviewed 1917 back in February.

A Catholic-Protestant meme war

A Catholic-Protestant meme war kicked off on Facebook when a couple of Catholics initiated it. Paul Manata had glorious responses, as did several other Protestants. In fact, I'd say Paul single-handedly won the war. Cameron Bertuzzi thought Protestants had lost the war...until he saw Paul's responses, then he completely reversed judgment. My contributions are below. NB: This kind of humor won't suit those who are easily offended. So of course I'll start with (probably) the most offensive one.

Midianite virgins

@RandalRauser

King David didn't have an affair with Bathsheba. He raped her. There is no willing consent when the king orders that a civilian wife be brought into his presence.

True. Of course, that's a narrative description, not a divine command.

Numbers 31 describes God commanding that all Midianite men, boys, and nonvirgin women be killed. That's genocide.

i) In context, I assume this wasn't a campaign to eradicate the Midianites as a people-group from the face of the earth, but at most the Midianite adults who are captured at this particular locality. Indeed, the virgins were exempted and there are further historical references to the Midianites in the OT. As one OT scholar has noted (in private email):

ii) There is some ambiguity as to who the Midianites were, and it has been suggested that they might not have been so much a distinct ethnicity as people who could either be associated or intermingled with various peoples, such as the Moabites, Amalekites, etc. It may be that they should be regarded as a confederation of different peoples as opposed to a single ethnicity.

iii) It is particularly directed against the Midianites on account of their attempt to corrupt the Israelites, as recounted in Numbers 25. Notice the association with the Moabites in this episode. Indeed, we can might well understand that this was not a matter of “ethnics,” but a matter of “ethics.”

iv) Because the concern in Numbers 31 is particularly against those Midianites who were involved in the Midianite/Moabite incident in Numbers 25, we cannot say the action was directed against all Midianites.

v) As well, we have to take into account what is certainly to be understood as the hyperbolic character of both the language and the narrative. Indeed, after this account, there are still Midianites who have to be contended with, as evidenced by the books of Joshua, Judges, Kings, and Isaiah.

"but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." (v. 18) A terrified 13-year-old who saw her family killed doesn't consent. That's rape.

i) The statement in Num 31:18 is notably terse. Probably because it takes for granted the more detailed war bride context of Deut 21:10-14. In other words, they're not sex slaves. Rather, it was meant to be understood within the kind of framework envisioned in Deut 21:10-14.

ii) Likewise, isn't the tacit implication that Midianite virgins can be distinguished from Midianite wives because the virgins haven't reached sexual maturity, and so they're not yet eligible for marriage, but will be married off when they hit the age at which Jewish females usually got married?

iii) Is that an enviable situation for females to be in? Certainly not. But as I've mentioned before, these were warrior cultures. If the men are killed, the females are totally vulnerable. They can starve or turn to prostitution. Rauser fails to consider the plight of unattached females in the ancient Near East.

The commands doesn't represent an ideal. Rather, they address a situation in which some things have already gone terribly wrong. So this is damage control. I've discussed the dilemma in more detail elsewhere:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/02/when-bible-rubs-us-wrong-way.html

iv) What does Rauser think it was like to be a woman in a heathen culture like the Midianites? They were much better off becoming Jewish wives.

For a modern comparison, consider the forcible taking of young Chibok schoolgirls by Boko Haram in 2014. They didn't consent either.

Which piggybacks on his dubious interpretation of Num 31:18.

Christians need an honest conversation about biblical atrocities.

Rauser needs to have an honest conversion about why he pretends to be a Christian when he repudiates biblical revelation. He suffers from a makeshift position that isn't consistently Christian or secular. He abodes fanatical confidence in his moral intuitions, even though the Bible writers don't share his intuitions. So what makes his intuitions true?

Rauser suffers from a Messiah complex. His self-appointed calling in life is to single-handedly redefine Christianity along progressive lines. That's doomed to fail. It will never replace biblical Christianity. And his alternative is just a hodgepodge of secular humanism with some residual Christian motifs and paranormal anecdotes.

The scope of OT holy war

Here's an exegetical article by an evangelical OT scholar who argues that the scope of the holy war passages has been traditionally misinterpreted:

https://www.godawa.com/chronicles_of_the_nephilim/Articles_By_Others/Hess%20-%20Jericho%20and%20Ai%20of%20Joshua.pdf

One may or may not agree with his conclusions, but it's carefully reasoned.

Weeding evil

Here's a thoughtful response to facile charges of OT "genocide" by Iain Provan:

Dear RJS:

I've been following with great interest your posts on Seriously Dangerous Religion for the last several months, and all the comments they have generated. I want to thank you very much for your thorough and accurate reporting on the content of the book – I feel very well represented!

