Harvard Divinity School
Exodus 32 and the Theory of Holy War: The History of a Citation Author(s): Michael Walzer Source: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 1-14 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity School Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1508946 Accessed: 28-03-2017 23:20 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
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HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW VOLUME 61 JANUARY 1968 NUMBER 1
EXODUS 32 AND THE THEORY OF HOLY WAR: THE HISTORY OF A CITATION MICHAEL WALZER HARVARD UNIVERSITY
THROUGHOUT much of the history of political thoug West, the Bible was at once a constitutional documen
kind of case book, putatively setting limits to speculation
as to conduct. Theologians and political theorists were
be judges interpreting a text or, more often, lawyers def particular interpretation before the constituted powers in
and state or before the less authoritative court of opi Bible became, like other such texts, a dissociated coll
precedents, examples and citations, each of which meant lawyers and judges said it meant. But the lawyers and judges did not agree. Indeed, the of any particular citation will suggest that arguments thoritative texts are not necessarily less controversial
than the speculations of men who admit no authorit
soever. The appeal to such texts is not a way of ending di
and settling disagreements - though of course the app authoritative interpreter of texts, possessing political or
astical power, is just that - it is rather a way of carrying
course. But it is a special and highly formal way, restr
the arguments it permits even if not in the conclusions i
The recognition of an authoritative text by a group o imposes a common style; it makes necessary certain in motions. It compels a writer to extract his meaning f
biguous, obscure or irrelevant passages and, what is most tant, from passages with which other men have already w Because of all this, it makes possible detailed comparisons writers committed to the same authority. Their differen tions are often most sharply revealed in the way they
a disputed passage: one man after another confronts
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2 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
words of Holy Writ, twists and turns them, or ignoring the views of his predecessors, and
ing (as he may not do when he sums up hi
at which he aims and the anxieties which atte The purpose of this brief essay is to examin particular citation which figures significantly
very different thinkers --St. Augustine, and John Calvin--and which provides a different views of a crucial form of politic
or, in Augustine's words, the struggle of goo men.
I
Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, Who is on the Lord's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered
themselves together unto him. And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every
man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.
In the context of the Five Books of Moses, Exodu is an uncharacteristic passage. It forms one conclusio
of double narrative of the story of the golden calf (in t
tive conclusion, Moses intercedes for the idol-worshipp and God forgives them: "And the Lord repented of the
he thought to do unto his people"). The text is disj confusing, evidence - so we have been taught by mod - that it is a compilation from different sources or
construction of an early, now partially obscured tale. T tive as a whole is different from earlier and later descr
popular rebelliousness against Moses and his new God out the books of Exodus and Numbers (and also in th
onomic recapitulation) rebels and idolators are pu
Jehovah directly. He sends fire, plague, and serpents 1 Compare, for example, Numbers II:i, i1:4-34, 16:41-49, 21:5-6.
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EXODUS 32 AND HOLY WAR 3
and only here the punishment is carri and at the direct command of an infuriated Moses -"Moses'
anger waxed hot." There is no command reported in the te from Jehovah himself. More than this, the executors of t
punishment, the children of Levi, have at this point in the Exo story no defined political or religious position. The only con tuted authorities in the Mosaic polity, such as it was at that ear time, were Moses himself, Aaron the high priest, and the judge
chosen by Moses, presumably from among the tribal elder The establishment of the Levites as priests (or as one set o priests along with the descendants of Aaron) comes later in
biblical narrative.
The entire passage relating the golden calf incident has been described by some biblical critics as a late interpolation whose possible basis in fact or in memory cannot be known, and which
may indeed have no basis at all. It is excluded by Professor Winnett from what he calls "the Mosaic tradition," a specula-
tive reconstruction of the earliest narrative which includes all
the other stories of rebellion against Moses (the ten "murmurings"). The purpose of the interpolation, Winnett and others believe, was to justify the role of the Levites in the later Judaean
state. It was designed also, perhaps, as a propaganda thrust against the northern kingdom of Israel, where golden bulls were set up and worshipped during the reign of King Jeroboam.3
These are, of course, recent notions; so long as the Bible was considered the revealed word of God, such speculation was impossible. Theorists did not then question the historical value of particular passages, but rather sought out the divine intentions and injunctions which they contained, even if obscurely. But faith in revelation was not an adequate guide in that difficult search. Inevitably, particular discoveries of God's will were determined chiefly by personal and social needs (in contrast, presumably, to the discoveries of modern critics which are other-
wise determined). Thus the notion conveyed by Exodus 32:262 Exodus 18:21.
