Tag: scapegoating

Resurrection as the Confrontation and Defeat of Antisemitism and the Antichrist

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamín Netanyahu recently said “Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan” while explaining the rationale behind military actions involving the US and Israel against Iran. Netanyahu, referencing the historian Will Durant, was arguing that the military action of the US and Israel against Iran, and presumably the destruction of Gaza, were examples of when morality is not enough, and strength and power must be exercised. According to Netanyahu, “If you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good. Aggression will overcome moderation.” Ignoring the implications of out-eviling the evil through ruthlessness, the contrast between Genghis Khan and Jesus may have come to Netanyahu so easily, as one of the defining necessities of Israeli citizenship concerns Jesus and Christianity.

The Law of Return, defining who can be a citizen of Israel, refrains from defining the term “Jew,” but the Law simply states: “Every Jew is entitled to immigrate to Israel.”[1] However, in 1962 the High Court of Justice ruled that a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who had converted to Catholicism and had become a Catholic monk (Brother Daniel) could not immigrate to Israel, since he had converted to Catholicism. “The argument of the majority judges was that after his conversion to Christianity he is a member of a non-Jewish religion, and is not allowed to immigrate to Israel.”[2] The problem is that “Jew” was not specifically defined as pertaining to religion, but had been defined either as the child of a Jewish mother or a convert to Judaism. Those with Jewish mothers were not required to be practitioners of Judaism, but the only requirement is that he/she be one “who is not a member of another religion.” Secularism, atheism, nationalism, and Zionism, are not considered as competing with Judaism as a religion.

The primary issue was in regard to Jews who had converted to Christianity or Messianic Jews, all of whom were disqualified as having the right to immigration. That is, the primary consideration for the right to Aliyah (immigration to Israel, and originally referring to the honor of being called upon in the synagogue to read from the Torah) was rejection of any other religion, with Christianity and Christ being of specific and primary concern. The ruling was passed down, “a Messianic Jew (i.e., the child of a Jewish mother who believes that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel) is of ‘another religion’ rather than Judaism.” As Justice Barak makes clear, an atheist or secular Jew along with religious Jews all agree, for purposes of immigration, there is no such thing as “a Jew who believes in Jesus.” Justice Barak expressed his opinion that even according to a secular outlook there is general agreement that “a Jew who believes in Jesus” is no longer a Jew, according to the national meaning of the term.[3] The key determinant of who is a Jew cannot be said to be either religious or ethnic identity, as converts are welcomed as well as the children of converts who are secular or atheistic, but not being a follower of Christ is the clearest unifying factor.

Given the history of the conflict between Jews and Christians and the persecution of Jews by Christians, it may be understandable that Israel would want to preserve an identity which is specifically and definitively not Christian, but it is also true that this conflict goes to the heart of Christian identity. The rejection and crucifixion of Christ, and recognition of this fact is the beginning point of Christian preaching. Peter, in the first Christian sermon, says, the resurrected Messiah, is the one “you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men” (Acts 2:23). Everyone knows, “The things about Jesus the Nazarene . . . how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to the sentence of death, and crucified Him” (Lk 24:19–20). This killing is not a vague result of general wrongdoing but is the historical and concrete result of the beliefs, practices, and religion, grounding Jews (and Romans), causing them to condemn and crucify Jesus. These people have blood on their hands, and it is this recognition that “cuts them to the heart” causing their repentance which leads to their baptism (Acts 2:37–38). A neutral or innocent audience is simply not addressed by the Gospel, but it is aimed at those complicit in the killing. This message cuts to the heart, as “the things concerning Jesus” pertain to those who are guilty, but this guilt is not simply Jewish.

“For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel” (Acts 4:27). The “Gentiles rage,” and “peoples devise futile things,” and “all the kings of the earth” take their stand, “against the Lord and against his Christ” (Acts 4:25–26). The opposition to Christ is universal, including Israel, Gentiles, kings of the earth, priests, common people, or all that are represented in the gathering in Jerusalem, which seems to include the root of humanity. This city of man, Jerusalem, which is responsible for his killing, is also the site of the beginning of Gospel proclamation.

It is the crucified who is risen and who directly saves those involved in the crime of his murder. This is not generic or genetic guilt, but is specific, historical, and concrete.[4] It is in their role as “the Council of elders,” the  “people assembled, both chief priests and scribes,” Annas as High Priest and Caiaphas, all who were of the “high priestly family,” as well as Pontius Pilate and Herod, or those who gather in Jerusalem (e.g., Lk 22:66; Acts 4:5-6).  These are the judges who will be judged. The antisemitism is not in the details but the details contain the concrete reality that brought on the killing. Betrayal, scapegoating, victimization, judging, capital punishment, sacrificial religion, or the very modes of redemption in which Israel and Rome put their hope, killed Jesus. Where the first Adam encounters the second Adam, all that has gone into shaping and misshaping Adam, comes into play. The murder concerns the very ground constituting humanity, as it comes into conflict with the reality of his humanity.

They condemned him as a threat to their nation, to their temple, and to their religion and considered him a blasphemer (Mk 14:63–64). He is accused of colluding with Satan, of being insane (Mat 12:22, 24, 26, 27, 28; Mk 3:30; Jn 10:19–21), of having demons (Matt 12:25), and of wanting to destroy the temple (Mk 14:58). He is accused of being a malefactor (John 18:29–30), which may include being a sorcerer and may have been aimed at his miracles.[5] He was accused of claiming to be the rightful King of the Jews (Jn 18:33-38; 19:19). They crucify him because of the threat he poses, and the resurrection is a refutation of their legal-religious condemnation. It is a reversal and judgment on their “nailing him to the cross.”