Now that your posts are concluded, I wonder if I could enter the discussion on the point that is the focus of the final one? In this post, you say that "a valid case can be made that The Old Story is intrinsically dangerous if it actively teaches and encourages violence and warfare." I do agree with this sentiment. So the question is: does the Old Testament do such things? It certainly describes violence and warfare in the ancient world – but does it actively teach and encourage us to engage in these activities? After all, there are many actions described in the Old Testament that cannot reasonably be taken by the alert reader of Scripture as intended for our imitation (e.g. David's adulterous actions with respect to Bathsheba). This includes many actions commanded by God – since the alert Scripture reader knows that God commanded ancient Israelites to do many things that are not required of the Church (e.g. to engage in animal sacrifice). So we need to be discriminating in our judgments when it comes to questions of "teaching" and "encouragement." My own judgment with respect to herem warfare very much agrees with your own: "We are not called to purify the land or to establish a holy kingdom by force." That is absolutely correct, in my opinion.

The question of whether ancient Israel was ever called by God to do such a thing is another matter, and I think that it will help with clarity if we consider it separately. My conviction here is that our biblical authors certainly thought that ancient Israel was called to do such a thing at one point in its history. But here it is very important to read carefully and to note what these authors do say about this, and what they do not. In spite of what modern readers quite often claim (and this includes some of your respondents), the biblical authors evidently do not think that Israel was called to conquer and settle Canaan because of the race or ethnicity of the previous inhabitants, or because Israel had some kind of right to the land and the previous inhabitants were simply and inconveniently "there," in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Our authors explicitly tell us, to the contrary, that in the events of the conquest and settlement, the Canaanite peoples were experiencing the justice of God, on account of their longstanding wickedness (Genesis 15:16; Leviticus 18:24-26; Deuteronomy 9:4-5) – just as the Israelites themselves in the period of the later monarchy are also driven out of the land on account of their longstanding wickedness. For the biblical authors, the war in Canaan was God's (and not the Israelites') war. The Israelites are only God's vassals, summoned to help him fight against wickedness (e.g. Amos 2:9; Psalm 78:53-55).

Perhaps we should like to argue with our biblical authors about these claims; but at least we should recognize that this, and not something else, is indeed what they propose. It will not help the conversation if we begin by misunderstanding them. If we then advance to the argument itself, it interests me to know how we shall establish that, in fact, these claims are false – that, in fact, God was not bringing justice on the Canaanites for their long-term wickedness, but that something else was happening instead. What is the argument to be, on this point? That God cannot bring justice on wicked cultures in the here-and-now, but must wait until the eschaton? Or what? We need to be clear on this point. It will not do just to say that "this idea is dangerous because it has, in the past, and might in the future, encourage some people-groups to attack others." The biblical authors do not tell us about these events in order that we can generalize from them about how we can recruit God to our own bloodthirsty schemes. Indeed, Scripture as a whole never does generalize from them, as it does from the Exodus, about the ways of God in the world. They are understood, within Scripture itself, as highly unusual events (which is indeed why I did not spend much time discussing them in my book – they are not considered in Scripture to be "normative"). Yet the question remains: did God (unusually) once bring these people-groups to justice in this way or not? The biblical authors claim that God did. What are the grounds for dismissing this claim?

And then, thirdly, there is the question of what, exactly, ancient Israel was called by God to do with respect to the Canaanites – not the "whether" question, but the "what" question. This is an important question that has not received as much consideration as it deserves and needs. Modern readerly attention tends to be drawn quickly to the herem language in answering this question, and to passages like Joshua 10:40-42 that give the impression that the conquest of the land of Canaan was complete, and that all the original inhabitants were wiped out. Yet the predominant way of referring to the conquest of Canaan in the Old Testament is in terms of expulsion, not killing (e.g. Leviticus 18:24-28; Numbers 33:51-56; 2 Kings 16:3)— just as the Israelites, later, are said to have been expelled from the land because they sinned in the same way as the Canaanites (2 Kings 17:7-23). Further, there are clearly many Canaanites still living in the land in the aftermath of Joshua's victories – people who are not ultimately even expelled from the land, much less killed (e.g. Judges 1:1-3:6; 2 Samuel 24:7; 1 Kings 9:15-23). Clearly, then, there is something very strange about the language of Joshua 10 (and associated passages). Indeed, as Lawson Younger has helped us to see (Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing, 1990), we are likely dealing here with the kind of hyperbolic language that is fairly typical of ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts in general – with ancient literary conventions governing descriptions of conquest and battle that should not be pressed in a literalistic manner. To press them in such a manner is immediately, in fact, to create enormous tension between what they apparently say, and what other Old Testament passages say about such important matters as distinguishing combatants from non-combatants in warfare (e.g., Exodus 22:24; Numbers 14:3), and not holding children, in particular, morally accountable for wrongdoing, or allowing them to be caught up in the consequences of their parents' wrongdoing (Deuteronomy 1:39; 24:16—in the very book of Deuteronomy that speaks about the Canaanite wars). A particular absurdity that arises from such a literalistic approach is that Deuteronomy 7:1-3 must then be read as speaking of God "driving out" the current inhabitants of the land, then urging the Israelites to "destroy them totally" (herem), and then prohibiting intermarriage with them!

