One of the things I find most interesting about the upcoming elections are the choices facing conservative Christians in the Presidential elections. Conservative Christians generally hold that the religious beliefs of prospective political candidates are relevant to their fitness as American leaders. But this puts them in a bit of a pickle in the upcoming election. While the major Democratic candidates are quite vocal about how their Christianity has affected their political commitments, the major Republican candidates are rather less . McCain has always had a distrustful relationship with the Religious Right. Giuliani disagrees with conservative Christians on most social issues and seldom discusses his religious views. And Romney, who has positioned himself as the most conservative candidate is a Mormon--which many, if not most, conservative Christians would place him outside of Christianity altogether.
Some liberals write fairly scornfully of evangelical Christians. I think some evangelical ideas deserve this. And evangelicals have certainly been at least as scornful and vituperative in writing against liberal ideas. But I am not sure that the liberals are very good at understanding or predicting how Christians will react politically. It is occasionally asserted that Republicans engage in dog-whistle politics--where as long as they say the right buzz-words they will get the Christian vote. I don't know if this is true. After all, this would be effective only as a signalling device--a way to show Christian voters that you are one of them. The reason this worked so well with Bush is that he really did convince evangelical Christians that he was one of them--a born-again Christian with the same religious and spiritual concerns they had. Will this work as well for a Republican candidate that cannot identify religiously with the evangelical community? I don't know, but I suspect not. If the Republicans fail to mobilize the evangelical vote again in this election, will the Bush presidency be anomalous? And if so, can the Democratic party peel off some of these voters by presenting strongly religious candidates?
I am doubtful. While I do think that the failure of the Bush presidency will deservedly tarnish and hamper most efforts to mobilize evangelical Christians, I am unconvinced that these voters will switch parties. It is not enough to just be religious. After all, even the Muslims are religious. What is important is that you be of the proper religion. And frankly, liberal politics has overwhelmingly been identified with liberal Christianity amongst the evangelical community. And evangelical Christians has defined itself in opposition to liberal Christianity.
Furthermore, I think many underestimate how well evangelical Christianity meshes with the current policies of the Bush administration. For instance, why are evangelical Christians so fervently in support of the war in Iraq? Shouldn't they, as Christians, be against war a la Jesus's many sayings on humility and forgiveness? Is is just group identification? Or is it that they've believed the (formerly) cunning lies of the Bush administration? An unjustified assumption is that these Christians wouldn't support the war on the basis of their religious beliefs. After all, evangelical Christians are Christian. That is, they believe that God is on their (the U.S.) side. And with God on their side, how can they lose? Only by a lack of faith--i.e. by giving up because the war looks hopeless. And not only Christian, but evangelical. Their ultimate goal is not peace in the Middle East, but a Christian awakening. Of course they will support the overthrow of governments they view as anti-Christian (i.e. not run by Christians). This would be a policy goal vitally important to them in a way that is almost invisible to secular people.
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Friday, July 13, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Christians: Are They the Moral Majority?
As I'm sure most people are aware, Jerry Falwell died last week. I only ever knew him as a famous Christian "spokesman" who said some things that people found embarrassing. That, and as the popularizer of the term "Moral Majority." Phil Nugent points out that this term seems oddly inconsistent with the Southern Baptist culture of Falwell, and with slight differences related to their more individualistic and anti-authoritarian attitude also inconsistent with the normal Evangelical culture of the Northwest. He says:
But yet, the Christian right is politically mobilized, and politically mobilized as Christians. They constitute one of the most vocal blocs of one of our major parties. What is the political justification provided for trying to make religious ideas binding on people? Here it became necessary to bring in the idea that actually Christianity constitutes in fact a political as well as religious majority. In other words, it is a re-making of religious ideas over into political and moral ideas. But this seems to provoke a serious tension in how we are meant to treat religion.
Take abortion. Why do Christians try so hard to make it illegal? After all, they know that non-Christians are evil and do evil things. So why are they attempting to prevent them from doing this one? Or, in the popular pro-choice refrain, if they don't want abortion, don't have one. Why should they be worried about the morality of those outside their religious communities? In other words, why is this a legal/political rather than a religious issue for religious people?
It seems to me that the simplest answer is that American Christians have largely adopted forms of reasoning more characteristic of Enlightenment liberalism than strictly fundamentalist ideas warrant. Liberalism characteristically tries to universalize their moral principles and so must treat all humans as essentially equal and indistinguishable. But if we are to treat all humans equally, it seems that we (roughly) must treat all religious beliefs as also being equal as the major religions on offer are not universalizable across all people (Liberal Christianity, which was an attempt to sketch out a picture of this universalized religion, is what led to the rise of fundamentalism).
