Half-hour video interview:
Half-hour video interview:
There are differences among the Gospels. A Christian who wishes it to be otherwise might say, “I wish there was only one Gospel.” But God gave us four, and it is more respectful for us to hear them the way that God gave them to us, listening to the message of each on its own terms. That does not make their messages incompatible—just different (like, for example, my wife and me). By definition, they have to be at least somewhat different if we have four of them instead of four copies of the same Gospel.
There the matter might lay except that some people today have made a big issue out of the differences. Some popular speakers cognizant of some of the differences have used them to rhetorically terrorize (or at least scare the wits out of) many Christians who never read their Bibles enough to notice the differences to begin with. While some of us who have long seen these differences might be tempted to thank such speakers for pointing Christians to their Bibles, we wish that these Christians would have noticed these differences first in a friendlier setting. But scholars with high respect for Scripture now need to explain (and thus have the opportunity to explain) more about how Scripture is written, as well as its message.
Yes, there are differences
What is singularly unhelpful is when some Christians respond, “There are no differences there!” Again, had God wished us to have just one Gospel witness in the New Testament instead of four, he undoubtedly would have arranged for that. If the Gospels were precisely the same, they would not be different Gospels. While that observation is so simplistic that it should go without saying, responses vary in the degree of variation that the responders observe.
So what kinds of differences do we find? I shall offer in this series of posts only a very small number of samples. I am picking examples that are not very controversial, in hopes of pointing out to Christians who don’t read the Bible very much that there are in fact differences, and inviting them to respect the Bible that God gave us rather than one they wished he would have inspired differently.
I shall not spend much space addressing here those who think that such differences undermine Scripture (and sometimes use them to ridicule Christians) because I spend countless pages addressing those issues in my academic work. This blogsite is mostly for more popular level materials (since my publishers own my academic materials). (Still, I am borrowing these examples from a forthcoming book, because I really need most of my time to write the academic books, and it saves me time if I can borrow my own words from elsewhere.)
First example, the cursing of the fig tree:
Mark 11:12-25 | Matt 21:12-13, 18-22 |
1. Jesus curses the fruitless fig tree (11:14) | 2. Jesus challenges the temple (21:12-13) |
2. Jesus challenges the temple (11:15-17) | 1. Jesus curses the fruitless fig tree (21:19) |
3. The next day, the disciples find the fig tree withered (11:20) | 3. The fig tree withers at once (21:19) |
4. The disciples are surprised (11:21) | 4. The disciples are surprised (21:20) |
5. Jesus gives a lesson on faith (11:23-25) | 5. Jesus gives a lesson on faith (21:21-22) |
Did Jesus curse two fig trees over the course of two days, though each Evangelist mentions only one, with one withering at once and the other withering later but the disciples needing precisely the same lesson on faith, in very similar words, each time?
But guess what? Ancient readers didn’t expect ancient biographies to be in chronological order, and moving material around was considered a matter of arrangement, not of accuracy.
And ancient expectations are what we need to consider: it is simply anachronistic to judge documents by standards that didn’t exist in their day, or genres that didn’t exist in their day, even when modern genres evolved from ancient ones with the same names. To ignore genre and the expectations that a writer could take for granted that his readers shared is like ignoring the language or culture in which a work is written. We can’t speak of the “historical reliability” of parables or psalms. Readers in the early Roman empire expected history-writing and biography to be reliable in substance, but not to have anything like verbatim recall of wording.
So critics who condemn biblical texts for differences are reading them anachronistically. So are defenders who pretend the differences aren’t there, unwilling to actually look honestly at the texts they claim to respect!
A couple more brief examples and a conclusion should wrap up this discussion—next time.
I was converted from a non-Christian background, so I didn’t grow up hearing the Gospels. The first time I read through the Gospels as a new believer, I was shocked. Matthew was great, but then Jesus got crucified again at the end of Mark. “How often is this going to happen?” I wondered.
I was shocked because, having been told that the Bible is God’s Word, I assumed that this meant that God had dictated it in the first-person. You could insist on it being like that if you want, but if you do insist on that, everyone who has read it will know that you haven’t.
I didn’t understand the Christian perspective that God inspired Scripture through different human authors, who sometimes treated the same events. I had a wrong understanding of what inspiration meant, an understanding that needed to be adjusted by reading the actual biblical text.
