Most Christians avoid the passages of scripture that describe Yahweh as violent warrior God. It’s easier to skim those passages than to truly wrestle with the darker verses of scripture. Gregory A. Boyd leans in, urging us to open our eyes to the ramifications of our interpretation. Most troubling, most conservative approaches to scripture require a defense of divine genocide: “In the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you” (Deut 20:16–17).

Boyd holds a conservative approach to scripture including divine inspiration and authority. However, his emphasis on the cross as a interpretive lens shows how verses like Deut 20:16–17 do not align with God’s character. For Boyd (and, he argues, early church interpreters), all scripture should be interpreted through the lens of Jesus crucified. Boyd entitles this approach a crucified hermeneutic.

[W]hen Jesus was crucified, all sin was nailed to the cross with him (Col 2:14), which included all fallen conceptions of God as a violent warrior. We thus see the ugliness of our sin reflected in the ugliness of the beaten, crucified, and God-forsaken Son of God, and we are called to renounce this ugliness. (552)

The question remains: how do we use this crucified hermeneutic to explain the manifold violent portrayals of Yahweh? Boyd develops four principles:

1. The Principle of Cruciform Accommodation: “In the process of God “breathing” the written witness to his covenantal faithfulness, God sometimes displayed his triune, cruciform agape-love by stooping to accommodate his self-revelation to the fallen and culturally conditioned state of his covenant people” (644).
2. The Principle of Redemptive Withdrawal: “Jesus’ sacrificial death on Calvary teaches us that God judges sin and defeats evil simply by withdrawing his merciful hand, thereby allowing sinners to suffer the consequences of their sin and wisely causing evil to self-destruct” (849).
3. The Principle of Cosmic Conflict: “The agents that carry out violence when God withdraws his protective presence to bring about a divine judgment include perpetually-threatening cosmic forces of destruction” (1010).
4. The Principle of Semiautonomous Power: “When God confers divine power on select people, he does not meticulously control how they use it” (1196).

In the second volume, Boyd applies these four principles (sometimes in overlapping ways) exhaustively to the Old Testament. Out of his self-giving love for his creation, God condescends and even wears literary masks that portray him as violent. In this way, God identifies with sin in anticipation of the cross where he will take the sin of the world on himself and make atonement. Rather than actively causing violence, God chooses to withdraw his providential protection from time to time, giving sinners what they desire as he allows the chaotic cosmic forces of the fallen world to steel, kill, and destroy.

The final principle should be of particular interest to pentecostals and charismatics. This explains how could God allow his power be used by Elisha to murder a group of kids who called him ‘baldy’ (2 Kgs. 2:23–24). Boyd posits that when God empowers his people, he doesn’t micromanage—rather, he allows freedom in the exercise of that power, even if it contradicts God’s desires. This also explains Samson’s exploits and (dare I say) many healing evangelists! This has important implications for a theology of spiritual gifts.

At over 1,400 pages spread across two volumes, Crucifixion of the Warrior God is a commitment. Readers will tackle an innovative yet orthodox approach to some of scriptures most troubling passages. Agree or disagree (more likely: a combination of both), Boyd’s work highlights the glory of the Christ who chose to die rather than retaliate and in doing so, revealed the heart of the triune God.

Boyd, Gregory A. Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament’s Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross. 2 vols. Fortress Press, 2017.