So to argue against abortion, religious people must step outside their religion and use liberal reasoning against it. And I think the rhetoric is consistent with this claim. After all, according to those against abortion a morally significant human life begins at conception and so a properly universal liberal moral reasoning would include their rights as well. Hence the popularity of the "right to life" as an argument against abortion.
But the concept of a right to life is a creation of Enlightenment liberalism. It is not really to be found in the Bible. For instance, the image of the "vengeful God" of the Old Testament is a result of the passages where God commands the Israelite leaders to kill another nation--sometimes absolutely--even those we would normally consider innocent, such as the woman (non-combatants), children, and even their livestock. In fact, in a startling turn-about, King Saul loses the blessing of God because he decides to spare some of the innocent Amalekites. And as for the New Testament--what little political thought is contained there says nothing about protecting the rights of innocents. It is striking in light of the contemporary political scene that as far as we can tell neither Jesus, nor his immediate disciples felt it was necessary to try to effect social change through political means. In fact, while Jesus had much to say about the society he lived in, his invective was primarily reserved for the religious leadership of his own religion--a very different attitude from that of contemporary Christians.
These are difficult questions. Many early Christians, and some of the more libertarian type Christians I knew growing up had the view that Christians should not be involved in government or politics at all--but rather should keep themselves separate from the dirty doings of the world. Other seem to think that religion and politics are both good and necessary things, but should be kept as separate as possible. Others, and this is more characteristic of the religious right, try to combine the two. I am not sure that they are very successful.
Having grown up in the rural Southern Baptist culture that Falwell came to represent, and having grown up in it during the last few years before it became fully owned and operated by the Republican Party, I've always believed that there was no way anyone who was really of that culture could have come up with the term "Moral Majority." When I was a child, our preachers and Sunday school teachers (and our teachers plain and simple, because in what I suppose was a violation of law, the teachers in my third and fourth grade classes used to lead us in prayer and Biblical-related discussions, for all the good that it did in my case) didn't tell us we were a part of any majority. Quite the opposite; it was always made clear that only a tiny fraction of the people on Earth at any given time would finally prove good enough to make it to Heaven and see God's smiling-Santa face.I think this illustrates a couple of the oddities of the religious right's political involvement. Christianity has a long history of seeing itself as the "hidden city," as a separate society within society. This derives from the division between the world of spirit and flesh and goes back all the way to Jesus telling the Pharisees to give to Caesar what is his and to God what is God's. Since this is partially understood in terms of moral and spiritual purity, there is always this sense that the world of flesh--of which the state is a, perhaps the most, powerful manifestation is trying to distract and pull us away from true Christianity. This attitude seems to me to encourage a permanent notion of Christianity as the minority view. It doesn't matter what people say, or even what they do. What is fundamentally of importance is your relationship to God. Since this limits you to solely trusting the few people you know personally, or those who know and engage in the essentially religious (and hence exclusionary) markers of this relationship, there is always a limit on the size of the group that will qualify.
But yet, the Christian right is politically mobilized, and politically mobilized as Christians. They constitute one of the most vocal blocs of one of our major parties. What is the political justification provided for trying to make religious ideas binding on people? Here it became necessary to bring in the idea that actually Christianity constitutes in fact a political as well as religious majority. In other words, it is a re-making of religious ideas over into political and moral ideas. But this seems to provoke a serious tension in how we are meant to treat religion.
Take abortion. Why do Christians try so hard to make it illegal? After all, they know that non-Christians are evil and do evil things. So why are they attempting to prevent them from doing this one? Or, in the popular pro-choice refrain, if they don't want abortion, don't have one. Why should they be worried about the morality of those outside their religious communities? In other words, why is this a legal/political rather than a religious issue for religious people?
It seems to me that the simplest answer is that American Christians have largely adopted forms of reasoning more characteristic of Enlightenment liberalism than strictly fundamentalist ideas warrant. Liberalism characteristically tries to universalize their moral principles and so must treat all humans as essentially equal and indistinguishable. But if we are to treat all humans equally, it seems that we (roughly) must treat all religious beliefs as also being equal as the major religions on offer are not universalizable across all people (Liberal Christianity, which was an attempt to sketch out a picture of this universalized religion, is what led to the rise of fundamentalism).