Playing catch-up
Although most Christians do not misunderstand the nature of the Bible this severely, especially if they grew up taking the Bible’s character for granted, many do have misunderstandings. Yet the little kids in Sunday School knew the Bible better than I did, so I had to work to catch up. I had always craved knowledge, but now, believing that the Bible was God’s Word, I began craving understanding of Scripture that could only be satisfied by immersing myself in it.
Reading forty chapters of the Bible a day, and so through the New Testament once a week (or the Bible once a month), was very helpful to me. After a number of weeks I had a good overview of the New Testament. I understood much better how it fit together as a series of different works and letters, and began to hear what passages meant in their context.
Sometimes preachers quote verses faster than one can look them up in context. I wanted to know the Bible, or at least the New Testament, well enough that if someone quoted a verse, I would immediately know the full context. Of course, some verses sound a lot alike, such as many passages in the Gospels that treat the same events. I wanted to know those passages so well that I could, after hearing a single verse, know which of the Gospels it came from, and therefore know its context. (Admittedly, sometimes the best I can do is just mention the several passages that sound alike.)
Examining differences
After I had been a Christian for about seven years I finished my first degree in biblical studies. At that time I decided to work my way through a synopsis of the Gospels, passage by passage, to see if there were any patterns in the differences in wording. I found that the wording was often less close to verbatim than I had expected, although the Gospel writers were often recounting the same events. I also noticed that they often told accounts in a different sequence.
Because I was eager to submit to the Bible itself, whatever I found there, more than any presupposed theology about the way God should have inspired it, I simply adjusted my understanding of inspiration to fit what I found there. I want to submit to whatever God’s Word says, not impose a philosophic or theological straitjacket on it. That was because I believed that the Bible, rather than any inherited theology about the Bible, should direct our beliefs.
I was excited about what I was discovering and contemplated making it a major emphasis in my teaching. As I weighed the needs of the church, though, I decided that these observations were not that important compared to crucial biblical themes that the church needed. One can mention such observations in passing, but churches need to hear the message of the text. Literary-theological approaches, served by ancient background, help us get at that message better than simply observing the mechanics of how writers wrote.
Why the differences?
Of course, I took such observations for granted in my academic work; those who know the biblical text well and revel in discussing it dialogue about such observations. In detailed commentaries, where we have good reason to believe that one source adapted another in some respects we naturally ask, “Why? What was the purpose of this adaptation?”
Sometimes it was to condense narratives: thus Matthew omits the paralytic being let down through the roof, though he tells the more theologically crucial part of the story. (Unless we suppose that Matthew omitted it to protest the destruction of private property!) Sometimes it was to contextualize; many scholars think that Luke envisions an Aegean-style roof different from the more common Galilean-style roof maybe presupposed by Mark (Mark 2:4; Luke 5:19). More certainly and obviously, compare Matthew’s usual “kingdom of heaven” with Mark’s “kingdom of God,” especially in parallel passages.
Sometimes it was for greater precision of wording; Matthew and Luke recognize Herod Antipas as more precisely labeled a tetrarch (Matt 14:1; Luke 3:19; 9:7; Acts 13:1) than a king (Mark 6:14, 22).
Quite often it was for style: trying to raise the level of Greek, Luke removes most of Mark’s historical presents.
Still, in what is probably a majority of cases, except where we find a pattern, one scholar’s guess is as good as another’s. Maybe it was for style. Maybe it was to abbreviate. Maybe it was to provide a few more vivid details the author heard elsewhere. Maybe one author adapted some wording to bring out a different emphasis. Sometimes these observations help us preach a particular Gospel’s message more faithfully, but often we just scratch our heads. (Maybe that is why I am going bald.)
Such differences are common whenever we compare different accounts of events, whether directly from eyewitnesses or from those who knew them. You can probably notice this pattern even in conversations in our daily lives, once you start taking note of it.
So what’s the big deal? Tune in next time for part 2.
Roe vs. Wade is in the news again. For anyone who doesn’t know, that’s the case that legalized abortion in the United States (although “Jane Roe” herself later came to oppose abortion).
The legality of abortion is a volatile issue, but one in which Christians, and others who believe that life is a basic human right, have an important stake. Beyond and distinct from its legality, which tends to dominate headlines, its morality is an issue that many families, Christian or not, must sooner or later confront.