It is not that Christianity is antisemitic, but Judaism is the specific site in which the Messiah reveals himself (universally), and he brings fulness and truth from out of the Jewish faith: “Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Lk 24:27). He is in all of the Jewish Scriptures because none of it stands alone, it all requires relativization in the light of Christ. The law made absolute, the Jew made absolute, or even God, apart from Christ, made absolute, is captive to the orientation and power of death, which causes theme to condemn him. This God, this religion, this law, is built on crucifying. It absolutizes the tomb, and Jesus empties out this tomb religion, and this is the promised fulfillment of the law and the prophets (Is 28:14-28).

In light of the resurrection their accusations and understanding are proven false, the point of Christ’s vindication. Peter proclaims not only that Jesus’ resurrection vindicates him, but it indicts those who killed him, along with all their reasons for crucifying him. “But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:24). The “power of death” pertains to the deadly condemnation, but also to the nature of the worship, the religious nationalism, the essentializing identity, which drove in the nails. The condemnation, and the understanding and systems of religion and identity which brought it about, are judged by the resurrection. Peter distributes culpability to Jews (the “you”) and the Romans (the “godless men”) but all serve the power of death, which they presume is absolute and is theirs to manipulate. This essentializing, absolutizing, of death and their ability to wield it upon victims of their choice, is proof in the flesh (they imagine) of the truth of their power. The entire system, is overturned in the resurrection: “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). Your beliefs, judgements, and religion (or at least the understanding of your religion), which brought about his crucifixion, stand condemned.

This confrontation of Peter with the Jews is the pattern of proclamation of the resurrection: Peter is himself confronted as a betrayer of Christ and all of the disciples share in the betrayal exemplified by Judas (the charge levelled by Jesus while washing their feet, in Jn 13:1-17). Peter is not shifting the blame but explaining how Jews and Romans are complicit in yielding to the bondage which killed Jesus. Some may not be persecutors on the order of Paul, deniers on the order of Peter, betrayers on the order of Judas, but may simply give themselves over to grief, like Mary at the tomb, but what all share prior to or outside the realization of resurrection is bondage to death. In a long explanation concerning the prophecy presumed to be about David, Peter explains that God has not abandoned Jesus to the grave, and this means life, and the Holy Spirit, not death, are the final reality (esp. Acts 2:33).

The message is a judgment on the judges, as the apostles condemn those who condemned Jesus. “On the next day, their rulers and elders and scribes were gathered together in Jerusalem; and Annas the high priest was there, and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of high-priestly descent” (Acts 4:5–6). The same Jewish court that condemned Jesus condemns the apostles and demands their silence (Acts 4) but the apostles reverse the roles, and proclaim Jesus has judged the judges in his resurrection. This however is only the beginning of the message, as they have “acted in ignorance” (Acts 3:17) and through repentance and return, the wiping away of sin, and times of refreshing come through Christ (Acts 3:19–20). Absolution and forgiveness are possible through the power of resurrection.

The pattern is established: realization of complicity in the crime as the first step in a new sort of worship, a new sort of temple, a new understanding of Scripture and Israel. “He is the stone which was rejected by you, the builders, but which became the chief corner stone. And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:11–12). God judges human judgment, as the victim has become the vindicator, offering true justice. As Rowan Williams notes, “grace is released only in confrontation with the victim.”[6] Grace comes to those who recognize their complicity in the crime, reifying the law, opting for the nation over Christ (the law of sin and death).

The refusal to recognize the resurrected Jesus is a refusal to recognize God is with the victim. This coin though, has two sides: the refusal of Jesus places one on the side of those who killed him, but victimizing through scapegoating, is also the crime that killed him. Jesus can be overtly or implicitly rejected, but on both sides of the equation are the guilty. The “not Christian” as the essence of Jewish identity performs the same work as antisemitism. Each is defined by the same reifying process. The scapegoating which killed Jesus is the same scapegoating which was turned on the Jews. That is, Zionism and the modern State of Israel may preserve the identity which, along with Roman complicity, brought about the death of Christ, however Christian antisemitism (e.g., the crusaders’ accusation that Jews are the “Christ killers”) repeats and preserves the same reifying identity which brought about the death of Christ. The reification of the law and the temple on the part of the Jews is repeated by those antisemites who also reify Jewish identity. Antichristian, antichrist, and antisemitism, are made of the same stuff in that each makes an absolute of the negative. While the tendency may be to quickly pass over “who killed Christ,” not only the sin of antisemitism but all sin is defeated by exposure and proclamation of what caused the death of Christ, as it is precisely the scapegoating reification which Christ confronts, judges, and defeats. Indeed, antisemitism is simply a case in point of what killed Jesus. Othering Jews or Romans, is of the same order as blaming Jesus, and in this victimization of the Other there are no innocent bystanders.

[1] Joshua Pex, “Immigration to Israel according to the Law of Return after conversion to another religion?” OFFICE@LAWOFFICE.ORG.IL, Updated on: 29/06/2025

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (London: Darton, Longman and Todd LtD, 2002) 2.

[5] Deuteronomy warns, “If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, . . . that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death” (Dt 13:1–2, 5). Later sources also indicate it may have been the accusation of sorcery which got him killed: Evidence of Jewish opinion at the time of Lactantius is the following passage from the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 43a: “On the eve of the Passover Yeshu [the Nazarine] was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, ‘He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favor, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.’ But since nothing was brought forward in his favor he was hanged on the eve of the Passover.” See John W. Welch, “The Legal Cause of Action Against Jesus in John 18:29–30” Celebrating Easter: The 2006 BYU Easter Conference, ed. Thomas A. Wayment and Keith J. Wilson (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University), 157–75. Accessed here: https://rsc.byu.edu/celebrating-easter/legal-cause-action-against-jesus-john-1829-30.

