Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Fundamentally Altered Viewpoint

    Alan Lenzi, of Bible and Ancient Near East, asks a simple question:

    Does awareness of the ANE archaeological, linguistic, cultural, and textual materials discovered in the last 150 years or so fundamentally alter our understanding of the Hebrew Bible?

    As soon as I’ve finished writing this short post I’m going to go to his blog and comment with the answer “yes.” (If you want to answer his question, please go there to do so. If you want to comment on my additional notes, do so here or as desired.)

    The problem, however, is that the question is not quite that simple, because he uses “our”. If he used “your”, I would be quite comfortable with just a yes. In my personal experience, I moved from believing that God more or less delivered the Bible intact to the various prophets and other authors, to one in which I see them each as recording their experiences with God. That is a fundamental shift, and it resulted from working with ancient near eastern material. It wasn’t a very comfortable process.

    But there are two concerns that I have with the answer. If I am to include the Christian church in general, I would say that even in mainline churches many if not most of the members are unaware of the comparative and textual material, and if they are aware, it is a fairly foggy sort of awareness. Just how much of “us” has been fundamentally changed?

    Many ministers are well aware of the comparative materials, yet they hesitate to truly educate congregations. One reason, true if not valid, is that some members are going to lose their faith based on this material. I don’t know precisely why different ways of dealing with the data appeal to different people. It’s easy for those on my side, the “faith” side so to speak, to accuse those who leave the church of doing so for reasons other than that they are following the data where it leads them.

    Many of those who leave Christianity look back at someone like me and suppose that I am rationalizing my faith. Having pretty much ditched all the fundamentals that got me into a Biblical Languages program in the first place, training to teach, I still try to construct a faith position that, to them at least, looks pretty flimsy.

    I’d prefer to allow that we all come to where we are in a substantially honest manner, though I would put an emphasis on the role of the Christian community. One is more likely to construct a workable faith position if one is supported in the community. That cuts both ways as I see it. One could blame departures on a failure of the community to support. I think that does happen. But one could also blame those who stay on the support of the community, rather than intellectual honesty.

    The church, in my experience, regularly fails to provide a good environment for intellectual and spiritual searching. Most church members want to see their church more as a destination than a journey, and they don’t want someone running around and shaking the foundations and the framework. In my view that is a weakness. While someone may search while in the church, and may find, it seems to me almost accidental.

    So in terms of the church as a whole I would say that many do not have a fundamentally altered viewpoint simply because they ignore the relevant data. I will ignore here those who simply challenge the data as such.

    Finally, it’s easy to project one’s personal experience onto the broader movement. My personal movement from a fundamentalist to a much more liberal view of inspiration reflects the historical journey of the church since reformation and enlightenment. Except that it doesn’t. I think there have always been at least hints of handling inspiration, and even those who rejected inspiration based solely on the information that they had at the time. The basic facts are much clearer now, and many more people have had the opportunity to see such material, but the actual impact is smaller than one would imagine.

    So, in order, for me, yes. For the church community in America today, not so much. For Christianity as a whole, maybe partially.

    Don’t worry. I’ll try to be even less clear next time!

  • TVUUC Shooting

    On Sunday, July 27, there was a shooting at Tennessee Value Unitarian-Universalist Church in which two people were killed.

    Moderate Christian Blogroll member Shuck and Jive is following this tragedy. I will be following it via his blog and the news stories he links to.

    I join my prayers with those already offered for the people of this congregation.

  • One Reason Theology Students Lose their Faith

    There are many different faith journeys, and I would not presume to speak for all of them. One reason, however, for theology students to lose their faith as they become more educated is that they are given no room to explore questions that they have and are greeted with judgmental attitudes. This specifically applies to those studying in more conservative institutions. Liberal institutions bring their own problems, including a culture that almost demands negative answers to the questions.

    This is demonstrated, I think, by the case of Peter Enns. I only recently added Bible and Ancient Near East to my blogroll over at my Participatory Bible Study Blog, and today there is a post there leading to this post and comment thread about the departure of Dr. Peter Enns, whose heresies (if any) are very mild.

    Read the comment thread to get the anger. As Dr. Lenzi notes, the link to the comment thread may go dead. There are people calling for it to be deleted–apparently the subject should not even be discussed. And though I do see some cause for concern about libel, that isn’t the reason people are calling for it to be deleted.

    Once one is the target of such anger, I think one asks oneself why one should suffer torment in order to be permitted to teach in such an atmosphere. Many people simply find somewhere else to go.

  • Newbigin: Proper Confidence

    With it’s subtitle, “Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship” this little big sets sail into a rather intense area of debate, and one which is very relevant to recent discussions on this blog. I’m not really going to try to summarize it. It is only 105 pages and those aren’t too terribly intense if you’ve done a bit of theological reading before. I’d suggest getting a copy and reading it. I got mine as a gift from a friend. Giving me books is a great way to get on my good side!