Here I speak outside my expertise as a biblical scholar. Although I believe that I am correct in my analysis (that is, I genuinely believe my beliefs), subsequent generations often provide clearer perspectives than those writing in the thick of cultural debates. That limitation is, however, true for all of us, so I offer my best thoughts here. If I fail to persuade some readers, I hope that I will at least help them to consider why many who hold my position do so with ethical integrity and concern for justice.
Not just a partisan issue
I have openly opposed the current administration’s stance on immigration. I have written about biblical teaching on care for the poor; defended the full participation of women in ministry; and advocated for racial justice. Most of my writing specifically about social justice sounds, in a U.S. context, as if I am left of the political center, although in none of those posts have I advocated for or against any political party.
It is, however, concern for justice, not a connection to any political party, that drives my interest. Thus I would like to highlight a justice issue that I think that many of those who tend toward the political left need to reconsider. Of course, we need to care about the welfare of the mothers, and if abortion laws ever change, we will learn how committed to life those on the political right really are. Indeed, genuinely prolife commitments ought to show themselves now in costly commitments to nutrition programs for impoverished mothers globally (nutrition, malaria and so forth affect fetal development and mortality). Yet how can we not also care about the unborn if (as suggested below) we genuinely acknowledge them as live human beings?
This post is about abortion, but it is not about political parties and still less about individuals who have had abortions. Regarding individuals, Scripture is abundant in its teaching about grace and forgiveness. It is not even prolife to speak about forgiveness in cases where the mother’s life was at stake. Other cases involve wrestling with tragic situations or someone aborting a fetus before coming to the belief that this was a live human being. There are other cases where the moral dimensions of the decisions are more conspicuous.
The point is not about political parties or about individuals who have had abortions. It is whether we can help more people to recognize the value of human life even in the womb, so that together we can seek alternatives that affirm the value of every human life.
Limited Biblical Material
I have not written much about caring for the unborn, not because I think it unimportant but simply because as a biblical scholar I don’t have as much to work with textually. When I don’t speak as a biblical scholar, I don’t speak from my own expertise. Of course, we cannot limit ethical and moral reasoning to specialists in particular areas, so my limitations do not preclude me from speaking out. They just mean that you should take my limitations into account here, as you should take into account the limitations of the vast majority of people who are currently speaking about the issue.
To engage in intelligent discussions in ethics, we may have to reason with others about a range of issues such as nuclear weapons, social security, gun control, civilian casualties through smart bombs, market economies, and a host of other issues not directly addressed in the Bible. That the Bible does not directly address an issue does not exempt us from sometimes needing to consider the ethics of such situations. In fact, among issues not addressed, I think this one is clearer than most. (Again, some other issues, such as sacrificial care for the poor, are crystal clear in the Bible, though the most effective means of such care in modern economic contexts are often debated.)
Then again, the Bible’s lack of more specific attention to abortion is not completely surprising. Abortion wasn’t much of an option in ancient Israel; it was more of an option in the Roman empire, but, like direct child abandonment, seems to have been rare enough among Jews and Christians to not have come up in the New Testament.
Ancient Christian teaching
Among northern Mediterranean gentiles, however, abortion was enough of a cultural issue that it does appear in some early Christian documents. One cannot accuse these precedents of politically partisan U.S. biases.
Note for example the Didache, probably from the late first century, and thus perhaps contemporaneous with some of our New Testament. It often offers great advice, such as: welcoming in trust those prophets who come to you, but: if they ask for money, they’re false prophets!
Most relevantly here, it warns: “Don’t murder! Don’t commit adultery! Don’t molest children! Don’t have sex with someone you’re not married to! Don’t steal! Don’t practice sorcery and witchcraft! Don’t kill a child by abortion or kill one already born!” (Did. 2.2). Or compare the late first- or early second-century Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas: “You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain. You shall love your neighbor more than your own life. You shall not abort a child nor, again, commit infanticide” (Barn. 19.5, trans. Holmes).
Neither of these works is part of the biblical canon (a fact for which I am particularly grateful in the case of Pseudo-Barnabas), but they do show us that from an early period Christians in the gentile world grappled with the question.
Much stronger is a later second-century work: “those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion” (Athenagoras Plea 35, trans. ANF). Near the end of the second century, Tertullian insists: “For us murder is once for all forbidden; so even the child in the womb, while yet the mother’s blood is still being drawn on to form the human being, it is not lawful for us to destroy. To forbid birth is only quicker murder. It makes no difference whether one take away the life once born or destroy it as it comes to birth. He is a man, who is to be a man; the fruit is always present in the seed” (Apology 9.8, LCL trans.). In Sibylline Oracles 2.281-82 (which may be a Christian interpolation), abortion merits eternal punishment.