So to argue against abortion, religious people must step outside their religion and use liberal reasoning against it. And I think the rhetoric is consistent with this claim. After all, according to those against abortion a morally significant human life begins at conception and so a properly universal liberal moral reasoning would include their rights as well. Hence the popularity of the "right to life" as an argument against abortion.
But the concept of a right to life is a creation of Enlightenment liberalism. It is not really to be found in the Bible. For instance, the image of the "vengeful God" of the Old Testament is a result of the passages where God commands the Israelite leaders to kill another nation--sometimes absolutely--even those we would normally consider innocent, such as the woman (non-combatants), children, and even their livestock. In fact, in a startling turn-about, King Saul loses the blessing of God because he decides to spare some of the innocent Amalekites. And as for the New Testament--what little political thought is contained there says nothing about protecting the rights of innocents. It is striking in light of the contemporary political scene that as far as we can tell neither Jesus, nor his immediate disciples felt it was necessary to try to effect social change through political means. In fact, while Jesus had much to say about the society he lived in, his invective was primarily reserved for the religious leadership of his own religion--a very different attitude from that of contemporary Christians.
These are difficult questions. Many early Christians, and some of the more libertarian type Christians I knew growing up had the view that Christians should not be involved in government or politics at all--but rather should keep themselves separate from the dirty doings of the world. Other seem to think that religion and politics are both good and necessary things, but should be kept as separate as possible. Others, and this is more characteristic of the religious right, try to combine the two. I am not sure that they are very successful.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Biblical Inerrancy Pt. 3 (sorta)
I've had a more difficult time on this posting than the first two, partly because motivations are more complex than arguments, and partly because positive suggestions require more ingenuity than criticizing the ideas of others. So instead of posting either of the two overly long bad blogs I've halfway-written I will wait to conclude this topic until I can lay out my thoughts more coherently.
Instead I'll just make a couple quick comments. First, as I noted earlier, a major motivation for accepting this doctrine is to preserve doctrinal orthodoxy. But why should the Christian care? It makes sense to worry about doctrinal orthodoxy when you can do something about it. But heresy is just so much more boring than it used to be. In fact, my guess is that most people who begin to believe heretical doctrine leave the evangelical church before they can even be properly excommunicated anyway. After all, why stick around? More than likely there is another church down the block that you will find perfectly congenial to your new "heretical" beliefs. And anyway, acceptance of a heretical doctrine will generally be accompanied by a rejection of the Inerrancy doctrine--again making it seem there is little reason for the Christian to emphasize this issue.
After all, when there is only one or maybe two churches you can attend, or if you live in a society where atheism is not even a live option for even the secular then there are clear negatives to the pronouncements of heresy from the pulpit. But that is not the America that most people live in.
Finally, I find it somewhat ironic that the Inerrancy doctrine is primarily used by its adherents to defend not the theological, but moral and scientific claims of the Bible. After all, the Inerrancy doctrine is rarely useful in resolving long-standing theological disputes such as the Calvinism/Arminianism debate, or eschatological debates. Rather, it is used to argue that evolution is wrong, or that homosexuality is evil, or that women should submit to their husbands. It is within the Evangelical's rights to believe these doctrines, but they do seem removed from the core notions of personal salvation and relationship with God through being born again which forms the core of Evangelical practice and belief. So why is it such a big deal?
Instead I'll just make a couple quick comments. First, as I noted earlier, a major motivation for accepting this doctrine is to preserve doctrinal orthodoxy. But why should the Christian care? It makes sense to worry about doctrinal orthodoxy when you can do something about it. But heresy is just so much more boring than it used to be. In fact, my guess is that most people who begin to believe heretical doctrine leave the evangelical church before they can even be properly excommunicated anyway. After all, why stick around? More than likely there is another church down the block that you will find perfectly congenial to your new "heretical" beliefs. And anyway, acceptance of a heretical doctrine will generally be accompanied by a rejection of the Inerrancy doctrine--again making it seem there is little reason for the Christian to emphasize this issue.
After all, when there is only one or maybe two churches you can attend, or if you live in a society where atheism is not even a live option for even the secular then there are clear negatives to the pronouncements of heresy from the pulpit. But that is not the America that most people live in.