[6] Williams, 4.

Why Are Some Blind to the Slaughter?

Renee Good and Alex Pretti were caregivers, described by friends and family as compassionate and kind, and both were killed in the midst of caring for their neighbors. Renee had just dropped off her 6-year-old at school and her final words, in the midst of protesting the actions of ICE, were to give comfort to those who killed her: “I am not mad at you.” Alex’s last words were for a woman who had been pepper sprayed, “Are you okay, are you okay?” He put himself between the woman and her assailants, perhaps the natural response of an ICU nurse. Pictures of Alex helping veterans and offering comfort to patients, reminded me of the ICU nurse who cared for me after having heart problems. She seemed angelic, and Alex was clearly also gifted with compassion. Both Alex and Renee spent their lives caring, until there was no more to give.

The wanton slaughter of these two precious lives is obvious for all to see, such that the mystery is why some are blind to the reality. Beyond the obvious evil of the killings are the slanderous responses, betraying the same blindness. The claims that “they had it coming,” before and after the fact, are made of the same stuff. Clearly the killers are blind, but so too those unable to see that shooting a mother in the face or a man in the back ten times, is not justifiable. Blindness to slaughter of the good and beautiful is exposed for what it is at the cross, however, recognizing this “evil” means exposing the lie of the justifications, the law and order that killed Christ.

There are three levels of “legal justification” surrounding the murders, and accompanying each level is a more profound evil.

The Universal Law in Which the Evil Suffer and the Good Prosper

The main law justifying the killing is on the order of the unwritten law of the friends of Job, presuming “he had it coming,” otherwise it would not have happened. The instinctual presumption that the guilty suffer preserves from the troubling reality. We can identify with the “good” and not worry about the contamination involved in identifying with the “guilty.” In this absolute legalism, suffering is already guilt. The pervasiveness of this understanding struck me, when a local man in our little town was killed by the police and the wife of a man who is now a Republican legislator, immediately pronounced him guilty. The world is divided into the guilty and the innocent and those who are poor, black, brown, foreign, or immigrants, suffer because they probably deserve it.

The law “justifying” the killings and deployed in the form of ICE agents, is aimed at weeding out illegals, foreigners, and immigrants, and has been mainly leveled at people of color. “These people” are not protected by this instinctual law, but are its living proof. Justification is inscribed in the flesh of those being punished and those who do the punishing. Those white citizens who might empathize or even identify with the suffering have placed themselves outside of this unwritten law and are guilty by association. “Clearly, they had it coming.”

This law may float free of religion or it may be codified as part of a religious understanding. It may be called karma, nature, reaping what you sow, or lex talionis, but it is the misunderstood law written on the heart which stands behind many forms of “natural” and religious law.

The Christianized Version of the Universal Law

Ironically, Christians may be the most confused about where Christ stands in regard to the law, presuming that he died to uphold it rather than to expose its deadly nature. Rather than mere blindness, inherited from the universal law on the order of the friends of Job or the aggravated blindness of the scribes and Pharisees, some suffer from a doubly confounded blindness in assigning Jesus’ death to upholding the law that killed him. Penal substitution presumes God does the killing, and the killers are his instruments, assigned to play their various roles so as to achieve an atoning payment. There is a Christianity blinded to the evil which put Christ on the cross, assigning it to God, and it is this form of the religion that confuses God with the victimizers.

Here the Christian friends of Job can quote Romans 13 (in isolation from chapter 12), along with German Christians serving Hitler, justifying the murder of all who oppose the Leader. In this understanding Caesar, the President, the police, the soldiers, or ICE, cannot break the law as they are the law. They embody the law and serve as its instruments. These Christians imagine that their allegiance to Empire and their allegiance to God are one and the same and the presumption is that God put Trump, or Putin, or Caesar in power.  The notion is that God ordains specific governments to accomplish his will and this is in line with his redemptive strategy in and through the Church, so that the ordination of Christ and the Church is on a continuum with God’s use of state and law.

In this understanding, Roman law and God’s law are united to bring about the death of Jesus, so that he might pay the penalty of the law. God is working out his providential intent to punish Jesus under the law so that he might be punished for all. Rome, with its god-Caesar is not being judged, nor is Israel and its leaders who bow down to Caesar. None are called to repentance, but Israel’s and Rome’s justice are perfectly adequate for God’s purposes. After all, Rome and the Church will unite under Emperor Constantine and this Constantinian Christianity imagines that human law, justice, and government, are in accord with God’s purposes in Christ. In this understanding the economy of salvation works with the economy of human cultures and nations so that salvation comes through Constantinian Rome or Christian America. 

People fleeing violence and poverty are subjected to a law, which anyone vaguely familiar with the teaching of Jesus would seem to condemn as evil. Yet, it is Christians, steeped in a religion they link to Jesus, that are blinded to the forces which killed Jesus, which slaughtered Renee and Alex, which continues to kill Palestinians, and which can be linked to a catalog of genocidal violence.

This may seem as close to radical evil as possible, but something even worse is unfolding.

A Scapegoating Christianity

There is an elite who recognize the function of the law in creating scapegoats, who recognize Jesus’ exposure of the scapegoating mechanism, and rather than eschew violence, they are taking control by deploying new levels of violence. The oligarchs backing Donald Trump, and who have also shaped the career of JD Vance, recognize that their accumulation of wealth and power depend upon heightened fear, continued willingness of the masses to submit to authoritarian rule, and ultimately the suspension of democratic society, and several identify as Christians.

