I'm not a Christian, but I have thought about this issue quite a bit, so I
thought I'd throw in my opinions (for whatever they're worth). I should
note that I have also engaged in numerous scholarly debates on the subject.
Well, okay, it was just arguments in the university pub over pints of
Guinness, but dammit, that has to count for something.
>First, what I haven't given up on is the standard of truth. It wouldn't
>bother me if Noah took 15 pair of animals, or if something like that, so I
>am not an inerrantist. But if I am to believe some story that claims to be
>divinely inspired and claims to tell me something of my relationship with
>God, I want more certainty than warm and fuzzy feelings and I want more
>certainty than my parents told me this was true. All parents around the
>world representing all religions, tell their kids that their religion is
>true. But they all can't be true.
But there is a sense in which all religions can be true, without for a
moment espousing subjectivism. That is, if we reduce the claims in holy
books -- or at least, specific claims -- to the level of allegory, it is
possible for two *prima facie* contradictory accounts to in fact be
complementary. Nor does this for a moment seem to lessen the worth of the
books in question. Figurative truth is still truth.
And I don't mean to be putting forth some kind of Wittgensteinian
linguistic trickery here. Of course many religious claims are intended to
be completely literal accounts of truth, rather than merely figurative or
emotive statements. But the question is, which claims should be
interpreted in which ways? I think, in the case of the Bible, there is
good reason to interpret many claims in a figurative sense.
Suppose that there is a God and He inspired the writing of the Bible. In
this situation, God is communicating to a culture with extremely limited
capacity for scientific analysis. Wouldn't it be preferable, then, from a
divine perspective, to "dumb down" the account somewhat, and make general
points by way of allegory? Imagine for a moment that Genesis said "the
universe began when a singularity exploded, and, after the planet earth
coalesced, abiogenesis occurred" or some such thing. While this is
certainly what modern western science would like to see, how comprehensible
would such an account have been to the Israelites? From God's point of
view, the strict literal correctness of an account would, at least in this
case, seem to be less valuable than the message it conveys. For example,
we might take the creation account in Genesis as a purposefully
anthropomorphized and mythical account, but one which serves to convey the
true message that "God is the creator of the universe, and humans have a
special place in that universe".
>>Two things need to be understood to accept Genesis as allegory without
>>loosing faith in Christ. The first is that the Old and New Testaments do
>>not represent prophecy and its fulfillment, but two separate religious
>>accounts that have been artificially forced together because the followers
>>of the new religion were converts from the old, a situation unique in
>>religious history. This realization should allow you to separate your
>>Christian faith from your scholastic curiosity, because it allows you to
>>treat the historical and theological accounts of the New Testament as
>>separate from the accounts in the Old Testament, though not necessarily as
>>independent.
>
>If they are 2 separate religious accounts artificially put together, then
>they don't really belong together and they probably were inspired by
>different gods/people. And I am not interested in worshipping in a
>religion inspired by people alone.
A tangential point of interest: this idea that the Old Testament is not the
work of the same God that authored the New Testament was actually espoused
by an early Christian/Gnostic group, the Manichaeans. St. Augustine, for
one, was actually a Manichaean for many of the early years of his life.
>>The second is that the Old Testament is not the work of God, but of men
>>trying to relay the message of God to all mankind (as they saw it).
>
>Then we should reject it utterly if it isn't the work of God. It becomes
>merely the Bhagadvadgita or any other religious document--the conception of
>men of what god is like. It becomes an anthropomorphism--god created in
>man's image. Under that scenario, the OT is historically interesting but
>useless as a purveyor of metaphysical truth.
True, but the value of figurative truth is not to be disparaged. The works
of Keats and Coleridge are historically interesting and (pretty much)
useless as literal purveyors of metaphysical truth, but, all the same, the
themes conveyed in much of their poetry are universal and of great
interest. This is why I personally believe that the Bible contains
important truths, even though I am entirely skeptical on the matter of
whether it is divinely inspired.
> As
>>such, these authors could have incorporated accounts they knew were myths
>>and legends, even complete fictions, along with histories, law codes, poems,
>>philosophical and theological treatises, if they believed that these
>>accounts helped to convey some part of that message.
