Review of Gregory Boyd’s “Crucifixion of the Warrior God”

by Brian J. Orr

Introduction

The God of the Old Testament wants his enemies’ blood shed for their abominations; the God of the New Testament wants to shed his own blood for his enemies’ abominations. Since the first century, this dilemma has led many Christian (and non-Christian) thinkers to either reject portions of the OT that do not complement with what is revealed in Jesus Christ in the NT, or they put the best possible spin on such violent portraits of God in the OT, justifying his direct and/or indirect actions, regardless of how atrocious and deplorable they might be.

covers of The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the CrossGregory A. Boyd believes this dilemma is one of the greatest challenges the Church faces today, and it has been his focal point of reflection and research for the last decade. And his two-volume work, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross, published by Fortress Press, is the fruit of his labors.

Overview

The work is presented in two volumes. Volume 1 is the state and defend portion; Volume 2 is the application portion. The main thrust of Boyd’s work is to demonstrate how the violent portraits of God in the OT, when interpreted theologically, through a crucifixion-centered hermeneutic, can be seen in a manner that displays the true character of God as revealed on the cross. Such a hermeneutic “gives us a perspective . . . that is superior to what people in the OT had” (xxvi). Applying this lens to the violent portraits of God in the OT will allow us to see that God did not directly or indirectly sanction and carry out actions of divine genocide.

In Volume 1, sub-titled The Cruciform Hermeneutic, Boyd establishes the warrant for his crucifixion-centered hermeneutic, needed to see below the violent divine portraits of the OT. Boyd observes that there is an antithesis between the character of the God revealed in the OT and the character of the God revealed in the NT. This contradiction needs reconciliation without dismissing the God-breathed texts of the OT or by putting a spin on its violent depictions, which only downplay the events rather than reconcile them with Christ as revealed in the NT.

In Volume 2, sub-titled The Cruciform Thesis, Boyd applies his cruciform hermeneutic to the violent portraits of God in the OT, fleshing out that there is something else going on behind the scenes that reveals the true character of God—that which is revealed on the cross.

Boyd argues that there are four distinct dimensions to the revelation of the crucified God, shedding light on what lies beneath the violent portraits of God. What we read on the surface of such texts, God commanding violence, below the text, God is actually permitting the violence to occur or withdrawing himself from the situation. The surface-level interpretation is a result of Israel’s fallen condition and misconception of God, viewing him in light of Ancient Near Eastern tribal deities. Accordingly, his people have ignorantly attributed violence to him. But in reading the Bible backwards, a cruciform hermeneutic will reveal what is truly underneath that mask of violence the OT God was wearing.

Another key element of Boyd’s thesis is that of a warfare worldview, which he claims the authors of the Bible had. Behind the natural world there is a cosmic battle—spiritual warfare—between evil and angelic powers that the Church has paid little attention to. These demonic powers have been waging war ever since the beginning of creation, directly impacting and influencing the evil choices and actions of fallen sinners—particularly in seeing other humans as the enemy instead of themselves. But Christ entered the battlefield to destroy the power of such entities, slaying them on the cross. And he did so through remaining sinless, keeping himself free from their oppressive authority. The first Adam and the rest of humanity were unfaithful to God, giving in to the deception of Satan and the fallen powers that be. His death ended Satan’s power over humanity, freeing it from its “Satan-induced blindness and [empowering it] to behold the true glory of God shining in the face of Christ (2 Cor 4:4-6),” so that all humans could “now participate in the faithfulness of the second Adam” (Vol. II, 1065, 1059).

nails used by crucifixion

Summary

In reflecting back over the book, three key points line up for Boyd’s cruciformed hermeneutic. He has demonstrated 1) the centrality of Christ in the Bible and how it not only points to Christ, it points to a crucified Christ as the true revelation of God; 2) the need for a conservative principle to maintain proper course for the Church in interpretation; 3) and the surplus meanings to be discovered under the surface of a text through the lens of the crucified Christ. The crucified Christ becomes the key to unlock the sensus plenor of all biblical texts, showing the congruency between both sides of the Bible and a congruency in the nature and character of God even when texts appear, in the letter, to be antithetical to each other.

Boyd’s driving motivation in this work is to establish (or in his mind, recover) a cruciform hermeneutic, revealing the thematic center it has in our canonical interpretation of Scripture. The fallen condition of the people God revealed himself to led him to accommodate to them in such a manner in that he allowed them to project onto himself a wrong conception of “God as a warrior.” They placed a mask of ugliness on him, depicting Yahweh as a “god who fights,” covering up the true God—the crucified God in Christ—the non-violent, enemy embracing, self-sacrificial God of the Bible.

I do have some reservations, particularly of Boyd’s views of accommodation and revelation. These, I believe, present a serious obstacle for many readers to overcome, if Boyd wants them to embrace his hermeneutic as a biblically viable option. The real question is whether Boyd is able to surmount such critical hurdles and satisfy his claim of hermeneutical superiority. That decision I will leave to readers of his work who take the plunge into volume 2, where Boyd works through numerous examples from the OT itself putting his cruciformed hermeneutic to the test. 