The Republican party has a long history of weaponizing Christianity, so as to manipulate the shift that is unfolding. Where I am located, in rural Missouri, thirty or so years ago there was next to no Republican presence, while today the opposite is the case. The fusion of the Republican party with evangelical religion runs from Ronald Reagan, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, and George W. Bush, but in Trump and company it has taken a more virulent form, with its heightened rhetoric and action against immigrants, people of color, and notions of civilizational war. Establishing or “recovering” a Christian civilization is the well-known stance of Steve Bannon (the ideologue originally behind Donald Trump), who maintains that “we” in the West must affirm our Christian identity or be overrun by dangerous outsiders who will impose a different identity upon us.[1]

Peter Thiel, arguably the key ideologue among the cohort of oligarchs surrounding Trump (including his fellow South African, Elon Musk), writes, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”[2] He remains committed to the “Christian faith” but stands “against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual.” Thiel hopes to use technology, so-called “transhumanism,” to escape death. He plans to create a new order with its own currency, its own social order, and its own interplanetary colonies and is taking active steps to bring this about. He has not only funded Vance but Curtis Yarvin, the architect of “neocameralism,” advocating replacing “democracy with corporate governance, citizens with customers, democratic deliberation with algorithmic optimization.” His RAGE doctrine aims to “Retire All Government Employees”—and Musk’s DOGE (Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency) began systematically purging civil servants following this blueprint.[3]

Mike Brock lists the various means Thiel is deploying, but key to the death of Alex and Renee are his plans for ICE. As Brock notes, “Palantir’s ICE integration means deportation agents use Thiel’s surveillance software for mass raids—over $248 million in documented contracts since 2011, including systems that track Americans’ movements, associations, and communications. This isn’t law enforcement technology but population management infrastructure that makes democratic resistance impossible by eliminating the privacy necessary for organizing collective action.”[4] In Thiel’s overt deployment of scapegoating, some must die that a few (himself) will be saved. In one interview, when asked whether humanity should continue, he was unclear if this was his goal.[5] The overt weaponizing of the power he finds exposed in Christianity (through the work of René Girard), uses the evil power exposed by the crucified, and seeks to manipulate it for his personal enrichment and self-aggrandizement.

The Exposure of the Lie of Evil

Jesus exposed the lie that God is not with those on crosses, those who suffer, the poor, immigrants and the outcast. God does not wield power through death and suffering but in Christ has defeated this power. He exposes the blindness of those who cannot recognize the innocent victim. In the words of the Psalmist quoted by Jesus, “They hated me for no reason” (Jn. 15:25; Ps. 35:19). They demonize and criminalize Jesus, who submits himself to their blindness as, “These words of Scripture have to be fulfilled in me ‘He let himself be taken for a criminal’” (Luke 22:37; Mark 15:28). As with every scapegoat, Christ is the perceived source of the problem and he is killed to protect the law and the nation. He pronounced his killers blind, both before and from the cross. These blind guides cannot see they are crucifying the Lord of Glory because their vision is distorted by the law, which separates good from evil, Jew from Gentile, clean from unclean, and ultimately God’s people from his enemies. They imagine God is on the side of the victimizers, the crucifiers, those wielding the law and he is against all who fall outside the law.

This blindness is compounded by those who pervert Christianity and see scapegoating sacrifice as God’s instrument of salvation. They fail to benefit from Jesus’ exposure of the lie and due to their misconstrual, there is no rescue available. But there is something worse than this failed form of the faith: those who recognize Jesus was scapegoated, that he exposed and defeated this mechanism, but instead of implementing his defeat of evil they would manipulate it so as to control the world enslaved by its power. They are worse than blind, in that they would use their insight to manipulate the blind. Renee Good and Alex Pretti are victims of this engineered blindness, on display not only in their killers but in those blind to their murder.

[1] See my piece, “Have the Dark Ages Returned?”

[2] He explains in “The Education of a Libertarian” https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/

[3] Mike Brock, From the website “Notes From the Circus,” https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-oligarchs-bible-how-peter-thiel

[4] Ibid.

[5]https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=thiel+interview+questioning+if+humanity+should+continue&type=E210US105G91970#id=1&vid=ba10f2404febf524085599d5fd85c897&action=click

The Sign of Jonah as the Major Semiotic Shift of Scripture

“An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet” (Matt 12:39).  

Taking into account the context of Jonah, contrasting particularly with Nahum, and then accounting for Jesus’ direct and indirect references to Jonah, what unfolds in the Gospels is not just another sign but a semiotic shift, in which one order of signs and meaning is displaced by another (the sign of Jonah). Jesus’ singular sign is not the sort his hearers will recognize as such, because it is a sign of a different order; not another miracle, but a foundational shift as to how signs are constituted. The immediate contrast posed in Matthew is with the expected sign of an “adulterous generation,” judged by the men of Nineveh who “repented at the preaching of Jonah” (v. 41). This generation will also be judged by the “Queen of the South” who “came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon” (v. 42). There is a new order of wisdom, greater than Solomon, in the sign of Jonah. It exceeds the imagined wisdom of this crooked generation and even exceeds the pinnacle of Hebrew wisdom. The sign of Jonah taken up by Christ, in Anthony Bartlett’s description, “is a deliberate manipulation of familiar biblical DNA to produce a remarkably new mutation.”[1]

Jonah, like Ruth, stands against the prejudice and exclusivity of the Jews in its story of Jonah’s mission to Nineveh (the capital city of Assyria, the foremost enemy of the Jews), but it is also a reversal of the Hebrew view of God, in which God punishes the wicked and rewards the good. No one, in Jewish estimate, could exceed the evil of Nineveh, and yet in the book of Jonah, God cares for the Ninevites in the same way he cares for the Jews. Jonah counters the theodicy typified by Deuteronomy, that taken up by the Maccabees and inherited by the Pharisees in the time of Jesus, in which rewards and punishment can be traced in the rise and fall of nations. The problem is Jerusalem is threatened by Assyria but God would save Nineveh, the capital city of this enemy. To accentuate the problem the pagans, in Jonah, are more responsive to God than God’s prophet (serving perhaps as a typical Jew).