    I’m afraid to summarize. Newbigin boils down a great deal of material into those 105 pages, so setting out to summarize is difficult. But I would say briefly that he holds that all knowledge involves risk, as a subject makes a commitment to some thing. In the same way all knowledge is subjective, as it is known by a subject. There is no point in discussing knowledge without a subject who is doing the knowing. Nonetheless we can be confident of such subjective knowledge, and in fact we regularly are.

    I’m pretty certain I’ll be dissatisfied with that summary later, and I’m sure someone who has read the book will come back and point out how I have oversimplified everything, lost all the nuances, and perhaps even misrepresented some aspect. I guess I will take the risk of choosing to believe it will do to lay the groundwork for my response.

    I agree with Newbigin in broad outlines, but find myself coming to a different point on the spectrum as a result, always providing that I am correctly reading where he comes out within the outline. A key point here is simply that all knowledge is subjective to some extent. We do not know absolutely or from a perspectiveless framework. We know from who we are and where we are.

    In some postmodern thought, this results in the claim that all ideas are so subjective that we shouldn’t make truth claims between them at all. In the creation-evolution controversy, many people who would probably forcefully reject any idea that they are postmodern nonetheless use the “all stories are equal” approach to denigrate science and thereby make their own story look better. If scientists might be wrong and creationists might be wrong, then why privilege the results of scientific research over young earth creationism? (Note that the example is mine, not Newbigin’s.)

    Newbigin doesn’t leave us there, however. He does believe that there is a reality to be perceived, and that we do our best to perceive it, and in doing so take a risk through the commitments that we make. There is a certainty, not that we are right, but that we are going toward what is right, or so I interpret page 67, separated from its specifically Christian commitment.

    But the whole cannot be separated from its Christian commitment, because that is ultimately what Newbigin is talking about–the commitment to the one who is truth, a subjective commitment because it is a choice taken with risk, but not something of which one cannot be confident at all.

    I certainly agree that all knowledge is limited and subjective. The results of scientific research are not complete, and my theological wanderings are certainly not absolute. (I do believe there are things that are absolutely true, but they are so far from our perception that we have to be satisfied with doing our best to head that direction. It’s sort of like navigating by the north star. You’ll never get there, but if you keep on, you’ll arrive somewhere in the vicinity of the north pole.

    So in the sense that all knowledge is subjective and that one makes choices, takes risks, and can (indeed will) have confidence in things one does not know absolutely, I agree with Newbigin. Where I perceive that I differ is in the relative levels. I think it is very easy to overemphasize how relative certain elements of physical knowledge are, and to underemphasize just how relative certain spiritual issues are. The idea that all stories are equal results from such a confusion.

    In practical terms most of us treat “objective” as something that can be similarly perceived by multiple people. A scientific experiment that can be repeated by anyone with the proper supplies and equipment is considered objective. Fantasies in my own mind are subjective because nobody else can perceive them. While there is a subjective element in the most objective fact, and there is an objective element in the most subjective (neurons fire when I fantasize, I would imagine!), there’s a very valuable distinction there. I don’t think Newbigin misses that point; I do think he emphasizes is somewhat less than I would.

    As an example, let me relate three experiences, two of them singular and one that has been repeated many times. In the first, a couple of days after our son died, I was in my wife’s home office with her when I clearly heard our son speaking in the next room. It was clear enough to me that I actually got up and started to head over there to talk to him before I was jolted by the reality that he was dead. My wife heard nothing, of course, and a recorder would have recorded anything. In fact, the only evidence you have or can have of this event is that I relate it. I didn’t even tell my wife what happened at the time. She simply noticed me leave the room and decide to come back, and since such inconsistent behavior is not uncommon for me, she never noticed.

    In the second, we were both in the living room and I heard water running. I got up mumbling about having left the tap running in the bathroom (though it did sound oddly different). My wife starts laughing and says, “No, that’s my new screen saver with sounds of running water.” In this case there is an objective event, but I misperceive it.

    In the final case, which happens commonly, I hear the dog barking, and I assume something has happened. This is objectively demonstrable, as in anyone who goes to where the dog is will likely perceive him barking and almost as likely notice why. He generally only barks for some reason. It may not be a good one, but there will be a cause!

    My point in all those words is that there are many levels of confidence that we have in our knowledge, and the question here would be where we place certain matters of spirituality on this continuum. I think that on a day to day basis I rank them much more subjectively than does Newbigin, but we both rank them somewhere.