Finally, I find it somewhat ironic that the Inerrancy doctrine is primarily used by its adherents to defend not the theological, but moral and scientific claims of the Bible. After all, the Inerrancy doctrine is rarely useful in resolving long-standing theological disputes such as the Calvinism/Arminianism debate, or eschatological debates. Rather, it is used to argue that evolution is wrong, or that homosexuality is evil, or that women should submit to their husbands. It is within the Evangelical's rights to believe these doctrines, but they do seem removed from the core notions of personal salvation and relationship with God through being born again which forms the core of Evangelical practice and belief. So why is it such a big deal?
Friday, April 27, 2007
Biblical Inerrancy Pt. 2
Yesterday I laid out some of the reasons Christians have accepted the doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy. As I see it, there are two primary reasons motivating this belief:
1) The belief that a perfect God would only "inspire" a perfect book--where perfection is understood to include complete factual accuracy as well as correctness of doctrine.
2) The need for a hermeneutical methodology austere enough to provide authoritative interpretations of the Bible.
These are two different types of motivations. The first presents an argument for the truth of the Inerrancy doctrine, while the second tells us why something like the Inerrancy doctrine is necessary for Christian belief. Today I want to focus on the first reason and see if this is in fact a successful argument.
Initially, this argument might be read like this:
1) God is a perfect being.
2) Anything created by a perfect being is also perfect.
3) The Bible was created by God.
--------------------------------
4) Therefore, the Bible is perfect.
5) Anything that is perfect must be without flaw.
6) Errors of any kind (factual, theological, moral, etc.) would constitute a flaw.
---------------------------------
7) Therefore, the Bible is without error.
or
8) The Bible is inerrant.
Obviously, atheists will be unpersuaded by this argument as they do not accept (1). However, as I said initially, my goal is to show why the Inerrantist view is not a likely view even on explicitly Christian grounds. So I take it that we must accept (1) as one of our axioms (yes, I'm aware that some Christians, including even some that are closely tied in with the evangelical community [such as Clark Pinnock], question the traditional understanding of (1), but I take them to be a fairly insignificant minority). However, after that we immediately run into problems. Normal Christian doctrine would have it that everything has been created by God. Thus, God has created many things, such as humans or wormy apples, that are not perfect. So (2) seems to be obviously false. But that doesn't seem fair. Surely something else is meant when we say that God "inspired" the Bible than just ordinary creation. After all, in some senses God has created all books, but yet the Bible is still supposed to be uniquely inspired by God. So how can we fix up (2) to better catch what is meant by the doctrine of Inerrancy?
After she had finished creating the universe back in Genesis 1, God pronounced everything to be good--perhaps a way of saying that it was blameless and perfect. And then, so the story goes, humans messed things up by disobeying God's commands. So perhaps (2) should be replaced with:
(2)* Anything solely created and/or influenced by a perfect being is perfect.
While that would seem more correct, we now run into problems with (3). In order to derive (4) using (2)* we would have to also change (3) to:
(3)* The Bible was solely created and/or influenced by God.
But that seems incorrect. After all, the general doctrine of Biblical Inspiration acknowledges that the Bible was in fact written by humans--it just claims that these humans were divinely influenced when they were writing. But, for instance, it would seem very unlikely to claim that there is nothing at all of Paul in his epistles, especially as they are written in the first person, and given the personal tone at the ending of most of the epistles.
So this argument fails to prove that based solely on the perfection of God the Bible must be perfect. Because the writing of the Bible is uncontroversially mixed with the labor of humans, there is no requirement that the end product, even of a divinely inspired process, be perfect in the way claimed by the Inerrancy Doctrine.
But wait a minute. Can't the Inerrantist still claim that while it is perhaps not necessary that the Bible be perfect, as a matter of fact, God did inspire the Biblical writers to pen a perfect text? Well, that is a possibility. However, the perfection of God does not provide us with a reason to think that he did so. We would need some other reason to think this true, and I am not aware of any respectable arguments beyond the one I have presented.
But okay. Assume that God did in fact create a perfect text. Does that prove that the Bible is inerrant? Well, no, not really. For that conclusion we still need two more premises, and while (5) seems fairly unproblematic, (6) is probably false. Think of it this way. Based on 1-3 anything solely created by God would be perfect. But humans were created solely by God. Does that mean they are/were perfect? Well, yes, in a way it does. However, the creation of some perfectly good things, such as free will, are thought to only be possible by allowing the possibility of imperfection to arise. Thus, it is not possible to create a perfect human being without allowing her to choose to do evil as well as good. Thus, because God in creating human beings desired them to be able to freely choose to obey/worship him allowed them the possibility to not do so. But that doesn't mean that his creation was not a perfect creation.