Such sentiments reflect the prevailing Jewish view of the time as well; note for example the first-century writer Josephus: “The Law orders all the offspring to be brought up, and forbids women either to cause abortion or to destroy it afterward; and if any woman appears to have so done, she will be a murderer of her child, by destroying a living creature, and diminishing humankind: if anyone, therefore, proceeds to such fornication or murder, he cannot be clean” (Against Apion 2.202, trans. combining Whiston and LCL).
Or Pseudo-Phocylides: “Do not let a woman destroy the unborn babe in her belly, nor after its birth throw it before the dogs and the vultures as a prey” (Ps.-Phoc. 184-85; trans. OTP). (The Diaspora Jewish philosopher Philo, by contrast, seems to begin life only once the fetus is fully formed; Philo Special Laws 3.108-9.)
Examples could be multiplied, but rather than reinventing the wheel I simply refer those interested in the question to, for example, Michael J. Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church, who shows the church’s consistent position in its first four centuries. Those interested in a consistently prolife treatment from a justice-emphasizing ethicist should also look at Ronald J. Sider, The Early Church on Killing (addressing early Christian pacifism as well as rejection of abortion).
A fetal-fatal justice issue
Scripture may not address abortion explicitly, but if one grants that the fetus is a live human being, the moral principle involved seems fairly clear, at least to me. A key biblical expression of justice is to defend the weak and the vulnerable; who could be weaker than an infant, and especially an infant still in the womb?
Perhaps some oppose abortion simply because that position is considered “conservative.” Most Christians who oppose abortion, however, do so out of a sincere commitment to justice. Now, many are inconsistent in what sorts of justice they argue for; many ignore many genuine justice concerns advocated by the left. This inconsistency, however, does not justify critics on the left simply dismissing concerns about justice for the unborn.
Since nearly all of us believe that it is wrong to kill human beings, at least those who are not seeking, individually or corporately, to harm us, the key question of abortion’s morality is whether the fetus is a live human being. Here I reason less as a biblical scholar because biblical evidence is limited, but there is biblical evidence. For example, just as mothers attest babies kicking in their womb today, John the Baptist could leap for joy in his mother’s womb (Luke 1:44); the Spirit of God was already at work in him (cf. 1:15).
Believing that the fetus is a live human being is the key reason why many of us Christians oppose abortion. A prochoice professor friend with whom I once dialogued about abortion wanted to exclude from discussion the question of whether the fetus was a live human being. He said that raising that question was cheating, because it was designed to immediately end the argument. I responded that it is instead the very point that the argument is about; if the fetus is just extraneous tissue, there is no legitimate reason to oppose abortion, and few people would object to it. If, conversely, the fetus is a live human being, then deliberately killing that fetus is killing a human being.
I am a biblical scholar, not a biologist, but we have to make ethical decisions based on the best information available to us. In this case, the unborn child is not only genetically human, but he or she is a human genetically distinct from the mother.
Some of the more cogent objections
Granted, although the fetus is alive, it remains dependent on the mother until birth. Nevertheless, dependence can be an arbitrary criterion for personhood; indeed, medical technology has permitted fetal viability at a younger and younger age. Moreover, unlike infants of some other species, human babies remain dependent on others for survival even after birth.
Further granted again, there are legitimate debates as to when personhood begins. The majority of fertilized eggs spontaneously abort before a mother knows that she is pregnant. If all embryos within the first two weeks are persons, the majority of heaven’s (or on some views, limbo’s) human population could well be embryos that never saw the light of day!
But simply foreclosing the question of personhood’s beginning by declaring life to begin at birth or at fetal viability is not satisfactory. Development at, say, thirteen weeks, the end of the first trimester, is considerably beyond a two-week embryo. The fetus is now kicking, opening and closing fingers with distinct fingerprints, and more than two million eggs already reside in her own ovaries. By nineteen weeks, she may hear and respond to her mother’s voice. By twenty-two weeks (about five months), she looks much like she will after birth, although much smaller. Whatever the particulars, we can at least be certain medically that the fetus is human and genetically distinct from the parents.
