Book Review: Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence

Matthew Curtis Fleischer, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence (Oklahoma City, OK: Epic Octavius the Triumphant, 2017)

I am grateful to the author for supplying me with an advanced reader copy of his book.

The Old Testament appears to present its readers with a God who condones, endorses, and even commands violence. In The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence, Matthew Curtis Fleischer argues that despite appearances to the contrary, the Old Testament makes it clear as early as the opening chapters of Genesis that violence (understood as ‘the use of physical force against a person or his property’, p. 7) does not have a place in the good world God created. While Fleischer acknowledges that there are times when God does command the people of Israel to commit violent acts, these are limited to the pre-monarchical period when Israel was required to drive the other nations from Canaan as part of their settlement of the promised land. After this, Fleischer contends, the people were not intended to engage in hostilities again, and certainly not commanded to indulge in nationalistic expansionism. Instead, Israel was called to uphold the Mosaic law and show itself to be a nation entirely dependent on God for its security and prosperity rather than on treaties, its military, or imperialistic pretensions.

Fleischer’s case makes much of the notion of incremental ethical revelation, the idea that God revealed God’s ethical standards for Israel (and through Israel, humanity) in stages. Ideas about nonviolence in a violent world would likely have been rejected, Fleischer explains, and so God tolerated certain forms of violence for a time for the sake of purging impurity from the people and judgement on other nations, all the while leading God’s people to recognise and accept that violence has no legitimate place in the world. This incremental revelation about acting nonviolently eventually finds its ultimate fulfilment in Jesus, who taught and practised nonviolence and expected his followers to do the same. It is a compelling position, and Fleischer defends it confidently, clearly, and comprehensively.

However, while the idea of incremental ethical revelation is persuasive, it does condition Fleischer’s approach to reading the Old Testament in a particular way. Fleischer is correct to observe that the Old Testament books are essentially snapshots of God captured at different points during Israel’s history; but his particular construal means the later texts must somehow enhance the earlier portraits of God’s relationship with Israel, with the further implication that what could be called a chronological reading of the Old Testament (where later texts are more accurate or ethically responsible than earlier texts) must take precedence over a canonical one (where later texts might come before or be incorporated into earlier texts). This makes it possible to say that much, if not all, of the violence in the Old Testament is actually not commanded by God at all, but that (to put it crudely) the writers of the Old Testament, shaped by a violent environment, presumed God to have commanded it. Admittedly, there is something persuasive about this, but it does not seem to do justice to the canonicity of Scripture, especially when compared to Fleischer’s reading of the New Testament, which does not seem to deploy the same hermeneutical framework and tends, in my view, to downplay those New Testament verses that do suggest some sort of violence.

This reservation aside, Fleischer’s case is strong, and, as noted above, he defends it rigorously and well. The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence appears to have been written with a gun-toting, Trump-supporting US audience in mind, but much of what Fleischer writes for his compatriots translates easily into other national contexts. Stylistically, there are too many instances where Fleischer makes his point sufficiently well but then supports it unnecessarily by quoting from two or more scholars for support. Moreover, while I can appreciate the need for thoroughness, the final few chapters seemed less focussed than the earlier ones. Taken together, these two elements make the book feel unnecessarily lengthy. Nonetheless, The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence is certainly worth reading, and I have no hesitations in recommending it as a helpful study especially for Christians who desire an in-depth but non-technical account of how violence in the Old Testament can be interpreted.