We are dealing with very important matters here. I hope that this short response has at least clarified what I think about them, and what it is that I read the biblical authors as thinking about them. I am very grateful to have had the chance to write. I shall also be grateful, however, if readers of both the Old Testament and my own humble attempt to explicate it in Seriously Dangerous Religion do not so dwell on these things that they neglect the many matters that our biblical authors consider to be much more centrally important. People like Richard Dawkins display a purpose in such a focused neglect. Perhaps the only thing worse than this is neglect with no purpose at all. There are many other aspects of the OT tradition that deserve our attention, and which RJS herself has done an admirable job of articulating over the last few months.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/04/16/more-on-seriously-dangerous-religion-rjs

HT: Hawk

In general a good response. A potential weakness of this explanation is that because humans are social creatures, the innocent are sometime caught in the dragnet of collective punishment, so a separation between innocent and guilty isn 't always feasible in this life.

Defeating evil

The book of Revelation is chockfull of violence and warfare. Once issue is how literally take this imagery. At one end of the continuum, a reader may believe events will unfold as described, as if this is film footage of the future.

At the other hand of the spectrum is the view that this is symbolic imagery for a bloodless psychological struggle between good and evil. Spiritual warfare. Fighting for the soul. 

There's a gain of truth to that, but there was real warfare in the 1C Roman Empire. Christians suffered physical persecution and martyrdom. And that continues throughout church history.

I remember as a boy reading Perelandra for the first time. I was blown away by the sensuous sceny of the floating islands on the copper seas.  

However, I found the fight scene towards the end jarring and unsatisfactory. Ransom is gradually losing the debate with the Un-Man. He isn't necessarily losing the argument. He has truth on his side. But the Uh-Man, as a mouthpiece for Satan, is his intellectual superior. He's been around since creation. He tells the Queen beguiling lies. Incrementally, her resistance weakens. 

And that point Ransom gives up on debate and resorts to violence. On the face of it, reading it for the first time, that seems like an artistic co-out. A cheat. As  if Lewis took the action in one direction but was unable to resolve it on its own terms, so he abruptly changes course.

But coming back to it years later, there's wisdom in his denouement. Lewis was a WWI vet. And he lived through WWII. He was depressed by the prospect of another war. I once watched an interview with Freeman Dyson describing what it was like to be a college student in England on the eve of the war. The atmosphere was claustrophobic and fatalistic. The English could foresee that the Wehrmacht was coming for them. Coming to their shores. It was unstoppable. So you had to wait for the inevitable. Were you doomed? Was resistance futile?

It's best to resolve conflict through reason, but sometimes people choose evil over reason. They can't be reasoned with. They put themselves beyond the reach of reason. So they can only be defeated through superior force, not superior argument. Having goodness and truth on your side are not enough if that's the very thing evil loathes. Although Revelation uses stock martial imagery, although the imagery is stylized, it may portend real warfare. 

1917

I saw the film 1917 yesterday.

Assessing just war theory

A. In Christian tradition, the ethics of warfare centers on just-war theory. Indeed, for many Christian ethicists, just-war theory is treated as the unquestioned frame of reference. 

To their credit, theologians like Augustine and Aquinas were attempting to put warfare on a moral footing. Does warfare suspend Christian ethics, or is it possible, under certain circumstances, to wage war without committing murder? 

A moral difficulty in war is that you are harming individuals who didn't harm you directly, or harm you at all. The harm and counter-harm operate at a more anonymous, aggregate level, where one group endangers another group, even if no particular member of the group endangers an individual on the other side. It's the ensemble action that's threatening.  

Is religion the cause of most wars?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHoiJj8iSCE

The Kurds

Trump has come under intense criticism for withdrawing military support for the Kurds. Perhaps that's well-deserved. I haven't studied the issue, so I have no firm opinion one way or the other. But I'll venture a few generic observations:

1. The talk about "abandoning" a military ally is intellectually devious. It's not like the Kurds came to our rescue. The alliance was always enormously lopsided. They need us far more than we need them. They weren't doing us a favor. We were doing them a favor. They were doing themselves a favor by forming an alliance with us. But what do we actually owe them? 