Further granted, U.S. law does not directly commit or endorse abortion; it simply allows it. This differentiates the issue from any injustices directly perpetrated by a government. Thus some who believe that abortion is wrong do not believe that the government should be involved in restricting it. Many of us do acknowledge areas where we believe certain behaviors wrong yet do not advocate legal restrictions (such as, for example, consensual but casual sexual intercourse).
Nevertheless, should not the political left, which often seeks to regulate even details of interaction to reduce pain to the emotionally vulnerable, seek to protect the most vulnerable and voiceless persons of all (Prov 31:8)? If we would oppose a law that permitted the execution of one-year-olds or ninety-year-olds based merely on the general vulnerability of their age, should we not also stand for justice for the unborn? (Again, I speak to the U.S. situation, where citizens are granted a role in shaping the government; in societies where citizens lack such a role, they may be limited to addressing justice within their own voluntary communities.)
Many markers of human development have ambiguous or amorphous boundaries. For example, brains are not fully formed even in adolescents (and adolescents are definitely fully human; I love ours). The rational part of the human brain may reach the apex of its development somewhere around age 25; after roughly age 30, it begins to decline (woe is me!)
Happily, no one limits personhood to the late twenties, but a (very) few may start it after infancy. Thus Princeton University ethicist Peter Singer, for example, permits infanticide. Those who treat birth as an arbitrary criterion for personhood may either treat abortion as a form of prenatal infanticide or infanticide as a form of postnatal abortion. Some appeal to past legal precedent to deny the fetus’s personhood. The judiciary’s track record of shifting biases, however (consider, for example, the periods in which many members of the Supreme Court were slaveholders), does not engender confidence in mere legal precedent as a determinant for morality. (The same may be said, of course, for public opinion in general.)
Not just a left-right issue
Again, most of my posts that have addressed social justice have supported issues more often emphasized by the left than the right (“left” and right” being defined by the usual polarized U.S. political categories). In this case, it looks to me like the left and the right have matters backwards.
The U.S. political right tends to emphasize freedom from government interference, so one might expect them to be prochoice. The U.S. left tends to emphasize defending human rights, and therefore we should expect them to champion the vulnerable in the womb. What human right is more urgent than right to live?
It looks to me like a freak of historical development that in the U.S. the right is prolife and the left is prochoice. (We all, of course, have our own historical and cultural contingencies.) But it seems to me that whether we tend to favor the right or left on other issues, if our allegiance is to justice rather than to a particular party, we should celebrate what supports the right to life.
Prolife preaching
For better or for worse, only once over the years have I addressed this issue from the pulpit. This is partly because I like to preach expository sermons and not a lot of passages lend themselves to an expository treatment of abortion.
I was an associate minister speaking out on a matter where it would have been risky for the senior pastor, who supported my plan to address the issue, to speak. One member of the youth group was pregnant by another member of the youth group. The young man’s mother wanted the young woman to abort, but the young woman wanted to keep the baby, and the pastoral staff agreed with the girl’s right to do so.
I spoke about King David killing Uriah to cover up David’s sexual sin, and how we still sometimes take life to cover up our behavior—sometimes by abortion. If this thought scandalizes you, you would be right to imagine that it scandalized a lot of people that day. My guess is that a strong majority of that congregation’s members were Democrats. But as I noted explicitly, I was not advocating a political party. I was addressing a moral issue, no less than when I (more often) challenged people to sacrifice materialism and share their resources with the needy. I probably faced more hostility that week than any other. (Happily this congregation was very forgiving and liked me again the next week.)
But if truth is not partisan, we cannot limit our preaching based on what sounds most palatable to a given setting—even if it must be communicated as graciously as possible and balanced with a lot of preaching on other issues of justice as well.
Conclusion
The fundamental question that makes abortion a moral issue is whether the fetus is a live human being. If the fetus is a live human being, then should we not seek ways to protect it the way we would insist on protecting every other human life? If feticide takes a human life, then fifty or sixty million abortions in the U.S. since Roe vs. Wade is a serious and pressing justice issue, one of the most serious and pressing moral issues of our day.
Because I believe that the fetus is a live human being, I want more people to recognize the value of human life even in the womb. May we together, whether from the right or from the left, seek alternatives that affirm the value of every life.
My interview with Craig Dumont on Spirit Hermeneutics for PentecostalPastor.com. Not sure why I’m not smiling in the first frame but the smile comes after awhile. 🙂
Some cultures understand loyalty better than others do.