In the same way, when we evaluate the claim that the Bible is perfect we must evaluate it in terms of the purpose for which it was created. It is not, for instance, a perfect cookbook. Nor is it a perfect mathematics text. But that doesn't take away from any alleged perfection it might hold. It was not written to be a cookbook, thus it takes nothing away from it to say that it doesn't have great recipes.
In the same way, we can say that the Bible is not primarily written as a scientific, or historical, or even as an ethical treatise. Rather, its primary purpose is as a text that brings us closer to God. In that light we cannot make the assumption that either historica, scientific, or even moral correctness are either necessary or even helpful in bringing us closer to God. Suppose as a thought experiment that the theory of evolution is in fact the correct account of the rise of biological diversity. It seems to me entirely possible that a religious text that used this theory as its theory of creation would be unacceptable to most people living two thousand years ago. So if the Bible had included the theory of evolution in Genesis it would have been factually correct, but religiously imperfect. And since it is the the religious goals of the Bible that are its primary goals, that means that in order for it to be a perfect text it would have to include some factual errors (and there are similar arguments about moral truths).
To sum up, the primary motivation for believing the Bible is a perfect text is based on an unsound argument. Furthermore, even if the Bible is a perfect text, that is not enough to show that it is without factual error. God, as a perfect being relating to a world that is imperfect is forced to lower herself to the human level in order to communicate with us in meaningful ways. And really, this should come as no surprise to the Christian. Among the major world religions Christianity is unique in its doctrine of the Incarnation--that God so loved the world that he was willing to lower himself enough to actually become a human being, with all of the frailties incumbent on that state. Why should it be any surprise that he is also willing to use any imperfect human means necessary to communicate his desires and plans for his human followers?
1) The belief that a perfect God would only "inspire" a perfect book--where perfection is understood to include complete factual accuracy as well as correctness of doctrine.
2) The need for a hermeneutical methodology austere enough to provide authoritative interpretations of the Bible.
These are two different types of motivations. The first presents an argument for the truth of the Inerrancy doctrine, while the second tells us why something like the Inerrancy doctrine is necessary for Christian belief. Today I want to focus on the first reason and see if this is in fact a successful argument.
Initially, this argument might be read like this:
1) God is a perfect being.
2) Anything created by a perfect being is also perfect.
3) The Bible was created by God.
--------------------------------
4) Therefore, the Bible is perfect.
5) Anything that is perfect must be without flaw.
6) Errors of any kind (factual, theological, moral, etc.) would constitute a flaw.
---------------------------------
7) Therefore, the Bible is without error.
or
8) The Bible is inerrant.
Obviously, atheists will be unpersuaded by this argument as they do not accept (1). However, as I said initially, my goal is to show why the Inerrantist view is not a likely view even on explicitly Christian grounds. So I take it that we must accept (1) as one of our axioms (yes, I'm aware that some Christians, including even some that are closely tied in with the evangelical community [such as Clark Pinnock], question the traditional understanding of (1), but I take them to be a fairly insignificant minority). However, after that we immediately run into problems. Normal Christian doctrine would have it that everything has been created by God. Thus, God has created many things, such as humans or wormy apples, that are not perfect. So (2) seems to be obviously false. But that doesn't seem fair. Surely something else is meant when we say that God "inspired" the Bible than just ordinary creation. After all, in some senses God has created all books, but yet the Bible is still supposed to be uniquely inspired by God. So how can we fix up (2) to better catch what is meant by the doctrine of Inerrancy?
After she had finished creating the universe back in Genesis 1, God pronounced everything to be good--perhaps a way of saying that it was blameless and perfect. And then, so the story goes, humans messed things up by disobeying God's commands. So perhaps (2) should be replaced with:
(2)* Anything solely created and/or influenced by a perfect being is perfect.
While that would seem more correct, we now run into problems with (3). In order to derive (4) using (2)* we would have to also change (3) to:
(3)* The Bible was solely created and/or influenced by God.
But that seems incorrect. After all, the general doctrine of Biblical Inspiration acknowledges that the Bible was in fact written by humans--it just claims that these humans were divinely influenced when they were writing. But, for instance, it would seem very unlikely to claim that there is nothing at all of Paul in his epistles, especially as they are written in the first person, and given the personal tone at the ending of most of the epistles.