2. Does the US military have a duty to maintain a military presence in the Mideast to prevent some Middle Easterners from slaughtering other Middle Easterners? No.

The job of the US military is to protect the lives of Americans. American soldiers have no duty to be killed or maimed to protect foreigners. Their lives aren't forfeit to save the lives of foreigners. Their lives aren't less valuable than the lives of foreigners. And their own families have a prior claim on them. 

3. I share the concern for the fate of Syrian Christians. But Christians throughout the Muslim world are at risk. Does that mean we should start a war with every Muslim country that persecutes Christians?  

Grave of the fireflies

(Source)

Some people object to the U.S. dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war with Imperial Japan:

1. If the U.S. hadn't dropped the atomic bomb, then arguably the U.S. would have continued firebombing Japan. This evidently would have been much worse for Japan than the two atomic bombs. Victor Davis Hanson explains in The Second World Wars:

The March 9–10, 1945, napalm firebombing of Tokyo remains the most destructive single twenty-four-hour period in military history, an event made even more eerie because even the architects of the raid were initially not sure whether the new B-29 tactics would have much effect on a previously resistant Tokyo. The postwar United States Strategic Bombing Survey—a huge project consisting of more than three hundred volumes compiled by a thousand military and civilian analysts—summed up the lethality of the raid in clinical terms: "Probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any time in the history of man." Over one hundred thousand civilians likely died (far more than the number who perished in Hamburg and Dresden combined). Perhaps an equal number were wounded or missing. Sixteen square miles of the city were reduced to ashes. My father, who flew on that mission, recalled that the smell of burning human flesh and wood was detectable by his departing bombing crew. A half century later, he still related that the fireball was visible for nearly fifty miles at ten thousand feet and shuddered at what his squadron had unleashed...

Both atomic bombs were dropped from B-29s, the only American bomber capable of carrying the ten-thousand-pound weapons and reaching the Japanese mainland from the Mariana bases. Most controversy over the use of the two bombs centers on the moral question of whether lives were saved by avoiding an invasion of the mainland. The recent Okinawa campaign cost the Americans about twelve thousand immediate dead ground, naval, and air troops, and many more of the fifty thousand wounded who later succumbed, with another two hundred thousand Japanese and Okinawans likely lost. But after the bloodbaths on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, those daunting casualties might well have seemed minor in comparison to the cost of an American invasion of the Japanese mainland.

The ethical issues were far more complex and frightening than even these tragic numbers suggest. With the conquest of Okinawa, LeMay now would have had sites for additional bases far closer to the mainland, at a time when thousands of B-17 and B-24 heavy bombers, along with B-25 and B-26 medium bombers, were idled and available after the end of the European war. Dozens of new B-29s were arriving monthly—nearly four thousand were to be built by war’s end. The British were eager to commit Lancaster heavy bombers of a so-called envisioned Tiger Force (which might even in scaled-down plans have encompassed 22 bomber squadrons of over 260 Lancasters). In sum, the Allies could have been able to muster in aggregate a frightening number of over five thousand multi-engine bombers to the air war against Japan. Such a force would have been able to launch daily raids from the Mariana Islands as well as even more frequently from additional and more proximate Okinawa bases against a Japan whose major cities were already more than 50 percent obliterated.

A critical consequence of dropping two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have been not just precluding a costly American invasion of Japan, but also ending a nightmarish incineration of Japanese civilization. Otherwise, by 1946 American and British Commonwealth medium and heavy bombers might have been able to mass in numbers of at least two to three thousand planes per raid. Just two or three such huge operations could have dropped more tons of TNT-equivalent explosives than the two atomic bombs. Within a month, such an Allied air force might easily have dropped destructive tonnage equivalent to ten atomic bombs, following the precedent of the 334-plane March 9–10 fire raid of Tokyo that killed more Japanese than either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki nightmares.

"It seemed to me," Japanese prime minister Kantaro Suzuki remarked after the war, "unavoidable that, in the long run, Japan would be almost destroyed by air attack, so that, merely on the basis of the B-29s alone, I was convinced that Japan should sue for peace. On top of the B-29 raids came the atomic bomb, which was just one additional reason for giving in...I myself, on the basis of the B-29 raids, felt that the cause was hopeless."

2. In addition, the historian Gerhard Weinberg writes the following in his paper "Some Myths of World War II":

The other myth in need of another look is the controversy over the anticipated American and Allied casualties in the two planned invasions of the home islands of Japan of which Truman authorized the first in mid-June 1945. Invariably the likely casualties of the Chinese, Russians, British, and others are omitted from this discussion. Similarly the planned Japanese killing of all the prisoners of war they held is ignored.