Some cultures identify strongly with their leaders. In some cultures, people are prepared to die for the king, the queen, or (more often) their nation. Sometimes such loyalty may be blind or misinformed, but it gives these loyalists a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves.
More relevant to the point here: by providing a sense of what it is like to be loyal, it makes it natural for believers in those cultures to express loyalty to our king Jesus in a similar way.
There are serious strengths in individualistic cultures, including appreciation for independent, critical thinking (though most people even in such cultures still fall in line with majority views, which can function as a sort of massive peer pressure). But in our individualistic cultures we often downplay loyalty. We are not loyal to kings and sometimes not even loyal to families. My own country from the start has prided itself on its hard-won independence (celebrated every July 4, which is also my birthday). “Loyalist” was not considered a positive title.
With that independent streak in our culture comes both the strengths and weaknesses of our individualism, which can also influence us as Christians. On the positive side, we should be able to stand up against peer pressure that would make us at all disloyal to Jesus; we should be willing to stand even alone for the sake of truth and what’s right. On the negative side, sometimes we tend to stand too alone, as if we don’t need the rest of the body of Christ.
When taken to its extreme conclusion, the danger in such a culture is that everyone can end up doing what is right in our own eyes—a sort of moral anarchy (Deut 12:8; Judg 17:6, 21:25). This can also make it more difficult for Christians in our culture to envision what loyalty should look like.
We need to think of elements of loyalty (to friends, ideals, family, nation, work, or whatever else) that help us understand what loyalty should look like. Also we often admire our heroes and root for them, and this can give us at least a faint appreciation for what our admiration for our Lord should be like.
But even if we cannot envision it in any other way, we need to overcome this cultural blind spot.
Loyalty to Jesus recognizes that he is our king and lord, and we should live wholly for him. He is also our hero who at great cost overcame and won salvation for us. We rejoice when he is honored, and feel pain personally when people dishonor him. We live and die for him, because our lives are wrapped up in him.
New Testament scholars sometimes contrast the Jesus of history versus the Christ of faith. Not everyone means the same thing by this contrast. Christian scholars, for example, usually recognize that what we can know about Jesus by conventional historical methods is limited; it is therefore less important than how we worship him by faith. We know enough historically to believe him worthy of our trust, and so we embrace the rest of his message because we trust him and his faithfulness in commissioning the right agents (especially the first apostles) to give us their testimony about him.
But sometimes scholars value the historical Jesus that they reconstruct in opposition to, and as more real than, the Christ of faith. Jesus’s early followers would likely have seen this as a problem.
Consider 1 John 4:2-3:
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world. (NRSV)
Or 2 John 7:
Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist! (NRSV)
According to this apostolic witness, the Jesus who came in history is the Jesus who rose from the dead and now sits exalted at God’s right hand. The Jesus who came in the flesh is not different from our faith; he is the very one who matters for our faith.
This link opens up to four roughly seven-minute videos, each of them tackling some examples of verses often taken out of context, including “This is the day that the Lord has made,” “Let the weak say I am strong,” “baptized in fire,” “faith comes by hearing,” “now faith is,” and others.
This post is in response to U.S. attorney general Jeff Sessions citing Romans 13:1-7 with respect to taking children from their parents at the border.
To be fair, the larger context of his statement is that nations need to be able to legally protect their borders. But the larger, larger context is response to the issue of separating families. Although this post will touch on biblical thoughts related to immigration policies (which will not be resolved here), it is the attorney general’s appeal to Scripture that has invited my wading into the issue.
(Also, up front about me: my wife and kids are legal immigrants from Africa. All came from very dangerous situations, but given the limited number of refugees brought into the U.S. each year, probably none of them could have come as refugees. As of two years ago, the estimated total of involuntarily displaced persons globally was 65 million. The U.S. currently has a cap of 50,000 refugees allowed per year, which would be just over 0.08 % of the total. In the special circumstances of 2016, Germany admitted perhaps ten times that number, mostly from the Middle East.)
But is there biblical precedent for separating families at borders?
Well, sort of: when Abram entered Egypt as an economic migrant or refugee, Pharaoh took Sarai from him (Genesis 12:10-16). God judged Pharaoh’s household for what Pharaoh did to God’s servants (12:17). Some families separated at the U.S. border today might also be God’s servants.