'F. V. WINNETT, The Mosaic Tradition (Toronto, 1949), 48-50, 146f., 161; S. A. CooK, Critical Notes on Old Testament History (London, 1907), 75; T. J. MEEK, Hebrew Origins (New York, 1960), 134ff. But see the different view of
W. F. ALBRIGHT, From the Stone Age to Christianity (New York, 1957), 299ff.
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4 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
28 - that there existed around Moses a s
whose function it was to enforce divine law
multitude - had enormous appeal to certa and theologians in the medieval and earl appealed to men who sensed the immediat
of the golden calf because they lived, or so
idol-worshippers and lusty sinners. The quired of them also a vigorous struggle a Jehovah and Christ. But among other m with the same immediacy the dangers o uneasy with religious militancy, the tale and then called forth a considerable talent
not yet possible to declare the text a late always be argued that God did not intend i
or, that it was a command to be obeyed o stances unlikely ever to recur. Whatever odus 32 was frequently cited in the lon over the questions of religious persecut
later over the related questions of political From the time when Augustine first grapp
of a Christian empire until the collapse in England in I66o, the dramatic onslaug the idolatrous people was an example wh be imitated, needed to be elaborately exp II
It cost St. Augustine many years of anxious study and reflec-
tion before he brought himself to defend the persecution of heretical Christians by the Roman state.4 When he finally did so, he offered in justification of his new position an interpreta-
tion of Exodus 32. Earlier in his career, Augustine had maintained that spiritual men would struggle against heresy armed only with the Word of God. They would not, that is, make war with heretics, but would rather seek to persuade them of their folly or wickedness through the example of holy lives and the 'The development of Augustine's thought on persecution is carefully traced by HERBERT A. DEAxE, The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine (New
York, 1963), Chapter VI.
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EXODUS 32 AND HOLY WAR 5
preaching of true doctrine. Wars with t
insisted, could bring only secular victor
worldly peace - or rather to a few mo
since war was chronic in the City of Ma
bring that eternal peace which God of elect. Christians might fight in the w seeking the only peace that was possib should fight (and their wars would be was a worthy goal even for God's pilgr end. But as a community the City of from such wars; they were civil wars the heavenly city was, so to speak, a f not involved and had no possible inter
Augustine's defense of religious persecu at any rate required) the discovery of an was a war very different from the en tious and lustful men, and one which ne
peace very different from those brief was satiated or lust controlled. It was no instead from the deep-rooted and perpe
City of God and the City of Man. "T "we have two wars, that of the wicke and that of the wicked at war with t two cities existed, there would be war gious persecution, Augustine conclude one form of this perpetual struggle. " both the bad have persecuted the good
secuted the bad: the former doing harm
the latter seeking to do good by the
pline. ... 7 In his Letter
to Vincentius, one of the
5AAUGUSTINE, City of God, Book XVIII, 2
Zema, et al.). ' City of God, Book XV, 5. 7 Letter XCIII, paragraph 8 (trans. J. G. Cunni tinguish this struggle of wicked men and good me
of the earthly city (described above) which Aug Book XIX, 7). Good men may fight against wick do so as members of the earthly city and so rep
that pertains to that city. Hence they fight a lim
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6 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
defended the persecution of the Donatists book of Exodus to illustrate this double p was the oppressor of the good; Moses of t the same weapons. Faced with the threat o cessful heresy, Augustine was unwilling to the Word. Now worldly men and spiritual the weapons of the world. Yet the Bishop of culty distinguishing them.8
When good and bad do the same actions and s tions, they are to be distinguished not by wh but by the causes of each: for example, Pharaoh of God by hard bondage; Moses afflicted the correction when they were guilty of impiety 32:27]: their actions were alike; but they we motive of regard to the people's welfare - th lust of power, the other inflamed by love.
A close examination of this citation will s
difficulties of Augustine's position. Pharaoh, the Israelites out of lust, that is, in his own out of love for the people, in their own inte motives point to another difference of great
Augustine's political purposes required him
gard for the people's welfare" was thought b whom he knew so well to be one of the cru mate ruler. The mere "lust for power" mark
afflicted the people for their own good, th true sovereign, their prince, chief or jud lead them out of Egypt. In another passag
ning: it begins with a specific violation of worldly pea ends when that peace has been restored (not improved u But the war of the wicked and the good has no beginnin coterminous with the earthly city itself, which had it is not started anew by each particular aggression, nor necessarily defensive (or limited). The theories of the just war and the holy war (or crusade) represent two radically different Christian defenses of the use of violence. Both have their origins in Augustine and a long history thereafter. For a discussion of the two traditions in later history, see ROLAND BAINTON, Congregationalism: From the Just War to the Crusade in the Puritan Revolution, Andover Newton Theological School Bulletin 35:3 (April, 1943), 1-20. 8 Letter XCIII, paragraph 6. ' See ARISTOTLE's Politics, Book III, C. VII.