So this argument fails to prove that based solely on the perfection of God the Bible must be perfect. Because the writing of the Bible is uncontroversially mixed with the labor of humans, there is no requirement that the end product, even of a divinely inspired process, be perfect in the way claimed by the Inerrancy Doctrine.
But wait a minute. Can't the Inerrantist still claim that while it is perhaps not necessary that the Bible be perfect, as a matter of fact, God did inspire the Biblical writers to pen a perfect text? Well, that is a possibility. However, the perfection of God does not provide us with a reason to think that he did so. We would need some other reason to think this true, and I am not aware of any respectable arguments beyond the one I have presented.
But okay. Assume that God did in fact create a perfect text. Does that prove that the Bible is inerrant? Well, no, not really. For that conclusion we still need two more premises, and while (5) seems fairly unproblematic, (6) is probably false. Think of it this way. Based on 1-3 anything solely created by God would be perfect. But humans were created solely by God. Does that mean they are/were perfect? Well, yes, in a way it does. However, the creation of some perfectly good things, such as free will, are thought to only be possible by allowing the possibility of imperfection to arise. Thus, it is not possible to create a perfect human being without allowing her to choose to do evil as well as good. Thus, because God in creating human beings desired them to be able to freely choose to obey/worship him allowed them the possibility to not do so. But that doesn't mean that his creation was not a perfect creation.
In the same way, when we evaluate the claim that the Bible is perfect we must evaluate it in terms of the purpose for which it was created. It is not, for instance, a perfect cookbook. Nor is it a perfect mathematics text. But that doesn't take away from any alleged perfection it might hold. It was not written to be a cookbook, thus it takes nothing away from it to say that it doesn't have great recipes.
In the same way, we can say that the Bible is not primarily written as a scientific, or historical, or even as an ethical treatise. Rather, its primary purpose is as a text that brings us closer to God. In that light we cannot make the assumption that either historica, scientific, or even moral correctness are either necessary or even helpful in bringing us closer to God. Suppose as a thought experiment that the theory of evolution is in fact the correct account of the rise of biological diversity. It seems to me entirely possible that a religious text that used this theory as its theory of creation would be unacceptable to most people living two thousand years ago. So if the Bible had included the theory of evolution in Genesis it would have been factually correct, but religiously imperfect. And since it is the the religious goals of the Bible that are its primary goals, that means that in order for it to be a perfect text it would have to include some factual errors (and there are similar arguments about moral truths).
To sum up, the primary motivation for believing the Bible is a perfect text is based on an unsound argument. Furthermore, even if the Bible is a perfect text, that is not enough to show that it is without factual error. God, as a perfect being relating to a world that is imperfect is forced to lower herself to the human level in order to communicate with us in meaningful ways. And really, this should come as no surprise to the Christian. Among the major world religions Christianity is unique in its doctrine of the Incarnation--that God so loved the world that he was willing to lower himself enough to actually become a human being, with all of the frailties incumbent on that state. Why should it be any surprise that he is also willing to use any imperfect human means necessary to communicate his desires and plans for his human followers?
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Biblical Inerrancy Pt. 1
Many people assume that it is not possible, or at least kind of pointless, to discuss theological or "spiritual" issues with someone from a different religious tradition than your own. I think the assumption is that most people's religious beliefs are based on grounds not amenable to rational discussion and so unless you share the assumptions of the believer it is impossible to change her mind.
I find this argument largely unpersuasive. Most religious people I know do not consider themselves to be irrational in their religious beliefs. They often have a different conception of rationality, but there is still an underlying logic to their beliefs. Accepting the underlying compatibility of their beliefs with rationality makes it necessary for them to respond to arguments identifying inconsistencies in their beliefs. Thus, even if you do not accept a particular set of religious presuppositions it is still possible to criticize it for logical consistency. Besides, most theological beliefs are far removed from the sort of core assumptions that are the ones that have to accepted on the basis of faith.
In that spirit I want to ask some questions and make some points about the Christian doctrine of Inerrancy over the next few days. Now for many this might seem to be going after low hanging fruit, but as this doctrine is very common in both the Christian and Muslim religions I think it is important to address. While I am a secular atheist myself, I think that some of our religious traditions are important and influential ways of understanding the world, and as such deserving of respect. However, I also think that some of these traditions, or at least aspects of these traditions, have had and continue to have pernicious effects on modern society. I think the doctrine of Inerrancy is one such (at least in Christianity--I'm not as familiar with how it has influenced Muslim countries--although the fact that it usually accompanies fundamentalism makes me suspect it has had a negative effect there as well), and so will make some criticisms of this doctrine and propose some alternative ways of understanding the the main Christian concerns driving this issue.
