A few days ago, Olaf ten Napel published an opinion piece on Cvandaag entitled “Unconditional Support for Israel? I’m Facing a Dilemma” (“Onvoorwaardelijke steun aan Israel? Ik zit met een dilemma“). Many Christians will recognize the dilemma he describes as we observe the war in Gaza. Is Israel going too far? Should they not just accept the loss of the 50 hostages and pursue peace?
At the same time, we must realize that many false narratives are being spread by Hamas, Iran, and their collaborators. Some of our Dutch media outlets sadly swallow these narratives wholesale, without fact-checking, and present them to the public through TV, radio, the internet, and newspapers.
The Conquest of Canaan vs. the Peaceful Teachings of Jesus
Olaf draws an interesting comparison between the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces and ancient Israel’s conquest of Canaan (the Promised Land) under Joshua’s leadership, thousands of years ago. Is what’s happening today similar to what God commanded his people to do during the days of Joshua?
You can feel the tension between the violent account of Canaan’s conquest and the peaceful teachings of Jesus. How we deal with that tension determines whether we remain within the faith Jesus Himself professed—or drift toward a doctrine the early church decisively rejected: the teaching of the heretic Marcion of Sinope (c. AD 85–160).
Is the God of the Old Testament Different from the God of the New?
Marcion, a highly influential thinker in the second century, offered a ‘solution’ to this tension. He argued that the God of the Old Testament was not the same as the Father of Jesus. The former was cruel, violent, and legalistic—a kind of demiurge. The latter was loving, forgiving, and spiritual. So he ended up rejecting the entire Old Testament and most of the New Testament, except for a heavily edited version of the Gospel of Luke and ten epistles from the Apostle Paul. He did not accept the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John. He also excluded other writings that would later become part of the New Testament canon.
The church labeled his view a heresy, because it undermined the unity of God’s revelation between Old and New Testament, and tore Jesus away from his own history: Israel.
Throughout the past 2,000 years of church history, this heresy has continued to resurface in various forms. A few years ago, for example, the well-known American pastor Andy Stanley urged believers to “unhitch” the New Testament from the Old, arguing that seekers shouldn’t be burdened with the complicated and bloody stories found in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Movements like this have occurred throughout the centuries. One notorious example emerged just before and during World War II, when the so-called “German Christians” sought to break all theological ties with the covenantal history of Israel and the Jewish people. Why? Because the Old Testament was uncomfortable and didn’t fit easily into their Western worldview.
We Should Welcome Critical Questions
Let me be clear: I see Olaf as a man of integrity who is asking critical questions. And such questions should be welcomed. They are even urgently needed, especially if we as Christians claim to stand for justice and against injustice.
But the underlying assumption—that there is a moral divide between the God of Joshua and the God of Jesus—comes dangerously close to Marcion’s view. Yet Jesus Himself clearly says that He did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets, but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17). He does not introduce a new God, but fully reveals who God always was.
“All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
—Matthew 11:27 (ESV)“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
—John 14:9 (ESV)
Why Did Joshua Have to Destroy Entire Peoples?
Anyone who takes seriously that God is one—yesterday, today, and forever (cf. Hebrews 13:8) must be willing to theologically wrestle with apparent contradictions, rather than brushing them aside.
One helpful resource here is the work of the late Michael Heiser. In his book The Unseen Realm (and the simplified version, Supernatural, which has been translated into many languages, many of them readable for free online), Heiser explains that the “nations” Israel was commanded to destroy—like the Canaanites—were not ordinary peoples, but descendants of the Nephilim: hybrid beings, giants, born from sexual unions between spiritual beings and human women (cf. Genesis 6:4).
This act of birthing Nephilim was, according to Heiser and many other biblical scholars, a demonic assault on God’s created order. The command to destroy these peoples was not an arbitrary genocide but a targeted “giganticide”—an act to protect humanity against a satanic conspiracy to corrupt it.
Of course, this view requires more theological depth than a surface reading of the text. But it helps us remain faithful to the whole of Scripture, instead of creating a canon within the canon where we only listen to the peaceful words of Jesus.
How Should We View Israel and the War in Gaza?
And that brings me back to the present. The tendency to dismiss the Old Testament as violent and morally outdated also affects how we view Israel today. At the same time, I also see the opposite happening: Christians building their theology almost entirely on the story of Joshua, without considering Jesus’ love for all nations. Both approaches fall short.
Whoever follows Jesus must acknowledge that the God of Israel is also the Father of Jesus. And whoever reads the whole Bible knows that God’s faithfulness to Israel is never disconnected from His love for all nations (though there were exceptions—like the giant clans with their demonic origins). God called Israel to be a light to the nations (Isa.49:6)!
Will You Let Marcion Live On?
So here is my dual appeal: yes, please keep asking critical questions. But beware of answers that revive an old heresy. Marcion is still alive—sometimes disguised in the cloak of social justice. Don’t create a canon within the canon, and thereby reject the revelation that God has given to us through the entire Old Testament and New Testament.
So let us keep following the way of Jesus: not by playing Scripture against Scripture, but by recognizing Jesus as the Word made flesh, the incarnate Torah, in whom God’s justice and love are perfectly united.
The ghost of Marcion must die and be laid to rest, once and for all!
Highly recommended if you want get up to speed quickly with Michael Heiser’s life-changing teaching:
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