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EXODUS 32 AND HOLY WAR 7
text, Augustine similarly stressed the "j
He was, after all, defending the activi
and opposing the violence of self-ap
Hence, he had to argue not merely th
of the good against the wicked, but also had representatives on earth who migh
ards legitimately wield the sword. He
that sword to private Christians. And it he omitted any mention of the Levites a
tion" of the people simply to Moses: f
ently volunteered for their bloody
ordained or appointed. To have emphas have been to suggest the prerogatives Augustine seems to be maintaining th
office in worldly states and empires and
only officially, in pursuit of religious ment which, as his most recent inter fundamentally contradicts the dualism Magistrates who persecute heretics in the City of Man into a theocracy or, pretend that Moses acted at the direc a kingdom of the godly.
But suppose the godly did not hold p
Might they still wage that second war w
as perpetual? Augustine's response wa his own world-historical conception of vitiated the effectiveness of that resp
more successful in limiting the use of th
trates if he had also limited the purpo might be used to secular affairs. He w cessful, or at least less useful to later he had maintained his dualism consist
possible to defend worldly religious activ all sorts of religious activists, enthusiast dren of Levi. 10 Oeuvres Completes de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1873), Vol. 23, 279. " DEANE, Political and Social Ideas, 215ff. 12 See the discussion in DEANE, p. 199 and references there. One of the criteria for a "just war" is that it be waged at the command of a legitimate sovereign.
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8 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
The theory of eternal warfare developed b
orated in the Middle Ages into the full-sc cal doctrine of holy war.'3 Until the age
wars were fought only between Christians a
in such wars the Christians were usually lords, the problem which had worried Au But Gregorian writers of the eleventh an
citing Augustine's defense of religious perse
the doctrine encompassed also the struggl against heretics, schismatics and excomm struggle might, of course, be carried on in
gustinian restrictions. Given the political gorians, however, they could hardly leave They urged instead that holy wars might be
mand of the church alone and that sold
against the enemies of God required no se
soever. The radical papalist Manegold of rightly took the very position that Augu preclude: "those who kill excommunicant not considered murderers." That the accusation was even im-
aginable indicates that the men involved were not public officia
enforcing the laws of the state. They were presumably priva Christians who had taken the holy war, so to speak, into th own hands."5 To vindicate Manegold's extreme position it w only necessary to cite the example of the Levites, so careful ignored by Augustine. And judging from the rebuke which Aquinas later administered to the more enthusiastic defende
of the holy war doctrine, this appeal to Exodus 32 was frequentl made by medieval radicals. III
St. Thomas Aquinas did not believe that war was either chron or perpetual, or that human history since the Fall had invol
a continuous persecution of the good by the wicked and the wic
" MICHEL VILLEY, La Croisade: essai sur la formation d'une theorie juridi
(Paris, 1942), 30ff. 14 VILLEY, 36ff.
" VILLEY, 39.
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EXODUS 32 AND HOLY WAR 9
by the good. His Aristotelian concept posed him towards a view of peace as
mankind. Even between Christians and i
was no necessary state of war (and in the Summa Theologica, Aquinas made
important wars fought in the century a
the Crusades).e6 All men were ruled imprinted on their minds at birth and Adam's sin. Aquinas did, of course, acc tics might legitimately be persecuted,
this persecution in world-historical term farther than Augustine in limiting it. T
own position and Augustine's is eviden tion he offered of Exodus 32.
Christian radicals (unnamed in the S
drawn two arguments from the biblical
cal onslaught, both of which Aquinas had argued first that it was lawful for
punish a sinner--for had not Moses was virtually an invitation: "Put ever side . . ."? To this Aquinas replied t fact acted at God's command: "Thus saith the Lord God of
Israel . . ." The slaughter was "properly" His act and no
their own. The second radical argument was that clerics mi legitimately slay evil-doers. This assumed that the Levites w already priests, an assumption that Aquinas chose not to qu tion. He argued instead that the Levites were ministers of Old Law which appointed corporal penalties. They were no be compared with Christian priests.