Brian OrrBrian Orr is a PhD student at London School of Theology and is an elder at Sovereignway Christian Church in Hesperia, Ca.

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Tavis Bohlinger

Dr. Tavis Bohlinger is Editor-in-Chief of the Logos Academic Blog and Creative Director at Reformation Heritage Books. He holds a PhD from Durham University and writes across multiple genres, including academia, poetry, and screenwriting. He lives in Grand Rapids with his wife and three children.

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21 comments
  • I like Walton’s presentation on this in his “Lost World of the Israelite Conquest” much better than I do Boyd’s. I agree with Walton that herem has been based mistranslated along with many of the other propositions he makes in his book.

    I think Boyd’s thesis if true would disqualify Jesus from being a Jewish messiah, let along the Jewish messiah. Jesus was a practicing Jew, faithful to Torah in all he said and did.

    • Hi Donald,

      I’ve not read anything by Greg Boyd, but something about your comment got me thinking. You said, “Jesus was a practicing Jew, faithful to Torah in all he said and did.” I agree wholeheartedly, and yet Jesus often deviated markedly from accepted Torah traditions of his day. eg. the “You have heard it said, but I say to you” sayings of Matthew 4-6; Sabbath healings (eg. Mark 3:1-6), not to mention his very different conception of Messiah.

      MIght Jesus’ differences in Torah-tradition leave enough wiggle room for Boyd’s Cruciform Hermeneutic? Welcome your thoughts. Liam 🙂

      • Thanks for asking. The short answer is I do not think so, because of the way I understanding things.

        Assuming Jesus is God (and he is), this means Jesus inspired the Scriptures that Jesus used, the OT/Tanakh. Jesus would in turn perfectly interpret those same Scriptures, that is, the living Word of God would be consistent with the written word of God. Those same Scriptures say that if someone deviates from the Law/Torah, then they are a false teacher. One of the recurring themes in the gospels is how the opponents of Jesus tried to get him to teach against Law/Torah; they knew that if they could succeed at this, they could safely ignore him. But Jesus ALWAYS won the debates, in many cases including showing his opponents that THEY were teaching against Law/Torah. The puzzle for us then is in figuring out HOW Jesus taught and interpreted Law/Torah perfectly.

        Many think that the Law/Torah consists of a collection of isolated truth statements; this is not the case, rather, it is a description of a system. If you take some small amount of text out of Torah, you are taking it away from its larger context of Torah and the result can easily be immoral, atheists do this as a way to denigrate Scripture. I think this is what Jesus is discussing in Matt 5. He is not teaching against Torah, he is teaching against common misinterpretations of Torah.

  • Boyd is dreaming if he thinks his argumentation does no harm to the integrity of the Old Testament texts. Liberalism is alive and well around every corner.

  • I am in the middle of volume 1, and while I obviously still have a fair bit to read, I have found his arguments very compelling. I would urge anyone to read his two volumes before dismissing his theory.

    • If you are interested, my original review of volume 1 delves into more detail regarding Boyd’s understanding of revelation and accommodation, which I think is unpersuasive.

  • The most interesting thing to me in this dilemma is how is how dilemma was spelled as “dilemna” for 500 years and only recently changed spelling. Weird.

  • Based on reading the review, and what I know about Boyd (I haven’t actually read the book), it seems like he advocates that we “read” the NT back into the Old — wholesale. As if the original, plain, meaning of the Old is not available to those without the New. The New may illuminate or expound upon — even clarify — but it does not change the original meaning as it was transmitted and understood in its original context.

    Such a systematic “Christological” hermeneutic is highly problematic and utter nonsense.

    https://drreluctant.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/do-we-need-the-new-testament-to-understand-the-old/

    Excerpt:

    Jesus: “The [OT] Scriptures testify of Me..”

    Pharisees: “Where are you in the Scriptures?”

    Jesus: “In types and shadows”

    Pharisees: “How can anyone rightly interpret these types and shadows?”

    Jesus: “By the New Testament”

    Pharisees: “By the what?”

    Jesus: “It won’t be written for about 50 years, and won’t be widely available for longer than that, but you need the NT to rightly interpret the [OT] Scriptures.”

    Pharisees: ?!?!?!??… So until we can read a copy of this NT I guess we can suspend judgment on your claim that the Scriptures testify of you?”

    And….this comment was perfect: Otherwise “Moses will condemn you” has to become “Moses will tell you he’s every bit as surprised as you are!”

    • No, Boyd does not suggest that the original, plain meaning of the OT is not available without the NT. In rather simple terms, he is arguing that the meaning of the OT is incomplete without the NT. And can be misapplied and misinterpreted without the NT. That much should be obvious even using Jesus’ example of Moses’ rule about divorce, or by looking at legislation about slavery.
      I suggest that you read his book. Even if you decided that you still disagreed with him, your reply mis-characterizes Boyd’s position.

      • If the meaning is not complete, then by definition, it is not available.

