Beacon2Light

View Number 3: Eschatological Continuity Daniel L. Gard’s position is that of Eschatological Continuity. To summarize, this view sees ancient Israel as God’s theological, political and chosen people to punish the Canaanites via genocide and occupy a land that God had granted them. God acted through Israel to perform this function. Gard goes further into the Old Testament also to argue that sometimes God acted solely in the destruction of His enemies in a type of herem. He sees that as the only justifiable genocide of history and it will only be repeated by God in the last days when he commits a final herem upon the people of the Earth. There is a lot to praise in this portion of the book though I don’t favor his view. On page 116, Gard gives a great summary of what herem (or the ban) means and how it was acted out in the biblical accounts versus the Canaanites. Rooted in what I see as his evident Reformed background, Gard is terrific on the attributes of God and thus His character ...

On one of the google communities, I had a discussion with an atheist. One of the things that he brought up was the annihilation of the Canaanites by the Israelites. This cruel God of the Bible, as he described Him, was not one he could embrace. We had been talking about something else when he made this turn in the conversation. I remarked that I had not studied the issue much but that I was not afraid of the Bible's difficult to understand passages. As I said to him, I had a book called Show Them No Mercy: 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide and that I would make that the next book that I read.  As I began to read the book, I decided to summarize the four viewpoints contained therein. I will do this as a four part series of blog posts. What is important for the reader to understand is that these are my summaries and certainly the authors of the sections and views could dispute my summation and/or interpretation as could those who hold those views. This post offers you a l...