I am sometimes surprised that non-Christians don't talk about this issue more than they do. After all, around 30% of all U.S. citizens believe "the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word." People will often refer to this belief, usually scornfully if they do not hold it, or with great fervor if they do, but rarely address the reasons why someone might accept it.
First, I want to narrow the issue. I am not interested at this point in addressing the general doctrine of the divine inspiration of the Bible. I take that as a core Christian belief that rejecting would largely result in rejecting Christianity generally. Rather, Inerrancy refers to a particular understanding of what it means to say that the Bible is divinely inspired. This understanding interpretes the doctrines of inspiration to involve two distinctive claims:
1) The Bible is completely without error, including on matters of fact about history, science, psychology, ethics, or most pertinently, theology and spirituality.
2) There is a determinate meaning to all Biblical texts that is accessible by an application of a "literal" reading of the text.*
Why would Christians believe these? Well, the first is easy to understand. God is supposed to be a perfect being. The Bible is a divinely inspired (or "god-breathed" from 1 Timothy 3:16) collection of books. Hence, the Bible should also be perfect. Something like, if God wrote a novel, it would be a perfect novel, if he wrote a scientific treatise, it would be completely without error, because anything with error is by definition able to be improved and so not completely perfect. Ostensibly if God is perfect then he should have the ability to inspire a perfect document, and since he loves all humans would be motivated to do so, and that is why we have the Bible. The acceptance of this argument is why believers in Inerrancy often understand attacks on the accuracy of the Bible as implicitly being attacks on the power or authority of God himself.
It is more difficult to understand the reasoning behind the second thesis. However, I think its roots lie in the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone). When the Protestant Reformers rejected the authority of either the Pope or the church fathers to make authoritative interpretations of Biblical texts they were left in a bit of a bind. On the one hand they were placing Scripture on an even higher pedestal than previously--it was viewed as the only divinely inspired and thus authoritative documents for Christian practice and doctrine. But they still had to restrain their more adventurous members from outlandishly heretical interpretations of Scripture. Since they could no longer appeal to the interpretation of their own church leaders as authoritative, what would be their response to someone who held heretical beliefs based on a different reading of Scripture? How would they adjudicate between differing interpretations?
It seems they could only do so if they could enforce the claim that a particular method of interpreting the Bible was correct, and furthermore a method austere enough that it could rule out alternative interpretations. With these goals in mind the attraction of emphasizing the literal interpretation of texts becomes obvious, as it allows you to cut down on more imaginative or fanciful interpretations as being illegitimate.
My guess, and this is primarily a guess, is that this reasoning is also why evangelical and fundamentalist Christians reject the claim that they represent only a relatively recent movement in Christianity. They see themselves as the continuing in the mainstream of the original Protestant thinkers by continuing to emphasize the unique authority of the Bible and claim that it is in fact the mainline liberal Protestant denominations that have diverged from their heritage.
Tomorrow I'll examine these arguments in greater depth to show why I think, even if you accept the core theological claim of divine inspiration, they are not convincing proofs of Biblical Inerrancy. After that I will present an argument or two demonstrating the superiority of alternative ways of understanding divine inspiration.
*However, the literal reading should be understood as only the default reading. Even the most dedicated Inerrantist acknowledges that the Biblical authors would often use literary devices such as metaphors and parables to make their points. The point is that we should only accept a metaphorical reading when there are textual markers that the author is intending a passage to be understood in a non-literal manner. This is why many Inerrantists prefer talk of the "plain meaning of the text," or the "intended meaning of the author" as being the authoritative hermeneutical method.
I find this argument largely unpersuasive. Most religious people I know do not consider themselves to be irrational in their religious beliefs. They often have a different conception of rationality, but there is still an underlying logic to their beliefs. Accepting the underlying compatibility of their beliefs with rationality makes it necessary for them to respond to arguments identifying inconsistencies in their beliefs. Thus, even if you do not accept a particular set of religious presuppositions it is still possible to criticize it for logical consistency. Besides, most theological beliefs are far removed from the sort of core assumptions that are the ones that have to accepted on the basis of faith.