Perhaps into the discussion one should also enter the anticipated casualties on the Japanese side about which there was no controversy within the Japanese leadership. It was accepted that there would be 20 million such casualties. This figure those in charge in Tokyo unanimously deemed acceptable until the second atomic bomb suggested to some of them that the Americans could drop an indefinite number and hence not have to invade at all.

In this connection, it may be worth noting that both the British government and Stalin had agreed to the use of the atomic bomb before Washington had asked them.

Now that the focus has turned to Japan, this may be an appropriate point to touch on Japanese war aims. These are all too often described as limited to resource-rich parts of Southeast Asia. The Japanese certainly wanted them, but the inclusion of India, Alaska, New Zealand, and Cuba in Japanese planning—to mention merely a few—hardly points to a modest program of annexations. One cannot help wondering what Fidel Castro would think of the inclusion of Cuba in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere—and of being rescued from this prospect by the Yankees.

Were the Crusades justified?

On Facebook I responded to two critics of the Crusades:

Actually, I think the First Crusade was justified, to repel Muslim military invasion. However, the Crusades quickly went off the rails, and were ruthlessly conducted.

i) Although Urban II called upon the Franks to wage a counteroffensive against Muslim aggression, it's not as if "the church" led the military campaign. The pope, cardinals, bishops, and priests weren't combatants, although there was a military order of monks (Templars). 

All Urban II could do was urge the "civil ruling authorities" to repel Muslim invasion. Are you saying religious leaders should never give civilian leaders advice?

ii) Muslims were killing and enslaving Catholics. Didn't a medieval pope have a right to urge civilian authorities to protect Catholics? I'm not Catholic, but I'm just discussing the issue in terms of how the table was set in the middle ages.

iii) Where's the line between "the church" and civilians? Almost all civilians in the Western Roman empire were Catholic. 

iv) There is a tradition the men of the cloth should never take up arms. Do you agree with that? If a violent man storms into a Sunday school and threatens to kill the children, doesn't the pastor have duty to prevent a massacre by using lethal force, if necessary, to ward off the assailant? 

v) The appeal to Rom 13 is fallacious. To say civil authorities have a role in military action doesn't say anything about the role of the church one way or the other.

vi) There are multiple justifications given for the Crusades. We don't have to accept the justifications offered by Urban II to say the Crusades were justifiable in principle as an act of self-defense. We're not bound by Urban II's rationale. We can have independent reasons for believing it was necessary to repel Muslim military aggression.

vii) I agree with your larger point that Europeans make a basic mistake when they treat Roman Catholicism as their default representative of Christianity.

Moral dilemmas for the voting booth and battlefield

How many contemporaneously-corroborated reports of sexual assault do Republicans need to read — or tapes bragging about sexual assault do Republicans need to hear — before they understand the president is a likely sex predator?

— David French (@DavidAFrench) June 22, 2019

A couple of problems with French's tweet:

i) Making moral evaluations about voting isn't about assessing a particular candidate in isolation, but a comparative judgment about competing candidates. You are choosing between one candidate and another. 

ii) French's scruples are ironic and lacking in self-reflection when you remember that French is an ex-Marine. He volunteered for service during the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. And he was deployed to Iraq.

Now warfare is notorious for its moral dilemmas. "The problem  of dirty hands". Take airstrikes which will inevitably result in the killing or maiming of innocent children. Children who are blinded or horribly burned or lose arms and legs as a result of air strikes. 

If that's justifiable, how is voting for Trump worse than that? Both soldiers and voters are sometimes confronted with moral dilemmas. Presumably, French endorses the lesser-evil principle to justify his own, voluntary participation in the horrors of war. Why does he have different moral standards for voting and warfare? 

The four horsemen of the Apocalypse

6 Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, “Come!” 2 And I looked, and behold, a white horse! And its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer.

3 When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

5 When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. 6 And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!”

7 When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” 8 And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth (Rev 6:1-8).

For unbelievers, as well as many Bible scholars, Revelation is a period piece. Whatever its prophetic pretensions, the historical horizon is sealed in the 1C. But it's striking to consider how modern this vision is:

1. The white horse apparently represents aggressive warfare. As we know, 2000 years down the pike, warfare remains a perennial feature of life on earth. So there may seem to be nothing prescient about that vision. Yet you have utopians like Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of our Nature) who think secularization is making the world less violent. Likewise, secular humanists thought organizations like the United Nations would prevent war. If countries just have a forum in which to talk through their disagreements. 