Having received his call to preach to Nineveh, Jonah flees toward Tarshish, the Timbuktu of his day beyond any known outpost of Israel and its God, and in the opposite direction of Nineveh. We only learn at the end of the book that he is fleeing, fearful that God would have compassion on the Ninevites (4:2 echoing Exodus 34:6-7): “Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.” Jonah fears Nineveh will repent and God will relent in punishing them; an unusual problem for a prophet. Where Abraham argued that God should not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, cities which received no prophet, Jonah wants the opposite response, which is probably the prevailing Jewish attitude, and seemingly a parody of this attitude (captured in Nahum). When the city repents, Jonah becomes downcast and angry (4:1), echoing the attitude of Cain before he kills his brother (the same word). The murderous anger of Jonah reflects a deep-seated violence which explains his original flight.

In response, “The Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up” (1:4). According to Bartlett, “The scene is reminiscent of creation itself where ‘a wind from God swept over the waters’ (Gen. 1:2). We are in the realm of primordial divine action, and in the biblical repertoire of signs the violence of the storm must echo Genesis, including the episode of the flood.”[2] The pagan sailors cry out to their gods, and question Jonah, urging him to pray: “So the captain approached him and said, ‘How is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish’” (Jonah 1:6). While they are willing to scapegoat Jonah by throwing him in the sea, he makes for an odd scapegoat in his willing and detailed instruction: “Pick me up and throw me into the sea. Then the sea will become calm for you, for I know that on account of me this great storm has come upon you” (Jonah 1:12). The sailors display an uncommon decency, doubling down in their efforts: “However, the men rowed desperately to return to land but they could not, for the sea was becoming even stormier against them” (Jonah 1:13). They even offer up a prayer to the Lord, seemingly having converted to the religion of Jonah: “Then they called on the LORD and said, ‘We earnestly pray, O LORD, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life and do not put innocent blood on us; for You, O LORD, have done as You have pleased’” (Jonah 1:14). The sailors, more than Jonah, are sensitive to spilling innocent blood, and rather than the usual release from guilt with the death of the sacrifice (Jonah tossed overboard) their fear is not assuaged: “Then the men feared the LORD greatly, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows (Jonah 1:16) like true Israelites (Ex 14:31). The sailors and all of Nineveh are more quickly changed than Jonah, who shows no sign of repentance.

Jonah is angry at God’s mercy and would prefer to see his enemies suffer rather than have them repent and be saved. According to Bartlett, “Jonah fulfills textually and emotionally the very same character as the violent storm and the evil it brings about. The text has doubled back on itself, returning Jonah to the same murderous state he embraced when he was thrown into the raging sea – and beyond that to the very first murder of history, thus once more knitting together the themes of human and cosmic violence.”[3] The king and the Ninevites and God all turn from the violence, but the violence endures among the Jews. In identifying with the sign of Jonah, Jesus understands the poor light this shines upon the Jews’ murderous attitude toward him, but it is precisely this violence that constitutes his death and resurrection as the sign of Jonah. He brings the resolution missing in Jonah and the Jews.

Though John does not mention the sign of Jonah, he closely echoes the story (in 6:16-21). The sea, often equated with chaos (and as in Daniel, the gods of violence and chaos), is where Jesus reveals his divinity, tying the ἐγώ εἰμι to his power over nature in calming the storm and walking on the water (as if we now see YHWH trampling down the waves (Job 9:8 and Ps 89:10) and offering the comfort of his presence in the storm (Gen 26:24; 46:3; Jer 1:8; 1:17; 26:28). In the portrayal of the synoptics, the disciples panic in a storm while Jesus sleeps, and they double down on their rowing before waking Jesus, to save them from “perishing.” Much like Jonah is vomited by the great fish, Jesus and the disciples arrive suddenly at the distant shore of the Gadarenes where he encounters a horde of demons and sends them (back?) into the sea (Mark 5:1–20) and the demoniac becomes an evangelist to the Decapolis. Jesus defies the expectations of the Jews and even his disciples by saving the wrong people, like Jonah.

This Jewish understanding, on the order of the friends of Job, pictures the world as a closed system in which those who do good prosper and those who do evil are made to suffer. In this equation, good nations and individuals should thrive, and those that are wicked should suffer and be defeated. A “sign” in this closed system would accentuate the values of this system, by heaping miraculous favor on the chosen or by furthering the suffering of the wicked. A sign might be on the order of Joshua at Jericho, where the walls come tumbling down allowing the genocide in which “both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys,” were meant “with the edge of the sword” (Joshua 6:17–21).

Instead, Jonah depicts not only the people but all the animals putting on sack-cloth, fasting, and repenting (Jonah 3:7-8). It depicts God’s great compassion, a counter-sign to that of the flood, which brought total destruction to “animals and creeping things and birds of the air” (Genesis 6:7). Jonah cares more for his plant, providing him shade, than he does for the multitudes in Nineveh (Jonah 4:9) to say nothing of “the many animals.” For him, Nineveh’s evil should evoke divine wrath, as in the flood or at Jericho, but God fails to destroy Nineveh, the very people oppressing the Jews. God tries to evoke a bit of empathy from Jonah, noting that a plant, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow” (4:10) does not really compare to “that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals” (4:11), but the response of Jonah is an open question.

