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I certainly would not argue that war is endorsed by the Bible, nor would any other Christian I know. Nor capital punishment for that matter.
Would capital punishment be endorsed by its being laid down as law for the ancient israelites? That would seem to ensure that there are at least some situations where it's proper. (See also the various statements against showing mercy in those contexts.)
I'm a little less confident about war, but Israel entering Canaan seems pretty plausible as by divine command.
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Not sure how you get around this one. God specifies that the blood will be shed “by man” and then gives a justification, indicating that this is to be taken as a normative statement instead of a descriptive one.
This is immediately after Noah gets off the ark, so you can’t pull the “Mosaic covenant” stuff that gets you out of Leviticus.
I disagree that this is a normative statement.
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Extremely easily. That's Old Testament. Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament and so the old covenant no longer applies.
Please don't write so arrogantly when you are unaware of one of the most basic concepts in Christianity. It's unbecoming.
This is an overly simplistic view of the relationship of the old and new covenants. (Accordingly, maybe be a little slower to say those final two sentences of yours, especially since @Quantumfreakonomics demonstrated knowledge of what you talk about by his reference to the Mosaic covenant.)
The following is probably not optimally ordered, but it should present things in a little more detail and clarity (I'd need to do significantly more reading to clarify my thoughts enough to do it better). But first we'll look at the law as laid down at the time of Moses. This can, generally speaking, be classified into three sorts of laws:
Christ's fulfilling of the law refers to his perfectly keeping it, in its entirety. (Rather than, as James 2:10, describes, breaking it in one point, and becoming guilty of the whole.) He alone has properly measured up to its standard, and so earned, on our behalf, the promised rewards associated with that.
Note that this does not abolish any of the three classes of laws. Moral laws still remain, as we still ought to do good things, and not to do bad things. It's not obvious to me that ceremonial laws would be affected by this—plausibly, there's no reason to stop celebrating the passover, just because someone's fully followed the law. And civil laws still must obviously exist, it still makes sense to punish criminals.
Rather, what Christ's fulfillment of the law accomplishes is meriting for us salvation and the rewards of the law—in the case of the promises to Adam, eternal life. In its application to us, that means that we are no longer dependent upon our fully upholding and fulfilling the law to reap these benefits, we are generously given those by means of our being united to Christ.
What about the three classes of laws, then? Why are they not all here?
First, moral laws stick around. They continue to apply in three sense to Christians. First, they serve to remind us of our dependence upon and estate before God by our failure to keep them. (Consider especially the bar Jesus sets in his articulation of them in the sermon on the mount—one breaks the commandment against adultery not merely by adultery outright, but also by lustful desires, for example.) Second, it can deter evil. Third, it acts as a guide to life. None of these change. (If you want textual proof, 1 Corinthians 9:9 cites a law as authoritative.)
Second, ceremonial laws are changed, because the system of laws that are proper to a people who are largely ethnically a single nation, and which exist in anticipation of and invoke a future savior are no longer so fitting when now the people of God are ethnically diverse, and rather look to the past (and future) coming of God in the flesh, and a corresponding fuller revelation. Read Hebrews in its description of how the old covenant relates to the new, and Paul, in his insistent commands against requiring gentiles to follow the Jewish laws. We still have ceremonial laws, though, of a sort—the command to celebrate the Lord's Supper is one.
Third, civil laws are changed. This is because the polity of Old Testament Israel has collapsed. These were never incumbent upon those not living as a part of the people of Israel, anyway. Instead, we have the various legal codes enacted by governments around the world (many of which are better for that people, in the context and society in which they live, than if they were to replace that law with the Israelite one), which are, as stated in Romans 13, of divine ordination and to be obeyed.
(This isn't a full discussion of everything that could be said—I haven't addressed things through the lenses of covenants properly.)
Applying this to the question at hand. What are we to make of the "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his image"? Well, the previous discussion was properly speaking, talking about laws for Israel. This is not one of those, being given rather at the time of Noah. It is also a bit ambiguous (at least in translation, I haven't looked at scholarship on this) whether this is a prophecy or general principle, or a command. Let us assume that it is the latter—that is conceded by your treating it as an old testament law.
Well, first, as this is something that is being given immediately after the flood, to Noah, this seems to have in its scope the entire people upon all the earth. This is different from, say, the commandment of circumcision, which applied only to the sons of Abraham, and to all others who wished to join the church of God as it existed then upon the earth. Rather, this is describing something universal. Accordingly, this could not be a ceremonial law—it is not laying down a churchly rite, that is only contingently the case and for the people of the church. It is explicitly grounded in something universal and enduring to mankind (the image of God), and at a time when it would be delivered to the whole of mankind then existing (Noah and family).