Aquinas thus offered an interpretation of Exodus 32 in its w
as curious as Augustine's: if the Bishop of Hippo ignored t Levites, the medieval doctor ignored Moses. He not only fai to reproduce Augustine's discussion of Moses' motives; he not even mention Moses as a participant in the slaughter. his version God and the Levites were the only actors. Aqu
16AQUINAS, Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, Q. 40. 17 The following paragraph i based on an interpretation of Summa Theologi 2a, 2ae, Q. 64, Articles 3 and 4.
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10 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
was not willing to confront the attack upon th
as the act of a secular magistrate - not becau sarily have disapproved of such an act; mor sensed the danger of defending persecution tion. It was far better to ascribe Moses's indiscriminate invi-
tation to Jehovah himself, since Jehovah, Aquinas felt, was u likely to issue another such. And this in effect denied the val of the citation altogether. This particular incident in Israel history was a special case from which Christians had nothing learn. God no longer gave commands like the one he presumably gave (no direct command is mentioned in the text) to the L vites. The penalties of the Old Law had been superseded. Aquinas had no desire, of course, to question the general value of Israelite history as a guide for his contemporaries. Indee he defended his preference for mixed government with a carefu analysis of the Mosaic polity."s Like Augustine, however, h argument set in motion intellectual processes which he could not arrest. Men who shared St. Thomas's obvious dislike for the
crusading spirit, for example, might well deny the legitimacy of religious persecution as well - crusade and persecution had often
enough been described as aspects of the same war. The defen
of either by reference to Old Testament passages might then be met by a simple extension of Aquinas's own argument as to relevance. An interesting example of this extension can be found in
Hugo Grotius' De Jure Belli ac Pacis, a seventeenth-century treatise restating and enormously elaborating the Thomist do trine of the just war. Grotius repeats in rather different bu recognizable form Aquinas' two arguments against the relevan
of Exodus 32. First, he attributes the severity of Mosaic punishment to "divine counsel." And he then dismisses such counsel with
a fine show of agnostic trepidation: "no conclusive inference can
be drawn . . . its depths we cannot sound . . . we are liable to run into error." " Acts committed at the command of God
are no precedents for latter-day Christians. The conclusion is not different from Aquinas' and the method is only a more radical ver-
sion of his own. Secondly, Grotius writes what sounds like a s Summa Theologica, ia, 2ae, Q. 105, Article i. 19 De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Book II, XX, xxxix.
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EXODUS 32 AND HOLY WAR 11
modernist parody of the medieval argume the zeal of private men to punish sinners gests, was justified in the period before " established. "Primitive" law permitted suc is "very unsafe" today.20 IV
For both Aquinas and Grotius, society a natural conditions of mankind and the natural aims of all men.
God, perhaps, could act against nature (though Grotius did not believe he ever did so) but men surely could not, or at any rate only perverse men could - the terms of the argument are ambiguous enough, but the intentions of the theorists are fairly clear. They meant to require peaceful behavior from all men and to restrict war to a defensive struggle against aggression and perversity waged by recognized champions of society and never by private men or self-designated saints. For John Calvin, on the other hand, peace was the natural condition only of regenerate men. So long as mankind was divided into saints and worldlings, war was inevitable and continuous.21 Describing this struggle, urging the saints onward, Calvin and his followers brought the theory of the holy war to its logical conclusion. Their rejection of the moderation of Aquinas and his school carried them further than Augustine had ever ventured. The radicalism of their doctrine is apparent in the startlingly new view they took of Exodus 32. Flatly contradicting Aquinas, Calvin described the Levitical onslaught precisely as a precedent:
the Levites foreshadowed the Protestant elect. They were a special group of men to whom God had given special privileges and commands; but they were also symbols of the coming generations of holy warriors. The key to the character of the Levites for Calvin was not that 2 De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Book II, XX, ix and xiv.
'The imagery of warfare was frequently employed in CALVIN'S sermons to describe the activity of the saints and the response of Satan and his worldlings; for some examples, see Commentaries upon the Prophet Daniel (London, 157o),
Sig. B2; Sermons on the Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus (London,
1579), Sermon 9 on Timothy, p. ioo.