Jesus also elicits the sympathy of the Jews (in the same conversation he raises the sign of Jonah), using sheep to challenge their legalistic attitudes surrounding the sabbath: “What man is there among you who has a sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matt 12:11–12). The Pharisees do not want sheepish signs, any more than Jonah wants a compassionate God. They need a sign on the order of Elijah’s fire from heaven, consuming their enemies. Fire from heaven burning up Romans, Samaritans or sinners, might be a good sign, but the sign of Jonah is precisely not a furthering of the scapegoating of Jewish enemies; rather it is an exposure and displacement of scapegoating sacrifice. It is counter to the Deuteronomic guilt, in which calamity is caused by human guilt, and in which God’s vengeance follows fixed laws, and by which he can thus be manipulated to achieve a calculated end. Jonah’s anger at the compassion of God is on the order of Jewish anger at Jesus’ compassion for sinners, for the lame and the sick. Neither Jesus nor the God of Jonah meet Jewish expectations.

Jonah, a parody of the typical biblical prophet, serves for Jesus as a parody of the Pharisees. Like Jonah, they are displeased and angry at Jesus, precisely because he is making a mockery of their narrow views of God. Jonah gets so angry he wants to die, not because God is vengeful, but because he is loving (Jonah 4:2). The Pharisees, like Jonah, would prefer unrelenting anger to unrelenting love and neither wants a God who will extend his love into the depths of hades, or who will take up the cause of all of humanity as the “suffering son of man.” The Pharisees want a real sign; in the same way Jonah wants the destruction of Nineveh, so Jesus evokes the end point of Jonah’s and Jewish violence, in that both overlap with death and hades: “just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt 12:40).

Jonah equates his journey to being trapped in the grave or sheol: “Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed me, weeds were wrapped around my head. I descended to the roots of the mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever, but You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God” (Jonah 2:5–6). Jonah metaphorically goes to hell in the belly of the fish, which delivers him to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria (Jewish hell on earth), not for vengeance but for repentance. Though Jonah may not repent of his hellish attitudes, Nineveh repents of its violent evil, and Jesus, like Jonah, descends to sheol, he preaches to the dead (I Pet 3:18-19; 4:6), he harrows hell, and this is why the sign of Jonah is a non-sign for the Pharisaical. It is a discontinuation of one order of signs, and the establishment of new order of meaning. The orders of heaven and hell, punishment and revenge, fixed rules in which evil and good can be clearly sorted are thrown into question.

Jonah is ironic, rule-bending and rule-breaking, and is in some estimates a mocking jab at the narrow minded, vengeful understanding of God on display in the book to which it is adjacent, Nahum. Nahum has a very different understanding of God and of the deserved destiny of Nineveh. “The oracle of Nineveh: The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite. A jealous and avenging God is the Lord; the Lord is avenging and wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserves wrath for His enemies” (Na 1:1–2). Jonah and Nahum, back-to-back, portray opposite understandings of the character of God and the plight of the wicked. In Nahum, a closed system of scapegoating justice, requires annihilation of the enemy: “He will make a complete end of its site, and will pursue His enemies into darkness” (Na 1:8). Rather than harrowing hell, God is hell for the enemy Nineveh: “Who can stand before His indignation? Who can endure the burning of His anger? His wrath is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken up by Him” (Na 1:6). Nahum presents a glorious image of the destruction of Nineveh, the sort of sign every Jew might expect: “Woe to the bloody city, completely full of lies and pillage; Her prey never departs. The noise of the whip, the noise of the rattling of the wheel, galloping horses and bounding chariots!” (Na 3:1–2). These people will get what they deserve because God is a known quantity, a warrior God, fighting on behalf of Judah. “Horsemen charging, swords flashing, spears gleaming, many slain, a mass of corpses, and countless dead bodies—they stumble over the dead bodies!” (Na 3:3).

This is not the sheepish God of Jesus and Jonah, but one who delights in the destruction of the wicked. Where Jonah pictures the possibility of repentance and salvation for the worst of sinners, Nahum closes this possibility: “There is no relief for your breakdown, your wound is incurable” (Na 3:19). This God delights in the smashing of the head of the infants (3:10), and there is no danger this God will relent in his anger until Nineveh is completely destroyed: “And the LORD will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. In whirlwind and storm is His way, and clouds are the dust beneath His feet” (Na 1:3). This God uses natural calamity, not for purposes of repentance, but for ultimate destruction. Where God in Jonah is too merciful, too loving, and too concerned for the least (in Jonah’s estimate) the God of Nahum and his people, have no room for grief: “Nineveh is devastated! Who will grieve for her? Where will I seek comforters for you?” (3:7). This is the sort of good news Jonah’s Jews like to hear. There is no question that God punishes with the same sort of violence and oppression leveraged against the Jews, and which Israel would, given the opportunity, use on her enemies. The cruelty of nations is not the issue in the holy wars but the victory of Israel and the Jews is the prime concern.

Considering the long rule of Assyria, from the ninth century until the death of Ashurbanipal in 626 B.C.E., and the fact that the Assyrians made Judah a vassal state and destroyed Israel, the hatred expressed in Nahum is understandable. The way in which the Jews understood God was thrown into question by their long subjugation, and the only explanation was for a future devastation. Warrior gods prove themselves in war, and by this standard the God of the Jews seems distracted or apathetic. Not only does Nahum not rebuke Judah (the usual prophetic explanation for their suffering is their sin) but he makes excessive promises: “For never again will the wicked one pass through you; he is cut off completely” (Na 1:15). Nahum has no sour notes about sin and repentance for Judah, but only bad news for Nineveh, the kind of sign to warm a Zionist heart.  