Obeying the Government in Romans 13
But the attorney general was referring instead to Romans 13:1-7. Unfortunately, there is plenty of precedent in church history for governments exploiting this passage to justify conformity to laws that they did not have to create or apply the way they did—including by slaveholders and the Nazi and apartheid regimes.
I am not implying moral equivalence with Hitler’s regime. I am just saying that quoting Romans 13 does not prove its applicability for every situation. Paul wrote that lengthy (paragraph-long) admonition to just one church—the one in the capital, where Christian witness and relations with the imperial government were most at stake. There had also been recent unrest about paying taxes. Add to that unrest in Judea, which in just over a decade would break out in war. It already had a number of other Jews trying to explain to the government that many Jews were loyal and not about to start a revolution.
Speaking of revolutions, the British applied Romans 13 differently than the colonists during the States’ War of Independence. (I personally think the British had a better case than does the attorney general. But now, aside from stepping outside my expertise, I may be getting too controversial …) For further comments on the proper context of Romans 13:1-7, see especially the comments of Wheaton College professor Lynn Cohick (soon to be provost/dean at Denver Seminary and president of the Institute of Biblical Research) in USA Today.
When I was a young Christian, my father at one point forbade me to talk further with my brothers about the Bible. When I tried to persuade him of his need to accept Christ, he said I was disobeying the verse that says to honor one’s parents. The Bible said to obey one’s parents. What was I to do? I felt guilty either way, but chose what I thought was the lesser of two evils. I met with my younger brother Chris to disciple him when my parents were asleep. I kept attending church and sharing Christ on the street despite being aware of my father’s displeasure. I wish I had understood back then that Jonathan and Michal were right to protect David from their father Saul, who wanted to kill him. My father and I eventually had a wonderful relationship. But I share this account reluctantly (and for the first time publicly) to point out that sometimes we have to disobey authorities, though it must be only when absolutely necessary.
The Bible and immigrants
There are more complex issues about immigration, Scripture, and security that I cannot address here, but I will survey some Scripture before going on to questions of application.
God commanded his people to welcome and care for foreigners (see especially Lev 19:34; 23:22; Deut 10:18; 14:29; 24:14, 17, 19-21; 26:13), even embracing as “citizens” (members of Israel) those willing to become part of their people (Num 9:14; 15:14, 16, 26, 29-30; 19:10; 35:15; Deut 1:16; 26:11; 31:12). (Thank God: this provides some of the Old Testament basis for gentiles being grafted into God’s people in the New Testament. Any of us who are ethnically gentile should appreciate God’s kindness in welcoming us as fellow citizens with his people—Eph 2:19.)
What might apply to economic refugees might apply even more to refugees from violence, such as the family of Jesus traveling to Egypt to evade Herod’s brutal regime.
The hard part: how does this apply to public policy?
I will offer some suggestions about what I think, but a reader who protests, “You are outside your expertise!” would be correct. We all do our best to apply the Bible as wisely as possible. I am doing my best in this section, but this is not where my qualifications lie.
Security issues differ today from those in ancient Israel, and that I am not sufficiently qualified regarding modern public policy or economics to speak as directly to these issues. Most nations back then did not restrict entry or control borders to the extent practiced today. It would have violated ancient protocols of hospitality, not only for Israel, but also for most of their “pagan” neighbors. Of course, individuals or families migrating differed from a massive group like Israel passing through someone’s territory. Edom and some other nations perceived them as a threat and turned them away (Num 20:18-21).
So some rightly point out that Abram was not an “illegal” immigrant. (In fact, he was warmly welcomed, albeit partly because Pharaoh took a liking to his wife. A great “me too” passage, but that is for another time.) Neither, however, was Abram a “legal” immigrant in the modern sense. I don’t know how much paperwork he had to fill out, but he certainly didn’t have to wait six months or a number of years to enter the country.
I also recognize that part of the stated reason the U.S. government is separating children from their parents is to prevent detaining them with their parents in unhealthy or penal settings. Part of the stated reason for detaining the parents is that the influx of immigrants is becoming too great for the social systems around the border to handle. (I dislike this reasoning, but while my biblical expertise informs my ethical convictions, nobody consults me on public policy matters.)
It is also true that few nations can think of absorbing all the tens of millions of refugees fleeing violence around the world today, whether from governments or gangs. Happily, some nations, such as Germany, Lebanon, Uganda and Jordan, have been accepting and sometimes absorbing massive numbers of refugees, despite many problems along the way. More prosperous and stable nations naturally do become greater magnets for those in need.