        People *with* the New Testament still misinterpret the Bible. The NT is not needed to understand the Old. It sheds light on and expounds, but it does not “fill in the gaps” as if the meaning were not available.
        In Jesus’ citation of the law of divorce, he did not re-interpret the original law or change its meaning or indicate that the original meaning of the law wasn’t fully available to the OT Israelites. And what does legislation about slavery have anything to do with it? All your comment has done is confirm my original critique.

        • On what Jesus said about marriage and divorce, it was all aligned with Torah. It is very easy to take these verses out of context and thoroughly misunderstand them. See David Instone-Brewer’s books on this, he also has copies of his books on the web, but they are worth buying. In Matt 19, Jesus is correcting seven (!) misinterpretations of Torah made by the Pharisees, but one will not be able to see this without knowing what they taught.

          I think there are 2 valid ways to read the books in the OT/Tanach, the first is without knowing that Jesus is the goal towards which Scripture points and the second is when you know that Jesus is the goal. Both are valid ways of reading and both should be done.

  • Works like this contribute to further our understanding of the relationship between the Old Testament books and those of the New Testament After all, the apostles did not but formulate an re-interpretation of Old Testament texts through the lens of their own experience with Jesus
    A continuation for this line of thinking could be to explore how the individual writers had to adapt their own ideas and understanding of the significance and meaning of the Old Testament Were each of them successful, is there a variance in each of the NT authors in the degree of change from traditional understandings to the new understanding brought by Jesus? Who adapted better or most to Jesus’ lifting of the traditional Hebrew view of the coming of a God of wrath to Jesus’ emphasis on the love of God as a Parent to all mankind? had any such differences created tension between the thoughts of the different NT authors?

  • So … how would Boyd then explain the great (violent) flood of judgement? Did God simply “accommodate” the world and “allow” all the people of Noah’s day to destroy themselves violently in water? I think not. God determined to send the flood, and carried out the violent action Himself, without any participation on man’s part. Hmmm. And what about Hell? Wailing and gnashing of teeth … a fire that is never quenched …. Hmmm. My first impression of Boyd’s book from this review seems to indicate he struggles with much post-modern angst.
    Boyd’s thesis conflicts with NT revelation as well as OT. Consider the following text:
    “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say
    to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?”
    21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one
    vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?
    22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power,
    has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for
    destruction,
    23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy,
    which he has prepared beforehand for glory” (Ro 9:20–23)
    Mr Boyd …. does the phrase “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” imply violence?
    Post-modern Hermeneutics … a definition:
    1) conforming the God plainly revealed in Scripture to a politically
    correct image, through the imposition of 21st century philosophy
    back upon the ancient text.
    2) Bible twisting

    • Excellent point. I do agree with you that Boyd is reading modern sensibilities back into the Bible. And I too would be curious to know his position on hell and the Flood. (I wouldn’t be surprised if he denied a global flood and was a universalist).

  • I may try to make time to read this book. However…
    I wince when I hear things that seem to say the Old Testament God is a meanie and the New Testament Jesus is all sweetness and light, with the sweetest and lightest being the Sermon on the Mount. That was one of the first things I “unlearned” when I began to read the Bible initially out of cultural interest during young manhood.

    After all, nobody in the Bible talked more Hell and damnation than Jesus himself.

  • I have not read where one person emphasized that God patiently and with great long-suffering allowed his people to be enslaved in Egypt while the Amorites continued to sin in such detestable ways. Each Amorite generation was passing on to the next their continued improvement of idolatry, child sacrifice, and gross civil injustices (Lev. 18.24-28). God waited more than 450 years before finally dealing with the carnage of generational sin and wickedness that was increasing with each passing year – each child perfecting the sins of their parents. God makes clear to Abraham that “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” (Gen. 15.16). This time of delay allowed for their sins to reach a maximum limit in the divine accounting of justice. The Exodus and conquest of Canaan by the Israelites marked the end of God’s gentle dealings with this people and the beginning of exact, perfect, and deserved justice from a God who can do no other. These “innocent children” as it is claimed, are the same ones who in just a few years would also be emulating their parents and committing the same abominations. Herein is a picture of the Cross! The accumulated guilt of sin and rebellion that the elect of God deserve is satisfied by a God who will by no means clear the guilty (Ex. 34.7). Satisfaction must be made and it was in the person and work of Jesus Christ instead of the deserving sinner. This is the grace of the Gospel and it is the same immutable God who accomplished it. Those who deserve destruction, like the Amorites, have not received it because God has poured it out on his Son in the place of all who believe in Him by faith. The Biblical account allowed forty years for the Canaanites, who had heard of the mighty acts of God in the Exodus, to repent while the Israelites wandered in the desert (Josh. 2:8-11). Examples such as Rahab, who became part of the lineage of Christ, as well as the Gibeonites, demonstrate the forgiveness and inclusion of repentant sinners into the covenant community of God’s people.
    People also forget that Israel, like the Amorites, failed to obey God and therefore, like them, the land vomited them out also according to the exact judgment of God by the hands of the Assyrians and the Babylonians! God is free to use whatever “Rod” he chooses to exact perfect judgment on a sinful people be it a temporal or an eternal judgment- but make no mistake about it- God will judge sin and it will be exactly what it deserves be it in the Old or New Testament times.

Written by Tavis Bohlinger
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