In that spirit I want to ask some questions and make some points about the Christian doctrine of Inerrancy over the next few days. Now for many this might seem to be going after low hanging fruit, but as this doctrine is very common in both the Christian and Muslim religions I think it is important to address. While I am a secular atheist myself, I think that some of our religious traditions are important and influential ways of understanding the world, and as such deserving of respect. However, I also think that some of these traditions, or at least aspects of these traditions, have had and continue to have pernicious effects on modern society. I think the doctrine of Inerrancy is one such (at least in Christianity--I'm not as familiar with how it has influenced Muslim countries--although the fact that it usually accompanies fundamentalism makes me suspect it has had a negative effect there as well), and so will make some criticisms of this doctrine and propose some alternative ways of understanding the the main Christian concerns driving this issue.
I am sometimes surprised that non-Christians don't talk about this issue more than they do. After all, around 30% of all U.S. citizens believe "the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word." People will often refer to this belief, usually scornfully if they do not hold it, or with great fervor if they do, but rarely address the reasons why someone might accept it.
First, I want to narrow the issue. I am not interested at this point in addressing the general doctrine of the divine inspiration of the Bible. I take that as a core Christian belief that rejecting would largely result in rejecting Christianity generally. Rather, Inerrancy refers to a particular understanding of what it means to say that the Bible is divinely inspired. This understanding interpretes the doctrines of inspiration to involve two distinctive claims:
1) The Bible is completely without error, including on matters of fact about history, science, psychology, ethics, or most pertinently, theology and spirituality.
2) There is a determinate meaning to all Biblical texts that is accessible by an application of a "literal" reading of the text.*
Why would Christians believe these? Well, the first is easy to understand. God is supposed to be a perfect being. The Bible is a divinely inspired (or "god-breathed" from 1 Timothy 3:16) collection of books. Hence, the Bible should also be perfect. Something like, if God wrote a novel, it would be a perfect novel, if he wrote a scientific treatise, it would be completely without error, because anything with error is by definition able to be improved and so not completely perfect. Ostensibly if God is perfect then he should have the ability to inspire a perfect document, and since he loves all humans would be motivated to do so, and that is why we have the Bible. The acceptance of this argument is why believers in Inerrancy often understand attacks on the accuracy of the Bible as implicitly being attacks on the power or authority of God himself.
It is more difficult to understand the reasoning behind the second thesis. However, I think its roots lie in the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone). When the Protestant Reformers rejected the authority of either the Pope or the church fathers to make authoritative interpretations of Biblical texts they were left in a bit of a bind. On the one hand they were placing Scripture on an even higher pedestal than previously--it was viewed as the only divinely inspired and thus authoritative documents for Christian practice and doctrine. But they still had to restrain their more adventurous members from outlandishly heretical interpretations of Scripture. Since they could no longer appeal to the interpretation of their own church leaders as authoritative, what would be their response to someone who held heretical beliefs based on a different reading of Scripture? How would they adjudicate between differing interpretations?
It seems they could only do so if they could enforce the claim that a particular method of interpreting the Bible was correct, and furthermore a method austere enough that it could rule out alternative interpretations. With these goals in mind the attraction of emphasizing the literal interpretation of texts becomes obvious, as it allows you to cut down on more imaginative or fanciful interpretations as being illegitimate.
My guess, and this is primarily a guess, is that this reasoning is also why evangelical and fundamentalist Christians reject the claim that they represent only a relatively recent movement in Christianity. They see themselves as the continuing in the mainstream of the original Protestant thinkers by continuing to emphasize the unique authority of the Bible and claim that it is in fact the mainline liberal Protestant denominations that have diverged from their heritage.
Tomorrow I'll examine these arguments in greater depth to show why I think, even if you accept the core theological claim of divine inspiration, they are not convincing proofs of Biblical Inerrancy. After that I will present an argument or two demonstrating the superiority of alternative ways of understanding divine inspiration.
*However, the literal reading should be understood as only the default reading. Even the most dedicated Inerrantist acknowledges that the Biblical authors would often use literary devices such as metaphors and parables to make their points. The point is that we should only accept a metaphorical reading when there are textual markers that the author is intending a passage to be understood in a non-literal manner. This is why many Inerrantists prefer talk of the "plain meaning of the text," or the "intended meaning of the author" as being the authoritative hermeneutical method.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Life soundtrack
I was listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor when I got on the bus this morning, just before that part of Lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven! when the preacher starts talking about his vision and there was this black man who was doing the same--the entire time I was on the bus--except he was he was very much not a Christian exhorter. Duelling apolocalypses.
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