2. The red horse apparently represents social unrest, the breakdown of civil authority. 

3. And that, in turn, may tie into the black horse, which seems to represent the consequences of economic manipulation.

i) In the 1C, the diversion of arable land to produce luxury items for the ruling class created food shortages in staple crops. For a modern-day parallel, consider the economic implosion of Venezuela. 

ii) Cities are especially vulnerable because they rely on having food, water and other necessities supplied from the outside. Cities lack the local resources to be sustainable on their own. Vast population centers become completely dependent on commerce which, if disrupted, precipitates urban catastrophe in a few days. The flourishing of urban populations is even more precarious in a hitech civilization than it was in the 1C. 

4. Among other things, the pale horse represents epidemics triggered by infectious disease. You might think this is one of the most dated aspects of the vision. Hasn't modern medicine done much to eradicate pandemics? True, but that could revert overnight:

i) Overprescription of antibiotics and antivirals has generated superbugs. 

ii) Progressive policies funnel immigrants into the country who haven't been screened for contagious disease. In addition, traditional Muslims have prescientific views of hygiene. 

iv) The general public is losing resistance to contagious disease, due both to the diluting effect of uncontrolled immigration–as well as progressive elites at the helm of the antivaxxer movement.  

iii) Likewise, welfare is a magnet for urban concentrations of homeless men and women. This leads to the breakdown of public sanitation. 

iv) In addition, green policies promote composting rather than standard food disposal. That attracts rats, which multiply exponentially. 

A side effect of affluence is to make many people indulge a false sense of security. Affluence creates a buffer. The affluent aren't used to living on the edge, where there's no margin for error. They lose their sense of danger. In addition, most folks are crisis-driven. Hazards are an abstraction. They are used to feeling safe, so they lower their guard. But the world is an unforgiving place. Just consider the following scenario:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/31/dr_drew_pinsky_entire_population_of_california_could_fall_victim_to_bubonic_plague_due_to_homelessness.html

The warning is focussed on LA, but all up and down the West coast, urban centers have become a haven for illegal immigrants and the homeless. While many infections diseases are curable, the system is easily overloaded. For instance, the black plague is curable, but because it's rare, hospitals lack the resources to contain a serious outbreak. 

So the vision in Rev 6:1-8, far from being obsolete, dovetails with contemporary conditions. 

Biblical warfare

https://randalrauser.com/2019/03/the-problem-of-evil-and-biblical-violence-a-conversation-with-an-exvangelical/

Fraternite 

It should be fairly obvious that God commanding genocide is only a problem if our master values and identity are those of modern Western liberalism. For example, nobody (and especially not the authors) really had a problem with these texts for several thousand years. For a fairly clear example of this, remember that the Crusaders recited the mantra "Christus Dominus est" when they were running Muslims through with their swords in the Holy Land.

At least as far as I am concerned, the first challenge for modern Christians is to recognize just how completely shaped we are by modern Western liberalism and secondly to then summon up the fortitude to identify and label those (typically invisible) cultural assumptions for what they are.

Daniel Wilcox 

What? Heck, I was a fundamentalist kid of 11 when I started encountering these horrific texts.:-( My dad was the minister of our small village church.

It doesn't take liberalism for a kid to know that slaughtering children is evil, and that God would NEVER command such horrific actions.

Fraternite 

Aside from maybe David and Goliath, these gory war texts in the late Hexatuch and Judges are exactly what my 3 year old and 6 year old boys seem to be inexorably attracted to. They also like the carnage in Revelation, for what it's worth -- and trust me, this is not where I am steering them. And even in David and Goliath, their favourite part is where David cuts off Goliath's head. They play act it all the time and insist on parading around the house with the invisible head. It's quite fascinating.

I have a hard time believing that you only ran across these things at 11 if you grew up fundamentalist, honestly.

Immunity of noncombatants

Catholic moral theology teaches the immunity of noncombatants. But in virtue of what are they immune? From my reading, "innocence" is frequently the condition that confers immunity. Noncombatants are immune because they are classified is innocents, and it's wrong to target innocents. Wrong to intentionally take innocent lives. (Although "intention" is a term of art, viz. double effect theory.)

But in what respect are noncombatants deemed to be innocent? Let's consider some possibilities:

1. Morally innocent

It might be a moral category. To be morally faultless or sinless.

i) If so, the principle is too strong. In traditional Christian theology, human beings are sinners. Even children are subject to Adam's sin. Even children have evil impulses. 

ii) Perhaps in the case of children before the age of reason, it might be said that they are inculpably evil because, despite their evil impulses, they lack the intellectual capacity to be consciously evil. 

iii) But even if we grant that distinction for argument's sake, the class of noncombatants in just-war theory is far larger than children before the age of reason (which has fuzzy boundaries in its own right). 

