Marcus Borg has a way of getting my goat. A recent example can be found in an interview at Patheos:
There also are some passages in the Bible that, even when we understand them perfectly—they are wrong. Just to pull out one example: In 1 Samuel 14, God commands Saul to kill all the men, women and children of the Amalekites, a neighboring people with whom they are at war. Now, I can’t believe that God ever commanded anyone to go do that. Kill all the babies? I don’t think there’s any point in trying to explain away that passage and say that somehow God isn’t commanding actual death. No, the verse is perfectly clear. It says God commanded Saul to go kill all the people, including the babies. And I think we must say: That’s plain wrong. God never commanded Saul to go kill infants.
I believe Borg meant to reference 1 Samuel 15, not 14, which is a story about Jonathan being spared after violating the king’s orders. Nonetheless, I understand why Borg recoils at the notion of God ordering infants killed, but he knows quite well that the single verse he highlights is not an isolated incident. I’ll bring up the binding of Isaac, the Exodus, the destruction of Sodom, the flood, Joshua’s conquests, and the death of David’s child as a short list.
Lots of children and babies face death in the Bible.
Do I understand this? No, not at all. I am horrified by it. Does that mean I’m ready to take out a razor blade with Borg and slice 1 Samuel 15 and other verses out of the Bible? No.
Out of curiosity, I went to see what John Wesley wrote of this passage in his Notes on the Old Testament.
Here is the key verse from the King James version: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” (1 Samuel 15:3)
And here is what Wesley wrote about the verse by key word:
Destroy – Both persons and goods, kill all that live, and consume all things without life, for I will have no name nor remnant of that people left, whom long since I have devoted to utter destruction.
Spare not – Shew no compassion or favour to any of them. The same thing repeated to prevent mistake, and oblige Saul to the exact performance hereof.
Slay, &c. – Which was not unjust, because God is the supreme Lord of life, and can require his own when he pleaseth; infants likewise are born in sin, and therefore liable to God’s wrath. Their death also was rather a mercy than a curse, as being the occasion of preventing their sin and punishment.
Ox, &c. – Which being all made for man’s benefit, it is not strange if they suffer with him, for the instruction of mankind.
Yes, Wesley wrote that killing infants was a mercy as it spared them from God’s wrath for the sins they would commit as they grew to maturity. We can be horrified by the thought, but I am not willing with Marcus Borg to declare Wesley wrong because I struggle to reconcile the testimony of Scripture with my own ideas about God. I’m not willing to do that out of hand.
This is deeply troubling and challenging, but my deep sense is that any simple and easy answer – whether Borg’s or Wesley’s – misses something fundamental. I’ll keep my razor blade for my chin whiskers.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
We tend to flatten the Bible and make every part of it fit into our understanding what being a Christian is all about. In is pointless, however, to try to justify God’s actions in the Old Testament in terms that will satisfy a moral sense shaped by 2000 years of Christian history. The intentional extermination of an entire enemy population is contrary to the law of war and shocks the modern Christian conscience. But strip away what we know of Christ, and even the teachings of the classical prophets, and why is it surprising that God should speak to the members of an Iron Age tribal confederation within their own context.
God called Abraham and created a family. The family grew into a race of slaves whom God freed and gave his law. The freed slaves became a tribal confederation which eventually became a kingdom. And on the story goes. At each step of the way, God dealt with his people in a manner appropriate for that stage of their life together. It wasn’t always in ways we consider either religiously oriented or politically acceptable. It is anachronistic to expect otherwise.
In the age of Samuel and Saul, God condescended to relate to his people as something like a tribal god. How else could it be?
I don’t think it is necessary to believe that Samuel and Saul either misunderstood God or that the text is just the record of imperfect people trying to figure out what God is all about. I accept the text as revelation of who God is and what God did. The Bible is not primarily about universal moral or religious principles, but about what God did and said in particular times and places. We can’t distill a simple moral lesson out of any one part of that story in isolation. Neither can we sit in judgment over God’s actions in history.
With reference to the the specific theme of God’s judgment, I think it is a distortion of the biblical witness to disregard texts that speak about God’s willingness to destroy evil. God loves and creates and redeems, but even the New Testament sees the coming of the kingdom as a day of wrath for some.
I’m with Borg on this one. I know why I choose the interpretive method that favors seeing the Old Testament through the lens of Agape love and I don’t think that method is as sloppy or off-hand as you seem to think it is. It *is* a bit involved to explain, but it’s not unthinking or sloppy.
At the end of the day, we do need to deal with these ‘difficult texts’. If you choose the approach that you do believe that God IS a ‘respector of persons’ and favors certain categories of people over others, then I think you still have a lot of theological reflection and explaining to do. ‘Who does God think should be dead in *our* context?’ would be one important question.
I did not mean to imply “unthinking” or “sloppy” in my reaction to Borg. I expressed an understanding of the basic impulses that I perceive to be driving his position. I am confused by the source of his convictions that God never did something that Scripture has God doing repeatedly.
I confess to not having worked out all this. I do find some of the ways people write and speak about it as bordering on Marcionism, though.
We say Jesus is God and then conclude that anything we see God doing in the Old Testament that seems to be in conflict with Jesus in the Gospels is ruled as “not really God.” But the other move we could make is to say that the New Testament and Old Testament testify to the same God, so we need to hold these things that seem to conflict next to each other and affirm that both are God.
I’m not sure how to do that, but that may be the very point God was making at the end of Job or in Isaiah 55:8-9.
John Wood at Baylor University has a great article on Peace and War in the Old Testament.
One quote: “The Old Testament does not speak with one voice regarding warfare. We might hope that the constant threat and experience of war would have forged a consensus among the ancient Israelites about this fundamental reality of their existence, but this consensus was not to be. What happened instead, by all evidence, were vigorous debates about war during virtually all periods of Israel’s history. Scripture faithfully records these debates, for the diversity of viewpoints arose out of a deep faith in God who had brought the people out of the land of Egypt.”
Entire article – very worth reading: http://www.baylor.edu/christianethics/PeaceandWararticleWood.pdf
This makes loads more sense to me, since the Bible is clearly the record of the way people have understood God over the centuries. “Scripture faithfully records these debates…” Just as scripture faithfully records widely varying views of who Jesus was and is — various understandings of God — and so on.
Inspired? Sure. Directions for us in international relations? No, thank God! The “words” of God? Nope. The “Word” of God? Yep, when these words speak to us in a way that is consistent with the overall message of the Bible.
So is every bit of the Bible to be interpreted as literally what happened and/or the way that God sees things? We have already decided “no”, as the rest of that interview that you linked points out that we already cut out parts of the Bible about the treatment of women, about justifying slavery, etc. For me, it’s a perfect time for the famous Wesleyan Quadrilateral to be invoked.
(Thanks for a thought-provoking post!)
Thank you, Mike, for the link to the article and the helpful comment.
This does strike me as one of the most important questions about the Bible. How do we read its own debates and dialogues? Which gives rise to the question: How do we enter into dialogue with it in the places where it does not debate itself? (see the issue of same-sex sex.)
As we work through those questions we then have to come to terms with what we mean by saying it is the Word of God and inspired. All quite important questions.