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12 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
they killed idolators but that they killed stressed a feature of the biblical text carefu Augustine and Aquinas. "You shall show zealous of God's service," he told his Geneva you kill your own brethren without sparing,
order of nature be put underfoot, to show
all..."22 The point was made even more Knox, in a brief comment upon the same draweth his elect after it, against worldly
natural affections and against civil statutes an Neither Calvin nor Knox made any mention o
distinction between private men and magis tion had been largely superseded by the con and worldlings - a supersession always imp of the holy war. Indeed, Knox's reference
constitutions suggests that he was perfectly w out-of-office against ungodly magistrates. He
saints serving only God, and that without ben
Moses presumably served God also, in a h
different capacity. Both the Levites and Mo to the new Protestant conception of the e Calvin nor Knox shared the concern of Aqu over which to emphasize. The radicalism of Calvin's sermons is not at all evident in his
Institutes. It was only with Knox and then some of the English Puritans that that radicalism was developed in anything like a consistent fashion. Writing against the Anabaptists in the famous
chapter on civil government, Calvin merely reaffirmed Augustine's view of the right of magistrates to wage war upon God's enemies - and reaffirmed also the required version of Exodus 32 "Sermons on the Fifth Book of Moses (London, 1583), p. 1203. In his Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses (Edinburgh, 1854), Vol. III, 35Iff., Calvin denies that there is anything cruel in the slaughter of brethren: "Moses only wished to condemn that absurd regard to humanity whereby judges are often blinded ..." It should be said that the long discussion of Exodus 32 in the Commentaries is not directly relevant here, since Calvin is not citing the passage in the course of an argument, but expounding it in detail. Citation depends, to a degree, on previous exposition, but often the exigencies of argument will lead a writer to use a particular passage in a way not yet canvassed by the expositors.
'JoHN KNox, Works, ed. D. Laing (Edinburgh, 1846-48), Vol. III, 3IIf.
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EXODUS 32 AND HOLY WAR 13
with its exclusive emphasis upon the ro the meek and placid Moses," Calvin as cruelty, that, after having his hands im his brethren, he continued to go throu thousand were slain?" 24 There is, of cou
text of Moses having killed anyone at the all three thousand of the idol-worshippers
sion of the Levites is determined by th intends to his own question: Moses was his office, in the "infliction of public ve
stress was not quite the same as Augustine
"the people's welfare" and he was quite suggestion of Moses' secular authority. I the affliction of the righteous at the c
alone is sovereign, and if in the Institutes only through men whom he has first raise
not hard to imagine him choosing othe
imagine other men claiming to be so chose
That claim was most dramatically put for enteenth-century English Revolution. In
expanded considerably on the ancient dis of Exodus 32 and developed a full-scale escape from Egypt as a revolution paral exhaustible source of godly precedents a sermons and pamphlets, the Levitical o
as a revolutionary purge. But it was still a
purge should be conducted by magistra "The divine policy and heavenly remedy wealth and church . . . endangered," wr ter, citing Exodus 32, "is that those tha
God do totally abolish and extirpate all the
it was disturbed." 26 But saints in and o
24The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bo
Allen).
~ See for example the remarkable sermon which after the execution of Charles I, Works, ed. W. H. Goold (Edinburgh, 1862), Vol. VIII, 127ff. ' SAMUEL FAIRCLOTH, The Troublers Troubled (London, 164x), 24f.
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14 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
claim that extraordinary authority. Alas, th calf offered no clear evidence as to its preci V
Three basic interpretations of Exodus 32 were offered by political theorists and theologians in the course of more than a thousand
years of debate. St. Augustine imagined the slaughter of the idol-worshippers as a public and benevolent act of persecution directed by Moses, a secular magistrate seen in the guise of a Roman consul. St. Thomas Aquinas saw the same event as an act of God (the Levites merely his agents), without significance for the future. Calvin saw it as an example of zealous activity by a band of saints free from earthly and natural law, instruments of the divine will, but voluntary instruments. In these in-
terpretations the three men reveal themselves and the special anxieties of their times: Augustine, struggling to justify persecution, but also to establish limits upon it consistent with the existence of a Christian empire; Aquinas, uneasy with crusading fervor, refusing altogether to recognize the war of good men against wicked men; Calvin, eager for battle and willing to set the saints loose from secular control. All three of them were
forced to be biblical lawyers, but God's law in their hands w as different as men and ages could make it. Differently as they might interpret that law, however, dismis it they could not. Only when the Bible had ceased to be an au thoritative text could men free themselves from the need to de-
bate its precise meaning and to describe their own positions as consistent with that meaning. Then the way was open for the historical critics, and open also for a kind of judgment which could never have been uttered by Augustine, Aquinas, or Calvin.
Thus John Aubrey reports the opinion of Thomas Hobbes: "I have heard him inveigh much against the Crueltie of Moyses for putting so many thousands to the Sword for Bowing to the Golden Calf." 27 27Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. O. L. Dick (Ann Arbor, 1962), 157. See also the
entry "Moise" in VOLTAIRE'S Dictionnaire philosophique.
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