2.  Judicially innocent

It might be a legal category. To be blames or guiltless in relation to criminal wrongdoing. 

i) But it's unclear why that would be the principle. If you have combatants on both sides, where one side is fighting a just cause while the other side is fighting for an unjust cause, you might argue that the unjust combatants forfeit immunity due to their legal complicity in an unjust war, making them liable to death or injury as a just desert. But the same reasoning can't apply to just combatants. By that logic, immunity extends to just combatants. 

ii) By that criterion, moreover, civilian policymakers who wage unjust war ought to forfeit immunity and face the same fate as combatants. Likewise, civilianswho provide necessary support services, viz. munitions factories.

3. Harmless

It might be a pragmatic category. Most civilians don't pose an imminent danger to the opposing nation or troops. They enjoy immunity because they are innocuous or nonthreatening compared to combatants. 

Certainly that captures an intuition regarding the immunity of children (with rare exceptions). However, the principle seems to lean on a rather artificial dichotomy regarding the immediacy of the threat. A military engineer may not pose a direct threat to the opposing nation or troops, but the direct threat may depend on his invention of military technologies. Likewise, take the policymakers who foment war. Or civilians who construct missiles, tanks, bombs, bombers, &c. Although there's a sense in which they are personally innocuous inasmuch as they don't shoot guns, they conscript combatants or supply combatants. 

I think each of these principles has some merit in limiting the scope of legitimate targets, but they're inadequate, either in separation or combination, to justify the absolute immunity of noncombatants across the board. 

Operation Mincemeat

On April 30th, 1943, the corpse of Major William Martin washed up on a beach in Spain. When the body was examined, the Nazi authorities discovered not only the typical wallet litter (license, receipts, bills, pictures, etc.) but a letter from a General to the now-deceased Major Martin alluding, with subtle undertones, to an Allied invasion of Greece. The Nazis, justifiably suspicious of being punked, launched an extensive investigation, employing pathologists and document specialists, seeking to authenticate the body and the letter.

While this research unfolded, the Allied forces did something truly remarkable; something that appeared to validate the intelligence in the letter. They began troop movements, seemingly staging for an invasion of Greece.

For the Nazi authorities, this confirmed the veracity of Major Martin’s letter.

Now convinced that the Allies planned an invasion, they redistributed their forces to fortify the Balkan peninsula, pulling troops away from Sicily…just as the Allies had hoped.

The whole thing was a ruse.

The Nazi army had been duped, the unwitting victims of an elaborate web of disinformation known as “Operation Mincemeat.” The military build-up near Greece had been a tactical ploy, complete with fake troops and inflatable plastic tanks. “Major Martin” was a real corpse, but the letter and identity were all fake, planted on the body as a diversion. And how did the Allies fool the Nazi experts? Well, they created a backstory for “Major Martin” that was so thorough and complete that it included running his obituary in a London newspaper.

The Allied invasion site was actually Sicily, five hundred miles away from Greece and the very place the Germans had withdrawn their troops to fortify Greece. This seduction of the Nazi’s away from Sicily to Greece has been called “the most spectacular single episode in the history of deception.”

By staging for Greece but landing in Sicily, the Allies pulled off an amazing head fake, completely outwitting the enemy.

(Source)

Is it permissible to use the body of the deceased in this manner? Does it dishonor the dead? Is this wrong? I don't think so if he or perhaps his family gave permission to use his body this way after his death. It doesn't seem different in principle from organ donation. Just that it's full body donation. (Maybe there's a distinction to be made between donating for medical research or other medical purposes and donating for war. But I am assuming it's arguable that both share the common cause of intending to save lives. Maybe doing so in war is not as directly saving lives like in medicine, but it indirectly does save lives by preventing more from dying.)

However, if no permission was given by him or his family, then would it be unethical to use his body this way? I'm inclined to say it might be unethical if he wasn't a soldier but a civilian. Minimally I would expect using the body of a soldier would take priority over using the body of a civilian.

If he was a soldier, then it seems more debatable. Presumably a volunteer soldier is willingly serving in order to protect his family and people back home. His way of life. His freedoms and liberties. These would be under threat if the enemy won. What's more, the soldier knows the risks of war, yet is willing to sacrifice his life for these ends. Hence I would think a reasonable presumption to make is, if the soldier is willing to die for his people and country, then he would be willing to allow his body to be used in this fashion if he has died, if doing so aids his people in winning the war against a terrible enemy, which would have been his ultimate goal as well.

Teens with guns

I going to make a couple of loosely related observations about schoolyard snipers. Many advocates of "sensible gun control" seem to think we need to keep guns out of the hands of teenagers, or at the very least, military grade weapons. 