The book ends with a question, which along with Jonah as a whole challenges Jewish self-identity and the identity of God: “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” (Jonah 4:11). Could it be that God cares for all people, even Ninevites (or Palestinians), and that he even cares for animals? This is not normally open for consideration in the sacrificial, scapegoating world of the Jews. The danger is Christians too will miss the significance of the sign of Jonah, in maintaining a Pharisaical calculus, aimed at sending the good to heaven and evil sinners to hell forever, when the truth is God will search out hell itself for the souls of the perishing.

[1] Anthony Bartlett, Signs of Change: The Bible’s Evolution of Nonviolence (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2022) 126.

[2] Bartlett, 127.

[3] Bartlett, 129.

Cluster Bombs for Jesus: The Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit 

The demonization of Jesus by the Pharisees (in Matthew 12:23-29) will ultimately result in his crucifixion. This, combined with Jesus’ teaching, exposes their blind hatred, their taking good for evil and evil for good. He exposes the murderous scapegoating mechanism, which is the true heart of their religion. They have confused God and the devil, such that they would destroy God incarnate in order to save their nation, religion, and themselves. Killing God to save the nation (Israel, in this instance), is the satanic strategy and law of the universe which Christ exposes. The Creator submits himself to the law of his creatures, submitting himself to murder – their salvation system. The strategy is evident in the nuclear strategy (mutually assured destruction), entailing the destruction of the world (in nuclear winter) in order to win a nuclear war, pointing to the law of blind hatred, demonization, and scapegoating always at work in war. Every war is the result of “ultimate injustice,” a desperate “necessity” in which there are no options and all out destruction is the only alternative. The enemy has the power to destroy the nation. They have nuclear plans, weapons of mass destruction, and the devil himself is on their side. The demonized other is beyond the pale – with negotiation or forgiveness unimaginable. The positing of satan – the demonized other – is the satan, which makes forgiveness or empathy or balance impossible.

In the eyes of the Pharisees, Jesus is an evil enemy devoid of the good. His movement must be destroyed. He is the devil, Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, Stalin, Mussolini, and Putin, or the equivalent of every demonized devil, who must be obliterated. However, the charge against Jesus is not yet the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. The age of the Spirit is ushered in by the Messiah, inclusive of His rejection and death, exposing once and for all the blind hatred that would kill him and for which he pronounced forgiveness on the cross.

Demonizing Jesus, calling the good evil, and glorifying evil as good, allows no room for the work of life-giving power of the Holy Spirit or forgiveness, but this is not the blasphemy to which Jesus refers. The attack on the Son of Man is not itself the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, as demonizing Jesus, calling the good evil and evil good, is not a peculiar problem of Pharisees or Romans. Demonization is the universal human problem giving rise to violence and war. This is the law and organizing principle of the world which killed Jesus, and this is the mechanism Jesus exposes.

The mechanism of blind hatred, of scapegoating, and sacralizing murder, are forever exposed by the work of Christ, which ushers in the age of the Spirit. The age of the Spirit, or the age of forgiveness, are made possible by the work of Christ. The blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is demonization and scapegoating in spite of Christ’s work. The forgiveness of God is contingent (as outlined in the Lord’s Prayer) upon forgiveness (may I be forgiven as I forgive), most especially of the enemy or the unforgiveable other. Demonization of the enemy, in the age of the Spirit, is the unforgivable sin as it cancels the possibility of forgiveness. The unforgiveable sin, in other words, is projecting the impossibility of forgiveness upon the demonized other.

In church history, the demonization of Jesus is soon reversed, so that the very motive that killed Jesus is turned on the Jews during the crusades. The contagion of violence that killed Jesus, in the ultimate rejection of the Gospel, is taken up in the name of Jesus. Could it be that among the first to commit the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit were those Christians who trampled on the cross of Christ by demonizing and murdering Jews in the name of Jesus? Rather than obeying the gospel command (the forgiveness of the enemy demonstrated and instituted by Christ), Christians, in their antisemitism, cancelled the very heart of the gospel. They are among those who go on “sinning willfully.”

As the writer of Hebrews indicates, it is one thing to set aside the Law of Moses but “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?” The next verse indicates clearly, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay” (Heb 10:28–30). The unwillingness to suffer, the seeking of vengeance (not allowing for God’s vengeance), the demonization of the other, all in the name of Jesus, tramples upon the cross and the Spirit of grace it provides.

This is frightening at a personal level, as it is easy to demonize the enemy, but it is also frightening at a corporate level, as the contagion of demonization sweeps over people and there seems to be no resisting it. The gospel is the singular point of resistance, the singular place where we should be able to stand back from the hysteria of scapegoating and recognize that all-out violence, that which killed the savior, is the blasphemy from which he would save.

The problem or impossibility of Christian nationalism, is that nations work according to the logic of the scapegoat while Christianity is the exposure of the scapegoating mechanism. The nation state depends upon demonization, while Christianity is premised upon its defeat. The lie of demonization, apart from its exposure by Christ, never sinks in. The projection of evil necessary for war, is the lie which is only incrementally exposed, apart from Christ.

It is obvious that the various military fiascoes of the United States, in Vietnam, Panama, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine are built on a hollow demonization. Evil must be destroyed no matter the cost, or at least this is the narrative which justifies yet one more war. To protect human rights and establish international order there is no end to the human rights violations and chaos required. The justifications are lies, but few seem to notice. Germany had no nuclear weapon, the Japanese were set to surrender before the nuclear holocaust unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the communist domino effect was a hoax, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Noriega was an American puppet, etc. etc. etc.  The past justifications now stand exposed, and the lying prognoses of easy victory are set aside as the next demon arises. The hoax is forgotten, and pure evil is projected on the next enemy. As Chris Hedges argues, “The U.S. public has been conned, once again, into pouring billions into another endless war. They lied about Afghanistan. They lied about Iraq. And they are lying about Ukraine.”[1]