I do not have a solution, but I believe that one ethical component of such a solution that would benefit everyone is to invest heavily in improving the stability of economic development of other nations, not least those at one’s borders. We all know that various factors make this ideal impossible in many places, but a country that could invest in building a massive wall on its southern border (for probably much more than $20 billion) might also be able to make staying at home more attractive for people in some countries.
According to the intergovernmental Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which supports democracy and market economics, the U.S. ranks a respectable second (at some $31 billion) only to the European Union (at some $92 billion) in development aid to other countries. In terms of its development aid per capita, however, it ranks eighteenth, and in gross national income, it spends closer to 0.17%, ranking twentieth. That is almost $100 for every U.S. resident; many of us as Christians give far more than that through Christian or other NGOs. But Norway, by comparison, invests more than $800 per resident. What we learn from such figures certainly is limited: how money is used often matters more than how much money is used. But my point in citing these figures is to remind us that there remains room for us to do better—at least for those of us with biblical values.
Applying biblical ethics to secular governments?
Again, I have to concede that my above considerations from Scripture do not dictate what the United States must do. Ancient Israel was a theocracy supposed to obey God’s virtues; as an individual Christian I recognize that non-Christian nations will not abide by specifically biblical virtues, such as loving one’s neighbor as oneself (Lev 19:18), loving foreigners as oneself (Lev 19:34; cf. Deut 10:19), or loving or defending the value of all human life. Aside from the issue at hand, I also understand why a nation not exclusively composed of Jesus’s followers might not want to practice Jesus’s even stronger ethic, given to his disciples, of turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:39; Luke 6:29).
Secular nations or businesses or other institutions will not work by Christian ethics. Still, those of us who are Christians had sure better heed these principles ourselves. Moreover, those of us who live in democracies are expected to use our voice and vote to promote values that we hold. Love of neighbor, by the way, also appears as the epitome of biblical ethics later in the chapter that Jeff Sessions cited, in Romans 13:8-10.
Before returning to matters of immigration, one more digression for U.S. readers: what precipitated this post was a Bible quotation used in a political context, not a particular U.S. political party. I believe that, for those of us who do not believe that human life begins only at birth, caring for the vulnerable includes caring for the unborn. Loyalty to Christ must trump any partisan loyalties, whether on the right or the left.
Immigrants in life-threatening situations
Obviously, many people migrate for better economic opportunities rather than life-threatening circumstances; further, some nations might limit others’ immigration for the sake of the economic welfare of current residents (I admit my lack of expertise here).
Nevertheless, sometimes people’s lives are in danger, as is the case for at least some immigrants to the United States from Central America. A law restricting entry in their case would be clearly unjust. I for one would ignore such a law if genuinely necessary to save lives, and would recommend other endangered persons to do so.
Before some readers take me as a political subversive, let’s make that hypothetical situation more concrete. U.S. immigration policies during the Nazi genocide in Europe denied entry to thousands of Jewish refugees, many of whom then died under Hitler. The U.S. did not yet know about the gas chambers or ovens, but by 1938 they knew very well that Germany was persecuting Jews. Congress, apparently in keeping with the general sentiment of the U.S. public, rejected a bipartisan bill to admit 20,000 Jewish refugee children in 1939. You know what came afterward.
What about famine? Abram didn’t face danger from violence, but he did face danger from famine, which can kill people. My wife’s entire neighborhood became refugees during the civil war she was involved in (further details in our book, Impossible Love). They lacked adequate food and clean drinking water. When, after the war, she returned to the ruins of her home, she was overwhelmed by the silence. Most of the neighbor children had died.
Does Romans 13 justify the issue at hand?
Some issues might be debatable, but others are not. The question that started this post is not just immigration. It is the use of the Bible to justify, as ethical, detaining families at the border even to the point of separating children from their parents. The attorney general may have been quoting the verse simply to say that it’s unethical to break a nation’s laws by entering it illegally. In ordinary cases might be true, though again, most Christians would make exceptions for danger to life, smuggling Bibles for persecuted Christians, and so forth.
But Romans 13 hardly resolves the question of whether those laws themselves are ethical. And when given in answer to questions about separating children at the border, an answer implicitly addressed instead to the immigrants is beside the point.