1. Some people think the solution, or at least one solution, is to have police officers permanently stationed in public schools. In that regard I'd simply point out that many many teenage boys can easily subdue and disarm a policewoman. I don't mean if her gun is drawn. I mean in the more casual atmosphere of a high school, where police officers wouldn't maintain the same physical distance or be on guard in the same way if they were walking the beat and interacting with strangers (which they usually do in pairs). They see these students everyday. 

A boy who had designs on shooting his classmates wouldn't have to smuggle a gun through metal detectors. There'd already be police firearms on site. The policewoman would be the armory. So long as he had the ability to overpower her and take her gun away, that's all he needs. 

2. Teenagers regularly enlist in the military. You can volunteer at 18, or join at 17 with parental permission. I don't have these statistics at my fingertips, but just since the advent of the all-voluntary military, we've probably had hundreds of thousands of teenagers (junior NCOs) with access to military grade weaponry. And that's not counting teenage draftees during WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. I'm guessing we've had millions of teenagers with access to military grade weaponry over the decades. How many of them have perpetrated domestic mass shootings? Surely the percentage is infinitesimal. Likewise, you can go straight from high school to police academy, which gives cadets access to police firearms. 

12 Strong

http://godawa.com/12-strong-salvific-masculinity-destroys-islamic-imperialism/

The lantern of the soul

Craig fields a question comparing ISIS to OT holy war:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcuqAC1e1Ys

I though Craig did a fairly good job in 3 1/2 minutes. I'll add a few observations of my own. I've discussed this general issue before, but not in reference to ISIS. And I won't repeat everything I've said about OT holy war. 

i) Some people object that if it weren't in the Bible, Christians wouldn't defend OT holy war. That may well be true, although I don't think that's a damning admission. If I weren't a Christian, I'd have lots of shallow, unexamined, unjustified beliefs. And it's not as if an atheist has a superior position. 

ii) If I were making a case against Islam, I wouldn't begin with jihad. Both the Bible and the primary sources of Islam have religiously-sanctioned violence. That's not what distinguishes Christianity from Islam. 

iii) Mind you, that comparison only works at a very abstract level of generality. Violence can be identical in some respects, but morally different. Take a murderer who shoots someone to death and executing a murderer by firing squad. In one respect their identical, but that overlooks fundamental moral differences.

Or compare a schoolyard sniper with a human shield situation. In both cases, innocent children may die, but those are not morally equivalent situations.

Likewise, in war, both sides may use the same weaponry, yet one side may be fighting for a just case while the other side is fighting for an unjust cause. It's not primarily a question of the kind of violence or the objects of violence, but the rationale. A Martian observer, just watching the battle, might think both sides are interchangeable, but that's undiscerning. 

iv) ISIS deliberately practices the most excruciating ways of killing that their fiendish imagination can devise. Exultant sadism. A religious pretext to be get in touch with their inner psychopath.

By contrast, the OT holy war doesn't torture the enemy to death. Although OT holy war is brutal, it doesn't practice cruelty for cruelty's sake.

v) In addition, OT holy war doesn't use violence to spread the faith. This goes to two radically divergent views of conversion.

In Islam, conversion is conformity. It's not a change of belief. When someone converts at gunpoint, they have the same beliefs and attitudes after conversion as they had before conversion. The only change is a different public facade. They feign reverence for the new faith. They say and do whatever is necessary to survive or thrive. 

It's very revealing that Islam values such a thin, perfunctory piety. Just say the right things and do the right things with no corresponding assent.

Compare that to OT piety, with its stress on circumcision of the heart. Or prophetic denunciations of mechanical ritualism. 

In biblical piety, faith is conviction first, and profession second. Not profession without conviction.

In biblical piety, conversion involves a transformation in the convert's entire outlook. A spiritual rebirth. A new heart. Loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.  

vi) That's why the Judeo-Christian faith can never endorse mass conversion, in that externalistic sense. That's why, even though Christianity is a missionary religion, a global religion by design, it is not a religion of world conquest, in the sense of using violence as an evangelistic tool. Coercion is an an instrument of submission, not persuasion. You can't force someone to believe against their will. At best, you can force them to pretend to agree with you. Like extracting a confession under torture. 

Biblical faith abhors mock piety. Abhors pious playacting. In biblical piety, faith proceeds from the inside out. God lights the lantern of the soul, which then radiates outward. 

vii) All these OT cultures were warrior cultures. They practiced military conquest. The Israelites weren't doing anything to the Canaanites that the Canaanites weren't doing to their neighbors, and vice versa. Indeed, the OT laws of warfare are quite restrictive. It's about securing a particular territory, with clearly-defined borders. That's it.