Yes, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a war crime, but have we forgotten it was provoked by NATO expansion and by the United States backing of the 2014 “Maidan” coup? Could it be, as Hedges argues, that the war in Ukraine is a proxy war serving U.S. interests? “It enriches the weapons manufacturers, weakens the Russian military and isolates Russia from Europe. What happens to Ukraine is irrelevant.” Hedges concludes, “The war will only be solved through negotiations that allow ethnic Russians in Ukraine to have autonomy and Moscow’s protection, as well as Ukrainian neutrality, which means the country cannot join NATO. The longer these negotiations are delayed the more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Their cities and infrastructure will continue to be pounded into rubble.[2]

Indeed, negotiation is the only possible outcome, short of Ukrainian absorption by Russia, yet the United States may reap benefits in resisting the inevitable. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell admitted as much: “First, equipping our friends on the front lines to defend themselves is a far cheaper way — in both dollars and American lives — to degrade Russia’s ability to threaten the United States.” Hedges makes the case that the Ukrainian war is not without vested U.S. financial interests, as “most of the money that’s been appropriated for Ukraine security assistance doesn’t actually go to Ukraine. It gets invested in American defense manufacturing. It funds new weapons and munitions for the U.S. armed forces to replace the older material we have provided to Ukraine. Let me be clear: this assistance means more jobs for American workers and newer weapons for American servicemembers.”[3]

In the Clint Eastwood movie Unforgiven, the old gunslinger is familiar with the sort of demonization that has had to occur to give rise to murderous impulses, but he needs the money. He recognizes the humanity of his victims, and his own cold-blooded willingness to kill is made obvious. Forgiveness is neither given nor a possibility in this black and white world, yet the entire edifice is exposed as a lie, in this most unwestern of westerns.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has taken on the aura of a white hatted good guy, but is his banning of eleven opposition parties justified, or is his allowing of fascists and right-wing militias to flourish truly serving democracy? Is it even possible to question his saintliness or to question the goodness of Ukraine? Hedges raises the questions,

Why did the Ukrainian parliament revoke the official use of minority languages, including Russian, three days after the 2014 coup? How do we rationalize the eight years of warfare against ethnic Russians in the Donbass region before the Russian invasion in Feb. 2022? How do we explain the killing of over 14,200 people and the 1.5 million people who were displaced, before Russia’s invasion took place last year? How do we deal with the anti-Russian purges and arrests of supposed “fifth columnists” sweeping through Ukraine, given that 30 percent of Ukraine’s inhabitants are Russian speakers? How do we respond to the neo-Nazi groups supported by Zelenskyy’s government that harass and attack the LGBT community, the Roma population, anti-fascist protests and threaten city council members, media outlets, artists and foreign students? How can we countenance the decision by the U.S and its Western allies to block negotiations with Russia to end the war, despite Kyiv and Moscow apparently being on the verge of negotiating a peace treaty?[4]

What becomes obvious, is the bad guys may not be as demonic or the good guys as saintly as there black and white hats indicate. Apart from the necessities imposed by scapegoating, the necessary divisions of one kingdom against another as the logic of this world, the need for enemies might be exposed for what it is. War requires demonization; thus demonization and scapegoating are required for nation building. Where an enemy is lacking one must be created.

If Russia did not want to be the enemy, Russia would be forced to become the enemy. The pimps of war recruited former Soviet republics into NATO by painting Russia as a threat. Countries that joined NATO, which now include Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, reconfigured their militaries, often through tens of millions in western loans, to become compatible with NATO military hardware. This made the weapons manufacturers billions in profits.[5]  

On Friday, the Biden administration announced it would start delivering cluster bombs to Ukraine. Declared weapons of mass destruction and outlawed by 123 nations – including all of America’s allies – cluster bombs are the short-term equivalent of all out warfare, in which blind destruction of the enemy boomerangs back to kill noncombatants. The bomblets are notorious for producing duds, or the equivalent of small, unexploded grenades which can lie around for years or decades before someone – very often a child, spots the brightly colored objects and sets them off. [6] The weapons pose a severe and lingering risk to noncombatants, having killed or injured an estimated 56,000 to 86,000 civilians since World War II. The Nazi developed weapon, was heavily deployed by the United States in Vietnam, where in an eight-year period the Air Force dropped some 350 million bomblets, which accounted for some 75-90% of American casualties (early in the war) at the hands of the Viet Cong, as recovered duds provided their primary source for explosive devices.[7]

One might suspect, with Hedges, that it is the cabal at the center of the military-industrial-complex that keeps the U.S. engaged in endless conflicts. He claims it is the “pimps of war who orchestrate these military fiascos” and that they “migrate from administration to administration.”[8] While there may indeed by these Dr. Strangeloves, plotting continual war and potentially if not inevitably set to ignite the war which will end civilization, I presume there is a more sinister force at work, a force so powerful as to be the guiding logic organizing human civilization.

The grand tragedy is that this force uncovered and defeated by Christ is thought to be in the service of the good. Cluster bombs, weapons of mass destruction, and ultimately nuclear weapons, may be called for so as to defeat the enemy. It may be that only through final war and world destruction that the battle can be won. This is the lie being posed. Apart from the Gospel, the lie of scapegoating, demonization, violence, and war, are the only alternative. The necessity of violence is only countered in Christ who has defeated and exposed the lie from the Father of Lies.  

[1] Chris Hedges, “They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine,” <chrishedges@substack.com> July 2, 2023

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] The Editorial Board, “The Flawed Moral Logic of Sending Cluster Munitions to Ukraine,” The New York Times (July 10, 2023)

[7] John Ismay, “America’s Dark History of Killing Its Own Troops With Cluster Munitions,” New York Times (Dec., 4, 2019).

[8] Hedges, Ibid.