"By man shall his blood be shed" is notably in the passive. This does not seem to give any specific entity (or every individual?) the right to avenge murderers. But it does seem to establish that that person ought to be put to death. A reasonable reading of this passage—though certainly not the only one—is that it is incumbent upon the kingdoms of this world to punish murderers with death (but given the cities of refuge, this is clearly not intended to be limitless or without qualification). This reading seems to be supported by later passages. Genesis 4 had described blood crying out. Deuteronomy 21 requires unresolved murders to have an animal slaughtered in atonement. Romans 13 describes the ruler as an avenger, and refers to bearing the sword (not merely prison or the lash). These all at least plausibly indicate that some crimes, especially murders, demand punishment, and that death is a suitable penalty for that. Because of the universality of the Genesis 9 passage, and because there is no identifiable principle why that should cease due to Christ's coming, at least in my judgment—it is not in respect of the chosen people of God, but is universal, and flows from unchanging principles—we should think that it remains in place.
You may not agree with all of this—I'm not certain of everything I said myself, especially regarding Genesis 9:6—but this does require more serious engagement than a simple dismissal of everything prior to the coming of Christ as irrelevant.
I didn't say it was irrelevant! I just said we could pick and choose as we pleased based on what's convenient at the time. :)
But fair, I'll get schooled. Yeah I mean a lot of it depends on patristic interpretations and such.
Why would it depend on patristic interpretations?
Sorry wrong comment.
And because I'm Orthodox. ;)
It didn't look like it was the wrong comment to me?
Well, that's seems a little silly. It shouldn't depend on patristic interpretations. Setting aside that they disagree with each other on things all the time (And then what. Pick your favorites?), that would imply that the status of whether they were laws was up in the air until some subsequent fathers wrote down their opinions and everyone decided to accept them as fathers. No, rather, whether the laws retain their force post-Christ objectively follows from the nature of the laws, and patristic interpretations could maybe provide some guidance as to what was already the case. But I'm perfectly willing to affirm that we have developed a more thorough grasp of things than was understood by many of the fathers.
At least, that is the take of this Protestant.
(And, seriously, dealing with laws, covenants, etc. is one field that Protestants put significantly more work into developing than did any of their predecessors. There is far more than I know. Maybe I'll get to reading some more Witsius or (J. H.) Heidegger or something some day.)
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But what /u/Quantumfreakonomics is saying is that it is something that God says prior to the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants. It's easy to write off a rule from Leviticus or Exodus, because, as you say, Jesus came to fulfill the law from a Christian perspective. But it is much harder to take a normative statement God said to Noah, the ancestor of all of modern mankind and prior to any Mosaic covenant, and say that it doesn't and shouldn't matter to modern Christians. Do you also think that Christians shouldn't be fruitful and multiply, or enjoy the beasts of the field and plants as food?
Not in all situations, no. And in fact many Christian saints have been vegan, and many Christian sects over the years have eschewed childbearing and focused on individual salvation.
Modern atheists have an unfortunate tendency to equate all of Christianity with the beliefs of the most vocal, modern evangelical Protestants. I should know, I used to do the same thing.
I mean, I wasn't thinking of modern Protestantism per se at all, Evangelical or otherwise. I've read through documents like the Westminster Larger Catechism (albeit years ago now), and my general impression was that the Christian attitude towards the Old Testament was not that none of it mattered to modern Christians. There was a fairly extensive role for the Old Testament in those old confessions and catechisms beyond it being the old covenant that doesn't apply anymore. There was lots of emphasis on the importance of Adam and the Patriarchs of Genesis, and discussion of parts of the Old Testament (like the 10 Commandments) being moral instruction that was still relevant to modern Christians.
A quick search reveals that you're Eastern Orthodox, and I don't discount that they probably have their own traditions surrounding the Bible and Apostolic Authority that differ from any Protestant or Western Christian branch, but even so I would find it unusual if an Eastern Orthodox scholar said that what God said to Noah doesn't apply because of Jesus' covenant. At the very least it seems to me that rainbows still happen, and God still hasn't flooded the Earth again, so it can't be the case that the Noahide covenant has been completely superseded.
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Then the Christians you know are very unusual, even just considering the set of Christians alive today, let alone considering the set of Christians across history.
That's not true. The official stance of the Catholic Church (the largest Christian denomination) is that the death penalty and war are both bad, and must only be engaged in when there's no other choice. This is very mainstream Christian belief, not some fringe position.
The Catholic Church's opposition to the death penalty is well known, but their doctrine explicitly allows for the possibility of just warfare.
If your claim is just that they teach that war is bad then I fully agree. I read eetan's "endorsed by the Bible" to mean permissible under some circumstances, not preferable or desirable.
I guess our disagreement hinges upon that last point, because I read "endorsed by the Bible" to mean desirable. I would phrase "permissible under some circumstances" as "condoned by the Bible".
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