    Which leads to the point on which the preceding paragraph is completely wrong–or is it? Both Newbigin and I make a very fundamental choice, the choice to believe in the incarnation. This provides at the foundation of our thinking the believe in God as creator, in other words, that the universe makes sense, and second that we have placed our final confidence in a person. In my personal thinking, and as I read Newbigin in his as well, this becomes a central axiom in our way of thinking. Subordinate facts may fall wherever on the spectrum, but this choice remains at the core, and is the one to which we give our true confidence.

    To quote from page 66-67, and do so more faithfully to its context than my previous allusion:

    If we are to use the word “certainty” here, then it is not the certainty of Descartes. It is the kind of certainty expressed in such words as those of the Scriptures: “I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me” (2 Tim. 1:12). . . . The weight of confidence rests there and not here with us. Secondly, the phrase “until that day” reminds us that this is not a claim to possess final truth but to be on the way that leads to the fullness of truth. . . .

    That’s a pretty good expression, I think.

  • Ad for New OT Professor at WTS

    While I acknowledge that a seminary has a right to choose their people and support their confession, this suggested ad gets closer to the way I feel about it. Peter Enns was pretty conservative from where I sit.

  • Discernment and Revelation

    Yesterday I wrote a post regarding judging revelation by means of reason, and in particular pointed out that one of the problems I see with Biblical inerrancy is that it cannot be demonstrated in this fashion.

    In a failed attempt at being brief I failed to underline that this is only one of my many objections to inerrancy, or that this objection is only applicable to certain approaches. It seems to me that when one can pick up a book attempting to reconcile errors in the Bible so as to demonstrate its inerrancy, it is appropriate to object to the process on the basis that there is no adequate standard to use in the task.

    There are those who take inerrancy as a presupposition, but does it not seem odd to take “this book is without error” as an axiom in one’s thinking and build all else from there? And if one has done so is it not a bit odd to then go about comparing the scripture with historical research in order to demonstrate what has been taken as an axiom? (‘Axiom’ and ‘presupposition’ are not quite synonymous, but are close enough for my purposes here.) That is a large topic, and I’m going to leave it for later.

    At the moment my concern is that my critique of that one approach means that I think it’s the only one, and that it has failed. In other words, if I think reason is inadequate on its own to determine whether God is speaking, or whether something is divine or demonic (think Tillich’s definition of these terms, though I don’t have his Systematic Theology on hand to quote, I think I found the right passage on page 226ff of volume 1 via Google Book Search.)

    This is especially important because Peter Kirk has broadened the discussion to discernment in the wider sense, such as testing Todd Bentley’s ministry, and I would hate to be understood as saying that such discernment is impossible. I do think that the fact that I disagree to a significant extent with Peter about Todd Bentley, though not as much as some others, indicates that discernment is not an easy subject to pin down.

    I’d like to point back to this post, which deals with discernment, as well as the Biblical Inspiration tag on my Participatory Bible Study Blog.

    For those who will go so far as to buy books (stop reading now to avoid gentle commercial announcement), I discuss these issues in my books When People Speak for God and Identifying Your Gifts and Service: Small Group Edition dealing with spiritual gifts in general but with substantial discussion of testing and authority. (End commercial, you can start reading again!)

    The key point I would like to make in this hopefully short post is that discernment, inspiration, revelation, and related issues are not simple, and we must approach them carefully and with–dare I say it?–discernment!

  • Peter Enns Leaving WTS

    I wanted to report on this mutually agreed separation, because I have previously reported on the problems. (HT: Through a Glass Darkly.)

  • What Would we Do Without PZ Myers?

    Some of us like to be angry, and if we’re Christians and angry, then PZ Myers is a very useful person. After all, how can one be properly angry without someone at whom one can direct one’s rage? Enter PZ Myers, who has now performed his act of desecration on the communion wafer.

    At first I found it fairly rude. As it has gone one it has become more and more ludicrous. On reading his post I can’t even tell whether the wafers are even consecrated. He seems to be indicating that he had more than one:

    You would not believe how many people are writing to me, insisting that these horrible little crackers (they look like flattened bits of styrofoam) are literally pieces of their god, and that this omnipotent being who created the universe can actually be seriously harmed by some third-rate liberal intellectual at a third-rate university (the diminution of my vast powers is also a common theme).

    It would be interesting from the viewpoint of Catholic theology if these had, in fact, not been consecrated. The rudeness seems to me about equal, but it would probably give a few theologians a laugh along the way.

    I still stick with my earlier point. These actions are not courteous, in my view, but they do not deserve sanction of law, firing from one’s job, or the outpouring of sheer hatred that has resulted from this whole incident.

    What would we, as Christians, do without PZ Myers to reveal our insecurity, our limited view of divine power, our anger, and our hatred? Someone else would have to come along and reveal the weakness that is within. Because the biggest argument against Christianity that is being made here is not made by PZ Myers, but rather by those of us who react as we do.