>
>What gets me about this approach is this. Many people who fight young-earth
>creationism find young-earth creationists saying things the YEC knows to be
>false. They then make the charge that the YEC is 'lying for Jesus'. And
>they criticize the YEC for this reprehensible behavior. But then the
>theists among those anti-YEC people are willing to accept the OT when the
>writers of the OT engaged in precisely the same behavior. If it is OK for
>the OT writers to incorporate KNOW FALSEHOODS into their book because it
>advanced their theological position, then consistency demands that it MUST
>BE ALRIGHT FOR YECS TO TEACH FALSE THINGS TO ADVANCE THEIR THEOLOGICAL
>POSITION. What is good for the goose must be good for the gander. Your
>position leads to the place where it is OK for the OT to be fiction but not
>OK for the YEC books to be fiction.
I actually disagree with Kevin on this point. I think there are two
reasons why (literally) untrue myths would be included in the Bible:
1) The writers really believed them. Remember, the Bible has its origins
in an essentially "pre-scientific" culture, and their conception of strict
critical analysis may not be the same as ours. (I ignore as irrelevant all
the problems in philosophy of science relating to attributions of
rationality and irrationality, although perhaps the likes of Davidson,
Henderson, and Lukes do have something to contribute here. I'll have to
think about that one.)
2) The writers, whether they believed the myths to be literally true or
not, presented them for their allegorical rather than literal significance.
Both of these strike me as somewhat more plausible than assuming that the
Bible authors (or OT authors specifically) knew the falsity of their words
and presented them anyhow. It seems more likely that either certain parts
of the Bible were presented sincerely as literal truth, but mistakenly so,
or that literal truth was never the intention at all.
> This realization
>>should allow you to separate your appreciation of the Bible as a source of
>>religious doctrine from your appreciation of scientific natural history,
>>because it allows you to treat each as separate domains independent of the
>>other, such that revelation in one cannot contradict revelations in the
>>other.
>
>Unfortunately, I live in a world that has a large amount of objective
>reality. What you are offering is the willingness to live in two worlds,
>one without any objective reality (theology) and the other with it.
That isn't necessarily the implication. The relevant question is, are
those theological claims which may appear to literally contradict the
results of empirical inquiry in fact *meant* to be claims of the same sort?
For example, if the Genesis creation account was intended (whether by God
or the human authors) to be primarily allegorical, then comparing Genesis
to the results of natural science would be a category mistake. Moreover,
each could be true, without contradiction. I'm not sure that this is what
Kevin was saying, but there you have it.
>>I am not trying to dictate to you what you should believe;
>
>I certainly didn't think that, and I am not doing it either. But the issue
>of how to interpret the relationship between reality and theology is
>certainly worthy of debate. :-)
I agree...!
>that is between
>>you and God. But I doubt God would be particularly angry if you took a more
>>liberal view of the question of Scriptural literature. Just something to
>>chew on.
>
>It is not God's anger that I am worried about here. It is his truthfulness
>and his reality. He must be real to be angry. And if he is real he must
>be capable of influencing this world and not merely be the
>creation/anthropomorphism of frightened humanity.
I think there is a certain value to be found in "Gods" whether they really
exist or not, but certainly the reduction of God to a mere anthropormorphic
construct is unacceptable to theists. I think, though, that *some*
religious claims may be reduced to the level of figurative truth without
arbitrarily reducing *all* theological claims similarly. This, perhaps, is
where the theist can make his scientific inquiry and his religious inquiry
complementary. Supposing for a moment that the results of correct science
are taken as likely truths (and I think you do take them this way, Glenn)
then you have a very powerful tool for deciding which religious claims
present figurative rather than literal truths. For example, in the case of
Genesis, you could construct an argument somewhere along these lines:
1) God exists, and Genesis is part of His true and inspired message for
humanity.
2) Genesis may either be literally or figuratively true, or some proportion
of each.
3) The results of natural science are extremely likely to be true.
4) The results of natural science contradict parts of a literal
interpretation of Genesis.
5) Therefore, those parts of Genesis which literally contradict the results
of natural science are extremely likely to be figurative, rather than
literal truths.
Food for thought? Or am I just stating the obvious in very roundabout
ways? :)
Regards,
Mike Hardie
<hardie@globalserve.net>
http://www.globalserve.net/~hardie/dv/