    By this reaction, we demonstrate that Jesus has not, in fact, done very much transformation on us. We demonstrate that we do not, in fact, believe that God is love. Instead, we believe that God is a God of hypersensitive feelings, overreaction, anger, and hate, and in addition that at times he can’t spell, punctuate, or construct a coherent sentence.

    If there is any good that will come of this I think it will have to be in some heart searching on the part of Christians to ask just why someone can do us this kind of harm without actually touching us.

    Some may ask we I use “we” and “us” in the paragraphs above, since I have indicated that I lack this anger. While I think the actions were rude, I face rudeness quite regularly and I can live with it. But as someone who is involved in teaching, I think it is important not to distance myself from the community. It would be easy to label all the angry people “not real Christians” and claim that I don’t have to recognize any connection. But in fact there is a great deal of connection. When one part of the body suffers, all suffer (1 Corinthians 12:26).

    One last note on a personal reaction. I surprised myself in reading about PZ’s actual desecration. While I regarded the proposed desecration of the wafer as rude, that really was all I felt. It was more the feeling of someone who cussed in a place where I think such language was inappropriate. When I read about the actual desecration, however, I felt the same about the wafer, but I had a stab of annoyance about the books! Why do such a thing to perfectly good books?

    I think the symbolism of book burning or defacing has more power over me emotionally, and in this case it did not involve books that are sacred to me, though I have read them. I have a fine copy of the Qur’an, for example, a gift from an Imam with whom I studied for a period of time. I treasure it, and despite having no belief in its inspiration, I nonetheless would not want it defaced.

    But emotions aside, doing stuff to stuff, provided no property issues are involved, should not evoke the type of response that this has.

    (PS: Ken Brown has written an excellent response, which is more concise and to the point than mine.)

    (PSS: I will have to hold a contest sometime to find a blogger who is not more concise than I am. The very idea boggles the mind.)

  • Using Reason to Judge Revelation

    One of my objections to inerrancy is that it is impossible to demonstrate. Lacking a perfect standard external to the Bible and also lacking perfect understanding, we are unable to actually demonstrate that the Bible is, in fact, without error. Some apologists seem to believe that if we just apply the right set of standards to all the literature before us, the Bible will stand out as inspired and inerrant as opposed to all other claimants.

    The problem is that if God reveals something to you that you cannot know in any other way, by what means do you determine that it is true?

    Previously I have written that determined what is an authoritative, inspired source is defined within a community, rather than in some externally objective fashion. Thus if one wanted to compare the revelations of Christianity and Islam, the Bible and the Qur’an respectively, one would need to compare the communities rather than the books. In practice the books are defined and judged by the communities involved. That sort of comparison is a daunting task, and neither of these communities (nor any others I know of) consistently seem to come out well. There is always the “everybody’s human” dodge, but that only makes it harder.

    Christopher Smith discusses some issues related to this in his post Some Objections to Newman’s Anti-Rationalist Polemics. There his main concern is applying our conscience to scripture. For example, what does one do about commands to genocide in scripture? This is a question closely related to my current series on theodicy.

    Referring to Newman’s claim that scripture is not to be judged by its contents, but rather by its credentials (an iffy proposition, to say the least!), Chris says:

    The kind of thinking described above may resolve the problem of divinely-ordained genocide in the Old Testament for the Bible inerrantist, but it also resolves the problem of divinely-ordained unbeliever-killing for the Muslim Brother. And of course, Newman applied it selectively. . . .

    I would add that if anything God commands is right by virtue of the fact that God commands it, a variation on this same statement, then how can one possibly tell the difference between divine and demonic? This is a major reason that I often equivocate (or some would probably use less charitable words) on the revelation aspect of scripture and dwell heavily on the experiential aspect. I tend to see scripture as a record of experience with God, revelatory in the sense that I judge it to be experience of the divine, but not in the sense that it provides extraordinary information that could not be acquired otherwise.

    Now there must be revelation in there if people are experiencing God, but we have a very imperfect idea of what is divine revelation and what is part of what we bring to the table. On the key question here, acts of God which seem to be morally reprehensible, I would say that we need to ask just how much of all of that was what God brought to the table, and how much was the result of what humans brought with them.

    I would submit that even when we have come through an experience that we say has profoundly changed us, we have only been changed a little at a time.

    Chris starts his concluding paragraph thus:

    Reason, of course, can lead people to differing beliefs, as well. I do not claim that reason is perfect, pure, or easy to use. . . .

    Good point, and that’s why we constantly put things to the test, both of reason and of experience. When someone comes out and says, “God told me to injure or kill people for no valid reason,” we can know that it’s wrong, and by definition, if wrong, it is not God.

  • Christian Carnival CCXXXIV Posted

    . . . at A True Believer’s Blog, a first time host. Go over and check it out!